Happy May Day, Everyone.
Not to take anything away from other things that get celebrated on May 1, but it’s in the ancient rituals of girls dancing ribbons around poles and secretly leaving baskets of flowers on doorsteps that the deep magic lies.
Posts Tagged ‘dance’
May Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dance, flowers, may day, may pole, postaday, secret on May 1, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Fancy Footwork (Jit & Jookin)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alistair macaulay, ballet, Carnival of the Animals, charles riley, dance, heather watts, hip hop, jit, jookin, Katie Smythe, lil buck, memphis, postaday, Saint-Saëns on August 10, 2014| Leave a Comment »
I intended to go straight to YouTube after reading NY Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay’s enthusiastic review of jookin at a recent Memphis showcase. But then I couldn’t remember the name of the dancer or what the dance style was.
It’s jookin. And I can see why Macaulay — who can be utterly scathing about ballet dancers and choreographers who don’t meet his standard — is so ecstatic about jookin.
Macaulay writes about the rise of the form and a now-famous dancer called Lil Buck (born Charles Riley) at the NY Times: “In 2007 Katie Smythe, a ballet teacher working out of her native Memphis, was driving her most remarkable student, Charles Riley, across the Mississippi to a lecture-demonstration in Arkansas. Mr. Riley, a young man specializing in the local form of virtuoso hip-hop footwork known as jookin, had started taking ballet lessons to gain strength and extend his range.
“Ms. Smythe had already persuaded some jookin dancers to improvise to Haydn and Mozart. Now she asked Mr. Riley to perform to the cello ‘Swan’ music from Saint-Saëns’s suite ‘The Carnival of the Animals.’ …
“In jookin, men wearing sneakers dance a version of pointwork too. They don’t wear tights, and in those shoes they can’t straighten their knees, but they go onto tiptoe and ripple their arms with the hip-hop currents … When Ms. Smythe and Mr. Riley reached their destination, she introduced him to the audience and put on the music. Her school’s archivist filmed the performance and posted it on YouTube.
“In 2010 this YouTube video (no longer online) was spotted by Heather Watts, a former principal of New York City Ballet who had danced for George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and many other choreographers. …
“Watching this video of Lil Buck on YouTube, Ms. Watts was immediately electrified.” Read here how she helped him get national attention.
Jit is another type of street dance, from Detroit. I believe that is what you see in the second video, but I hope someone will correct me if I’m wrong.
A Dance Party Before Work
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 5th Grade, brooklyn, dance, daybreaker, exercise, music, party, postaday, salomon faye, Stacey Anderson, verboten, willie davis, workout on July 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Claire swims in Walden Pond before work. I take a lazy walk. Other people run or go to the gym. But in Brooklyn, you have the option of a dance party at a club.
Stacey Anderson has the story at the NY Times: “It was a typically raucous scene in Williamsburg, Brooklyn … . However, not all was familiar at this rave called Daybreaker, held at the club Verboten. For a start, the 400 young participants wore athletic clothing and pressed office wear rather than skimpy dresses and droll T-shirts. Some were bright-eyed, but just as many yawned and clutched cups of coffee. …
“The Daybreaker dance party, which runs from 7 to 9 a.m. three times a month, is one of two new early electronic diversions finding audiences in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Branded as both a morning workout option and a wholesome inversion of dance culture, the events are novel beyond their sunrise start times: They are alcohol-free, with coffee and fruit-infused water distributed at the bar instead of the customary club libations. The event, which had its debut in December and moves from place to place, darkens its spaces to mimic the typical rave experience, quite convincingly.
“ ‘It’s like a casino in here; there’s no idea of time,’ said Malcolm Ring, 24, a financial analyst. He woke at 5:30 a.m. to attend this Daybreaker party, his first. ‘I would normally go for a run right now, but this is more enjoyable.’ ”
Photo: Willie Davis for The New York Times
The rap artist Salomon Faye at a Daybreaker party at Verboten, a club in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. 
Cake Dance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alehouse, baire, cake, cake dance, cakewalk, custom, dance, days gone by, garland, hurling, ireland, irish, james hackett, piper, pole, postaday, pta, publican, tavern on July 21, 2014| Leave a Comment »
When John was in fifth grade, the parent-teacher association held a “cakewalk” as a fundraiser. It was kind of like Musical Chairs except players didn’t sit down. People would get eliminated in each session, and the last one standing would win one of the cakes. At the time, the idea was new to me.
