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.

Frustrated in General

I am quite frustrated with technology right now. My rehearsal footage won't upload - not here, nor Facebook, nor Youtube - and I joined twitter but can't figure out how to tweet from my phone, even though I totally followed all the instructions. And I miss my friends back home....ok that has nothing to do with technology but STILL, it adds to my general feeling of frustrations. Damnit.

Wow, the blog has devolved into a rambling rant. This is getting off to a great start.

......Hey everyone, I'm a great and professional writer, can't you tell? lol

(don't mind me, I'll just go sit in the corner by myself for a bit until I calm down)

BTW, if you wanna follow me on twitter I'm @shallomj

Now if I can just figure out what number to send my SMSes to, I'll be golden.

Video Post: Lick

Last Saturday I danced in Echo Park Contemporary Ballet's inagural performance, On the Outside Looking In. Notwithstanding a few technical difficulties, the show was a full house and a success for audience members and performers alike.

It was held in an intimate informal setting - Down Dog Yoga Studio in Georgetown.



This is a video clip of rehearsal for one of the works - a duet between me and Kelly, aptly titled Lick. It looks a bit rough here, but we nailed it in performance.

Choreographer: Cedric Tillman
Dancers: Kelly Mayfield and Shallom Johnson
Rehearsal venue: Liz Lerman Dance Exchange

I'm hoping to continue working with Cedric in the future - possibly making a quick trip back to DC for Echo Park's next show is February 14th, 2008 - an evening of duets to a variety of love songs, perfect for Valentine's Day.

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.)

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.

Video Post: Chair Dances

I'm creating a solo for a performance on October 20th. It will be shown as a section of Objects of Hope: The America Project, by Contradiction Dance. If you look down one post, you'll see another work-in-progress section, a duet between me and Kelly Mayfield.



The movement phrases seen in these video clips are improvisations, generating movement that will soon be crafted into something that hopefully makes sense within the larger concept of the work.



I was working with the idea of my home as my object of hope, and with the chair as representative of that home. I was also trying to see how many different ways I could fit my body into and around the chair, and how that would inform the movement possibilities.

Kelly's concept is "reclaiming her patriotism" by asking questions about the state of America as a political, cultural and social entity. Where are our priorities, and why? Coming into this process as an outsider - a Canadian, with some pretty negative views on the current state of America - I am trying to see how I fit into this structure, and how my perspective can be integrated into the work.



Part of my thought process is "yes, I'm an American by birth (I have dual citizenship) but don't identify with that part of me. Partially because I grew up in Canada, partially because I don't agree with a lot of what goes on here, don't see "The Great American Dream" as having anything to do with me or my goals or my lifestyle. But I think that a lot of peopl that live here feel the same way, and are looking for a way to find some sense of pride in their country - either returning to a feeling they have since lost, or finding something in the concept of America to believe in for the first time.



I personally think that if you don't believe in what your country stands for - if you can't find pride in that - then you have to question how things can change, how you can personally effect that change to make your country a place in which you feel proud to live. And that goes for any country, anywhere - not just the US of A.



I also feel that we as artists have a responsibility to use our voices to effect change - and that change happens first and foremost in the mindset of individuals. Yes, it can be daunting and overwhelming to try and change the whole system starting from scratch - but not impossible. At least that's what I'd like to think, in my idealistic state of today (while my cynical side is shaking its head in disbelief).

Video Post: Me and Kelly's Duet

A first draft version of a duet between myself and Kelly Mayfield. This was the product of about an hour's work, and will be incorporated into a larger work, Objects of Hope: The America Project, for a performance with Contradiction Dance on October 20th.

Video Post: Footsie

I've been fiddling around in the studio coming up with some movement ideas for a solo work. I'm choreographing a solo that will end up being a part of Contradiction Dance's Objects of Hope: The America Project, to be performed on October 20th at a benefit concert. After about an hour of playing around with the chair (while filming the improv, some of which I'll post later), I decided to stick the camera on the ground and see what might come of that. This is what happened.



I'm thinking of turning this little kernel of an idea into a short film. Matt Mahaney and Cassie Meador just finished working a film for the DC Improv Festival, and I'm thinking of getting some help/advice from them on this project. It may not be something that I can fully realize while I'm here, but I at least want to get started.

If you'd like to view their film, you can see it here.

Offsite and Insight

"One site holds the view and possibilities of another site. A body identifies itself and its dwelling place counting the years, its history, in the remembered lines of a smile or furrowed brow, layers of strata, rings of growth, and turning pages. They all have a story to tell."

