dance in the mix

2011-09-19T19:34:00.003-05:00

Mikhail Baryshnikov and Merce Cunningham Talk Dance Photography

Photo: Everett Bogue

He may not be gracing the stage quite so often these days, but ballet legend Mikhail Baryshnikov has remained an ever-present artistic force; look around town, and you’ll see his mark on everything from cultural venues (the impressive Baryshnikov Arts Center) to new modern dance (his young Hell’s Kitchen Dance troupe) to theater (in last year’s acclaimed Beckett Shorts) to worshipful artistic homages — his mostly naked body is depicted, Apollo-like, by Robert Wilson, in the lobby of BAM. His latest project, a photo exhibition at Mark Seliger’s 401 Projects, showcases the results of two years of following around the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and capturing their movements on digital film. Misha (and, to our delight and surprise, Cunningham himself!) took a break from the opening-night festivities to talk to Vulture.

You’ve been photographing for decades, but never dancers. Why this, now?
I was experimenting. I wanted to really take certain moments that the audience during the performance may not necessarily appreciate, maybe some emotional moments, some romantic moments that I see, and sometimes I feel the audience doesn’t. I know that sometimes they feel, “He [Merce] is so formal and so detached and not emotional,” but I think it’s actually quite the opposite. That’s what I was trying to show in my work.

Why had you never focused on dance photography before?
I never liked dance photography; it’s very flat, and dance photography in the studio looks very contrived. Very few photographers really know how to … it’s just a page in the book. It was not that I hated it, but I didn’t feel it was necessary compared with the real thing. But there were a few photographers — Brodovitch, Himmel, Ilse Bing, Irving Penn — who made me feel it was possible. I wanted the audience to see, to be able to imagine, the movement before and after, not just the frozen moment.

So was it strange to now see dance from the photographer’s perspective?
I was just worried that I was a distraction for the dancers! But since I was always there two hours before the premiere, they were nervous anyway.

Your friendship with Merce is a long-standing one — do you relate to his choreographic style especially well?
When I arrived in this country almost 35 years ago, I started slowly to see … it took me a few years to get hooked! Some things for me, being a classical dancer at that time, were oddly familiar but also kind of far. But then I understood more and more the way he works and challenges his imagination and his dancers, and I became a Merce junkie. And of course I’ve had the luck and privilege to work with him and dance in his pieces and dance with him together, and I’m a big fan of his. I’m very honored to be his friend. I really admire him with all my heart.

So do you feel he really opened the window to modern dance for you?
Yes, yes. Though this is not really modern dance — it is in history books that are not written yet, because it is so far ahead of its time — much more than even George Balanchine. This is art that transfigures our present time into the future.

You’ve moved far beyond dance in recent years…
I’ve always rejected the notion that I’m just a dancer. I was always interested in photography and other forms of art. First of all it takes your mind from the kind of annoying moments in your professional life and opens different ones, and then you come back and through this I actually understand my own work in much more detail. You know, maybe it’s a bit too late in my career [laughs]. I wish I could start this again. It would have been something different.

Really? Would you do something other than ballet if you were starting over?
Absolutely. I don’t know, maybe I wouldn’t dance at all.

Photo: Everett Bogue

[At this point, who should roll into the gallery but Merce Cunningham himself! The 88-year-old choreographic legend did us the honor of having a brief chat as he surveyed the photos.]

So what do you think?
It’s great! One person is almost static, and the other one is moving. The static position of the body we know, but the moving position is different — it looks as if you got bigger. You see a kind of blur, and on top it’s the head moving! It’s like double, triple images. And in this one, there’s an arm that looks like a bird — it has feathers, and wings at the end of it!

What do you especially like about Misha’s work?
He has a great interest in what’s happening now, and this kind of work would not be possible without that which wasn’t around, let’s say, a few weeks ago. I saw him in the Beckett plays, and particularly in the first one, he was wonderful. It was quite striking.

And are you seeing your own work in a new way?
It’ such a different way of thinking about photographing; ordinarily it’s more static. It’s a great difference from dance photographs twenty years ago, which were just a picture. If you wanted to capture jumping, it was recorded in that position — and if it was a marvelous jump, everyone wondered how you got there! Here you see the movement — that’s something he sees.

Was it strange knowing throughout this project that Baryshnikov was constantly watching your work?
We would rehearse, and he came with his camera and stood quite close to the stage, and because he has a dancer’s eye, he knew where to look or move. You could see, he would hold the camera still, and then he’d move it, so he caught both things. I had no idea what these would look like, but it was fascinating to watch. He was like a sprite moving around in front of the stage. —Rebecca Milzoff

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/03/mikhail_baryshnikov_and_merce.html

2011-09-18T21:15:00.000-05:00

So the goal for The Bell House is to be more present. We're going to start with more blogging and more posts and more specifically, more substance, beginning with a new Pinterest account:

http://pinterest.com/johnsonrac/

This is where folks can pin favorite interests related to our pinboards. It should be fun!

~Rachel

2011-06-03T15:36:00.000-05:00

Very generous review by Alicia Chesser:

Quite a Sight

Living Water Dance Company's VISTA program was a panorama of movement

By ALICIA CHESSER

Dance is about the body, but it's also about the soul. The Living Water Dance Company, a Tulsa-based contemporary troupe led by Amy Roark-McIntosh, the founding director of dance at Oral Roberts University, explored the connection between the two in a thoughtful, varied, and moving performance of 11 original works at Camp Loughridge on May 15.

The program, entitled VISTA: sight, vision, perspective, field of vision, glimpse, landscape ... engaged viewers with those ideas as soon as they entered the campground, with dancers scattered around the Temple Conference Center, moving in silence. Robbee Stafford floated with the wind, from a boulder up onto a stone path; Rachel Bruce Johnson wrestled with a trio of pine trees; others played with the building's panoramic windows.

photo by Rachel Bruce Johnson | The Bell House

"Part of the vision I have for Living Water," Roark-McIntosh said, "is to share dance and improvisation in both traditional and creative venues, and Loughridge gives us the opportunity to creatively explore both indoor and outdoor space in a beautiful, natural setting."

