Park Bench Improvisations - Riley Park

On Mondays and Tuesdays I teach dance at Riley Park Community Centre. I was there early on Monday and decided to do some dancing in the park. The day was so nice and sunny, and I was happy to spend some time outdoors.

But the time I was finished, the people inside were giving me rather strange looks. One guy came outside for a smoke and asked if I needed help. I thought about asking him to dance with me but I didn't. Instead we talked about the ESL class he was taking, and about my dance classes. Then he stayed and watched while I filmed the last couple of clips.

Corner Improv

Another site-specific improv, on my lunch break yesterday. I am particularly fond of the ending.

Site-Specific Improv, Parking Garage

Yesterday on my way home I stopped at a parking garage and danced a bit. After sitting at a desk all day I needed to move and be creative.





I found this little flyer in the garage and thought it needed to be included in the dance. Didn't realize that it would make the faraway stuff out of focus but I kinda like the effect.

Site Specific Performance: Wrap-Up and Review

So, I thought that I'd say a few words about the site-specific performance last weekend, before it slips my mind completely as I am quickly moving on to new things at the Dance Exchange and elsewhere. There have been tons of things that have happened without my being able to write about them, which has been disappointing - but if I'm too busy to write, it's because I'm dancing. Which in and of itself is great.

Anyways, I digress. The site-specific performance went really well. It was the first time I'd done a morning show in quite some time, and my body took a while to adjust - the first show still had a few kinks in it, and our audience was a bit smaller. The noon show went much smoother, and the audience had swelled, including some of the DX company members and staff. It was nice to have their support.

All of the performers did an amazing job! Peter was a wonderful tour guide, leading the audience around the building, helping them to interpret the performance while at the same time building a short movement phrase based on the things they were seeing and hearing. Anne's poetic voice was beautiful, and added an extra dimension to the performance. I particularly enjoyed hearing her words juxtaposed against Dorothy's solo, focusing on the deliberate qualities of her movement and the description of the permanence and strength and texture of the rough brick wall.



My favorite part of the show was Ilya and Sarah's fountain duet. Ilya is a visiting guest artist from Russia, and he is an amazingly talented and creative choreographer and performer. Sarah is a local dance artist, who is equally amazing and beautiful to watch. I have a video of this piece, and of the teens' stairway dance, but I have to edit them as the file sizes are too big to upload.

John Borstel worked with the group to create a really engaging installation/set piece in which dancers manipluated a piece of fabric over the atrium balcony while the Teen Exchange group floated pieces of vellum paper printed with words down over the fabric to the floor below. Myself and other participants were dressed in white, dancing set and improvised movements on the lower level, under the fabric and among the fallen paper. From the audience's perspective, the printed words combined randomly to create jumbled phrases, allowing them to piece together meaning wherever they could find it - or to just read the piece as a whole.

We had a fabulous team working together on this project - I have to admit that I wasn't sure we could pull it off in the time that we had, but in the end everything worked out better than we could have imagined. Every audience reaction that I heard was positive - people were really intrigued by how we pulled them into the space, leading them to view the building in different ways that they had experienced before.



My kudos to everyone involved - Matt and Cassie for givng us a great start and helping to generate and craft our movement material, Peter and Ilya for helping me to keep everything organized and running smoothly, Anne and John for their wonderful artistic contributions, and of course our amazing community and Dance Exchange participants, and the staff at the Takoma Park Community Centre, and the DC Outlaw skateboarders, and the audience, and the perfectly sunny weather, and everyone and everything else that made this performance such a success!

Photos: A step in the process of creating John's installation piece: we used a tool called 3 Column Writing to generate some text, which (after a few more steps) we arranged in places around a room in a way that had some relation to the space and the words themselves. 3 Column Writing is a really interesting and useful tool, I will do a separate post describing the process later on.

Video Post: Solo, Work in Progress

This is one of two solos that I am creating right now. This one is an assignment by the Dance Exchange's Associate Artistic Director, Elizabeth Johnson: creating a solo to be performed as a part of the site-specific performance next Sunday, October 20th.

This work is inspired by writings of Takoma Park's Poet Laureate Anne Becker, whose work is often tied to ideas of place and physical presence, examining the effect of the earth and the environment on the people who inhabit it, and our effect on the physicality of the world. While I was generating this movement phrase, I was working with the concrete structure of moving between round and crescent shapes in my body - and more abstractly, examining through movement the cyclical nature of stabilization and adaptation that occurs in the earth and in human beings. There is another section of the work that was initially generated by using Build-a-Phrase, collecting movements as Anne was speaking about her poem Berry Hollow, stylizing and shaping those gestures into a short phrase. I don't have a video of that part yet.

