International Women's Day

by karen Krolak

International Women's Day first came to my attention four years ago when I arrived in Orvieto on March 8th for Simone Forti's Logomotion workshop. As the holiday has gained popularity in the US, I am reminded of the magnificent hours I spent walking, talking, and dancing with a kickass crew of choreographers/artists from all over the globe. So in the spirit of International Women's Day, I am delighted to introduce you to three of the women who wowed me with their creativity and kindness during that trip.

Marina Tsartsara's - Originally from Greece but now based in England, Marina's interdisciplanary creations "explore digital-live interactivity, kinaesthetic effect, the use of the senses in performance and the relationship between dance and film/video, amongst other areas of interest." As it turns out her visual art performance entitled Wherever I look opens today at the Avinyo Theatre in Catalonia. Please go if you happen to be in the area and send me a message with all the lush details.

Katherine Ferrier - Katherine simply amazes me. We actually met at an Improvisation Workshop on Bennington's campus in 2003 and it was purely coincidence that we reconnected in Italy. Her show, Textures: New Mixed-Media Collage Work by Katherine Ferrier, will open on March 16th at the Maia Papaya Cafe in Bethelhem, NH. (Again, please send me details if you are lucky enough to see it!) In between dancing, painting, quilting, teaching, and writing, she somehow found time to launch and curate Cultivate, a seasonal showing of contemporary dance works with support from the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire.  The call for applications to present workshops or perform at this fabulous fledgling festival just went up this week. I will post more on that later.


Ok, I have one more to tell you about but as the temperature in Boston breaks records, I find myself longing to wander around today soaking up inspiration. I have one more woman to write about after I return.  In the meantime, if you want to get to know even more feisty female choreographers, check out Dance Magazine's Growing List.

Summer Stages Dance Feast

by karen Krolak

If you would like a taste of Summer Stages Dance, mark your calendar for March 25th. They have set up a smashing series of master classes and decadent dance related activities from 12- 6PM  at Concord Academy in Concord, MA.  Diverse flavors of dance, live music, and interactive activities will be on the menu, along with delicious edibles from local restaurants. The day will culminate with an all-star finale performance by Summer Stages master faculty (Psst...David Parker and the Bang Group will be performing their duet in the velcro suits!!! That alone is worth the ticket price.) and special guest artists. Best of all, you can sample as much as you wish from this smorgasbord for just $25!


Artists include:
Sean Curran, contemporary dance
David Dorfman, modern dance, and disco funk line dancing
Margaret Tracy and Boston Ballet, Intro to ballet, and intermediate/advanced ballet
Nani Agbeli, dance/drumming from Ghana with 8 drummers
Darrah Carr, Irish step and ModERIN fusion
Brandon Albright, hip hop and break dance
Catherine Gallant, Duncan technique
Gina DeFreitas, DeAnna Pellecchia and Lynda Reiman, Aerial Dance
ABADA Capoeira Boston, Brazilian capoeira
Elaine Fong, Taketina and Trash Can Taiko
South Indian bharatanatyam, Navarasa Dance Theatre
Olivier Besson, Contact Improvisation
Leslie Salmon-Jones, Afro-Flow Yoga™
David Parker and the Bang Group, Making Dancesge based movement workshop
Edisa Weeks and Delirious Hair Designs, Hair Art
Alissa Cardone, Butoh/Ima
Christopher Janney, Soundstair
Lexington High School Jazz Combo, live music and Swing dance instruction
Nell Bryer's "After Disappearance," Media Lab Experience
And more!

Tickets to this family friendly all-ages festival are $25 in advance and $30 at the door, and include all classes and activities, and admission to the final performance. Children 12 and under are $10 in advance and $15 at the door, and group rates are available.

Sunday, March 25, from 12-6pm
Finale performance begins at 5:00

Purchase tickets online.

Richard Colton & David Parker Mentor SSD Choreographers' Project

by karen Krolak

Last week, we covered a few of the opportunities for choreographers in the Boston area. Here's another one that is open to folks all over the country, the Summer Stages Dance Choreographers' Project Fellowship.  Summer Stages Dance in Concord, MA, is celebrating their 15 season with a gaggle of amazing artists. Who wouldn't want to spend three weeks surrounded by David Leventhal,  Risa Steinberg, Dan Wagoner, David Parker, Richard Colton, and Sean Curran?

