Catherine Musinsky's Unchastened

Unchastened from brynmore on Vimeo.

by karen Krolak

Returning home from a Thanksgiving trip to Dayton to catch up with Amelia, I found piles of emails waiting for me. I am so glad that I combed through them though, because, this marvelous film was tucked into one of the messages from the Dance Action Network. Catherine Musinsky's work has always impressed me and her mischievous eyes just draw you in to her movement but this film floored me. It is so brave and beautiful. Be warned, however, if you are squeamish about such things... it does feature a bare breast as it delves into her transformation after surviving breast cancer.

Getting to Know Derick Grant--Part 1

by Nicole Harris

Somewhere around 2004 I took students of mine from Impulse Dance Center to a Manhattan Dance Project workshop where I met tap teacher Derick K. Grant.  I was instantly enamored with his laid back yet individualized teaching style and when I found out he taught regularly in New York City I promised to begin showing up at places he was.  A few months later I walked into his class at Steps on Broadway in New York City while I was in town visiting my sister and knew just who I was.  "You're that girl from Boston.  You said you were going to being stalking me and here you are!"  Since then I have been lucky enough to study fairly extensively with Derick and I consider him to be one of the biggest influences on my tap dancing today.  Last year he and I sat down to talk about his career, his choreography and his view on life.

NH: What was the first thing you ever choreographed?

DG: Lord have mercy, the first thing?  Well, let’s say the first official thing was a solo. It was called “Drums.” I was a rookie in the Jazz Tap Ensemble and I was challenged to choreograph a piece. I got to work with Jerry Kalaf, who was the musical director. It was the first time where I worked with live music, and had to like come up with arrangement, and make a dance. That was pretty cool. I was probably about 19. 

NH:  What are your biggest challenges as a choreographer?

DG:  For me being entertaining. I found that most of the tap choreography was very green. My main problem was getting people to dance while they tap, ‘cause most choreography that is used in shows is used with the purpose of telling a story. And most choreography that is used in tap dance are musical compositions. So finding a balance where you can use the body as a narrative, as an actor, but then use the sounds coming from those same movements, as a musical composition, is hardcore. 

NH:  Who are some of your favorite choreographers?
DG:  I’m going to have to say Jerome Robbins or Bob Fosse.  I started to study ballets because I realized that ballets were bodies of work that represented choreographers, and those pieces would live long after the choreographers died. And that in terms of being a choreographer, that’s kind of like the point, that’s like the painter making the painting. You want to have a piece that can live beyond you. You know? So then I started checking out the ballets, seeing what they had in common, and then what made them different from each other in terms of style and storytelling. And I had some success, I mean it was a rocky road because I don’t know a ton about ballet, so I probably missed a lot of the subtleties; they all kind of looked the same to me after awhile. I mean I know what’s a pretty turn, what’s a pretty leap, but that’s about the extent of it.  With Fosse and Jerome, you can see it in the body, like that’s a tap dancer there.  It was easy for me to respond and to understand that.

Special Thanks to Melissa Dollman for her assistance in getting this interview transcribed.  We love you!

Lorraine Chapman on Margie Gillis

Margie Gillis

[When Lorraine emailed me this morning about Margie Gillis' upcoming events, it totally made my day. I can't remember the last time that an artist friend contacted me to rave about someone else's work. Shouldn't that happen all the time? At any rate, she eagerly agreed to let me re-publish her remarks here. Let's hope that this starts a new trend in the dance world. Feel free to contact me at monkeyhouse[at]gmail.com if you would like to write about one of your favorite choreographers. - karen]

by Lorraine Chapman

This Sunday is an singularly unique and uniquely singular opportunity to experience the one and only Margie Gillis live and in person right here in Cambridge, MA! I first saw Margie dance when I was a teenager in the 1980's somewhere in Canada and I am still haunted by her stunningly captivating performance. I still see and feel images and movement from that show 25 years ago as clearly as if it had been yesterday. I met Margie in 2004 when we were both doing a piece for the Alberta Ballet. I could not believe what she created with a ballet company where improvisation is as foreign to their repertoire as tapping a time step. The dancers were set completely free in a joyous celebration of movement and dance.

I began working with Margie as my mentor this August and I felt so alive in rehearsal, in my body. She allows you to feel such pure love and joy while dancing. Working with her allows me to remember why I first began dancing as a child. How often do we get back to that feeling? Well, now is your chance! She's coming! Here!

