Congratulations to MCC fellowship grantees

by karen Krolak



This afternoon I received an email announcing the 2010 Choreography Fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Congratulations to all of this year's grantees:

Deborah B. Abel Carlisle $7500
Dawn Lane Stockbridge $7500
Sarah Slifer Gloucester $7500
Judith Wombwell Andover $7500
James S. Coleman and Terese Freedman Amherst $500
Erica Dankmeyer Williamstown $500
Anna Myer Cambridge $500
Wendy Woodson Amherst $500

Thanks also to all of the panelists, Jeremy Alliger (Executive Producer, Alliger Arts), Mesma Belsare (Choreographer, Dancer), James Martin (Associate Professor of Dance, New York University Tisch School of the Arts), and Amy B. Spencer (Co-director, Spencer/Colton Dance Company), who sifted through all 58 applications.

Although I am pleased to reside in a state that still supports independent choreographers, I am always saddened to remember that these grants used to provide twice the amount of funding when I moved back to Boston in 1996. At any rate, I look forward to learning more about several of these choreographers whose names are new to me. For example, I would love to see Dawn Lane's piece, Mattress Ticking, which explores the physical and artistic potential of a dancer with Huntington’s Disease. Perhaps we can even coax a few into being interviewed for the blog or C2C...

10th Anniversary Season Preview - Part 1

by karen Krolak

Pssst...I probably shouldn't blab about this yet but I am just so excited. Monkeyhouse has been accepted to Two Road's Dance in the Fells: 5 Pieces 5 Places on October 9, 2010! We are going to be creating something for Wright's Tower...the structure in the picture to the left. You can find out more about this project by watching Monkeyhouse's first episode of C2C. It is going to be a glorious addition to our 10th anniversary season. Merciful heavens! Can you believe that it has been 10 years? We have a bunch of thrilling news coming soon but we can't spill the beans until the contracts get signed. Keep your fingers and toes crossed and be on the lookout for updates soon.

Hooray for Orfeo!

by karen Krolak

Were you one of our dedicated fans who hauled yourself out on a sweltering afternoon last summer to see Monkeyhouse perform What's the Big Idea? at Orfeo's Festival in the Park? If so, do you remember how thankful we were that it rained right before showtime as it lowered the temperature of the stage enough for us to dance barefoot with out scorching our soles?

Did you stick around to see Orfeo Group's version of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)? If so did you hear that Orfeo's production received an Elliot Norton Award last night! Congratulations Orfeo Group!

Oh, and congratulations to Actors' Shakespeare Project too! Their production of Much Ado About Nothing was nominated for Outstanding Production for a Mid-sized Company. Psst...did you know that Monkeyhouse's Production Manager, Jason Ries was both the Lighting Designer and the Production Manager for that show? And, are you aware that Actors' Shakespeare Project will be opening Timon of Athens this Saturday? If already knew about that, did you realized that Bill Barclay who is directing Timon of Athens, performed after Monkeyhouse at Orfeo's Festival in the Park? Isn't it lovely how that just came full circle?

C2C, Episode Two!

For those of you who haven't heard, Monkeyhouse has a new television show (C2C) on S.C.A.T. tv in Somerville. (That's Channel 3 for all you Somerville residents!) Our latest episode, which focuses on building a movement vocabulary, is up and ready for watching!



Extra special thanks to S.C.A.T. & Bill Barrell, Caitlin Meehan, Uncle Monsterface and David Wechsler! Monkeyhouse Loves You!

USD Lab starts Friday

by karen Krolak

Psst... just a quick reminder to everyone in the New York area: Please come join me at Union Street Dance for the first session of Monkeyhouse Musings tomorrow. Oh, and feel free to bring or send along anyone else that you think might be interested. We are so excited to open this process up to the general public for the first time.

Dates/Times: May 7-28, every Friday from 4-6pm

Location: Union Street Dance, 725 Union Street, Studio B - Park Slope, BK

Price: $40 four class series, $15 single class -- DROP-INS WELCOME!

An Introduction to Adam Thompson

Monkeyhouse is always thrilled when people introduce us to other artists playing with movement. So you can imagine how excited we were when Monkeyhouse dancer, Caitlin Meehan, forwarded an email to us about the Deconstructive Theatre Project (DTP), an intensely collaborative company that utilizes the benefits of ensemble collaboration in art and education. Caitlin worked with DTP on Brecht & Co. and The Girlie Show. In Brecht, she experienced the DTP's process firsthand and experimented with movement, text, and music.

We were so curious about the company that we encouraged Caitlin to interview Adam Thompson, founder and director of DTP. He is currently creating and directing Atomic Triptych, The Orpheus Variations, and Colonia which was recently awarded a development grant from The Puffin Foundation. If this interview makes you crave more information on DTP, please sign up for their mailing list. If you do, you will also help the company raise some money as a clever donor has offered to give $1 for each new person added to their list this week.

by Caitlin Meehan

Caitlin Meehan: What do you think that dance and movement bring to works of theatre?

Adam Thompson: Dance and movement bring a heightened freedom of interpretation to the theatre. Movement is a curious sort of wonder in that it creates narratives that, geometrically speaking, are not solid lines but rather dashed ones. The audience is required to fill in the spaces between those dashes with their own political, social, and emotional experiences. I believe strongly in the responsibility of an audience to be intellectually and emotionally engaged in performance, and I think kinetic communication both allows for and indeed demands that kind of participation. I am interested in how an entire piece of theatre can be built the way a dance is built: the relationship between the micro and the macro, between structure and content.