Choreographers’ Project Fellowship
Applicants must be at least 21 years old.
Applications Due: April 2, 2012
Notification of Awards: April 16, 2012

The Choreographers’ Project gives promising emerging choreographers the opportunity to develop new work in a supportive environment. Fellows select a cast of dancers from the Summer Stages Dance Workshop and have access to rehearsal space in the evenings and on weekends. David Parker and Richard Colton mentor the fellows daily, and the weekly Choreographers’ Project Seminar class provides an additional forum for feedback on developing work. The fellows’ work is presented in the Choreographers’ Project Showcase, a professionally produced evening performance that is open to the public.

Fellowship awards include the following opportunities:

• Mentorship by workshop faculty and resident artists
• Access to all Summer Stages Dance classes and select performances
• The opportunity to bring one dancer/collaborator
• Studio space and rehearsal time with dancers drawn from the Workshop
• Weekly seminar classes that include informal showings of the new work, and culminate in a dialogue about the developing work with faculty and guest artists
• Open rehearsal and a fully produced public performance of work created during the residency
• Subsidy for housing and meals

Since the program’s inception thirteen years ago, fellows have been drawn from the professional dance community or are graduates from leading dance programs at colleges and universities, including Barnard, Bennington, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Princeton, Sarah Lawrence, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Yale.

For more information on Choreographers’ Project fellowships, call 978.402.2339

Deadline Extension for GSS Emerging Artist Program

by karen Krolak

If you are in the process of rapidly finishing your application to Green Street Studio's Emerging Artist Program, take a deep breath and relax for a minute. They have extended the deadline to Monday, March 5 at 5:00PM. Be on the lookout for info on the Summer Stages Dance Choreographers' Program later on this weekend. Don't worry, that deadline isn't until April. Isn't it exciting to have so many options to develop your work?

Meeting Misha

For the second month in a row, I had the terrific opportunity of working with amazingly talented teenagers via Miami’s YoungArts program. On a very warm Friday morning, I got in a van with a group of photography and dance students and went downtown to the Nader Gallery, an imposing gray building that is just as stark and plain on the inside as it is on the outside – save, of course, for the exquisite modern, contemporary and Latin American paintings and sculptures that it displays to the public.

I knew that the plan was to tour the gallery and meet up with master ballet dancer, choreographer and actor Mikhail Baryshnikov. Little else would have gotten me up so early, and with so much energy, before 10 a.m. on a Friday morning. But there was no grand entrance, no applause, no introductory speech – nothing you would expect from a legendary dancer. He came in casually and stood with his hands in his pockets, talking to his assistant and to the curator, looking much shorter than you might think a man of so many leaps and turns would appear. When it was time for him to talk to us, he came over and shook everyone’s hand as they introduced themselves.

“Ryan – tap dancer,” I told him.
“Ah, tap dancer!” he said.
I had a feeling he already liked me.

"Take full advantage of your youth and energy. That's the best time to learn." - Baryshnikov

I had been forewarned that Baryshnikov (or “Misha,” as he’s often referred to) was not much of a Chatty Cathy, and the only way our two hours with him would be successful was if we carried the conversation ourselves and asked lots of questions. Luckily for us, he was very loquacious that day, talking at length about the value of making art, and encouraging young people to make art; about some of the highlights of his career; about Baryshnikov Arts Center in NYC.

He led us upstairs and gave us a tour of his new photography exhibit, “Dance This Way,” which features photos that he has taken over the past five years of – what else? – dance. Although many of the pictures capture moments and motion during rehearsals and performances of various companies, the exhibit also depicts dance in other ways: an older couple locked in a passionate ballroom embrace; a profusion of hula girls and skirts, as seen from behind; a young couple on the dance floor at a club.

Misha showed us each photo one by one, telling us where it was taken, what he liked about it, and what had inspired him to take it. Often, he simply said that he was “lucky” to have gotten the shot. Certainly, as so many of the images capture dancers in action, he does seem to have been fortunate to photograph them at just the right moment when the lines and colors bled together to suggest not a sweet second of movement, but an entire feeling, a connection between dancers or between dancer and audience.

"Never forget your instincts. Be persistent with them. Be stubborn. You have to be your best and worst critic.” - Baryshnikov

I was tentative to approach him afterward for a photograph, seeing how he was preparing for an interview and not wanting to bother him. He more than graciously accepted, even getting on tiptoe for one photo and laughing while he tried to look as tall as me. (I told you, I swear he liked me.) Perhaps even better than meeting him and getting the photo was seeing him the next day before a YoungArts performance, in the lobby of the New World Center, and him nodding and smiling at me in remembrance. I went up and shook his hand as if we were old friends. Or perhaps it was the beginning of a new friendship.

