mall dancing

About gloATL's bloom at Lenox Mall this coming weekend, from Cynthia at artscriticatl.com
I have to admit having gone to the mall a couple of times with my daughter merely to have a warm place to get out of the house (toddlers and small spaces=fussiness). I saw the promotional video and posters for "bloom" and wondered how people register it along with all the other signage and displays in that kind of setting. It'll be even more interesting to see how people react/interact with the dancers! I remember performing one time in high school on a rickety stage in the middle of the mall (and all of us changing in the cluttered back room of a Bennetton...) This should be a lot more fun, to take it out in the halls, or "arteries" as the promo material describes it.

Cinderella interview

From ArtsCriticATL's Cynthia Bond Perry, here's an interview with one of Atlanta Ballet's Cinderellas, Tara Lee, about dancing the role. I was a corps member in Cinderella as a student long, long ago. I really like the Prokofiev music for this, though I think it's very difficult to choreograph parts of it (the "comic" parts of anything are always even harder to get right than the serious!) And apparently it's pretty difficult to play--we had an orchestra when we toured it to a smaller city that had a pretty rough time of some sections. (ouch!) I saw a production in Moscow by a smaller ballet company whose name I don't even remember (Bolshoi was off for the summer when I was there.) It may have also been a student company, though the leads were pretty amazing. Anyhow, enough reminiscing. I'm not sure if I can make it to this production (evenings are still pretty hard to do anything with the little one needing to be in bed by 8 and I think hubby can't keep her for an afternoon.) But I hope all you ATL dance folks enjoy it (performing and watching!)

Cedar Lake at Emory

Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet is performing Feb. 24-26 and Ms. Perry tells us 2 days are already sold out! A national/international dance company comes to town and performs in one of the really huge halls for a one-shot and it feels half-full...they come to Emory and perform in the Schwartz dance studio space...and always sells out way in advance (with people sitting on the floor!) What size house do we need around here for dance? Oh wait, that goes to the question about venue in general for dance, and wow, that's a doozie. Lots of folks use 7 Stages because the floor is sprung from back when it was Dancers Collective and the house is 200, reasonable for us local folks. For the new DanceATL website, I'm hoping to make a pretty comprehensive list of spaces that can be used for dance around town. If you'd like to share some info on where you have your performances, classes and rehearsals, please give me the contact info and the prices too. Then maybe it'll help to have a big list, maybe someone has been using a space someone else hasn't even thought of that would be a good fit!

Google calendar and DanceATL event

We've got the Google calendar now up! It's there at danceatl.org to hold the space where the fully functional website will go, launch date sometime maybe in April? To have your events added to the calendar, you can send us your info and we can add it. We'll work out the mechanism for who gets to add things to the new site's calendar. If it works similarly with our content management system, with a login and password, it may be something that is given out as part of membership to DanceATL.
Also, I'll post something prettier and more informative, but as a sort of "save the date" we will be having our first community meeting/event co-hosted by Atlanta Ballet on Sunday, Feb. 21 at 6 p.m. at Park Tavern. We'll start with a conversation on the topic of collaboration, with Sue Schroeder of CORE, Matt Kent of Pilobolus and possibly a representative from Atlanta Ballet. Then there will be a short, informal performance by SIDEWAYS Contemporary Dance and some music from Midnight United (two members are dancers with Atlanta Ballet.) The cost will be $5, or free if you join DanceATL for the year for $25 indiv./$100 org.(sound fair?)

Fair trade dance

Interesting blog I ran across from a NY choreographer who was keeping track of his choreographic process and his fundraising from individual donors that fueled that process. They finished up back mid-2009 but I just thought it was an interesting concept, especially "fair trade dance." I think though, that people don't want to actually work out how little they're getting paid for certain rehearsals/performances. I remember back in a company I was with when we could either all get paid $5, or we could just have nice snacks at all our company meetings. Well, we went with the latter because we agreed it actually seemed worse to do all that work for $5 than for nothing at all! :)

Relief Work Benefit concert

DanceATL update

So the good news for DanceATL: I have spoken via conference call to the project class at the Art Institute of Atlanta Decatur who are going to be designing the DanceATL website and I look forward to meeting them in person on Tuesday to discuss more specifics. I also met with my intern from Emory who will be getting started on Wed. this week. Be on the look out for an email or a call from her. She'll be letting you know about DanceATL (but if you read this, then you already know...) and asking for dance table flyers and images and other content we can use (with proper credit of course) for the new website.
I'll also let you guys know once we have a meeting place set (haven't heard back on that one yet) if it'll happen in Feb. or no. There was a suggestion to focus the conversation at the first meeting on collaboration, what it means as a choreographer/artist and administratively as an arts organization/artist. It sounded interesting to me. What do you think? Do you have any other thoughts on good topics for future monthly meetings for DanceATL?

As for other dance-related events coming up, there is a symposium at Emory about arts criticism. Look in the events in Feb.at the Creativity & Arts website for more info.

And next Thursday the Fulton County Arts Council is holding another Peer to Peer Dialogue:Dance. They had said they weren't doing more, but decided they could after all. If you'd like to go, you can contact me and I'll get you in touch with FCAC about it (I don't know if they want me publicizing all the details.)