For The Luv of It 2009

Finally got the official video from my last performance online.....a collaborative piece between myself Jhaymee Hizon (bboy) and Anna-Lisa (spoken word). Kudos to both of them for making this piece so special.

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.

The Farthest Earth From Thee: De-Exceptionalizing Disabilities in Performance

One of the projects I've been involved in is a show called The Farthest Earth From Thee. The project was commissioned in spring of 2007 by VSA Arts, and is a full-length production featuring a mixed-abilities cast of company and guest dancers. This FREE performance will be a "animated keynote" - a selection of excerpts from the production, accompanied by a discussion of the work led by Producing Artistic Director Peter Dimuro.

The creation process was highly collaborative. Peter acted as Artistic Lead on this work, crafting the movement generated by the entire cast. The movement was inspired by Shakespeare's sonnets - movement was generated by the sounds, metaphors, relationships and multiple meanings embodied in his work. The end product is a mix of dance and theatre, incorporating movement, music, character and spoken text.

During the Generating Dances institute that I attended in January 2007, we were exploring the beginnings of the idea that evolved into this work, playing with creating compositions inspired by words, and expanding on these initial phrases to generate longer, more detailed movement sequences. We used a lot of the toolbox exercises, which helped me to push beyond my comfort zone and experiment with new ideas and new ways of transferring those concepts into physicality.

This process really came in handy when I got back home to Vancouver, where I was working with 30Toes to create Between The Lines, a work inspired by the text found in children's literature.



All that said, it's interesting to come back to this project, now that the work is finished and has premiered, and is being remounted for another performance. It's intriguing to see where they've taken the initial ideas, and how it has evolved into a strong, cohesive work that really brings out the best in all of the cast members.

It's a new experience for me to be working with such a diverse group of performers, and I'm really enjoying getting to know everyone and finding new inspirations in the ways people - including myself - move beyond their physical or mental or emotional to come together and create something really amazing.


One thing that I love about the Dance Exchange is their ability to help people find value in their own physicality, in their own movement. To really accept who they are and what they have the ability to create, and to see it as beautiful, regardless of their body type or training or background. It bothers me that dance (and especially contemporary dance) is often very elitist, only acknowledging movers and ways of moving that conform to certain standards of virtuosity and technical prowess.

We have three performers in wheelchairs, one survivor of polio who has minimal mobility in his arms and hands, one performer with Downs' Syndrome, performers who are visually impaired, and many others (like myself) whose disabilities are less visible (but still there, nonetheless). And one cute li'l puppy dog, with cupid wings. Instead of thinking of a mixed abilities cast as a group of people with extra limitations, I like to think of this experience as a phenomenal opportunity to create something completely new and different from anything I've ever seen before - and that's exactly what they've done. In a way, having a structure like this to work in challenges you to make new and more interesting choices about movement and how the movement is presented to the audience.


It's also interesting to see how different people's movement looks and feels when transplanted to a differently-abled body...for example, Elver's movement uses a lot of swing and momentum from the back and shoulder to move his arms, which is a radically different choice than one I would have made - and probably not something I would have experienced had he not been there to create that specific phrase. I'm incredibly appreciative to everyone who participated in this work, for giving me a chance to meet them all and work with them in the process of remounting it for another performance. (And I'm sorry in advance if I run you over with my bike during the show! I promise, I'll be careful...)

Anyways. This show in particular is family-friendly and super-accessible, ensuring that all audience members will find a way to enjoy the performance. It is being held in honor of National Disabilities Awareness Month. We've got an ASL interpreter dancing and signing on stage (he's great!) as well as audio description, captioning, assistive listening, and the availability of programs in Braille and large print. Pretty cool, eh?

The show is happening on Monday October 1st at 4:30pm at the following location:

University of Maryland
Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
Robert and Arlene Kogon Studio Theatre
University Boulevard and Stadium Drive
College Park, MD

The show is completely free of charge! Hope to see you there!

Photos from The Farthest Earth From Thee, in rehearsal.