Even if: you've never improvised, you don't like to improvise, you don't think you're any good at improvisation, you think you're too experienced, you think you're too old...think again and convince yourself to come. You will not leave disappointed that you did.
If you humanly, physically cannot be there: please tell anyone and everyone in your life who dances and encourage them to attend both of these events. They will not leave disappointed that they did. I hope to see you all in three days.

Master Class & Informal Showing

with acclaimed international artist
Margie Gillis
Sunday, November 21st
Time: 1:00-3:00 Master Class 

&
5:00 Informal Showing
Price: Both events - $30 or $20 each
Special! BDA/GSS Members, Students, & Seniors: $12 Class & $15 Showing

Where: Green Street Studios
185 Green Street
Cambridge, MA 02139

PRE-REGISTRATION SUGGESTED: email info@greenstreetstudios.org or call 617-864-3191

C2C #5 - New Holiday Tradition with Betsi Graves Akerstein

by karen Krolak



Monkeyhouse's latest episode of C2C explores an alternative holiday production, The Story of Stuff, by Urbanity Dance. Betsi Graves Akerstein and I had a fabulous conversation about her newest creation and the Boston Dance Alliance's Rehearsal and Retreat Grant. Speaking of which, get hopping if you want to apply for the BDA Rehearsal and Retreat Grant as the applications must be postmarked by tomorrow, November 17!

Update on Anne Bluethenthal (San Francisco series part 2)

by karen Krolak

Chin-chin Hsu in Spine

Anne Bluethenthal and I shared a cabin during the Jacob's Pillow Choreography Lab in 2008 where we quickly began bouncing ideas off each other. While we share a common sense of theatricality, Anne's work seems to capture dancers at their most powerful and sensual moments. For example, her remake of Spine for Pluto in Capricorn (pictured at the right) featured a quartet of bare backs basked in warm set of spotlights. Even as these women contorted their torsos, Anne's choreography elevated their struggles. It was a physical poem about strength and supple vulnerability that inspired Caitlin Meehan's section in Monkeyhouse's quartet Odds. Spine was easily one of my favorite performances of 2009. If you are in the Bay Area on Sunday, I urge you to see her latest series of pieces, Traces of Grace and Other Dances.

Old First Concerts presents
ABD Productions
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2010 AT 4:00PM

Traces of Grace and Other Dances
Anne Bluethenthal and Dancers
in concert with singer-songwriter Melanie DeMore

ABD Ensemble
Mayuko Ayabe, Crystaldawn Bell, Chin-chin Hsu, Mihyun Lee, Sarah Pomarico,
Frances Sedayao & Shaunna Vella

with music by Eric Glick Rieman and Sean Feit
Lighting by Allen Wilner

$17.00 General
$14.00 Seniors (65 and older)
$14.00 Full Time Students
$12.00 Groups of 10 or more
Tickets can be purchased online at
http://www.oldfirstconcerts.org/performances/
415-474-1608

For more information visit: www.abdproductions.org

Interview with the Artists of ODD (San Francisco series part 1)

Amelia O'Dowd forwarded inkboat's latest newsletter to me because she thought I would be interested in their collaboration with AXIS Dance Company. As usual she was spot on, and, she didn't even realize that Monkeyhouse is plotting out a festival called Against the Odds for spring 2011.

I truly enjoyed this interview form the newsletter. So I contacted Shinichi Iova-Koga and he graciously allowed me to republish it here. Thank you Shinichi! I am so glad that Molly Barrons introduced me to his work many years ago and as always I am so thankful that Amelia keeps inspiring me.