The dancers moved inside, and the program opened with "Tension y escape," a flamenco solo by Lexi Allen (accompanied by guitarist Johnny Beard and percussionist Dylan Allen), which formed a striking contrast to the outdoor improvisation. In a stark black and white dress, her agile hands twining through the air as her feet stamped the floor, Allen was both structured and luxuriant, her steady gaze holding the focal point between groundedness and freedom.

L. Brooke Schlecte's "Shifting Parables" had the mesmerizing Johnson (also an ORU dance professor and the executive director of Bell House Arts) working at her edges. Seeming lost in space, she pushed a hand against her shoulder, her elbow, and her cheek to see when and where she'd fall. She looked up uncertainly, as if consulting a higher power, then looked back to her own body to try out the message. Her hands gestured haphazardly, then took on the movements of writing. Johnson's costume was all stripes and lines, telegraphing the solo's story of how we tell the story of who we are.

Anchoring VISTA were two long pieces, both by Roark-McIntosh, both rich with spiritual symbolism and ideas about community and communion. "Eucharistia," set to haunting music by Olafur Arnalds, took viewers through stages of preparing for a literal communion -- bread and wine -- and for its metaphoric counterpart, the transformation of a person through grace. Eight dancers entered in a line, then broke off in charged gestures (a finger to a palm, hands cupping mouths, fists clenched against the womb). Johnson crumpled to the floor apart from the group and was guided by a riveting Jessica Vokoun (assistant professor of dance at the University of Tulsa) through a sort of conversion experience, at the end of which Johnson's arms subtly traced the axes of a cross. She lay prostrate at the back of the room (bright and high-ceilinged like a cabin-cathedral) as Vokoun came forward, offering bread and wine to everyone in attendance who wished to partake. "Eucharistia" was a powerful meditation on the ways in which the support of a community allows "outsideness" to be revealed, broken down, and transformed.

For "Untamed," first seen as part of the Living Arts Contemporary Dance New Genre festival, the company brought the audience outside and performed the first half of the piece in a stand of trees and on a grassy hill. This work -- exploring "the mystery of the spirit of God" through sensory experience -- benefited from this natural setting, as Roark-McIntosh's expansive, flowing choreography merged with rustling trees and gleaming water. Incense, oil, candle flame, dark robes, baptism and anointing -- the piece was full of ancient religious imagery, made new by its expression in a contemporary dance for women.

As the dancers moved indoors, they brought the audience with them, continuing the piece in front of a dance film by Johnson, projected onto a screen between the stage and those awe-inspiring windows. At one point, the women on the stage, in black, did the same gestures as the women in the film, in white, who looked like angels moving in mirror image to the women on earth.

The strongest piece of the afternoon was Johnson's "Avelut," set to music by Philip Glass and based on Jewish mourning rituals. In her choreography, Johnson is often interested in the lightness and weight of the body; here those qualities take on an overtly spiritual dimension. She notices that the grieving body feels different, disengaged, out of place in the world. With Roark-McIntosh and Stafford beside her, all three sitting on low stools, Johnson watched her right arm fall and dangle; she walked heavily on all fours and sliced the air with her elbow, her movement just slightly out of time with the others. In her grief she literally fell off her chair, over and over, and what could have been an overwrought gesture was in Johnson's hands a masterpiece of subtle anguish. Her friends supported her with the simplest movements of compassion -- grounding, lifting, protecting. It was a brief, spare dance that spoke a hard truth gently.

VISTA also included several short pieces, including a solo on the idea of blindness, passionately danced by Stafford; a charming tap duet by McIntosh and Heather Fick, to the song "Me and My Shadow"; and Johnson's "Red," featuring Brie Matlach as a woman discovering mischievousness and surprise in a lonely situation. To conclude the program, local musician Dave Paulec played and McIntosh sang the 19th-century hymn "O Love That Will Not Let Me Go," while four dancers improvised a joyful ending to an afternoon of searching and finding, and attending to what one finds along the way.

URL for this story: http://www.urbantulsa.comhttp://www.urbantulsa.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A39137

2011-03-07T16:35:00.001-06:00

Check out this review on upcoming EXCHANGE adjudicator, Amy Querin, artistic director of Fresno Dance Collective:

http://fresnobeehive.com/2011/03/rogue_review_fr_1.html

2011-01-16T20:55:00.003-06:00

Well, the new website if finally ready for launch! We kept the old domain, of course, but it has a new, beautiful look and feel! Thank you Maranda Blumenthal for all your work on the new website!

www.bellhousearts.org

We also (by necessity) had to launch a new site to house the Exchange festival pages.

www.exchangefestival.org

I think it's comprehensive and concise and still looks great!

It's not easy finding your way around technology. There are some days I really hate it. I've been ready to hire more than my share of professionals to make us look swanky. In some ways, I almost think that is a smarter business plan. But for now, we are mucking around still a bit here and there on our own....except when we're not.

2010-12-16T11:06:00.003-06:00

Well, Christmas is almost here and the launch of our new website is, as expected, behind. However, it should premiere just in good timing with the unveiling of our new commercial video for Exchange Festival that will be in Tulsa, OK August 5-7, 2011. We are so excited about this. Andrea and Robert Jobe with Pivot Films did a fabulous job with the video and it highlights some amazing dance artists in Tulsa.

Here's a production shot from the filming day.