Now, as I’ve been looking into James Hackett’s Days Gone By again, I am realizing the cakewalk was based on a much older custom.
Writes James, “The cake dance, to which references were made frequently in the 18th and 19th century, was not a particular dance but rather a baire or session of dancing of which a cake was offered to the couple who proved themselves the best dancers. These events were usually sponsored by the local alehouse or tavern, and such gatherings were associated with hurling and other athletic contests. …
“The cake to be danced for is provided at the expense of the publican, or alehouse keeper, is placed on a board, which in turn is put on top of a pike that stands ten feet high, and from it hangs a garland of meadow flowers and also some apples fastened with pegs on the outside of the garland. … Those who are able to dance the longest around the cake are declared winners.”
Photo found here.
If you know where to find a photo of an actual Irish cake dance, let me know. In the meantime, here is an Irish piper accompanying a couple dancers.
Brazilian Slum to Boston Ballet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged boston ballet, brasil, brazil, Centro de Dança Rio, dance, Essdras M Suarez, favela, irlan silva, Isabela Coracy, James H. Burnett III, Mariza Estrella, only when i dance, postaday, poverty, rio, Rio de Janeiro, sacrifice, shanty on May 29, 2014| Leave a Comment »
We watched Only When I Dance on Netflix last weekend, and afterward my husband did a Google search on the dancer who won the awards.
(The other dancer was heartbreaking. She was told that because she was black, there would be no opportunity in Brazil to join a company and she’d have to win a place abroad. Abroad, they told her she weighed too much — even though she was quite slender. Her family was poor and sacrificed everything for her.)
Dancer Irlan Silva ended up at the Boston Ballet.
James H. Burnett III wrote about him for the Globe. “At 23, Silva is a rising talent with Boston Ballet. But six years ago he wasn’t sure whether he’d even live long enough to see his dream of a career in ballet come to fruition. …
“Where he came from — a gritty favela in Rio de Janeiro — was documented in a critically acclaimed 2009 documentary called Only When I Dance, in which Silva and another dancer from the slums of Rio, Isabela Coracy, battle the odds in pursuit of their careers. Favelas, shanty towns that surround the city, are rife with poverty and violence. …
“Silva’s interest in ballet developed when he attended a professional performance at the age of 10. ‘I was hooked immediately,’ he says.
“He says his natural flexibility and leaping ability carried him until he was able to receive formal training, but not every flexible would-be dancer in Brazil was able to land a spot in Centro de Dança Rio, the nation’s premier ballet school.
“ ‘My teacher — a great teacher — Mariza Estrella is responsible for inspiring me and pushing me on my way, out of the nest.’ …
” ‘Ballet can be expensive,’ he says. ‘My mother ran a cafe from her home. She still does in the same place. And she just made sure I had whatever I needed, like ballet shoes. …
“His father … Irenildo Santos, a factory worker in Rio, said through an interpreter in a recent phone interview that his son’s dancing ability was what convinced him that ballet was a worthwhile pursuit.
“ ‘We live in a very tough community. It can be very dangerous. There is crime. And there are even people who wish to harm you if you don’t behave in a certain way or fit a certain mold. … But when I saw him dance the first time, I was very moved. And now I am his fan. I am his biggest fan.’ ” Read more.
Photo: Essdras M Suarez/Boston Globe
Dancer Irlan Silva
Dance Walk in Cleveland
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ben aaron, cleveland, cleveland plain dealer, craze, dance, exercise, Fire Food & Drink, fitness, Flash Cashers, janet h. cho, Jennifer Lehner, karen katz, Kelly Perkins, postaday, Thomas Ondrey, walking, zumba on May 24, 2014| 2 Comments »
Photo: Thomas Ondrey/The Plain Dealer
Zumba instructor Kelly Perkins, center, leads a group dance-walking through Shaker Heights on Friday. The local version of the craze was organized by Shaker resident Jennifer Lehner.
Mary Ann is one of Cleveland’s biggest boosters. This week she’s been posting on Facebook about a dance-walk outing she joined Friday.
Janet Cho at the Cleveland Plain Dealer interviewed dance-walk organizer Jennifer Lehner.
“The idea came out of a backyard barbecue,” Cho writes. Lehner “was chatting with her friend Karen Katz, wife of Fire Food & Drink’s Doug Katz, about the fun YouTube video where WNBC television reporter Ben Aaron convinces New Yorkers to strut their stuff with him down the city streets.