The next step for the section shown in the video is to find the places where the free flow can be stopped, changed, or broken - to explore using sharpness, bound flow and stillness to break up the rhythm.

Next week Anne and I have decided to meet up and chat about poetry - she has graciously agreed to read some of my work and give me some advice...very excited and also nervous, this will be the first time I've had an accomplished poet read my writing and give me feedback.

Site Specific Institute: Progress Report (Day 1)

I thought that some of you may be interested in hearing a bit more about the site specific process, the tools we've used during our institute, and what we've managed to build so far. We've already done three sessions so I am a little behind in my documentation, but better late than never, I always say.

Day 1: We began the day with an exercise very similar to "Follow the Leader". In groups of three, we explored the outer periphery of the Takoma Park Community Center, experiencing different ways of moving in and interacting with this environment. An interesting observation was the effect of the physicality of the space on the dancer's choices: in places (like the railings) where the feature was big enough to accomodate more than one person, the movement ended up being done in unison...if the object of focus was small (like tracing a sign) then dancers were forced to choose between waiting for the leader to finish and move on before repeating the action (thereby creating a canon effect) or performing the action in unison, but in a different relationship to the space.

Our next exercise was a tool called Detail. This tool is widely used at the Dance Exchange, and is a great way to create movement based on our observations of the physical environment. Click the link for more information about Detail. At the community centre, we looked at the space on three different planes: floor level, horizon or eye level, and ceiling level. We picked one detail about each level of the space, and put the shape or texture or other characteristics of that physical detail into our body somehow, in movement. At the end of this exercise, we had generated a short phrase of three movements. (When working with this and other tools, keep in mind that each "movement" can be as long as you want, but needs to have a clear beginning, middle and end.)



After Detail, we generated another short movement phrase using an exercise that I call Build-a-Phrase: Questions. This is a variant of the Build-a-Phrase tool in which the group leader asks questions and the participants answer the questions and create movement based on the answers given. The questions we worked with all had to do with the idea of a person leaving an imprint on a place, or a place leaving an imprint on a person.

The exercise goes like this: everyone walks around the room, finding a partner. The leader poses a question. Each partner answers the question, then turns away from each other and creates a movement. You can create your movement based on your own answer or your partners' answer, or the question itself. Repeat with a new partner and a new question, as many times as you like. Each time a new movement is generated, take a few moments to link it with the previous movements, to create a phrase.


These question phrases were cut and pasted together in partners to create a duet phrase in a space of your choice indoors. Our assignment for the day was to take these phrases and perform them in two places outside of the community centre, working with the idea of public/private space and it's effect on movement. We were asked to do the phrase in the shower/bathtub and in a public space of our choosing. I chose the top of a jungle gym on a kids' playground. I would show you the video, but for some reason it's not working properly.

We were allowed to let the movement change in whatever ways were necessary (ie if you were really shy about doing your phrase in, say, the supermarket - then it may become a very small contained phrase using only your fingers). In my case, my shower is tiny so that changed a lot of the limb extensions and made it more about the torso. Also, the playground had lots of cool things to use when shifting my weight, so the movement became very off-centre. The challenge was to recreate those changes when we got back into the community centre the next day.

But more on that later....

Photos: images from around the Takoma Park Community Center.

Site Specific Institute: Skateboard Dances

Elizabeth Johnson and I have been working on a skateboarding section for the Dance Exchange's site specific institute. The skaters we are working with are slalom skateboarders, and they are really really good at what they do. We are throwing some dancers into the mix, who will be acting as cones for the skaters to go around.

Our first session was today - we set a sequence of passes for the skaters to do, a sequence of movements for the dancers to do, and are still trying to figure out how it will all work together. Timing will be key.

We are putting this on at the Takoma Park Community Center - in the lower parking lot, which is mainly used by the police cars (the police station is on the lower level of the building). We talked with some of the cops today and they were just about as accommodating as possible, even offering to shut down the lot for us to use on the day of the show. I never thought I would see the day when the cops would give up their space to some skateboarders....the power of dance, people! It brings communities together.

