“There’s a little bit of everything,” he says. “Tap is probably the only thing we don’t have.”

It may be an exaggeration, but not by much. In the show’s ballet- and contemporary-inspired tornado scene, a storm of dancers destroys Dorothy’s home and sends her off to Oz. Once she gets there, she’s swept up in a New Orleans–style second line that leads her down the Yellow Brick Road, where she meets a Tinman who pops-and-locks. Eventually, she is ushered into the Emerald City amongst a dizzying array of dances from the Black diaspora, from street styles out of Atlanta to Afrobeats to the South African amapiano. 

Though The Wiz may have one of the most versatile casts of dancers on Broadway right now—and, in Knight, a choreographer who has shown from his expansive commercial career that he can do pretty much anything—the show’s pull-out-all-the-stops movement isn’t about showing off. Instead, it’s a form of placemaking, says director Schele Williams, grounding Dorothy in elements of Black culture as she journeys through Oz and back home again.

“I liken Dorothy’s journey to a walk through the woods,” she says. “You can turn a corner, and it’s a gorgeous meadow. And then you can go another 40 yards and all of a sudden there’s a lake. Every turn, you can be in a new location with its own set of rules. It gives us permission to fully immerse ourselves in a new location.”

Tapping into his encyclopedic knowledge of dance genres to create a unique vocabulary was nothing new for Knight, who has spent years choreographing for top pop stars, most notably Beyoncé. What was new for him: the genre of musical theater, and the task of using those dances to tell a story.

And not just any story. The Wiz, a retelling of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and a staple of Black culture, was revolutionary when it premiered in 1975 with choreography by George Faison, winning seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Choreography. A film adaptation starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, with choreography by Louis Johnson, came three years later. Several efforts to reignite a Broadway production have been in the works since, including a revival in 1984 that only lasted 13 performances, and another attempt in 2004 that never got off the ground.

This time, The Wiz team predicts, will be different. Williams believes the world needs this show, with its joy-infused score and hope-filled message, right now. And by taking the production out of the ’70s and adding some contemporary innovations—in addition to Knight’s genre-bending choreography, there are updates to the book by comedian Amber Ruffin; costumes by Sharen Davis (of “Westworld,” “Watchmen,” and Dreamgirls); a dazzling set by Hannah Beachler, of Black Panther; and a modernized score by music team Joseph Joubert, Allen René Louis, Adam Blackstone, and Paul Byssainthe Jr.—they hope it will become timeless.          

“I really wanted to create something that didn’t feel super ‘now,’ ” says Knight, “but takes you on a journey of Black dance. Throughout the show you see how these people live, how they move, how they celebrate, how they mourn, how they support each other, how they find a family.”           

Knight began building the show’s choreography in October 2022. He workshopped movement in Los Angeles with some of his go-to commercial dancers. “I dreamed as big as I could,” Knight says. “For me, it was about, How do we keep the essence­ and energy of what George Faison did, and also bring JaQuel Knight to the table?”

Broadway veteran and The Wiz dance captain Amber Jackson says the dance call was one of the most intense she’s experienced, with long, fast combos that constantly switched between styles, and rooms jam-packed with a who’s who of Black dance talent. A dance workshop with the chosen few—many of whom were Broadway newbies like Knight—followed, then rehearsals, then the national tour, then another round of rehearsals and tweaks before Broadway previews.

Reviews of the tour seem to agree that the production is highly entertaining, if a bit flashy. But as far as the choreography is concerned, nothing is flashy for flashiness’ sake. “I think the movement does a really beautiful job of not letting the audience feel detached from it,” says ensemble member Maya Bowles. “It’s not so codified in technique that it’s like, ‘That’s so impressive.’ It feels familiar. It feels like home. It feels like something that’s inherently in us as a Black community. It’s something you can be a part of. The invitation is open.”

From Beyoncé to Broadway

Theater was already on Knight’s bucket list when he got the offer to choreograph The Wiz, a call that, he says, made him “lose his mind.” Moving from commercial dance to Broadway presented a new opportunity: Knight, who is so often tasked with executing the vision of another artist—whether Beyoncé, Megan Thee Stallion, or Britney Spears—had a chance to discover his own vision. “I feel like I’m given room to explore my creativity and shape my voice as a movement artist,” he says. “And I’m enjoying that.”