Now, to get back to work on our beautiful website. Maranda Blumenthal of Black Star Photographica has been laying out our information and photos in our new BluDomain flash template and I have to say, it's gorgeous!! I'm sure she's frustrated, though, waiting for new pictures! Gaaaaa, I wish the Executive Director would get her act together and send them ASAP! (sowy, Maranda!!)

We can't WAIT to show you!!

2010-08-24T21:09:00.010-05:00

MEDIA OVERHAUL

There seems to be so much to do and never enough time to do it all. I did, however, accomplish one thing so far this week - updating the portfolio on the design gallery page of The Bell House website.

I put together one digital image in order to showpiece a program I did for Out On a Limb Dance Company for the Out of the Loop Festival in 2009. I didn't want to upload all the pages individually, so I created one document to show the layout and uploaded that. Turned out pretty good.

We'll be auditioning for a photoshoot to create new images for Bell House mid-September. I'll be inviting area artists to participate in exchange for free images that they can use for their own purposes. The ideas that the BHA creative team have come up with for this shoot are amazing and will be exciting and challenging to capture. I'm finding a lot of inspiration from Laurent Ziegler, a brilliant photographer/video artist with an impressively abundant resumé. Under the collective name of un|still, Laurent's work ranges from dance, portraits, documentary, and art projects. And she simply signs her eNewletter with:

laurent ziegler

photographer

There are many changes to the look and feel of our media coming. Just plugging away one thing at a time, which is all I can do these days and still not miss out on my two boys.

photo by Maranda Blumenthal

~Rachel

2010-05-30T19:25:00.002-05:00

Don't miss Out On a Limb Dance Company's bi-annual Summer Dance Workshop
When: Sept. 25th, 2010
Where: McCallum High School, 5600 Sunshine Drive, Austin, TX 78756-1598
Cost: $60

Workshop Vision:
Out On a Limb Dance Company is committed to connecting and collaborating with other artists and dancers at various artistic levels. The workshop focuses on technique, improvisation, performance, and dance-making, as these aspects are important to the company and the artistic mission. Making dance, together.

2010-02-17T20:17:00.003-06:00

CONTEMPORARY DANCE NEW GENRE
LIGGETT STUDIO
FRI & SAT, FEB 26 & 27, 8PM
$12 ($10 MEMBERS AND STUDENTS)

With assistance of Living Arts Council's newly formed Contemporary DanceCommittee, the Festival will feature new eclectic works which go beyond traditional dance boundaries. Encouraging and supporting the creation and presentation of new local contemporary dance work as well as enhancing the public's understanding and appreciation of the art form is the current focus of the committee. Festival audiences will get a taste of the most intriguing intersection of forms at the Contemporary Dance New Genre this year. The return of local Festival favorites, Living Water Dance Company, and Portico Dans Theatre as well as introduction of Festival newcomers Nina Madsen, Jordan Fuchs, and Sarah Gamblin.

Purchase tickets online at:
http://www.livingarts.org/genre/newgenre2010/ng17.html

2010-02-05T22:46:00.001-06:00

INLET DANCE THEATRE
SDI 2010 Scholarship Audition
FEBRUARY 20, 2010

Why: To enable students needing financial assistance to attend Inlet Dance Theatre's Summer Dance Intensive 2009. All scholarships are based on ability and financial need.
Who: Serious students ages 12 & up
When: Saturday, February 20th from 10am-12pm Please arrive at 9:45am for registration. Audition begins promptly at 10am.
Where: Mosaic Experience Dance StudioCleveland Heights High SchoolCleveland Heights, OHon the corner of Cedar Rd. and Lee Rd.Enter from the parking lot off of Washington St.
HOW: Call the Inlet office at 216-382-0201 or email us @ inletdancetheatre@sbcglobal.net and leave your name and contact info to reserve your spot at the audition. Then go tohttp://www.box.net/shared/az90bu1bzb to download and print out the SDI 2010 Scholarship Audition Application Form. Please come to the audition dressed and ready to dance. Bring your completed application form with a parent/guardian signature on the medical release. Company members from Inlet Dance Theatre will lead scholarship candidates through a planned audition process (no need to prepare a solo).

2009-09-13T19:24:00.007-05:00

Dance for Camera

The Bell House had a great screening this weekend of two of our videodances at the Living Water Dance Company's performance at Kivisto Studio in Tulsa. The films screened were She Drew a Picture of a Whale and, the longtime coming, Deeper. Both seemed to be received well by the audience who generously applauded after each dancefilm, as they did for the entire concert. What a great audience!

Thank you to Amy McIntosh, Artist Director of Living Water Dance Company, for the opportunity to show our work. We especially appreciate the premiere for Deeper.

2009-07-28T10:00:00.012-05:00

THE 2009 EXCHANGE Choreography Dance Festival

Well, the first annual EXCHANGE Choreography Festival has come to a close and we couldn't be more thrilled. I know it was small beginnings but everything went so well from start to end. We had some phenomenal teachers who joined us for our inaugural year: Melody Ruffin-Ward from Roger Williams University, Stephanie Miracle from New York, L. Brooke Schlecte from Baylor University and Artistic Director of Out On a Limb Dance Company, Sarah Newton from the Dallas/Ft. Worth area and our very own Tulsans, Amy McIntosh (Oral Roberts University/Living Water Dance Company) and Jessica Vokoun (The University of Tulsa). Joining Melody Ruffin-Ward, L. Brooke Schlecte, and Stephanie Miracle on the adjudication panel was Tulsa's dance legacy, Becky Eagleton. Thank you so much to all the faculty and staff for making our first EXCHANGE a success!