” ‘We should do that!’ Katz said.
” ‘About one hour later I went home and bought the dancewalkfitness.com domain, set up the website and the Facebook page,’ she said. ‘You know, that’s just how I roll.’ …
“Lehner envisions tying the dance-walks in with her monthly Flash Cashers events, since the group might end up having lunch at a local restaurant after the workout.
“Flash-Cashers summons consumers to descend upon a local Shaker Heights-area business to spend at least $20 each during the cash mob event, giving the merchant a welcome one-night boost and increasing awareness among residents who may never have stepped foot in the store before.” Read more at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, here.
And here is Ben Aaron, who started the whole thing.
Bands Play on Porches at PorchFest
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bands, dance, families, music, porchfest, postaday, somerville on May 17, 2014| Leave a Comment »
The rainy Saturday turned out to be gorgeous, so we went to the Somerville PorchFest and ran into some people we know.
A variety of bands play on porches around the town. Neighbors sit on their steps to listen, families and college students wander in, entertainers entertain, and almost everyone is moved to dance.
My grandson and his best friend are pictured cutting a rug.
Read about this annual event here.
Dance for Grandma
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alicia steele, ballet, bbc, dance, elderly, Emma Ailes, exercise, health, long life, pensioners, retirees, royal academy of dance, scotland, seniors, staying fit, swan lake, t'ai chi chuan on October 19, 2013| Leave a Comment »
In the UK, retirees are taking up ballet.
Emma Ailes writes for BBC Scotland, “In a locker room at Scottish Ballet, a group of dancers are lacing up their ballet shoes. Only one thing marks them out from the other dancers here. These dancers are all in their 60s and 70s.
“Today, they are rehearsing ‘Swan Lake.’
“Among them is Alicia Steele. She danced when she was young. Now, nearly 80, she’s back.
” ‘I went to keep-fit classes, but I found them a bit boring,’ she says. ‘And I love the music with the piano. I just love it and it makes you feel a bit young again. It doesn’t make you look young, but it makes you feel young inside.’
“There’s been a 70% jump in the number of adult dancers signing up for classes in recent years, according to the Royal Academy of Dance. Some, like Alicia, danced when they were young. Others are complete beginners.
“Their oldest ballerina is 102.” More.
I took ballet both as a child and as an adult. But for now, I am sticking with tai chi chuan. Today the teacher had me learning complicated new moves with the advanced students. “You deserve it,” he said to me.
I’m not sure how to take that.
Photo: BBC Scotland
Trash Man Choreography
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allison orr, austin, choreography, dance, Forklift Danceworks, isadora duncan, postaday, Robert Faires, texas on October 13, 2013| 3 Comments »
I took modern dance in high school. The teacher was said to have studied with Isadora Duncan, and she certainly liked that flowing kind of movement.
Miss Hinney once challenged us to choreograph a dance about an abstract topic. Page and I chose Lavoisier’s discovery of oxygen, for which we used music from the Firebird Suite. We were not allowed to act it out as if we were Lavoisier, rather we had to interpret the chemical reaction using dance. It was impossible, so we were naturally very proud when we pulled it off.
Since then I have felt a great respect for the inventiveness of choreographers.
Here is one who sounds pretty cool. Allison Orr has closely observed garbage men in Austin, Texas, and has made their movements into a dance. More recently she worked with employees of the power company.
Robert Faires at the Austin Chronicle describes “The Trash Project, her award-winning, phenomenally popular collaboration with the city’s Solid Waste Services Department (now Resource Recovery) that made dancers of sanitation workers and the machines they operate. … Now, the Forklift Danceworks artistic director is at it again, albeit with a different city department, Austin Energy, whose employees are the focus for PowerUP. …
“For Orr, who’s made a career of making dances from the movements of people who aren’t trained in the art form – firefighters, gondoliers, roller skaters, orchestra conductors, Elvis impersonators, traffic cops, et al. – the personal stories of her subjects have become as important as their moves. She talks at length to the people with whom she collaborates on a dance and weaves recorded excerpts from interviews into the performance as the subjects are moving,” The latest Production, PowerUP was performed in September at the Travis County Exposition Center. More.
Photo: John Anderson
Power company choreography.
Power company choreography.