"Arts education is the most important thing in the world because art makes people more human."
- Baryshnikov

**To see some of Baryshnikov's paintings, and read more about the exhibit and the Nader Gallery, visit the gallery website.

Dance Around the World: Ancient Egypt

by Sarah Friswell

This month, we travel across the globe and back in time to Ancient Egypt, where dancing was a major player in many traditional activities and in everyday life.

Photo Credit: Dance and Dancers in Ancient Egypt
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/dancers.htm

In ancient Egypt, dancing was used in a number of different ways. Farmers would dance and give thanks to their gods when they had good harvests. Women would dance in groups after dinners as entertainment. Dancing was done at funeral processions by men wearing reed head-dresses. It was even accepted for both men and women to be professional dancers.

Women that danced usually wore only a belt of woven and beaded material around their waist.  This made it easier for them to move and dance freely with no inhibitions.  They also danced with weighted braids that were depicted being swung back and forth.  Although we may view this nudity as erotic or sexual, ancient Egyptians did not view the naked body in the same way that our culture does today. These women were described as elegant, graceful and acrobatic in their dancing.

It is unknown how much training and what type of training went into learning ancient Egyptian dance, although it is assumed that the dancers started to learn at a young age in order to master their craft. Art in tombs and monuments in Egypt clearly depicts figures dancing, leaping, turning, bending and twisting, which shows how widely accepted dancing was.

Dance and Dancers in Ancient Egypt written by Marie Parsons shows how scholars have broken down the types of ancient Egyptian dance into groups. They include dance purely for dance's sake, gymnastic dance, imitative dance, group dance, pair dancing, war dance, dramatic dance, lyrical dance, grotesque dance, funeral dancing and religious dance.

Unfortunately today, most of what we know about ancient Egyptian dance is what we have learned from temple murals and pictures. A depiction of the dance poses can be seen in this clip of archeao-choreology called "The Rite of the House of the Morning".  Researchers carefully studied Egyptian artifacts and art for three years to create this piece.  They maintain that it is in no way a replica of ancient Egyptian dance, only "a tableau of poses found in the art & artifacts, the beliefs, ceremonies, and symbolism of their sacred texts".

Hopefully as more information is uncovered, more light will be shed on this beautiful ancient art form. Until then, we can only hypothesize about dance and its use in ancient Egypt.

A little more about dance and music in ancient Egypt can be found at Ancient Egypt: Music and Dance. 

Heidi Henderson, Meghan McLyman, Micki Taylor-Pinney Mentoring Emerging Artists Program

by karen Krolak


As I mentioned earlier today, deadlines for choreographic opportunities are sprouting up all over Boston. Get your fingers waltzing around the keyboard quickly because Friday, March 2 at 5:00PM is also the deadline for Green Street Studios' Summer 2012 Emerging Artists Award Program. You can get insider insight on this program from EA Alumni, Jillian Grunnah here.

Mentors for the Summer 2012 session are:
Heidi Henderson, 
Meghan McLyman (EA Alumni), 
and Micki Taylor-Pinney.

This program is designed to provide infrastructure for choreographers, to create new work, and to provide deep, ongoing mentorship between experienced and early-to-mid-career choreographers. The Emerging Artist Award provides the opportunity for New England-based choreographers to be in residence at Green Street Studios from March to June 2012.

Green Street Studios will provide selected choreographers with:

•  Mentor/Choreographers, 
•  40 hours of rehearsal space per awardee for the creation of new work
• piece presented in a fully produced concert on June 15th & 16th 2012 at 8pm (dress rehearsal June 14th at 8pm). 

Click here for application pdf

Program Requirements: -

• professional experience in contemporary dance 
• past award recipients (within the last year) are not eligible 
• must be able to schedule and use 40 hours of rehearsal space effectively
•  must be ready to create 20 minutes of new work 
• group work only, no solos please 
• must be interested in collaborating with other artists 
• applicant must commit to attend all mentoring sessions with their dancers (see Scheduling, below)
• if accepted, must be willing to be a volunteer alumni mentor for potential future EA cycles

Once accepted, choreographers will have until the middle of March 2012 to work on their piece; they must be able to show two minutes of work on the piece they intend to show on Sunday, March 25th from 1:30- 5:00pm (Subject to Change)  All Choreographers must be able to attend 2 additional mentorship sessions with all their dancers on Sunday, April 15th & Sunday, June 3rd from 1:30-5:00pm (Subject to Change)

Questions? Email info@greenstreetstudios.org