Notable work/performances in the adjudicated concert series included stunning work by Rebecca Borden and Rebekah Hampton, both members of Perpetual Motion Modern Dance Oklahoma out of Oklahoma City. Borden’s, “i does not exist”, revealed Rebecca’s ability as a performer to throw her body to the floor in a blend of violent sensuality that rarely made one feel uncomfortable, but rather amazed and magnetized to her primal physicality.
Several students presented work birthed during Amy McIntosh’s (Living Water Dance Company) DanceMaking workshop in late June. Students were invited to continue working on their pieces and present as student choreographers during the adjudicated series. All of the students came from Pam Haden’s studio, The Dance Pointe, and exhibited a surprising maturity while performing and in receiving and responding to feedback from the panel.

Artistic directors of REDDance, Amanda Jackson and Meredith Cook from Texas Woman’s University presented another notable work, entitled “Shall Too Pass” that questioned the idea of ‘watchers’, as well as, a mysteriously ominous solo by Kayla Jenkins presented in the Sunday adjudicated concert. "Inside by Kayla Jenkins is a profoundly visceral experience. Jenkins use of imagery, groundedness, and costume (as a prop) brought the piece to this visceral space and captured the essence of a deep gnawing place in the soul”, says adjudicator, L. Brooke Schlecte, Artistic Director of Out On a Limb Dance Company.

Schlecte, Eagleton, Ruffin-Ward, and Miracle formed the perfect panel for the festival’s inaugural year. Many participants commented on the warmth and generosity of the adjudicators as they shared from their experience in reflection of the presented work and in their master classes. The Gala Performance was a great way to see some of their work as well. There were performances by the always intriguing Out On a Limb Dance Company as well as local and artistically diverse, Living Water Dance Company. Melody Ruffin-Ward set a solo performed by myself as well as Stephanie Miracle sharing a duet site-specific performance that traveled the ORU campus to various sights.

I’d like to close this year’s festival with the following comment from a scholarship recipient: “This weekend has already given me so much inspiration towards my goals as a dance therapist and dance supporter. Please keep in touch and continue to help others grow using your passion and creative intuition in dance.”

*photos by Maranda Blumenthal

2009-06-30T09:44:00.005-05:00

OBITUARY | 30.06.2009
German dance legend Pina Bausch dies at 68

Pina Bausch put Wuppertal on the cultural map
Acclaimed German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch has died at the age of 68. The recipient of numerous awards and prizes, she left her mark as an innovator in the hybrid genre of "Tanztheater," or dance theater.

The director of the Wuppertal Tanztheater said Tuesday that Bausch had passed away unexpectedly earlier that morning. The choreographer had just last week been diagnosed with cancer, but had continued with her work up until her death.

Bausch formed the successful Wuppertal Tanzheater in 1973, turning the Ruhr Valley town into an international dance mecca.

Though Bausch tended to avoid the limelight, she became known to many people outside the dance world with her appearance in Pedro Almodovar's Oscar-winning film "Talk to Her." The film also pays homage to her work.

Bausch's oeuvre explores memories, questions of identity and the difficulty of human understanding. Frequently, she thematizes the difficulty of relations between the sexes. Men and women can flirt tenderly at one moment, then fling each other violently across the room the next.

"It is about life and about finding a language to describe life," she said. The choreographer, on the whole, usually avoided pinning down or labeling her creations, preferring to let her audiences make up their minds.

In 2007 she was awarded the Kyoto Prize - one of the top prizes in the culture and arts field - in recognition of her work in breaking down the boundaries between dance and theater, and pioneering a new direction for theatrical art. She was the first woman to receive the accolade in the category art and philosophy.

Breaking with convention

Bausch's works leave a vivid visual impression
Bold and visually arresting, her first works were roundly criticized by traditional ballet fans. She became notorious for having her company dance on dirt, on leaves, in ankle-deep water, as well as for bringing them into direct contact with the audience.

But she began to attract attention abroad with her performances at the World Theater Festival in Nancy, France, in 1977. This was the start of a flourishing international career.

The grande dame of modern dance was famed for her collaborative way of working. She would start by directing a barrage of questions at her dancers, who would respond with words, gestures, and improvised dance. "I'm not interested in how people move, but what moves them," she once famously stated.

Bausch was strongly influenced by Kurt Jooss, a pioneer of German expressionist dance, with whom she began studying at the age of 14. He was to have a strong influence over her work. The psychological ballets of Anthony Tudor, whom she encountered during a scholarship at the Juilliard School in New York, also made a marked impression on her.

Although she led her company for over 35 years, she didn't talk of retiring. Upon receiving the Kyoto Prize less than two years ago, the choreographer said she still had "an awful lot of plans."

jg/kjb/dpa
Editor: Michael Lawton

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4444691,00.html

2009-03-22T15:00:00.002-05:00

The Out of the Loop Fringe Festival was last weekend in Dallas at the WaterTower Theatre. I joined 5 members of Out On a Limb Dance Company for a performance on Sunday evening. I am continually amazed at how their choreography evolves. One of the pieces premiered that night, called A Long Journey Home (photographed). The movement was refreshingly physical and the choreography complicated yet palpable. I was in awe as I watched it from 4 different views through rehearsals, dress runs, and backstage perspectives and I could never get enough.

Naturally, it made me wish I was in this piece, but i doubt my one year old infant son (who's trying to crawl into my lap at this moment) would let me travel for rehearsals any more than I already do.

But more than just being a piece that makes me want to dance it, it is a piece that is delicately smart and generous with kinesthetic detail that begs to be seen more than once. The longer I watch this company, the more I see the performers evolve as well. It is work that breathes and allows the performers to actually BE performers - to bring to the work an individual telling of the story, not just an imitation of the choreography. I so appreciate that as a performer myself.

Kudos, OoLD. More than kudos...bravo.