Being new to theater, and therefore not beholden to ideas of how things are “supposed to be” done, has given Knight freedom to push the boundaries of what dance on Broadway can look like, says Phillip Johnson Richardson, who plays the Tinman. “He has the audacity to reinvent the whole thing,” Richardson says, “and not think of it like, ‘We can’t touch that, that’s classic material.’ ”

A New Kind of Tinman

In most productions of The Wiz, during the song “Slide Some Oil to Me,” the Tinman shows off his newly lubricated joints with a tap dance. But in Knight’s interpretation, the dance break becomes a showstopping hip-hop moment that Richardson, who plays the Tinman, says revealed the whole character to him.

The movement—lots of popping, locking, and waving—felt familiar to Richardson, reminding him of dances he watched growing up. “It was like, ‘Oh, I know who this guy is,’ ” says Richardson. “ ‘And I know how I can approach this guy.’ It informed how I wear my hat—I was originally supposed to wear it to the front, and I was like, ‘Nah, he’d wear it to the back or the side.’ He’s a lot closer to me than I originally thought.”

The post <i>The Wiz</i> Returns to Broadway Nearly 50 Years After Its Premiere With More Dance Than Ever appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“Within a week of the premiere, every single ballet company that one would ever dream of working for was in my inbox asking for a new ballet for the same season,” she says. Portner decided to give herself another year in ballet, which eventually dragged into several. Now, she’s on track to have created five ballets for major companies before she turns 30 in November.

Last month, she premiered her Bathtub Ballet at the Royal Swedish Ballet, and in April, she’ll have yet another premiere, her Forever, maybe at GöteborgsOperans Danskompani. For now, though, islands—the piece that started it all—is back, this time at the National Ballet of Canada. It’ll be Portner’s first time sharing a major work in her home country, where she still escapes to spend time at her house and studio in the woods on her rare week off. 

What’s new? It’s been a while.

My life has been crazy. I feel like the last time I connected with Dance Magazine I was a baby. It’s been forever since I’ve been interviewed because I’ve been in this prolonged period of discovery and change. 

Are you based in Europe now? 

I would consider Canada home, but I only get to spend really random bouts of time out here. I’m working in Scandinavia a lot. What was supposed to be a two-ballet contract with the Norwegian National Ballet ended up spanning four or five years because of the pandemic. I actually just finished dancing in a new ballet at the Oslo Opera House, a new piece by Alan Lucien Øyen. I was acting, which was a really fun departure for me. 

I didn’t realize that islands changed your life in such a major way. Tell me about that piece. 

Islands saved my life, in a way. When I went into it, I wasn’t in a great place. I was going through a lot in my personal life. I didn’t feel like a legitimate person to be making ballets. I felt like my personality was incompatible with the machine of the ballet institution. So when Ingrid called me, I declined at first. The only reason I ended up doing it was because I felt like I needed to escape the States. I needed to have a new start. 

I wanted the piece to be two women. I wasn’t setting out to do a gay piece, I just felt that in the ballet space in 2018, queer representation was either by chance—like the lead got sick, so someone else had to come in and now it’s a queer duet for one night—or it’s this big, sweeping, romantic duet. I felt there was nuance and reality lacking. And I felt like, What if queerness isn’t the thing we’re putting onstage, it just exists? And we’re allowed to have a complex relationship, and have the queerness be secondary to that? Because that’s the truth to me.  

In my earlier work, I would put way too many ideas into one thing. I couldn’t tolerate sitting with an idea long enough to see it develop. Now, I’m much more able to sit with things, and that’s what I really wanted to do with this one. The only idea I had going into it was that because­ of the classical tutu, women’s hips have been four feet apart for hundreds of years. I was like, What if we were able to reverse that? So for the first half of the piece, they are literally dancing inside the same pair of pants. That was the most fascinating and most frustrating and most awkward process. Some days in rehearsal, it was like, Okay, we need a break from the pants for five minutes. 

What does it feel like to be sharing this piece in your home country and on such an iconic company?

When I was growing up, I had posters of Heather Ogden and Karen Kain in my bedroom. And then, Heather Ogden is cast in the piece. I really have to pinch myself. I actually went to the National Ballet summer programs growing up, and I was desperate to go to the school, but my mom didn’t let me. It’s this unattainable place that I never thought I would get to because I didn’t go through the front door. I’m entering through this magical backdoor. 

You’ve said that you don’t consider yourself a ballet choreographer, but you’ve been working extensively in ballet. What does your relationship to ballet feel like right now?