Sentenced to Dance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged andrew testa, dance, dance united, Katrin Bennhold, Matthew-Jay Pratt, new philanthropy capital, postaday, sentencing, trinity laban on September 8, 2013| 2 Comments »
A program in Europe that deals with school dropouts and youth who are in trouble with the law is turning many around.
Katrin Bennhold writes for the NY Times about Dance United. “This is no ordinary dance company. The young people at Dance United have a background in trouble, not ballet. …
“Referred by schools, parents and more often youth services, they train six hours a day for six weeks with professional contemporary coaches in a highly disciplined dance boot camp. …
“On average, 7 in 10 make it onto the stage; of those, 8 in 10 return to mainstream education or work, and more than 3 in 4 do not commit offenses or become repeat offenders. One in 10 even goes on to study dance professionally, with one Dance United graduate, Matthew-Jay Pratt, now in his final year at the competitive Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance in London.
“It is one of the most original and successful youth engagement programs in Britain, costing its private and public backers about $3,000 per person but saving society an estimated $128,000 in legal costs and welfare benefits, according to New Philanthropy Capital, a research firm that calculates returns for donors to charity. …
“Dance United started out in the 1990s, working with Ethiopian street children, youths in post-reunification Germany and young Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. …
“Ask Trey what he has learned and he eagerly shows off his favorite move: a long sideways jump, his face and chest turned skyward and his arms wide open.
“But he has also learned about getting up in the morning, even when his mother is still asleep, and how to follow a healthy diet. …
“And Trey has learned about books and the power to take control of your own story.” More.
Video: Dance United
Kiev Subway Dancing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ballroom, daily mail, dance, elderly, Garanichev Hleb, Gleb Garanich, kiev subway, Odd Stuff Magazine, photo, photograph, photography, postaday, senior citizen, seniors, soviet union, Ukraine on March 24, 2013| Leave a Comment »
My husband heard that the Kiev subway is a popular place for older Russians and Ukrainians to go dancing. So I Googled around a bit and found stories at Odd Stuff Magazine, here, and the Daily Mail, here. And a video at YouTube. In today’s world, you can’t keep a good story down.
At the Daily Mail (which seems to favor bullet points) Helen Lawson writes, “Saturday night fever: The subway where Kiev’s pensioners dance and find love.
- The dancers cannot afford to pay for a venue so they use a metro subway
- The group meets every Saturday at 7 pm to socialise and dance
- About 20 couples are known to have met thanks to the meet-ups
- Reuters photographer Gleb Garanich documented the weekly gatherings
At Odd Stuff, photographer Garanichev Hleb (is that the same Reuters guy?) asks the subjects of his photos about the dance scene. “Milevsky Nicholas was born in 1938 and Natalia Stolyarchuk born in 1955 met at these dances and has since moved in together. This is one of the 20 couples who met at these clubs. ..
“Despite his age, both retired and still work together earn about 4,000 hryvnia per month. …
“These people do not communicate in social networks, but still remember all the holidays of childhood and youth, when put on the table, to visit friends and neighbors come, everywhere sounded cheerful sounds of accordion.” More.
Leaping for Joy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dance, From Scratch Club, http://imgur.com/a/NAwjl, photograph, photographer, photography, photos, thanksgiving on November 21, 2012| 4 Comments »
Everyone is getting ready for Thanksgiving around here. John’s family has left for Syracuse to join culinary forces with my daughter-in-law’s family. My husband and I just arrived in Providence, where we will celebrate with Suzanne, Erik, my sister, and my brother-in-law.
Big cooking starts early tomorrow. But I already made the From Scratch Club’s cranberry sauce that was such a hit last year. (I found it on their WordPress blog.)
So as not to repeat myself too much, I am just going to share a link John sent me that captures the leaping-for-joy spirit that should be the essence of a holiday that is basically about eating a lot of food with people you like. And then maybe taking a nap and dreaming you are flying.
Check out the wonderful pictures at http://imgur.com/a/NAwjl
Singing and Dancing in the Cemetery
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Bree Harvey, cemetery, dance, earthquake, mt. auburn, Pamela Joye, peter demarco on October 16, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Being in the middle of an earthquake just now (a baby one), I got the urge to post about a cemetery.
Peter DeMarco wrote in the Boston Globe a while back about a lovely dance performance in the famed Mount Auburn Cemetery.