CM: Why do you require all ensemble members to experiment with movement (even if they have no background)?

AT: I believe all human visual experiences are born from movement.”I think that’s spot on.I am very interested in creating a hyper-visual body of work. It’s logical that a kinetic genesis is instrumental to realizing that kind of work. Movement is the most basic human vocabulary. We’re born and, for the most part, we can do it. We have to learn language, but movement: that’s inherent.

CM: How do you encourage actors who are previously "non-dancers" to explore that physicality? How do you/have you used movement in DTP's work?
AT: I like to begin by asking actors to share different stimuli that engage them: an image, a type of light, a poem, etc.I then ask them to use a new vocabulary to create that same sense of engagement. If you are moved by a poem, how can you translate the experience of that poem using a physical vocabulary? If it’s a painting, what would that painting sound like? I am interested in theatrical vocabulary – in deconstruction, reinterpretation and reconstruction.

CM: When did you first begin to use movement in your work?
AT: Our first production was Moisés Kaufman’s play, “Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde”. It’s the only extant play we’ve fully produced. Everything else, we’re created from scratch. But we tackled it kinetically. For the first two full weeks of rehearsal, we didn’t even open a script. In that play, a hand full of actors play a large number of characters, so the actors spent a good amount of time building an awareness of their own physicality, how that physicality could be utilized to inform the different roles they would take on, and – most importantly, I think – how to build a collective sense of ensemble physicality.


CM: Was there anything in your production of Gross Indecency that you would call choreography?
AT: There were a few things that I would call basic choreography. They grew out of less rigid exercises, toward more formal movement patterns.

CM: What is your own movement background?
AT: I don’t have any sort of formal training in dance, but I’ve studied varying techniques of performance composition: Viewpoints, Moment Work, etc.Actually, I have taken one ballet class (which I loved) and am currently studying aerial silk performance (which I really love). I’ve also been really lucky to have been and continue to be informed by the movement and creative vocabularies of the wonderful folks with whom I work.

CM: What movement qualities do you look for in dancers/actors/performers during the audition process?
AT: I look for fearlessness. I also look for confidence and a strong sense of self-awareness. I like people with strong personalities who are intellectually, physically, and emotionally intelligent.

CM: What has it been like learning about and experimenting with aerial choreography? How is this different from directing and shaping ground-based work?
AT: I love aerial work. I am really interested in its capabilities as a performance vocabulary.I find aerial to be a beautiful way to explore sexuality and sensuality on stage because it is all about trust, danger, excitement, and proximity to another body.The obvious difference between aerial work and ground-based work is that aerial work comes with a heightened awareness for safety. There may be a really great way to use aerial to present a moment in the piece, but it may not be entirely safe for the performer. There are a lot of logistical concerns. On the plus side, because aerial is so heightened in its theatricality, it allows one to really work in metaphor and poetry, which I think theatre is the most well-equipped of any art form to do.

CM: How do you/have you combined movement with text and characters in DTP's work?
AT: Historically, the theatre has primarily been the domain of the playwright. Everyone else comes in afterward and lays their work on top of the text. I prefer to flip that process on its head and lay the text last (if at all), or at least simultaneously with other elements. Often, we will start with a textual inspiration (a poem or an essay, maybe), interpret that via a different vocabulary, and then lay entirely different text on top. I also like to experiment with how a character’s identity can be fragmented among elements or actors: one actor is the voice, another is the physical body, another is the mind, etc.I think one of the great strengths of the theatre is its ability give all of the elements of the stage equal power to convey the context.

Audition Advice

Auditioning for summer programs, colleges, and various choreographers can be a daunting task for dancers. When we heard Sarah Friswell rave about how much she enjoyed her audition for Jacob's Pillow's Tap program, we were really impressed. We invited her to write a little about her experience to see if it might provide insights about how to make this necessary process less stressful.

by Sarah Friswell

This past January, I had the opportunity to audition for the newly created summer tap program at Jacob's Pillow. Luckily, there was an audition in Miami, FL that was accessible to me as I attend the University of Tampa. I left my school at four in the morning and made it with plenty of time to spare for the 10AM audition. I had already had the pleasure of participating in a master class with Dianne Walker when I was a student at Impulse Dance Center in Natick, MA. I was so relieved that she ran the audition with the same feeling as a master class.

We learned a combination in three parts and set it to all different tempos and styles of music. Throughout the two hour audition, we talked as a group about how we wanted to interpret the sounds and what we wanted our feet to be saying. I really enjoyed the combination we did. In fact, I decided to use it in my choreography for the University of Tampa's student show, The Spring Dance Happening.

I was very touched that Dianne also talked to us about her professional career and she really spoke to us as a community of tappers. One phrase Dianne talked to us about is to "put it in your pocket". This phrase is used to describe a dancer really understanding movements fully and fully embodying what the movements mean. I have used that phrase since then to inspire my dancers to work together as a group and to really feel the movements in the piece instead of just performing different steps. I will never forget the wonderful experience I was able to have and I am so grateful that I have gotten to work with Dianne now on multiple occasions. She is truly and inspiration.We worked very hard in the audition and it really exemplified how valuable an audition is as a learning experience. It also showed me just how much more I might receive through the tap program at The Pillow should I be lucky enough to attend their program sometime in the future.