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.)

The Dance Project

This isn't a blog for me to write up my personal reviews of shows, so I won't, but I just want to say thank you to George and Greg and all their dancers for the performance of the Dance Project I made it to (just barely, yuk weather and last minute "oh crap" parking money ATM stop later) last night.

What's coming next, everyone? I hear there's a bunch of stuff in March. And of course the end of Feb. is MAD Festival. Anything else in early Feb.?  If so, do you want to host the dance table?? :)

Dance Table on Sunday--free ticket!

So we have the Dance Table up at George/Greg's show, but we're also putting it up at the Trocks show at the Ferst on Sunday evening. Is there anyone who'd like to staff the table that night (the show starts at 7, so from maybe 6:30-6:40 till curtain? and at intermission, ideally?) The Ferst has generously offered a free ticket to see the show for our lucky volunteer! :)

Interview with George Staib about this weekend's performance

From Cynthia Bond Perry at artscriticatl.com: Choreographer George Staib talks about culture and identity for Staibdance debut
I'm excited for George and all the dancers having their debut as Staibdance. George has been making some fantastic work for a while (I was in one piece a couple years ago, the one with the poles...but seriously, not pole dancing ;) and I'm glad he's had the backing to make this happen.
We've got the dance table all set up in the lobby at 7 Stages, and if you have more information you'd like to include on it for your upcoming events etc., you can drop it off there. Just promise you'll make room and make it look pretty when you leave it? Thanks :)

meetings

So it looks like we won't be having our first meeting until February. I don't want to announce details until it's confirmed, but I'll post the info as soon as I have it and we hope you can make it!
As for the meeting itself, we've been bandying about ideas for a topic and two that have come up are production (inviting tech folks as well as dancer/choreographers for a sort of meet up) or marketing (this one might be more directly concerned with the mission of DanceATL, since the org will hopefully be a tool for marketing dance in Atlanta.) Any thoughts on other topics you might be interested in, either for this meeting or future ones?

Preview of Staibdance "The Dance Project"

From ArtsCriticATL.com: Cynthia Bond Perry's preview of the upcoming Staibdance show at 7 Stages. There's also a showcase of other local contemporary/modern choreographers (and if you're a contemp. dancer who's not dancing in one of these yourself, you probably know somebody who is!:)

Dance Truck

So some of us went outside despite the cold for the Dance Truck yesterday evening--then to be, luckily, led inside where it was warm to watch the Gravediggers perform. (I think the best links with info about this project are all on Facebook, so if you're one of the two people out there not on FB, you may be out of luck.)
I set up what was an admittedly pitiful version of the Atlanta Dances/Dance Atlanta/DanceATL (just when I thought we'd decided on the name...but we WILL have to finally make up our minds soon because they're going to be making us a website!) dance table. If you have materials, get them to me PLEASE. The next event where we'll set up will be George Staib/Greg Catellier's show in a couple weekends and I'd love to have more info to put out there! Thanks guys! Yay dance!

Happy New Year and New Decade!

Hi everyone!
Hope your holidays were warm and restful (that's something I've found isn't possible with a 14 month old, but it was fun nonetheless).
I'm re-posting links to Cynthia Bond Perry's Dance Magazine articles that Keif attached in a comment. They weren't active links in the comment so I'm re-posting so that you can follow them (though of course they don't have all the nice photos that are included in the print magazine, so I recommend checking that out too.:)
Atlanta Ballet article and the general dance scene article

And in other good news, I have found an intern from Emory who will be helping with the Dance Atlanta project during this coming semester. And there's also a project class at the Art Institute of Atlanta that will be taking on the design of a real website! I plan to have the intern contact folks to get information and photos/video we can use in the design of it.

I'm also hoping we will be starting our monthly meetings this month. Maybe I'll put up a poll here on the blog for times and days generally that work for the most people?

And of course, the dance table will continue. This is another reminder if you have any materials to get them to me for the table that will be at the Staib/Catellier show. Or let me know if you have other shows we should bring the dance table to.

Thanks to you all for making the Atlanta dance community as vibrant and exciting as it is. Here's to a year of continuing to build our community! Yay dance!