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

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.

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

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.

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.