Rachel Bruce Johnson

2008-12-31T18:46:00.004-06:00

The following article was posted on the Dance Magazine website.

http://dancemagazine.com/issues/November-2008/DM-Contributor-Clive-Barnes-dies-at-81

DM Contributor Clive Barnes dies at 81

Clive Barnes
Dance Magazine mourns the passing of our great friend and colleague Clive Barnes. His loss to the field of dance will be deeply felt. He brought his formidable knowledge to every review and essay he wrote and was completely dedicated to the world of dance in all its rich variety. Those of us privileged to work with him at Dance Magazine will miss acutely his wit and insight, and his deep knowledge of the field. He became the magazine’s London correspondent in 1955, and began his signature “Attitudes” column (long the magazine’s back page) in 1989. Last year, he wrote a generous and wise essay in that space celebrating the magazine’s 80th birthday, which happily coincided with his own. It recapped the many decades of dance he had chronicled. He filed his final column on Nov. 7. It will be published in the January ’09 issue. With his passing, we have lost a champion of the art of dance, who helped us to realize our mission to the fullest. We extend our deepest sympathies to his wife Valerie Taylor and his entire family.

Have your memories of Clive Barnes posted on our online tribute. Click here or email your thoughts to emacel@dancemagazine.com.

2008-12-02T20:21:00.000-06:00

Post has begun for the underwater dancefilm, Deeper. It's going well and there are new connections being discovered that can only be uncovered by the visual and kinesthetic fusion that happens in editing. There is still a lot of work to be done but it is coming along. View a draft of the film project at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDiATUnL5Ck

On another note, THE EXCHANGE Choreography Festival is in the planning stages. The first mailout for the festival should go out by mid-December and we are all a buzz about its potential. Hosting this premiere event is Oral Roberts University located in southtown Tulsa. As you guessed by the title, THE EXCHANGE is a choreography festival dedicated exclusively to the creative process. There will be master classes dealing with choreographic and performance process as well as a site-specific workshop with the potential for a performance opportunity during the festival. There will be two adjudicated concerts for artists who wish to receive feedback and critique from our jurors as well as a professional gala on Saturday night featuring Living Water Dance Company, Melody Ruffin-Ward, Brooke Schlecte and Out On a Limb Dance Company, Stephanie Miracle, and Bell House's own, Rachel Bruce Johnson.

Keep a look out for registration details and further festival details at www.bellhousearts.org

2008-08-06T14:53:00.003-05:00

The weekend's closing in and the summer workshop with Out On a Limb Dance Company in Denton, TX is almost here. If you haven't registered, never fear. You can pay at the door. Go to http://www.bellhousearts.org/currentcampaign to learn more.

2008-07-11T10:00:00.002-05:00

The Bell House is moving into filming on DEEP in two weeks and everything seems to be coming together. DEEP focuses on one woman’s experience of baptism. As she’s plunged into the baptismal tank, she enters an underwater world of death and renewal. As she struggles to come to a spiritual understanding of who she is and what her purpose might be in the real world, images of her life overpower her and bring her to the edge of complete surrender only to find that in letting go, she can now live more fully.

Performing her own choreography, Katy Eurich finds it challenging to navigate the difference between choreographing for a live work and choreographing for camera. "You see the movie in your head and you think the possibilities are endless, but then you realize that, while the film/video medium is vast, it does have limits, the main one being financial. When you don’t have the luxury of deep pockets, the reality of what you can do influences your artistic process. For example, with no money for a hi-end camera crew, the product output may be treated to create intention between the type of film necessary to use and the look and feel of the final dancefilm." Having no choice sometimes opens up more choices than you thought you had and forces you to go places artistically that you wouldn’t have explored if you hadn’t had to consider them in the first place.

All that said, DEEP, is an exciting step for The Bell House in that we are moving into territory that is new and untapped. The dancefilm medium is pervasive but few of have their hands in both meaningful messages and artistic excellence. It is a direction we find ourselves pleased to be headed.

2008-07-11T09:57:00.000-05:00

We’ve wrapped filming on Paper Cuts, a dancefilm choreographed by Linda Caldwell and directed by Rachel Bruce Johnson. In Paper Cuts, a world of shredded paper surrounds the dancer as she cuts through the space with joy and wonder. Her ecstasy turns to greed as she consumes, destroys, and leaves her delible footprint on the delicate paper world. After her gluttony is fulfilled she finds herself in a static, torn space destroyed by her activity. Her sorrow cuts through her final gestures.

Now that we’re in post, I realize how special this medium really is. There are so many magical moments in Sarah Newton’s performance of the role and together with Keith Fleming’s original sound score of manipulated paper sounds is truly a provocative experience. Paper Cuts has already been submitted to several film festivals even as we wrap up. It will be exciting to see how it is perceived and what kind of thoughts is provokes about consumption and the consequences of greed.

2008-06-22T19:50:00.001-05:00

EXCITING NEWS!

We have launched a new arts collaborative along with a new website for dance. It's called THE BELL HOUSE and you can find the link at www.bellhousearts.org. We are currently working on getting a 501(3)C for THE BELL HOUSE and are looking forward to reenforcing all the new projects we've got for the future as well as those already in the mix. Visit the website to learn more about this dance/art collaborative.

2007-11-11T15:57:00.000-06:00

Friday, November 9, 2007
Dance Recital Review: Dance Fusion
By Justin Smith
I wept. Let me just say from the outset that when confronted with immense beauty I have been known to leak a few. But I certainly wasn’t prepared for what I encountered Friday night at Dance Fusion, held at the John Anthony Theater at the Spring Creek Campus of Collin College.

The moment in question was the second to last number, performed by Muscle Memory Dance Theatre out of Dallas. The name of the piece was Under the Yellow Sky, choreographed by Lesley Snelson-Figueroa. As the lights came up, there were two swings hanging from the fifty foot ceiling and four dancers appeared wearing black and white. From there it gets a bit hazy. I know there were three sections in the piece, demarcated by first purple, then orange, and finally black as the backdrop colors. The whole piece in its entirety is hard to describe, but what I can say is that if you were to film the piece with a high speed camera, every millisecond when render a stage picture so breathtaking that it would leave you in total awe. Somewhere in the middle, I became overwhelmed by the music, the motion, and the colors that I felt Divine Transcendence touch my shoulder. What can I say? You should go see this show.

