Around Town

John Michael Kohler Arts Center, our home away from home!

Our favorite restaurant for fresh, locally sourced foods.

This is the perfect place for planning meetings or a quiet retreat.

For an early morning walk, I love the boardwalk along the Sheboygan River.

Marathon dance making

Often we call large-scale community residencies "marathon dancing making." Once we begin a new residency, it becomes a race to the end creating movement, sharing stories, crafting dances, getting to know different people and groups, finding music, and putting it all together into one beautiful shared performance experience. With such busy schedules, moments for the company to rehearse together become rare and valuable. Here you'll see Thomas, Martha, Sarah and I beginning to get back some new material choreographed by company member, Cassie Meador.

Good morning from Wilson, Wisconsin

For the duration of the residency, Cassie and I are staying in a house right on Lake Michigan. We fall asleep to the sound of the waves, and wake up to this view every morning:

Extreme balance

I'm always impressed with how adaptable our tools are in different settings. Yesterday, we spent time at the Hmong Mutual Assistance Association of Sheboygan. We had a room of almost all young men and 1 to 10 was the perfect tool for them. They took the task of making shapes with weight sharing and balance to a whole new level. You can find more info on 1 to 10 in our online toolbox.

Costume ideas

Started to play with potential costume ideas for the community piece today. I worked on this dress made out of newspaper and pages from an old dictionary during our time in the ARTery this morning. I love the idea of using recycled materials for costumes...

Here we go...

We had our show at the Kohler Arts Center on Thursday night and it was a huge success. Our audience was wonderful, and all of the dancers (especially our new adjuncts!) performed with confidence and ease. After a well-deserved day off, we returned to the Kohler Arts Center today for our first community workshop. We began in the ARTery with a workshop led by members of the local carpenters union. Under their careful direction, we made pinwheels and kites which will appear in our community performance in mid-March. Later on in the day, we led a community workshop for kids, adults, and seniors. Such a treat to see a wide range of ages dancing together!

Tomorrow: back to the Kohler to build more kites and pinwheels, and to lead another community workshop. Interested in joining us? Stop by the Kohler Center anytime between 11am-3pm for the workshop in the Artery, and then come take our movement workshop in the Matrix at the Center from 1:30-3pm. See you soon!

Show tonight!

Tonight, we perform at the Kohler Arts Center. On the program: "Sunday Evening" by company member Martha Wittman; Journey by Liz Lerman, Blueprints of Relentless Nature by adjunct artist Keith Thompson, Darwin's Wife by Liz Lerman (performed in the lobby during intermission) and Drift, by company member Cassie Meador. You can read the Sheboygan Press's preview of the show here.

Yesterday afternoon, we performed Drift for a group of local high school students. Adjunct artist Ami Dowden-Fant talks about the experience below.

Epsom salts for the dancers

Shop the Pig and Save

Cassie's piece Drift looks at the changes that took place on a particular piece of land in her hometown of Augusta, GA. At one point in history, a Piggly Wiggly grocery store was built on the land, and part of Drift is set in the Piggly Wiggly. So you can imagine how excited we were to get to shop at an actual Piggly Wiggly here in Sheboygan, Wisconsin! Here, company members Martha and Shula smile at the end of their first trip to the Piggly Wiggly.

Get to work!

We lost a lot of rehearsal time due to the double blizzard of 2010 in DC, so when we arrived in Sheboygan on Sunday, we went right into rehearsal. Here you’ll see part of the company rehearsing a section toward the end of Drift, with choreographer Cassie Meador leading the rehearsal.