Working on duets

Something we do a lot of in rehearsal is generate movement from a particular assignment or idea, learn material created by someone else in the room or teach our own, and then manipulate that material in some way. In Origins rehearsal on Thursday, Liz paired dancers together to make new duets. In each pair was one dancer who knew a phrase created by Ben, and one dancer who knew a different phrase created by Ben. The dancers could use the material as they liked, but were asked to start offstage and travel into the space. Here you'll see four very different results...

"Drift" at Arlington Farmers Market

This Saturday, head out to the Arlington Farmers Market to catch excerpts of Cassie Meador's Drift. Thomas, Martha, Ben and I will perform at 9, 10, and 11am. It's going to be a beautiful day on Saturday--we hope to see you there!

Newsletter = whirligig

This week we mailed out our spring newsletters, chock full of stories about the work we’ve been performing and creating. The newsletter covers the full range of what we do here at the Dance Exchange--from our residency at Kohler, to the successful partnerships of the MetLife Healthy Living Initiative, to an exclusive excerpt of Liz Lerman’s Hiking the Horizontal, to the excitement surrounding our world premiere of The Matter of Origins this fall at the University of Maryland.

We found a great local printshop called EcoPrint that is 100% wind powered and carbon neutral. The newsletter is already environmentally-friendly, but take it a step further. When you’re finished enjoying the stories in print, turn it into a whirling work of art!

--Emily Macel, Communications Manager

(Didn’t get a copy of the newsletter? Check out the digital version here.)

HOW TO TRANSFORM YOUR NEWSLETTER INTO A WHIRLIGIG

Step 1: Cut a square from the first page of the newsletter. To do this, fold the front right corner to the bottom left-hand side to make a triangle. Cut the newsletter along the seam, and then cut the extra 2 inches off the bottom. Now you have a square!

Step 2: Fold the square diagonally to opposite corners to create two creases. Open the paper back up to a square shape.

Step 3: Cut from each corner towards the center, stopping about an inch before you reach the center.

Step 4: Fold the corners into the center, holding them with a finger until four corners are in the center.

Step 5: using a push pin and a pencil with an eraser, carefully push the pushpin through the center of the pinwheel (where the corners are being held) and into the pencil’s eraser. Voila! A working whirligig! Take it outside into the wind and watch it work its magic.

Meet CERN

Liz's research for The Matter of Origins took her to CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland where she (with Creative Producer Amelia Cox, dancer Ben Wegman and videographer Logan Kibbens) toured the facilities and met with scientists. This video serves as a short introduction to a world we are becoming more and more familiar with as we work on the piece.



You can also visit CERNTV's YouTube channel for more videos and frequent updates about the LHC.

Back at it

Liz's new piece, The Matter of Origins, will premiere in September at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland. We've been working on the piece for over two years now, and are currently in the midst of a two-week long stretch of rehearsals at our studios in Takoma Park. Last week, we spent a few days working on the second act of the show, which will take place in three different theaters within the arts center. In each room, we'll be hosting a tea in which audience members, performers, and scientists interact. What does this mean? Well, we're still figuring it out....but we're excited by what came up in rehearsal this week. We begin with Ben giving us "the rules" of tea, then we'll see Ted in bed, and end with Keith and Ben working on a phrase for our tea tables.

Catching up with "Mountain"

On April 6th, we presented an excerpt from Cassie's new work "How to Lose a Mountain" as a part of Dance Conversations at the Flea in New York City. Cassie, Ben, Thomas and I drove up to New York on Tuesday morning, performed that evening, and then Ben, Thomas and Cassie were lucky enough to be stranded in New York (due to a series of events in which our car got stuck in a parking lot for the night) at the home of writer and DX friend Bruce Frankel, who graciously put the dancers up and even provided pizza. You can read Bruce's impressions of the performance on his blog. Just scroll down to the April 7th entry.

Photo by John Borstel