“The 100-member cast of ‘A Glimpse Beyond: A Unique Celebration of Life and Death’ leaves no one out: dancers, musicians, poets, puppeteers, sopranos, jazz singers, gospel choirs, and actors — some garbed as masked ‘spirit owls,’ others portraying the recently departed — join to make audiences ponder what lies ahead in the great beyond.”
According to DeMarco, the show was designed so that audience members could walk along, following the narrative as it unfolded “across the various graves, groves, and lush contours of America’s first garden cemetery.”
Bree Harvey, the cemetery’s vice president of external affairs, told the reporter that the performance was suited to Mount Auburn because “ ‘it’s a place of peace and tranquility, a place to commemorate the dead and console the bereaved and celebrate the lives of those buried here.’ ” More.
“Glimpse” reminds me of “When the Saints Go Marching in” and the New Orleans jazz parades that commemorate a life.
Back to the earthquake: John retweeted prompt info from @NewEarthquake on twitter: “4.5 earthquake, 6km SSW of Lake Arrowhead, Maine. Oct 16 19:12 at epicenter.” It took NewEarthquake only four minutes to report. In case you haven’t gotten into twitter yet, it is truly the place to go for breaking news.
Photograph: Pamela Joye
“A Glimpse Beyond: A Unique Celebration of Life and Death” brought a 100-member cast onto the grounds of Mount Auburn Cemetery
Dance versus Disability
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged actor, arts, cerebral palsy, choreography, dance, dancer, disability, Emily Pope-Blackman, Gregg Mozgala, Neil Genzlinger, Tamar Rogoff, Theater Breaking through Barriers on August 5, 2012| Leave a Comment »
A NY Times article I saved from November 24, 2009, remains as inspirational as when I first read it.
In “Learning His Body, Learning to Dance,” Neil Genzlinger writes that “Gregg Mozgala, a 31-year-old actor with cerebral palsy, had 12 years of physical therapy while he was growing up. But in the last eight months, a determined choreographer with an unconventional résumé has done what all those therapists could not: She has dramatically changed the way Mr. Mozgala walks.
“In the process, she has changed his view of himself and of his possibilities.
Mr. Mozgala and the choreographer, Tamar Rogoff, have been working since last winter on a dance piece called ‘Diagnosis of a Faun.’ It is to have its premiere on Dec. 3 at La MaMa Annex in the East Village, but the more important work of art may be what Ms. Rogoff has done to transform Mr. Mozgala’s body.
“ ‘ I have felt things that I felt were completely closed off to me for the last 30 years,’ he said. ‘The amount of sensation that comes through the work has been totally unexpected and is really quite wonderful.’ ”
Choreographer Rogoff saw Mozgala perform the role of Romeo in a production by Theater Breaking through Barriers in March 2008 and knew she wanted to create a dance piece for him.
“Originally, [Ms. Rogoff] envisioned a simple study, maybe 10 minutes long. Mr. Mozgala’s expectations when he agreed to the project were equally narrow: he said that he thought that she would either merely create a dance that made use of the physical abilities he already had or, after seeing his limitations, tell him, ‘Thanks but no thanks.’ ”
It turned out that their expectations were way too narrow. Read more.
Photograph by Andrea Mohin at The New York Times shows Gregg Mozgala rehearsing with Emily Pope-Blackman.
Collage and Editing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged amy spencer, art, artist, ballet, choreography, collage, concord, concord academy, creativity, dance, ica, modern, richard colton, sean curran dance, summer stages on July 24, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Sunday evening I went over to Concord Academy to hear Seán Curran talk about how he creates choreography. Betsy, one of the dancers from his company, did a beautiful job of demonstrating what he meant.
As a little boy growing up in Watertown, Seán said, he waited eagerly for the mail that brought Look magazine. He liked to cut out pictures and make collages with them.
He says that his approach to choreography is similar. He arranges many snippets or dance phrases in different ways. His challenge is to edit down the many ideas so that the choreography doesn’t topple from too much weight.
I make collages, too. I have always liked the idea of taking a bunch of random things people have said and trying to make a play out of them, for example.
I also make collage greeting cards. I keep a box of promising pictures, cut from magazines and gallery postcards. I go through the whole pile and set aside maybe 20 items that somehow remind me of the person for whom I am making the card. Then I edit them down to the few pieces that will be best for the particular occasion.
All that happens before I cut the shapes and decide on how to arrange them. Sometimes I do a cutout of a cutout and put something else in the space: for example, I cut a vista out of a painting of a window and put a girl in the space (bottom right).
Here are examples.
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