This question is always swirling around in my head. I have to really leave myself in order to fit into the ballet institution because it’s so demanding of me on so many levels. I’m this question mark. People are taking a risk on me, and it’s a lot of pressure to walk into these spaces with so much history, and have it feel like it’s on my shoulders to change it. And people are looking at you and people are hoping with you and people are scared with you. But it feels like people are holding my pinky finger and not holding my hand through it. That’s where it gets really hard for me, because there’s still so much that needs to change. This is why I wanted to do five ballets before I’m 30: so I can say that I did it, and then I can step out of the ballet world for a second and reenter it in an entirely different way. I want to help ballet make itself more sustainable and to open the door for other people. Because I love ballet, and I want to see it thrive, but I want to see its people healthier. I want to see more people making ballets and trying new things and making a mess onstage and for that to be okay. I just feel like the whole system can use a little more breath and a little more optimism and a little more chance. But what is chance at the end of the world? You know, I’m someone who never wants to do interviews, but then I start doing an interview and I can’t stop talking. It’s fascinating. 

The post Emma Portner Brings the Work That Kept Her in the Dance World to National Ballet of Canada appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But attend a Company 360 Dance Theatre performance and the tables are turned. The Fredericksburg, Virginia–based company, led by choreographer Bailey Anne Vincent, who is Deaf, incorporates American Sign Language into all its productions. “If you’re a Deaf person, you’re in on the story more than a hearing person,” says Vincent.

For Vincent, using ASL in her choreography—which might mean incorporating a sign to emphasize an emotion a character is feeling, or to communicate what a lyric is saying—is both an artistic choice and an accessibility-related one. Though her audience is mostly hearing, “I still try to approach all our shows assuming there might be someone who is Deaf in the audience,” she says. But it’s also just a natural extension of the fact that ASL is Vincent’s preferred language. “When I choreograph, the way that my mind thinks is in my own language,” she says. “So even if I don’t want it to, sign finds its way into whatever I’m choreographing. It can’t really be extracted.”

Deaf actress and dancer Alexandria Wailes feels similarly. “Dance and using ASL are both so embedded in who I am, as part of my identity,” says Wailes through an interpreter. “I can’t really separate one from the other.”

For artists, like Vincent and Wailes, who are fluent in both the actual language of ASL and the proverbial one of dance, the intersection of the two embodied forms offers limitless creative potential, and the vital opportunity­ to make accessibility efforts less perfunctory and more integrated and enriching. Though incorporating ASL into choreographic work is not a new phenomenon—Deaf-led companies and Deaf artists have long done it—it’s becoming increasingly common on increasingly mainstream stages.

To get a sense of the deepening relationship between dance and ASL, look at choreographer and performer Brandon Kazen-Maddox’s career thus far. A GODA (grandchild of Deaf adults) and native ASL signer, Kazen-Maddox was long one of the New York City performing arts scene’s go-to interpreters, a reliable presence at performances, talkbacks, and more.

But in 2019, choreographer Kayla Hamilton asked Kazen-Maddox to join her New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks piece not as an interpreter but as an artist. “She asked me to represent all sounds in sign language, and also use my body as a dancer,” says Kazen-Maddox. “It was the most mind-shifting thing for me, because I was seen as an artist and a dancer and a performer, and was also representing in sign language everything that was happening.”

The experience was the beginning of a shift in Kazen-Maddox’s career, away from simply facilitating communication between­ Deaf and hearing individuals as an interpreter­ and towards an emerging genre Kazen-Maddox calls “American Sign Language dance theater.” But it was also indicative of a wider shift in the performing arts, one that is more artistically fulfilling for Deaf and ASL-fluent artists and that also repositions accessibility: Rather than something tacked on to and separate from the performance, it is something deeply ingrained and integrated.

Always key to this work, says Wailes: Deaf or Hard of Hearing performers who are “bilingual” in dance and ASL. “If you’re trying to be more inclusive, great,” she says. “Who are the people who are onstage? What are their lived experiences and how does this reveal itself­ in the work? We should continue to push towards­ the embracing of more people who have never been welcomed in these spaces.”

The Question of the Audience: Who Is It For?

Until recently, Betsy Quillen experienced performances for Deaf audiences and hearing audiences separately. “It’s one or the other—it’s very isolated,” says Quillen, who is a Hard of Hearing actor and theater director. “There are Deaf shows, and there are hearing shows, and very rarely do the two feel comfortable together.”

So when choreographer William Smith asked Quillen to collaborate with him on a piece for Roanoke Ballet Theatre that incorporated sign language, they had a clear goal: to make something that both Deaf and hearing audiences could understand and enjoy. “My specific role was making sure that Deaf eyes would understand it, and that we were making our Deaf audiences feel welcomed and included and respected,” says Quillen. “But we also made sure to show our hearing audience that this piece is made even more beautiful because we’ve included the Deaf audiences—that all of this ASL in every part of the production is enhancing the experience for everybody in the audience.”