Video Post: On The Verge, in rehearsal

I am currently rehearsing a piece by the lovely Samantha Speis, choreographed on Gesel Mason's company, Gesel Mason Performance Projects. Sam also works as an adjunct with the Dance Exchange, and Gesel is a former company member who still works with them from time to time. She just got back from touring Ferocious Beauty: Genome to Toronto, and was kind enough to stop in and give us some rehearsal notes after watching a few runs of what we'd learned so far.

This is my second rehearsal with Samantha, and I am still learning the movement sequences and trying to get them "into my body". So what you see here is definitely rough and needs a lot of work. The choreography is beautiful, when Sam does it...on us - not quite as brilliant. It's a huge departure from the way my body likes to move...but every time I do it, things feel better and better.

Still going to be sore tomorrow, though. My triceps are feeling the burn from moving into and out of the floor.

I'm the dancer in the turquoise teeshirt, in the middle. To my right (closer to the camera) is Laura. Or maybe Lora? Lauren? Sorry, we just met today and I'm horrid with names. To my left is Meghan, also an adjunct artist with the Dance Exchange, and working with Kelly's company, Contradiction Dance. I know, so much overlap, it gets confusing...everyone is working with/for everyone else, it's rare to find a dancer or choreographer who only works with one company. Yet another reason why making connections, networking is sooo important.

This is the beginning of the piece.

This section happens closer to the end.

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.

Intro to Modern Dance: Loie Fuller

One of my responsibilities during my apprenticeship is to co-teach some of the community classes here at the Dance Exchange. On Tuesdays I'm helping Elizabeth and Shula teach Intro to Modern, a class for adults that looks at modern dance through the methods of technique, composition and history. Each week we take our insipration from a different person in the history of modern dance - the class gets an assigned chaper of reading, and our in-class work is structured around that icon's technique, concepts and interests.



So far we have covered Isadora Duncan and Loie Fuller. Next week we will be doing Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. This Tuesday, our technical exploration of Loie Fuller was based in the use of momentum and weight. We started with a gentle warmup, then progressed to a couple of simple combinations. The first was a swingy arm combination, feeling the weght of our limbs and their ability to move the body through space. The second was a combination focusing on the lower body, exlopring shifting weight from one foot to the other and finding the undercurve that facilitate a grounded, weighted feeling of being connected through the body to the floor.


We explored these concepts further going across the floor, with low runs leading into a suspension, the leg pulling you back into two slow steps. We found that the most diffuicult part of this exercise was controlling our momentum going into the suspension, and finding the opposition in the back leg to pull us backwards instead of allowing the forward momentum to overpower it. We also played with contrasting "up" and "down" movement qualities, juxtaposing the same long, low runs with quick, light prances.

For the composition exercise, we took all of that movement information (in vocabulary or quality) and added another layer - being inspired by light and fabric. We split everyone into two groups and gave each group a long piece of white fabric to work with. The afternoon sunlight was streaming in through the windows, making a perfect performance space for our creations. Here is what the groups came up with. Simply breathtaking work! I was wishing that I could join in, it looked like a lot of fun. Very inspiring...




Group 1





Group 2

Video Post: SEIU Project Rehearsals

Want a closer look into what goes on before the production hits the stage? Here are a couple of videos of the SEIU project - footage of the core company members and adjunct artists during today's rehearsal. Bear in mind, this is still a work in progress - we've got a whole day of rehearsals tomorrow to get things polished and ready for performance.

The presentation is made up of four sections, each pertaining to a time period or event in which people stood up for what they believed in and effected social change. This first video is the "Suffragette" section of the work. "Suffragette" is the term given to members of the Women's Suffrage Movement, who rallied and protested for the right to vote in the early 20th Century. The movement originated in the United Kingdom and quickly spread to the Unites States and Canada. It starts with a solo by Martha Wittman, and progresses to a group section including the other female members of the cast: Elizabeth, Cassie, Meghan, Samantha and Shula.

The second video is a chair section, and will be performed directly after the Suffragette section. Included in this shot are (from left to right): Samantha, Matt, Elizabeth, Thomas, Cassie, Megan and Shula. I'm not sure what meaning this section has in relation to the overall theme, or how it was developed - I suppose that's a good question to ask the company members during our lunch break tomorrow.

This last video has a few wobbly bits in it (and a stray finger over the lens at one point), because I was also running the audio and almost forgot to repeat it when the song finished. Oops! This section includes the whole company, and is the last section before the community participants join in for an excerpt of a Dance Exchange repertory piece titled "Still Crossing." The original work was created by Liz Lerman in 1991, and performed at the base of the Statue of Liberty, one of six international companies selected to perfrom at the statue's centennial anniversary celebration.

(If you're wondering, the puppy in the picture is Madelaine, the resident Dance Exchange Mascot and part-time company member. She had a small role in The Farthest Earth From Thee.)