Here are some pictures from our rehearsal today. The skaters are Mike and Earl, from the DC Outlaws. They just returned from the World Championships and we feel very lucky to have them participating in this performance! We will have two more skaters and six dancers working together for this section.

October is Here!

Wow, my first post of October. Already a month has gone by in my apprenticeship, two more to go before I head home to continue dancing in Vancouver (and maybe Europe this spring)...

I just wanted to quickly say how much I enjoyed this weekend's performances - Friday with Contradiction Dance, and Monday's show at U. of Maryland, my first performance with The Dance Exchange. In both instances I really felt included in the group - I feel like I fit in so well here, that everyone has accepted me into their world and that it's really a place where I can be myself and grow as an artist and as a person. Making so many new friends is wonderful.

It's also really nice to work with such a large cast (on The Farthest Earth From Thee). Vancouver companies tend to limit their casts (mostly due to budget concerns) to a maximum of four or five dancers. Working with a group of 10 or 12 people was a great experience.

Tonight Kelly's rehearsal process starts up again, in preparation for an October 20th performance. I am going to be creating a solo for myself that will be included in the work, and possibly developing a duet with Kelly...

Tonight is also the first session of a site-specific intensive, that will culminate on October 20th with a matinee performance at Takoma Park Community Centre. Yes, I have two shows in one day - one daytime, and one evening. That is going to be a looong day.

Photo: Miss Madeleine, watching rehearsals. She had a cameo appearance in FEFT as Cupid, and did a wonderful job.

Contradiction Dance: Objects of Hope: The America Project (First Draft)

So this isn't going to be the most creative post, because it is almost midnight and I have to get up early for company class tomorrow...but I really want to let everyone know that I'm performing with Kelly Mayfield's company Contradiction Dance, at the Martin Luther King library in downtown DC, tomorrow at 6:00pm! And everyone that's reading this who is in the DC area should totally come and see me! Here is the info, cut and pasted from the email because I am lazy.

I will be back soon with a more thoughtful post about the work, and my role in it.

Performances:

Objects of Hope: America - First Draft

Part of the DC Improvisation Festival

Friday, Sept 28th 6 pm

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library

901 G Street NW

Washington, D.C. 20001

http://www.improvfestival.com/performance_schedule.html

FREE!!

Save the Dates:

October 20th, 6pm

Objects of Hope: This Voice

Tribute to Adriana

Tickets? contact: Mitra@NileDanceStudio.com

December 5-8th 8pm, 9th 2pm

Objects of Hope: Planet

Dancing on the Earth

Tickets? Box Office at 240-895-4243 (ext. 4243), or e-mail: boxoffice@smcm.edu

Objects of Hope:

I NEED YOUR HELP!!! Yes, that's right, you... all of you. This project, Objects of Hope, will be a movement, sound, and visual display of our personal objects of hope. We all have them, they are all personal, and they are quite different, sometimes rare, and truly wonderful. However, we barely talk about or celebrate them. Last year was a look back in order to move forward... well, it's time to move forward. Join me.

Please respond to the following questions as you see fit. (pictures/drawings/sound/words/movement/etc.)

1. What are your objects of hope?

2. Why? Is there a particular story for any or all?

3. How do you celebrate/remember your Objects of Hope?

4. Anything else to share?

Many thanks for your time and willingness to share your experiences. Please request anonymity if you desire it. This project will include your stories, those shared by youth in both studio & outreach settings, college students, friends, family, and strangers. Who knows where this path will lead... forward as you like.

About Contradiction Dance:

Contradiction Dance is a place where theatre meets dance meets pop-culture. The company's vision is to make dances that report on, reflect, and question the world in which we live. Nurtured on the belief that artists and audience members communicate in a dialogue through the chosen medium, Contradiction Dance fosters discussion, reflection, and change through live performance and dance education.

Founded in 2006 by Artistic Director, Kelly Mayfield, Contradiction Dance blends several dance forms (modern, hip-hop, tap, and jazz elements) with aspects of storytelling, and theatre. This eclectic mix, fused by the direct purpose of theme, allows the company to create an exchange between art and life for audiences, performers, and collaborators. The company members are not simply dancers, they are artists; each contributes greatly to the process and the final product. Each has invested in their message, the desire to share it, and the study, practice and performance of the craft they bring to Contradiction Dance. For more information or to book a performance, workshop, or master class, please contact: Kelly Mayfield at contradictiondance@mac.com.