The question of who a production is for, and how many in the audience will be fluent in ASL, isn’t always a straightforward one, says Alexandria Wailes, a Deaf dancer who blended dance and ASL in the recent Broadway revival of for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. “Most of the time, it’s going to be people who don’t know ASL,” she says through an interpreter. “So what does that mean, in terms of what I’m sharing? I’m very aware that most of the audience is probably not going to quickly understand what I am saying. I just have to express it.”

But even that imperfect understanding can spur new ways of thinking. “The reactions I received from a lot of people after shows—their brains had shifted,” says Wailes. “For me, that was really exciting, because it means my work is encouraging people to think outside of what they’re used to experiencing with dance and signing.”

“ASL Is a Language, Not Just Something You Look At”

For artists and audiences who are not fluent in ASL, signs can sometimes be indistinguishable from choreography. And when hearing artists and audiences value how signs look over what they mean, the fusion of dance and ASL can become offensive rather than enriching. Antoine Hunter PurpleFireCrow, founder and director of Urban Jazz Dance Company and the Bay Area International Deaf Dance Festival, gives the example of a hearing choreographer asking him to “reverse” a sign because it would look cool, which then made it meaningless or changed it into a distasteful word.

“When people who are not native signers see ASL incorporated with movement, they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so beautiful,’ ” says Alexandria Wailes, a Deaf dancer and actor, through an interpreter. “Which is valid in its own right, but ASL is a language that is tied to culture, communities, and history. It’s not just something that you look at or do because it feels cool and it’s beautiful.”

That doesn’t mean ASL always has to be used literally, or that it can’t be an opportunity for experimentation. In fact, the expectation that ASL be completely legible in an artistic setting can limit Deaf artists, when there’s no similar expectation that spoken language in performance always be logical or straightforward. (For instance, it’s not uncommon for performers to say absurd sentences, or experiment with strange deliveries.)

“The forcing of it to be legible, or to be understood, is not allowing for the people who live it to speak their truth,” says Yusha-Marie Sorzano, a Hard of Hearing choreographer who collaborated on a 2020 solo for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performer Samantha Figgins that incorporated ASL.

For Hunter, this might look like using signs that are actually the total opposite of what the lyrics of the song are conveying. “As with any other language, ASL can be used poetically, rhythmically, artistically, metaphorically,” shares Hunter.

“I think it’s really beautiful when you begin to weave languages, because in the weaving comes the new word,” Sorzano says. “How fascinating is it that a sign that represents ‘I am’ can be woven next to a renversé? And does that become a new way of being­ ‘I am’? There’s this beauty in what happens when you build something new.”

The post How Dance Artists are Fusing ASL With Choreography appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Research has shown that just one engagement with art per month is associated with an additional 10 years of life, and that engaging in art for 45 minutes can lower the stress hormone cortisol. The arts can offer an emotional release. They can provide children with life skills like communication, self-reflection, and self-expression, and help those with chronic illnesses find relief and healing.

Susan Magsamen, the founder and executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University­ School of Medicine’s Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics, explores these benefits of the arts and more in her recent book, Your Brain on Art, with co-author Ivy Ross. She’s often asked if she could pick a specific art form to recommend. For Magsamen,­ it’s actually an easy answer: dance.

“It does it all,” she says. “It brings all of this physiology and psychology and multiple biological systems together simultaneously.”

With its unique brain–body connection, dance is at the very center of neuroaesthetics, or the science of how the arts affect our brains, and therefore our bodies. Early findings of this still-emerging field are confirming what dancers and dance lovers have long known implicitly: that experiencing dance—whether doing it ourselves or watching it—has profound effects on our physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

Studying the Dancing Brain

Neuroscientists are fascinated by dance because studying it can unlock mysteries not just about the arts and the brain, but about human movement itself. And yet, dance poses unique challenges for researchers.

For one, monitoring the brain while the body is in motion is complicated. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), one of the most popular techniques for mapping brain activity, requires lying in a scanner with the head completely still, says Olivia Foster Vander Elst, who studies the neuroscience of dance as a PhD student at Aarhus University. Some researchers have gotten around this problem by having dancers move only their legs while lying in a scanner, or having them just watch dance or imagine dancing. These results, however, probably don’t capture the full scope of what’s happening in the brain while actually dancing.

But other options for monitoring the dancing brain are emerging. For the past several years, butoh choreographer Vangeline has been partnering with three neuroscientists on The Slowest Wave, a project that uses electroencephalography—in which electrodes placed on the scalp measure electrical activity in the brain—to record five dancers’ brain waves as they perform. “When we go very slow in butoh, we reach a place like when we’re about to fall asleep, when we get a little drowsy,” says Vangeline. “But the difference is that we’re actually moving through that and being quite present.”