Muscle Memory jumps to new heights.

Dance Fusion is a show the features the local talents of the Collin Dance Ensemble, Elledanceworks Dance Company, Muscle Memory Dance Theatre, and the not local Janice Garrett and Dancers from San Francisco. The show was opened and closed by the Janice Garret and Dancers performing Brink (Excerpt) and Archimedes’ Revenge, respectively. I remember the first was like watching water whip around the stage as the dancers undulated up and down and in and out of sight from the audience. It was extremely flowy and did not have the course angles or hardness one usually finds with modern dance. The Janice Garrett Dancers also performed another piece just before intermission, Fast Brass, which was truly amazing to see. The piece was extremely fast and the dancers accented the music by fast shaking hands and faces. When they would walk, it seemed a bit comical as the dancers would strut around on stage with stiff arms swinging at their sides, looking like an old Keystone Cops film.

Both Elledanceworks and Collin Dance Ensemble were very good also. Elledanceworks' piece, Wavering Reflections, had three ladies in what looked to be something like white pajamas and each one was holding a long wooden stick. With the sticks the dancers looked to be about ten feet tall as they would never stand up straight while the sticks were standing straight. Either the dancers were swaying at an angle or the poles were at an angle and it produced a very strange effect. The Collin Dance ensemble performed three pieces, and it was obvious that there strength lay in classical training. The second piece they performed was called Conspirare, and it was a mixture of classical and modern dance. When given the opportunity to rely on their apparent ballet training, they really shined.

You can catch Dance Fusion again Saturday the 10th at 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. I say you should drop everything and go see this show. Who doesn’t desperately need a little more beauty in their life?

2007-08-14T19:55:00.000-05:00

Just finished a summer dance intensive in Houston. The aesthetic of the student showings and the faculty concerts seems to stay true to the 'look' of dance in this region. There was a lot of linear shapes and a tremendous amount of whipping. Lots of vocabulary in a short amount of time. Don't get me wrong, the dancing was lovely; however, I do feel a bit out of place aesthetically. That could be exciting, though.

It was a good week of meeting new people and getting to know older friends. Although I am having some difficulty processing the changes in my body now that I'm pregnant, it was so good to have more energy this month. It couldn't have come at a more perfect time, I just finished my first trimester and classes start this week at ORU. We just had the second round of auditions and everything looks good. We're going to have a great start for the program - about 30 students.

Excellent.

2007-08-13T14:11:00.000-05:00

A confession.

I've enjoyed developing my skills in dance photography; however, I find I get stuck technically by my disinterest in the technical. Considering myself a dancer first and a photographer second, I find myself more interested in the composition of photos and the intrigue of 'finding' movement through either choreographing the shot or cropping it in a way that enhances movement. The focus of my photography work nestling here causes my technical skills to suffer and I find that I rely more and more on photoshop and other post-production software to create the 'magic' I love.

2007-02-18T16:37:00.000-06:00

2006-08-23T09:49:00.000-05:00

Dance Photography: I'm attempting to fuse my work in photography with my work in dance, choreography, I mean. There are just too many hats and too many irons in the fire. These are new thoughts, so no brilliant epephanies as yet, but I'm sure they will come.

Like most of my life, I just simply have too many ideas and want too many things. It's time to sift.

I suspect it would be good for me to weed out the projects that are not producing just yet and filter more energy into those that are a little more fruitful. The idea being that the projects with renewed focus would florish from the attention and energy and the rest would die.

Well, maybe not die. Either die or hybernate until the time where sufficient energy and resources could make them great too.

As my friend Bill Wade, artistic director of Inlet Dance Theatre in Cleveland, OH says, sometimes it's necessary to stop the bleeding.

Thanks, Bill. I think the time is now.

2006-06-28T22:55:00.000-05:00

Footnote . Auckland, NZ . Herald Theatre

It was a really challenging space, the Herald Theatre. The rack on the seating was impossible to get a good perspective that was unobtrusive to the dancers and there were no wings even though they pretended that there were. The dancers are proficient, the choreography is excellent to average albeit inconsistently so, and the performance lacking. It's clear that Footnote is a young dance company; a "choreolab" comprised of six core dancers of capable technical ability and beautiful physique. Choreographers from the area are invited to make work on the company for performances on a touring circuit. What Footnote does have is funding.

Supported by the local foundational institutions and private donors throughout their touring territory, it comes as no surprise to me that this young company have the financial backing to put on such mediocre performances. It is not uncommon in the States to have many companies of varying artistic capabilities funded by local arts advocates. One such company is settled in the heart of my hometown. The company employs technically able performers with amazing bodies and on-stage charisma, but the range of their individual artistry leaves me wanting at the end of countless performances that seem to blend into one another as time goes by. Once I've seen then, I wonder if that's all I'll ever get. There is generally no range of sophistication being performed onstage. Where is the artist within the technician? And yet, audiences flock to support them and they are well funded with astounding social, prestigious, and financial backing.

Companies like this have their good sides too. Perhaps some audiences will never see dance in any other form; therefore, the fact that the company has attracted them to see dance however fundamental advocates the art form on some level. The only distress I feel is in how unchanging the administrative arts are in these matters. A companies structure and methods are rarely ever examined if a “formula” for success has been attained, hailed with an expounding “Eureka!”, no doubt. I struggle to understand how some artists with limited vision can be racking in the financial support and others, with more artistic depth and clarity perhaps, are never given the acknowledgement they deserve, let alone a check to make significant work.

That’s the key, isn’t it? Who is deciding what significant dance work looks like?

