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.

First Day of Show! Contradiction Dance @ Silver Spring Roundhouse, 8pm

Round House Theatre Presents



Contradiction Dance: An Exchange Between Life & Dance

Friday, November 7 and Saturday, November 8 at 8pm;
Sunday, November 9 at 3pm

TICKETS: $15 • Call 240.644.1100 or www.roundhousetheatre.org


Objects of Hope: Washington D.C.

Kelly Mayfield •Terence Nicholson • Kenneth Rascher • Arianna Ross • Chop Shop Studios
Joseph Nontanovan • Jasmine Artis • Shallom Johnson • Reggie Cole • Sylvana Sandoz

“I stood on my steps and watched the city burn, I was eight years old.”
For ages 12 and up.


www.roundhousetheatre.org • www.contradictiondance.com

Photo by Enoch Chan

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?

A Quick Choreolab Idea: Translations across Time and Space

So I need a place to jot this idea down where I won't lose it or forget about it. In discussion with Kelly and Ilya today, something in our conversation triggered this idea. I think we were talking about Kelly taping the solo that Ilya set on her...which you can see in the last post...and putting the video on Youtube so that he could give her choreographic/performance notes. Anyways. I started thinking about how movement gets translated from one body to the next, and about how playing with the parameter of distance would affect the final product. So, here is my idea.

Person 1 creates a phrase, long or short, simple or complex. I would probably start with something short but complex.

Person 1 teaches the phrase to person 2. Person 2 teaches what they learned to person 3. Person 3 repeates the process with person 4. And so on, for as many translations as you like. The last person teaches what they learned back to the first person. Find a way to show the results.

Option 1: Film the phrase each time that it has been taught and cleaned and is ready to "perform". Compile a film with the clips and see where the movement gradually changes, and where it stays the same.

Option 2: Play with the idea of time lapses between each person. Have this project evolve over many months, with each person really getting time to investigate the phrase with the person playing the role of rehearsal director/choreographer.

Option 3: Play with the idea of space. Have the phrase travel through space and time by letting each participant choose the next, wherever and whenever their travels may lead them. Decide whether you want the phrase to get back to the original owner, or not. If so, find a way to make it happen.

Option 4: Try this exercise in a studio setting work period, over one day or a few days...then combine the phrases into one work, with all dancers onstage, or moving on and offstage. Try out different relationships of time and space based on the changes each has made in the movement.

Option 5: Have one person learn all versions of the phrase and perform this as a solo.

Option 6: All of the above, in whatever combination intrigues you.

Thoughts? If you want to use this idea, please feel free. If you do, I'd love to see the results or hear some comments about the process.

Photo: Elizabeth Johnson and Cassie Meador, in rehearsal at the Dance Exchange.

Video Post: Studio Showing @ Dance Exchange

I know, I know...no new posts in over a week. I am terribly sorry, but my time has been short and my brain has been filled with so much other information that I just haven't been able to write, at all.

Ilya Belenkov (a visiting guest artist) is headed home to Russia tomorrow. Before he left, we held a studio showing in which, Ilya, Sarah Levitt, Cassie Meador and I showed choreography and received feedback. Ilya showed a completed solo that he created in his time here (absolutely beautiful movement, might I add); Sarah and I showed solos that were works in progress, and Cassie showed the beginnings of a group work that we have been working on for the past three or four days. I have footage of all three solos. I asked one of my teen students to film mine, and as a result it is a little blurry. I will try to get better footage of it later, as I continue to craft this work.

Everyone here is sad to see Ilya depart - he has been an amazing artist to collaborate with, and a brilliant mover and performer. I am looking forward to continuing our collaborations in the future - we have some plans in mind to work together with Kelly Mayfield under the umbrella of Contradiction Dance, possibly creating a site-specific work in London next season. I am also thinking of heading to Moscow this summer to attend a 3-week contemporary dance summer school, and maybe taking an extra week to do some site-specific work with Ilya and his collaborators. But of course nothing is certain, our plans are just in the initial discussion stages. Of course, as always, it will all depend on funding and other support.



Video 1: My solo (or should I say, duet?). More versions to come, stay tuned. You can see the initial chair improvisations here.




Video 2: Ilya's solo, the first time he has ever set a solo inspired solely by music and movement.



Video 3: Sarah's solo (an excerpt - my camera was initially set up too far away to catch her facial expressions, and you can't zoom in without stopping filming and starting again. The initial smiling and nodding actually went on for much longer.)

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.

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.