Though the first-of-its-kind study came with its own logistical challenges—dancers ended up wearing both electroencephalography caps and customized airline pillows to hold various hardware—it was made more feasible by the extremely slow movements often employed by butoh artists, says Sadye Paez, one of the scientists on the project. And while electroencephalography can monitor brain activity in real time down to the millisecond, it isn’t great with spatial resolution. Constantina Theofanopoulou, another scientist on the project and director of the Neurobiology of Social Communication lab at Rockefeller University, notes that it can only monitor a specific number of spots—in this case 32—where the electrodes are placed.

Another reason it’s hard to confidently say what is happening in the brain when we dance is because so much is happening. Dance isn’t only an artistic pursuit: It’s also usually a form of exercise, often a social experience, and sometimes a cultural one, too. Though this makes it more difficult to figure out how dance is impacting the brain, Corinne Jola, a choreographer and a senior lecturer at Abertay University studying cognitive neuroscience and the performing arts, encourages scientists to see dance’s multiplicity as its strength.

“I think the benefit is from a holistic approach,” she says. “Research often works by dissecting [dance] to be able to pinpoint which factor causes which effect. But maybe we should change the way we approach it.” In other words: Trying to pick dance apart into its many pieces may prevent us from seeing the full scope of what it can do.

What We Know About Dance and the Brain

There may still be more questions than answers about what goes on in our brains while we dance. But we do know that dance lights up multiple areas of the brain, likely increasing neural activity between brain hemispheres and developing new neural connections as it does so.

Some of the areas of the brain involved in dance are obvious: The motor cortex, basal ganglia, and cerebellum, for instance, which are all involved in coordinating motor activity. But dance and other art forms have also been found to activate the limbic system, which is involved in emotion and memory and is, evolutionarily speaking, located in an older area of the brain. “This has led people to the idea that art is very embedded in our bodies and brain,” says Julia Basso, director of the Embodied Brain Laboratory at Virginia Tech.

Other ways dancing can impact our brains and bodies: It’s been found to help alleviate headaches, build strong spatial cognition, improve mood, release feel-good chemicals like sero­tonin, dopamine, and oxytocin, and much more. It’s widely, though not universally, believed that dancing increases neuroplasticity in the brain, or the brain’s ability to change and adapt, which is especially important later in life to stave off degeneration. Studies of the popular Dance for PD program, which offers dance classes for people with Parkinson’s disease, have found that dance can improve motor control and balance while reducing tremors and rigidity. Research has also shown benefits for those with brain injuries, cognitive impairment, cerebral palsy, and dementia. Dancing with others can multiply its positive effects, says Magsamen, by helping to build stronger social ties and create a sense of belonging and trust.

You don’t have to be a “good” or even an experienced dancer to reap the benefits of dance. Still, the brains of proficient dancers show significant differences. Research has shown that brain activity—specifically the engagement of the corticospinal tract, which controls voluntary motor function—while watching dance varies based on how much experience the viewer has with that style, whether that experience comes from dancing that style themselves or just being very familiar with viewing it, says Foster Vander Elst. She says one study of ballet dancers even found that there is more activity in certain regions of the brain when dancers watch movement traditionally performed by their own gender (so movement they regularly do themselves) than there is when they view movement traditionally performed by another gender (so movement they regularly watch). Dancers’ brains have also been found to respond more quickly to certain changes in music than those of nondancers and even musicians.

Beyond Neuroscience

Though we need more research to be able to speak definitively about what dancing does to the brain, Jola says that we shouldn’t have to rely on knowing how these benefits occur when we know for sure that they exist. “You don’t necessarily need to know what happens in the brain if we have other sources of evidence that dance is good for us,” she says. “It’s good to understand the brain to explain mechanisms of improvement for people with Parkinson’s or mental health issues. But if we know other evidence of people’s improvement, we don’t need to have evidence in the brain to be sure that it helps.”

Joseph DeSouza, a professor of neuroscience at York University, agrees. Many people “feel that dance helps,” he says. “They don’t need a neuroscientist like me to tell them that they should do it.”

The post What Neuroaesthetics, a New Field of Research, Can Tell Us About What Dance Does to Our Brains and Bodies appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But in a vast field consisting of thousands of mostly gig workers performing many jobs throughout the course of one year, concrete data about what it’s like to be a dance worker has been challenging, if not impossible, to come by.

Soon, that will change: After a robust six-month effort to survey at least 25 percent of the dance workforce about their pay, work conditions, needs, experiences, and more, Dance/NYC will release its State of NYC Dance report later this month.

