Dance healing

Very cool NY Times article about how dance has helped body awareness for a man with cerebral palsy. Dance can be healing in so many ways, physically and emotionally. People are so cut off from their bodies (and I'm one of them right now, sitting at a computer writing about dance but hardly finding time to dance myself lately!) There are some fabulous programs with dancers working with folks to help them access their body-knowledge. SDC's Dynamic X-Change program has been teaching dance as a healing art to populations such as children with autism (haha, that came out sounding like I write about the program officially didn't it, go figure). brooks and company dance has a program for people with Parkinson's disease. And it's not dance but it is still movement, I did a workshop learning to teach yoga to folks with multiple sclerosis. As the subject of the NY Times article commented, the power of it was partially just the adjustment of working with what he was able to do rather than being told what he couldn't do for once. Really, we all have our limitations to work with, so the explorations are the same, and that mind shift is an important one for any of us to remember.

'Tis the season to be...Nutcracker-ing

I hope everyone's weekend shows went well! I'm sorry I didn't make it to see any of them this time, but I did set up the DanceATL Table at 7 Stages. Thanks to Carolyn at Good Moves for hosting the table! Now the table is on to Nutcracker performances.(Ah, Nutcracker. So many years of my life were spent in rehearsal and performing the gamut of roles in this standby. I've gotten to the point where every time I hear the music while holiday shopping, it's not so painful any more. But after high school, I definitely needed a few years away! It might be to the point in a couple years that I actually want to take Mirah with me to go see it for her first time. :) Aly is going to set it up at the Fox for the Atlanta Ballet's run, and we'll keep aside another set of the postcards etc. that can travel around to other productions. Again, if you'd like to host, please contact me.

Also, I am currently looking into finding an intern, or really, probably two to help out with DanceATL, one who can help with the collection of information from everyone, for the table and for the web, and another who can help create an actual website and give input on the identity/branding. If you are, or you know, anyone who is a dancer/dance enthusiast student looking for some credit hours for the spring, please contact me for that as well! Thanks!

Brooks and Company review up--with a shout out!

Thanks to Cynthia Bond Perry for including a bit about this blog and the DanceATL project in her review of Brooks and Company Dance on ArtsCriticATL.
This weekend so full of dancing, what are you guys planning on going to? Multiple shows, anyone? I don't know if I have babysitting lined up to make it to anything this time but all the best to everyone who's performing! Enjoy!

Wow!

There is a LOT of dance happening next weekend! I don't know what we're going to do with the Dance Table. I may end up taking the stuff over to the Good Moves show at 7 Stages based purely on location, the fact that it's on my way home from work. I can split up the brochures if anyone wants to host a table at some of the other shows, just let me know how to get the info there? But being only me, I'm sure I'm not taking things around to all 7 or 8 events that are happening.
I was wondering, looking at the fact that Kennesaw, Emory, Spelman and Agnes Scott are doing their student concerts this weekend, did all the schools know they were planning their shows for the same weekend?  It makes sense in that it's the last weekend before Thanksgiving and the crunch toward finals begins, and I guess the audiences are mostly friends/family from each school so they don’t have to worry about competing for audience. Ballethnic, Good Moves and the D'air Project all have a lot of younger students involved in their shows so I'm guessing that's how they ended up on the same weekend. Does it matter that everything's at the same time or would it work better to spread things out in the future?
Scheduling aside, yay for all this dance happening in town! I hope everyone's performances go really well!

Atlanta Coalition of Performing Arts--Member Services Council

So the ACPA is Atlanta's multidisciplinary performing arts service organization, serving theater, dance, music and film arts (so says their website :). Many of the dancers reading this may be familiar, or even be members through their org, or individually etc. There are currently NO dancers or dance-affiliated folks involved in the Member Services Council for this coming year! We need to have dance as a presence in this organization, especially while they're working on their new strategic plan . Working together with theaters/music etc. can help us all out in trying times, e.g. finding time when a theater is black for a dance concert to go in etc.

Please contact Jessyca at ACPA (jessyca@atlantaperforms.com) about the opportunities to help represent Atlanta's dance community in their organization.Thanks!

About last weekend's Dance Canvas show

Cynthia Bond Perry's review of the Dance Canvas performance last weekend is online here. Sounds like it went well, congrats, Angela! And thanks for hosting a DanceATL table!
Did anyone (other than the people I knew who danced in it :) make it to the Volta Dance Theatre show as well? As you can see from the recent post about the table schedule, there's a lot of dance coming up between now and the end of the year. This Thursday is CORE's Lunchtime in the Studio and Salon, and this upcoming weekend is brooks and company dance's "Composed."
Once again, I'm not keeping a specific schedule of everything here on the blog, but you can find listings on AtlantaPlanIt.com. (And please everyone list their events with the site; we want them to go back to having a tab for dance by itself, not just "theater and dance"!!)

"pour" interviews

From artscriticATL.com, a two-part interview (part 1, part 2) with Lauri Stallings about her recent site-specific work "pour" at LeFlash (apparently some of my neighbors called the police on them for being suspicious while rehearsing in the alley! considering all the actual crimes that take place down here, I guess folks are just jumpy.)

DanceATL Table schedule Nov-Dec.

And from the conference to some business. Here are the places I'm hoping we can have the DanceATL Table in the next couple months. Please let me know if you a) want to staff any night listed here, b) have another event you'd like to suggest and c) can get us your materials to include on the table. I'd also like suggestions on what to do when there are multiple events on the same night? Thanks!

• Volta Dance Theatre, Nov. 6
• Dance Canvas Nov 6-8 (maybe we'll move the table over for Sat. and Sun.? or duplicate somehow?)
• brooks and company dance, Nov. 13-15
• Good Moves, Nov. 21-22
• Atlanta Ballet, all month Dec. for Nutcracker
• Georgia Ballet (possibly), Dec. 4-6
• Fieldwork Showcase, Dec. 6
• SIDEWAYS Contemporary Dance Co., Dec. 10-13

Back home!

Whew! Made it back this morning (eeearrrlyy flight) and am just sitting down to reconnect with email, this blog etc. It's funny because I am probably the only person in the world who doesn't have a "portable electronic device" outside my just-phone cell phone. I'm holding out a little longer.
Anyhow, the conference was great! I came back with more than just the nifty Halloween-orange tote bag. :) I have to write up a more formalized report for the scholarship that I can post a version of, but I'll share some preliminary thoughts. It's very energizing to hear what other folks are doing, and though it's across disciplines visual and performing (and a couple of cultural like natural sci museums) it's still nice to be speaking the same language. The nonprofit conference I attended a few years ago wasn't in the same scope (though SDC is still smaller than a lot of the orgs present at this conference--not all) and with a very different mission. Some good ideas on what all these technological changes mean, and a nice take on the fact that no one actually knows for sure yet, so you might as well experiment/get creative (which is what we do as artists right?)