Interview with the Artists of ODD Shinichi Iova-Koga & Joan Jeanrenaud      ODD - Directed by Shinichi Iova-Koga | Music by Joan Jeanrenaud  For the first time ever, inkBoat will share the stage with AXIS Dance Company. The resulting world-premiere collaboration, ODD, is a series of dances choreographed by inkBoat Artistic Director Shinichi Iova-Koga, with musical accompaniment by famed cellist/composer Joan Jeanrenaud (formerly of the Kronos Quartet) and musician/vocalist Dohee Lee. ODD is inspired by the paintings of Odd Nerdrum. Shinichi how and why did you think of Odd Nerdrum’s paintings when you thought about this collaboration? SIK: Odd Nerdrum's paintings have been of interest to me since the mid-90's, but it wasn't until recently that I considered creating a dance work directly inspired by them. As we have examined these works more thoroughly, I have been struck by the relationship of landscape and body. There are similarities in shape, but more than that, I am reminded of Alan Watts speaking of humans having the conceit of being separate from nature. And how can that be? How can anything be separate from nature? Even our most polluting factories are part of nature. Our species imagines itself as above nature because we can go into outer space or divert water across large distances. But these are technologies and technologies are simply an extension of ourselves and we are an extension of nature. I believe it is this attitude that we are separate from the natural world that has given rise to polluting factories and dis-regard for our planet. Joan, have Nerdrums paintings been influential to you in composing the music? JJ: Nerdrum's paintings have become the essence for creating the music in, 'ODD'. In working with Shinichi his constant referral to the paintings has imbued their spirit into the dance and music, leading me to discovering sounds, feelings, gestures or motives that resonate with the images. As well, I am influenced by Shinichi and his aesthetics along with the work of the AXIS and inkBoat dancers and musician Dohee Lee, who is contributing her vocal, electronic and percussion skills to the score. I hope to create a sonic environment that the dancers will occupy and find inspirational. I want to create an overall sense of the strangeness, beauty and stillness that I sense from the paintings and Shinichi's choreography. Joan and Shinichi, what are some of your discoveries during the creation process? SIK: Early in our working process, I felt that paintings are paintings and dance is dance. We can be inspired by the paintings, but we cannot dance them. But, because the paintings themselves are still, we've been incorporating stillness more consciously into the choreography. And this is almost a traditional Japanese dance/theater idea. Noh and Kabuki in particular utilize many still moments as emphasis. The forms are precisely sculpted and freezes are employed constantly. I feel that the "avant-garde" ideas always come back to tradition somehow. Working with Joan has been a complete joy. As part of our process, Joan has created music for the paintings without seeing the dance, or created music for dance without seeing paintings. Each time, she manages to come up with something distinct and imbued with it's own character. And we let all these characters meet... the painting, the music and the dancers meet to create something that is a birth, a child that comes from all these sources and stands as it's own. JJ: Shinichi has led me to continually discover the significance of silence or of a small gesture in music the complexity of a single sound, sustained or brief. He has opened my ears by opening my eyes! ODC Theater, SF Fri-Sat, November 5-6 @ 8pm & Sun, November 7 @ 3pm ODC Theater, Tickets: $18 available through odcdance.org, (415) 863-9834 *Stay tuned for a meet and greet the artists gathering following the Sunday, Nov 7th matinee Malonga Casquelourd Center, Oakland Fri, November 12 @ 8pm (Target Family Night Performance); All tickets $10 Sat, November 13 @ 8pm and Sun, November 14 @ 2pm  Tickets $22/Seniors, Students & Persons with Disabilities $15 / Youth under 14 years $10 available through brownpapertickets.com, 1-800-838-3006

Short Series on San Francisco

by karen Krolak

San Francisco July 2009

While Monkeyhouse is in the midst of whipping together two projects for this weekend: Movement at the Mills on Friday and the Cambridge Connections Urban Dance at Endicott Concert on Saturday, I keep receiving notes about drool worthy performances in San Francisco. Now in my moments of procrastination, I get lost in wafts of lavender and long for the West Coast. So, in an effort to transform that fantasy into something productive, I have decided to toss in a series of San Francisco event posts.

While you are waiting for the series to start, here are the details for our events in Boston again.

Movement at the Mills
Friday, November 5th 2010, 6:00-9:00pm
Performances at 6:00 & 7:30

Performances will occur on three stages scattered throughout the evening.
Audience members are invited to walk through the Gallery and observe various styles of dance as visual art. Free and Open to the Public

Featured Dance Companies include:
Monkeyhouse
Marsha Parrilla y Danza Organica
Wanda Strukus

Mills Gallery
551 Tremont Street
Boston, MA

Please contact Andrea for more information at 617.456.1132 or ablesso@bcaonline. org

 &

 Endicott College Performing Arts Department Presents

A Dance Performance featuring Boston-based companies

CAMBRIDGE CONNECTIONS: URBAN DANCE AT ENDICOTT

Monkeyhouse • Phunk Phenomenon • Urbanity Dance

Saturday, November 6, 2010 at 8:00pm

Rose Performance Hall

 $20/ Free to Endicott ID holders

For tickets visit www.endicott.edu/centerforthearts

For more information, contact Nicole Sao Pedro: 978 232-2395; nsaopedr@endicott.edu

Cambridge Connections

CENTER FOR THE ARTS

Endicott College 

376 Hale Street • Beverly MA 01915