The report will contain findings from the Dance Industry Census, including an extensive survey completed by more than 1,600 individual dance workers and entities—broadly defined as anyone whose work intersects with dance—plus qualitative findings from roundtables held across the New York City metro area, during which participants could respond to the data collected thus far and share their own experiences. It will also include suggested action items based on the report’s findings.

“We’ve done some deep thinking with the data to offer the field: Here are the numbers, here’s what we think they mean, and here are the levers of power you can weigh on if you’re interested in changing some of these realities,” says Candace Thompson-Zachery, Dance/NYC’s director of programming and justice initiatives. 

Dance/NYC is not new to extensive research studies: In the past, the organization has published reports on immigrant artists, small-budget dancemakers, the impact of COVID-19, and more. It has also done previous State of NYC Dance reports as recently as 2016, but those were more focused on dance organizations than individuals. “We landed on the fact that in order to make change and really strengthen the ecosystem, we had to look more closely at individual dance workers,” says Thompson-Zachery. 

Though the final report won’t be public until mid-December, Dance/NYC has released some preliminary data and takeaways from the census—like that most dance workers earn limited income from their work in dance, have jobs outside of dance, and believe they are not paid fair wages. These findings and more will come to life at a performance event and gathering December 12 at Chelsea Factory, where Sydnie L. Mosley Dances and Ladies of Hip-Hop “will help us create the space and interpret the data,” says Thompson-Zachery. The event, which will also include a community meal, is free and open to the public.

“We want people to show up and to prioritize looking a bit more critically at the dance community,” says Thompson-Zachery. “We’re hoping we get real-time connections between people that can further galvanize us towards taking action and advancing the kind of change we’re looking for.”

Moving forward, the report will live on the DWR (Dance. Workforce. Resilience.) Hub, a new digital tool created partly in response to needs expressed in the survey and roundtables. Dance/NYC sees it as a one-stop shop for any resource a dance worker could want, from contract templates to racial justice recommendations to an interactive compensation chart. 

Thompson-Zachery hopes the report will empower dance workers and give them a broader context for the challenges they’re facing. “We run into pain points, and we don’t quite know what to do with them,” she says. “We talk in the hallway outside rehearsal, but we don’t quite understand how all the pieces fit together.”  

And now, when Dance/NYC—and whoever else wants to take advantage of the data they’ve amassed—makes the case that dance workers need more financial support or resources, they’ll have receipts. “It provides ammunition,” says Thompson-Zachery. “Because now we have numbers that we can pull to support the kind of claims we’ve been making around what the sector needs.”

The post Findings From Dance/NYC’s Industry-Wide Census Will Be Published This Month appeared first on Dance Magazine.

It only feels right that the two powerhouses’ first collaboration is a love letter to New York City. Hell’s Kitchen, a coming-of-age story loosely based on Keys’ own adolescence, with music and lyrics by Keys (featuring­ both original songs and existing favorites)­ and choreography by Brown, opens off-Broadway at The Public Theater this month. 

What kind of relationship did you have with the music of Alicia Keys prior to coming onto Hell’s Kitchen? 

I love Alicia Keys’ music. I mean, I’m originally from Queens. So the fact that she has a song dedicated to New York City and her being from New York—I immediately had a connection to her music and to the person she is. 

What’s it been like collaborating with her?

It’s really exciting and thrilling and also scary to create something to someone’s music and actually have that person sit in the room and watch. You want them to dig what you’re creating, of course, so the nerves are there. But she’s so down-to-earth and so encouraging.

What has your process of creating the movement been like? What influences are you pulling from?

I’m pulling from my own experience being from New York. There’s not much research that I have to do in terms of knowing New York, so it’s more about getting inside the music. That’s really been the goal: What does “Empire State of Mind” feel like, as a movement, as a dance? The exciting thing about the show is that it’s both music that we know and new music. There’s one number that I can’t wait until it’s released because it’s out of sight. I had so much fun choreographing it. 

There’s always the one song in a show that I’m like, What am I gonna do with this? It was the kind of thing that, as a choreographer, you can go several ways: You can lean into hip hop, you can lean into contemporary. I decided to lean into everything. It’s fun because I get to show my contemporary-modern dance side and I also show what I do with social dances. 

What’s it been like to choreograph to such iconic songs that you’ve known for so long? Is it hard to approach them with fresh eyes?

