Friday, March 19, 2010

Liz at Harvard

The company is constantly spread out across the states and world doing work simultaneously nowadays. While we were in residence at the Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Liz gave a talk at Harvard on the meeting of science and art. Liz was said to have spoken, "emphatically and elegantly about the position of art in society and has inspired countless dancers, scientists and layman with her passion." You can read more about her talk here.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Dance matters

After three amazing PACKED performances, we said goodbye to our community cast over an ice cream social wrap-up party. Every single member of our cast (all 57 of them!) brought an incredible focus and energy to these performances. As we said our goodbyes and traded hugs, I was reminded of the incredible power of the artistic process - the friendships formed over cultures and generations, the discipline and rigor learned, the confidence gained by old and young, and the stories shared. Here is Sarah and one our youngest cast members, Andrea, sharing a final goodbye hug.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Opening night!

Last night, we had our first performance of Language from the Land at Kohler Arts Center. It was the first time our whole cast of 57 (+ company) was together in one place, and the first time we ran the full show. Our cast danced beautifully! It was wonderful to see each person really shine and share their hard work over the past three weeks with the audience. And we get to do it again tonight! Here are a few scenes from last night:

Prop table: full of books and whirligigs

Participants Wendy, Keely, Linda, Cherie, Wendy, Sue and Gloria pose in costume before the show

Show order: posted everywhere!

Practicing our bow before last night's show

Friday, March 12, 2010

Day in the life

A little glimpse into our day on Thursday, March 11...

9:00 am Cassie, Ben, and Sarah meet over breakfast at Field to Fork to plan the day and catch up on Dance Exchange business back home.


11:00am Cassie, Ben, Sarah, Martha and Meg meet at Kohler to make final changes to Martha's text.


1:30pm Company rehearsal to solidify company sections, work with the set, look at transitions, and experiment with possible shifts in show order.


5:00pm Community cast arrives and the night begins with working sections that need to be finished or changed.

6:00pm Stumble-through begins. Here is a short clip of the Carpenter's section from the run:



10:00pm Finish stumble-through and release community. We made it almost all the way through the piece! Production meeting starts.

11:30pm Head home to rest up for opening night!

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Photo of the day

Thomas (pictured below with Cassie) tries on a paper coat for the piece. It was modeled after John Muir's coat, and was made by attaching pages from books to a blazer. It looked great on Thomas, but unfortunately its not quite right for the piece. We've had to let go of a number of ideas and sections we created as we start to put the piece together, but often the ideas we let go of are the ones that reemerge in different places. I have a feeling this coat will make an appearance in something we do down the line--I'd love to see Thomas do a solo in the coat because of the different quality the stiff paper gives his movement.



Make it work

Tech week. Since Monday, we've been editing sound, editing voiceovers, editing text, editing audio interviews, editing movement, and putting the pieces of the show together in rehearsal. We're not quite done, but we're close, and we'll learn a lot about what's working and what's not from our dress rehearsal tonight.

In the show, Ben and I dance a duet to a song called "Wonderful Town, Sheboygan, Wisconsin" that we found while researching Sheboygan history. Have a listen here.


Sunday, March 7, 2010

The evolution of a kite

Billy, one of our partners from the carpenters' union, shows us a design for our "mock" kite idea.

Cassie experiments with our first "mock" kite in rehearsal.



We spend a Saturday night, frantically following directions from an IPhone to find a fabric store in Sheboygan. We make it just before closing.


We search through rows and rows of fabric until we land on these three prints.

Stay tuned for finished kites!

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Late night work session

11:05pm: Editing sound


Bright and early

Good morning, Sheboygan! On the schedule today: a rehearsal block this morning, this afternoon, and then a potluck with our community participants and the Carpenters Union. I know I am definitely looking forward to a shorter work day and getting to spend time with our participants outside of rehearsal.

Yesterday, Willa, a participant in the project, and Bronwyn, a Kohler Arts Center staff member, worked on costumes for the piece in the ARTery. I was thrilled to see them take the initial commission from us for paper costumes and inject their own ideas (and design skills!) into the mix. Below, they talk about the process of constructing the costumes. I can't wait to try them in rehearsal!

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Let's waltz

Just a short clip of Ben working with Sue, one of our community participants who teaches ballroom dance in the area. Sue came in earlier in the week to teach waltz and polka steps to some of our participants, and below you'll see her teaching Ben the waltz they'll perform together in the show. AND--you won't hear him in the clip, but we're going to have an accordion player onstage during the show to provide the music for our waltz and polka sections.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Starting the day off right

Thomas Dwyer, who has been with the Dance Exchange for 22 years, is featured in a new book that comes out today called What Should I Do With the Rest of My Life? True Stories of Finding Success, Passion, and New Meaning in the Second Half of Life. The book, by Bruce Frankel, looks at people who have made big mid-life career changes. Check out the book here, and read an excerpt here. To celebrate the book's release, we took Thomas out to breakfast this morning before rehearsal. Here's the group at Field to Fork:


Rehearsal tonight

Tonight, we worked on creating more material with books for our sections about John Muir. Ben's group created some "human bookshelf" options:


Earlier today, Ben and I worked with Reilly, one of the youngest members of our cast, to create some structures with the books to help shape the stage space:


Reilly talks a bit about the process of creating his book cover maze:

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

John Muir

Every time we embark on a new community project, we like to start by researching anything AND everything we can find out about that community. Our research for Wisconsin led us to John Muir, the author and naturalist. Muir spent much of his young life in Wisconsin studying and writing about the land. Because of his writings, we were led to start thinking about the land surrounding Sheboygan and the participants' relationships with the land.

One idea we are working toward, inspired by Muir, is the use of books throughout the piece. We are hoping that stories, both from participants and from our research, can emerge from these books and help organize the structure of the performance.

To generate material using the books, we set up participants in a structure we like to call "round robin." Participants line up in two straight lines facing each other. One line is the choreographer line, and one line is the dancer line. Each person in the choreographer line makes a movement, using a book, and teaches it to the person in the dancer line across from them. Now that dancer has one movement. We shift the dancer line down and the choreographer line makes a new movement, using the books, for their new dancer. After a couple rounds, the dancer pieces together all the movements they have learned into a phrase. Once the participants in the dancer line have their movement phrases secured, the dancer and choreographer roles are swapped and the entire sequence begins again.