Clearly no one asked me. Hopefully when I have my own flailing dance company that will no doubt elude funding as well as prestige, I can tackle some of these questions and actually find solutions to them, however unconventional. For it seems that unconventionality is the way I must access the work albeit poorer rather than financially (politically perhaps) enabled.

2006-06-15T00:21:00.000-05:00

Choreographic Process

I think it is interesting the way artists think about and articulate their work. With the ever-increasing difficulty in describing "modern" & "post-modern" dance, I'm becoming less and less interested in carbon copy aesthetics and more interested in the depth of work it takes to come to significant dance work. I know, I know, "significant" is up for debate, but whatever it is, I consider it the "stuff" that perpetuates the field rather than the "stuff" that sedates it. Upon request for a lecture I was giving in a Dance Studies course a few weeks ago, one of my own professors, Sarah Gamblin, wrote about her process is creating her work entitled Terrible Angels.

Sarah Gamblin: Terrible Angels

"All I knew before the process began is that I wanted to work in a way that is similar to Bebe Miller's process, which is doing lab/workshops using improvisation and reflection to locate and create a world collaboratively with dancers. I also wanted to work with detailed, complex movement. We began the weekend of Katrina and I was listening to Cocorosie, which has a mournful, strange, hyper feminine and subversive feeling, this made me think of NO and it's cultural history, it's national bad girl status; death, femininity, sexuality, poetry, failure. These images just kept swirling around and I did not try to make narrative sense of any of it, nor did I try to distill anything into one coherent metaphor.

We worked with improvisations that I have been working on for a while. One is called, "docking and permission" or sometimes "pause and undo" or also "pause and permit". Basically you work on feeling your kinesthetic impulses without acting on them. You pause in stillness for a long time and then allow, permit an impulse to move you, but only until you pause again. You try not to let the movement carry you too far, try not to fall back on kinesthetic habits but instead pause and observe what you would do if you could, and then allow the impulse to emerge out of the blackness of not knowing; inviting surprise, incoherence so as to find mystery. This is an improv mode, not a way of setting material. It is a sensibility, always trying to subvert itself.After that we set material from this improv mode but through opposite means- by just repeating movements with a partner, without counting, analysing, singing, editing or correcting, until the movement became learned.

I am an improviser and I tend to privilege presence and the freshness of a moment over formal coherence. The choreographer in me is still trying to figure out how best to dialogue with this part. The improviser in me likes things that unwind, rather than wind-up, as classical aesthetics tend to privilege. I would like to learn how to make this improviser’s sensibility more meaningful to audiences. The feedback at ACDFA taught me how irritating departures from classical formal development can be for viewers. Incomprehension, mild contempt and dismissal seemed to dominate the responses from the adjudicators. In my process I had been trying to create an authentic universe lived in as if for the first time, I did use my own sensibility for form to make coherent this universe but my sense of form is not classical. What is development? Do we just know it when we see it? When someone says, you need to develop that, what is it we are supposed to do? I can see now that it is a matter of asking questions, dealing with feedback. There is no prescription for development, just a process that eventually teaches everyone; choreographer, dancers, audience, what development means in that world being created.
Also collaborated with a wonderful electro-acoustic musician named Dave Gedosh whose ultra strange music completely subverted my privilege of being strange. What I like was how over the top wierd the whole thing became, what I don't like is how jittery and uncomfortable and ultimately inaccessible the world became, witout any pay-off. I think the music was almost too intense for my work, which perhaps did not slap back enough, formally speaking, the musical wierdness.Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions.

I also collaborated with a wonderful electro-acoustic musician named Dave Gedosh whose ultra strange music completely subverted my privilege of being strange. What I like was how over the top weird the whole thing became, what I don't like is how jittery and uncomfortable and ultimately inaccessible the world became, without any pay-off. I think the music was almost too intense for my work, which perhaps did not slap back enough, formally speaking, and the musical weirdness.

2006-06-11T22:17:00.000-05:00

I'm becoming increasing nervous about finishing up my graduate work. There seems to be too many ideas that don't connect to one another to be deemed my personal 'body of work'. I'm going to have to work on that. I don't want my choreographic work to suffer simply because I'm forced into putting more attention on my professional paper. It's become a challenge to relate all the components that I will be presenting in my final presentation at the end of year 3. The last 2 dance works I've choreographed were, in my mind, successful for various reasons but I don't feel I have a good video representation of the work in order to make a professional-looking demo reel. How do I rectify that? By doing the video work myself? Hiring someone? That may have to happen. It's frustrating to realize that, like everything else in my life, I am required to do everything myself if I want it done right. For someone who values collaborative processes and feels that relationships are the most valuable asset emerging from dance work, it irritates me that I am constantly stuck doing work over again because it was not done well the first time. This is a self-indulgent rant, mind you, and I'm sure I will get over it by tomorrow. I'm just frustrated.

2006-06-07T22:37:00.000-05:00

Introduction to My Work

My name is Rachel Bruce. I am a graduate student at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas. I’ve worked as a video producer, photographer, and web and print product designer for the last 7 years as well as a professional performer and choreographer in several small grassroots dance companies in Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington DC and am currently the publicity coordinator for Texas Woman’s University’s Department of Dance. I am in the third year of a 3-year program to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Performance and Choreography at TWU.

I have learned most of what I know out of necessity to carve out a place for myself in dance. I don’t stand out in auditions but I’m a good performer. I have talent for choreography because I absorb ideas and can organize them kinaesthetically first before ever understanding them abstractly or logically. I worked in a corporate job straight out of college as an administrative assistant because I had to eat. It was a position in a creative division of a military contracting firm made up of graphic designers, video producers and communication specialist. I also danced for a company, rehearsing in the evenings and on weekends.