When you ask me that question, I immediately think of revivals. What does it mean to take a show and to give it a new take and reimagine it? I feel like it’s the same with her music. It’s so well-known, and she’s been on the map for decades now. And I know that there have been so many people that have created to her music. So what take am I going to have? And how is this music supporting the story? Because what’s beautiful about the layering of the music is that it’s positioned to support the story. So how can I lean into what the story is asking of me? And what are the ways that I can reimagine it for myself? I didn’t necessarily think of “Empire State of Mind” as a dance piece. But here I am creating a dance piece for it. 

What in the show are you most looking forward to audiences getting to experience?

The new songs. I listen to them to and from rehearsal, because they’re that good. It’s gonna be exciting to have people react to the songs they know—the way they come in is really smart—and the new songs.

The post Camille A. Brown Talks Collaborating With Alicia Keys on <i>Hell’s Kitchen</i> appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Most significant among them: the likely closure of the idyllic Petronio Residency Center, located a few hours north of New York City amongst the Catskill Mountains and designed as an early-stage choreographic development center for dance artists. Purchased in 2016 and officially opened in 2018, the center became financially unsustainable during the pandemic. 

“I borrowed a lot of money to make it through the pandemic,” says Petronio. “I began bringing people up because they needed to work. And I thought, I’ve been raising money for 40 years. I’ll borrow this money, we’ll get through this, and then I’ll raise the money. And then the funding fell off a cliff.”

Now, with a large Small Business Administration loan to repay, lagging funder support, and earned-income streams severely down post-pandemic, the company has listed the 178-acre property for sale. While this probably means the end of the center, Petronio hasn’t given up entirely and is still attempting­ to fundraise to save it. “Who knows what’s going to happen,” he says. “I wanted to put it up for sale before it got scary, and before it became, Oh, my god, we have to sell. I look at it like I’m cooking a meal, and I’ve got several pots simmering, and one of them is going to turn into a dish.”

With property values in the Hudson Valley having skyrocketed in the past several years, Petronio hopes that, should the center sell, the liquidation will put the company and its other programs on solid financial ground for the future, and allow it to continue to support the research and development of new work. It’s a story similar to that of Lumberyard, which also listed its upstate residency center for sale earlier this year, citing funders’ shifting priorities and the opportunity to put earnings from the sale towards other impactful programs.

The decision to list the property was a heartbreaking one for Petronio, who also lives next to the site and had long dreamed of a space where he could pamper artists as they make work. (The residencies came with a 6,500-square-foot house with mountain views and a private chef.) His balms during a challenging time: getting back in the studio to create and the music of violinist Jennifer Koh. The fruit of both will be on display in his new work, Breath of the Beast. “I felt that with the closing of the retreat, it was crucial we come out with something big,” he says of the evening-length piece. For Petronio,­ the “beast” of the title “is that creative, intuitive person that lives in you, that goes into that trance that’s required to make work that’s irrational and nonnarrative.” Breath of the Beast will feature guest artist Jerron Herman, along with members of Petronio’s company, and live improvisation by Koh. 

It’s not a traditional anniversary retrospective—Petronio says that may be coming later—but, in a way, celebrating the “beast” feels like an homage to Petronio’s last 40 years of creative process. 

And while the loss of a center devoted to that process will be deeply felt, Petronio will still be leaving a lasting legacy upstate:­ With the help of the Doris Duke and Howard Gilman­ foundations, 77 acres of the property will remain a “forever wild” preserve, protected from development indefinitely. “When I’m long gone, one or two of my works might move forward—who knows?” says Petronio. “But my legacy is that the Stephen Petronio Company saved a little part of the Catskill Mountains, with the help of many people. And I’m very proud of that.” 

The post Stephen Petronio Company’s 40th Will Bring an Evening-Length Premiere—and the Likely Closure of the Petronio Residency Center appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Their plight is understandable. You could situate Batten Bland amongst the icons she’s danced for, like Pina Bausch and Bill T. Jones. You could list the varied settings in which she works: with her own troupe, Company SBB//Stefanie Batten Bland; in buzzy, immersive shows like Sleep No More; on commercial projects for brands like Hermès and Louis Vuitton; in her game-changing classes at Montclair State University. Or you could highlight the elements that animate her transformative dance-theater pieces: the balance of abstraction and narrative, the dazzling theatricality, the shifts in space and time.

All of those descriptions are accurate. But no list of adjectives or accolades or resumé highlights can fully capture Batten Bland and the entrancing worlds she creates on stages and beyond. 

For Batten Bland herself, it’s not so com­plicated: “I’m a professional collager,” she jokes. “I put a lot of stuff together and it works out.”

Though Batten Bland is talking about the micro—the way she blends genres and mediums and influences in her choreography—the same could be said for the macro of her life: how she moves through the world, weaving together her disparate artistic and personal experiences and forging connections through her preternatural charisma.

