Shadow Dance Improv

At Riley Park.

I promise I'll do some actual writing soon, but I've been in bed sick as a dog for a week. So instead, you get an old(ish) clip of my shadow dancing on the wall at Riley Park. Just uploaded today, by the request of a Mr. Boris Willis aka eager bunny Boris.

False Creek Improvisations

Last week I did some dancing on False Creek, near the marina.

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.

More Dance-a-Day Movies

Here is the full trilogy of Dance-a-Day movies featuring Boris and myself. Music by Rydel.


Part 1


Part 2


Part 3

I'm on Danceaday.com

As I mentioned before, Boris and I made a few dances together the day before I left DC. Well, they're all online now, so please visit danceaday.com to have a look!

Here are the links:

Farewell Shallom

Shallom and Boris

Shallom Back in the Day

Movie


And just for fun - this is Boris wearing his Tour Guide Hat as we drive around the Arlington National Cemetery and the Iwo Jima Memorial. A couple of the above dances were filmed nearby. Boris - I miss you! Why you gotta live so far away?

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: DC Improv Festival, Daniel Burkholder / The Playground

This is installment #1 of a series of video shot at the DC Improvisation Festival today. Last night I performed with Contradiction Dance as a part of said festival, and the show went really, really well. One of Kelly's collaborators, Boris (of Danceaday.com) filmed the performance for us, and he's going to make Kelly a copy which hopefully she will be able to pass on to me.

For now, I've got a bunch of video of artists from here and elsewhere (including another Canadian - yay!) dancing around 9th and G streets. It feels good that I'm starting to get to know artists from around this city, and to see their work in action. One thing I will say, however - out of all the work I saw in this festival, I liked Kelly's piece the best. :) And not just because I was in it.



This video is of Daniel Burkholder / The Playground. Daniel and Co performed right after us on Friday night. Their work was mainly composed of pedestrian movements and incorporated a lot of moments of stillness contrasted with fast, furious traveling around the space. I've included the section that I found to be the most interesting/engaging.