Everything I learned at my corporate job that I had a vested interest in (barring the interest I had in keeping my job) was geared toward supporting the dance company. When we needed a poster to promote our shows, I found a co-worker who craved a creative outlet to volunteer. When we needed marketing, I paid attention to relevant ideas while at work. When we needed a program, I took a class under professional development (paid for by the company) that helped me learn a layout program in order to support the dance company. I got very good at seeing opportunities and making relevant connections to support the dance work I wanted to be doing.

Artistic Statement
I am an artist interested in making relational connections. From the movement in and from our bodies connecting to the movement in and from person to person, these are the movements that form relationships; relationships amongst people, ideas and movement. I am interested in asymmetry as a means of skewing conventionality and perspective. I am interested in developing movement quality as the voice of specific work.

Choreographic Process

I mainly enter the work through emotion and movement quality. Most of the time I am situated somewhere in between controlling and guiding the concept and am concerned with the accomplishing goals and nurturing the dancers rather than making master works. I’ve learned a lot from this approach.

Here are some examples of my work and the process I engaged in to create them:
White After Labor Day

Worked from a piece of music that inspired me. I had a vision of the kind of humor that the music inspired and it was a challenge to develop it. I worked with dancers with a wide range of skill sets so it was sometimes a challenge to generate the type of movement quality I thought the piece needed. I gave set movement phrases and tailor them to the dancers as well as asking them to create movement phrases based on what I had already given them. I thought that by doing this, I would receive feedback on what motifs were the strongest as well as the ones that the cast was kinaesthetically relating to.

dive

“dive” is a multi-media piece using video footage and the flat it was being projected on as another performer. I developed the movement and the structure first with a first draft of the video footage. I realized that I had too many metaphors in the video footage and should distil it down to one. I chose one metaphor – diving/floating – based on the movement vocabulary that had been developed. I originally called this piece “living in the blindspot” because I wanted it to be about making the choice to live wide-awake to not be indifferent. The movement vocabulary was virtuosic and kinetically chaotic while the video performer was floating in a pool not engaging with her environment in the typical way. I realized that the ‘blindspot’ was negativity so I spray-painted negative words like ‘no’, ‘not’, ‘never’ on the flat that the video was going to be projected on. I’d been taking water aerobics for 2 months in the pool where we did the filming and I happen to notice a sign that said ‘No Diving’ on the wall. I saw a connection – the missing piece of my context that would bring my concept alive. I re-worked the footage, re-shot a few segments and made some minor structural changes to support the context including a dive at the end of the video, which proved an effective ending.

Don’t…Away

This is a solo art/dance collaboration project. I listened to the same music that the visual artist was listening to, spent time studying the paintings which were large-scale on sailboat sails and incorporated inspiration from quotes she sent me that were relevant to the concept. I had a kinaesthetic entrance into the piece but not a visual one and that impeded my intuition to some extent. I filmed a 45-minute improvisation based on the movement ideas I was working with that I felt referenced the concept and edited the sequences as they made sense to me visually. Then I put it back in my body for further kinaesthetic reflection. I was editing and moving, editing and moving until, in the interest of time, I abandoned the editing software and finished making my decisions via movement. I never reached a satisfactory ending but had to perform it. After the art reception, my professor confirmed that she too didn’t think it was finished.

distorted clarity

This was a piece that my colleague and friend, Brooke Schlecte, choreographed through concept and improvisation. We were researching dance as grotesque form and had been saturating ourselves with reading about grotesque form and watching hours of video clips cataloguing relevant samples for our history presentation. We talked a few times about concept and what the other was thinking about. Brooke wanted to put two ideas together: eating disorders and writing on her skin with a marker as an addictive activity. I wanted to use contortion and emoting as a movement qualities. As we talked, we began to see how our ideas could fit together. I had some movement motifs and further ideas but had only improvised some in my living room. She had some motifs and a skeletal structure but that was it. We watched each others movement and reflected on each others ideas. We both began to see some possibilities that we then tried and videotaped. We saw more possibilities and made some changes and repeated the cycle 3 times before we were finished. We both felt we had a complete movement and concept idea that resounded with our intention to create a dance in grotesque form for our history presentation.

we all fall down

This is a 4-minute dance film that was part of a larger 24-minute film. I took a concept from a choreographer about ‘adults at play’ and asked a dancer to improvise swinging, hanging and playing on a monkey bar (with no storyboard). I got inspired by what she was doing and filmed the pebble section and the run away, then asked her to roll down the hill. At the end of the last take, while still filming I saw her knees and feet in the frame and asked her to walk back up the hill. She did and then laid down (which I didn’t ask her to do). Like I said this was part of a larger film and we finished the day having gotten, what I thought, was sufficient footage to make a sketch of something. After seeing the footage, I realized that there was a complete idea there and 3 hours of editing later, we all fall down was finished.

Summary

Critical thinking – pose a problem and set out to solve it. Be reflective and have reasons for every choice you make. It’s okay to not always be able to articulate your reasons for your choices, but pay attention and work toward it.

Engagement is an (re)action: engage with the work on as many levels and from as many perspectives as you can.

2006-05-28T21:39:00.000-05:00

so this is a new blog page. i don't know how many i can keep up with. myspace might need to drop off as far as posting is concerned.

well, so here's what this is: dance/in.the.mix

i'm a dancer. i'm also a student working on my masters in dance at texas woman's university in denton, tx. at this very moment, i'm doing some research in new zealand for international collaborative online exchanges. pretty heady stuff, but there's lots of other brains on the team, so no worries. personally, i'm looking to retreive information about dance for camera and am following a videodance project going on here at unitec in auckland. it's pretty exciting for me and i'm learning a lot about technology and conceptualization in choreographic spaces.

i have a lot of different interests and foci when it comes to dance, but i consider it all dance - it's just in the way you mix it, fuse it, distill it, sythesize it. so this is my blog to discuss projects and happenings in general in the world of dance from my point of view.

launch.