To collage is an inclination that Batten Bland comes by naturally. She grew up in a former paper factory in New York City’s SoHo, the daughter of a writer and a jazz composer. “The neighborhood was a cacophony of colors, sound, texture, scent,” she says. “It’s not at all lost upon me why I do what I do now, how I can inhabit a single space and yet turn it into so many at the same time.”

When Batten Bland was 9, gentrification pushed her family out of SoHo, and they relocated to Los Angeles. She spent her teenage years immersed in political activism and studying dance at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, trekking back to New York City during the summers to train at The Ailey School and the Joffrey Ballet School.

After two years at SUNY Purchase, Batten Bland left to pursue professional work with choreographers like Seán Curran, Kraig Patterson, and Jones. It was while on an international tour with Jones that Batten Bland connected with Bausch’s company, Tanztheater Wuppertal, which was also touring. When visiting Wuppertal, she received a last-minute request from Bausch to audition to replace an injured dancer. Batten Bland learned a solo over the course of a few hours, then performed it for Bausch, who sweetly asked if she could do it again, but “better.”

Guesting with Tanztheater Wuppertal unlocked­ the European dance scene for Batten­ Bland. “I came out of that feeling like I had cracked the door into a space that had different types of making that I hadn’t had access to before,” she says. She relocated to France, and danced for artists like Hungarian physical-theater giant Pál Frenák and modern African choreographer Georges Momboye. She also began to choreograph. Her first evening-length work, Let’s Hang Out Like Wet Clothes, was a success and toured Europe. “The joy that I got from actually seeing that work live was the same pleasure that I received being inside of work,” she says. “I didn’t know that transference was possible. It was intoxicating.”

In 2008, Batten Bland founded her company to support her growing choreographic projects. Before long, she began feeling the call to come back stateside: Her parents were getting older, and she felt she had reached her ceiling in France. Batten Bland worried that her work wouldn’t be understood, as dance theater wasn’t nearly as popular in the U.S. as it was in Europe. But in 2011, she made the move, encouraged by her longtime supporter Mikhail Baryshnikov, whom she’d met early in her performing career in New York City. He predicted—correctly—that dance theater was growing in the New York scene, and offered her the support of his Baryshnikov Arts Center.

When Batten Bland auditioned for the then-recently opened Sleep No More in New York City, she knew that she had made the right decision. “It was like, duh, this is exactly what I’ve been made for,” she says. “It was another extension of how I already coexist inside that amazing hyphenation of theater-and-dance.” Batten Bland was in Sleep No More off and on until 2018, performing two of the show’s most iconic roles, the Bald Witch and Lady Macbeth.

Simultaneously, her company—now binational, with both American and French performers—was slowly gaining recognition stateside. Its visually stunning, highly tactile pieces appealed to both downtown dance insiders and first-timers. “Her work is incredibly accessible,” says Mia Yoo, artistic director of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, where Batten Bland is a resident artist. “Even if you’re not somebody who goes to see abstract dance—the community that she can speak to is vast and across the spectrum of performance-goers.”

But it wasn’t until 2017 that her work received widespread acclaim, with Bienvenue뻑短WelcomeBienvenidoكب‭ ‬الهأ, a La MaMa commission exploring immigration and featuring striking cardboard walls graffitied by audience members. The next few years marked one breakthrough after another, with 2019’s Look Who’s Coming to Dinner, an inventive reimagining of the 1967 film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and 2022’s Embarqued: Stories of Soil, her Brooklyn Academy of Music debut. Embarqued—which explores African ancestral stories and transforms the stage into the deck of a ship—sold out its run, and the standby line wrapped through the building. “That made me feel like, wow, this scene is taking me seriously,” says Batten Bland. “I don’t feel like I have always been seen the way I thought I would have been here.”

This idea of being seen is a choreographic interest of Batten Bland’s—she likes to play with presence and absence, visibility and invisibility. Ensuring that the artists she works with are seen fully is also something of a mission. “She wants you to be who you are,” says Jennifer Payán, Company SBB’s associate artistic director. “She sees the heart and the imagination in someone’s choices, and then she amplifies it.” As longtime company member Emilie Camacho puts it, “She knows how to reveal people.”

Sometimes, she reveals people more literally. At Sleep No More, to which she returned in 2021 as a performance and identity liaison, she has worked with designers to properly light artists with darker skin tones. She’s also helped the show rethink its casting practices, inspired in part by her own experiences of being typecast throughout her career. “The world was saying, ‘Hey, has anybody noticed that Black women keep getting hired as witches?’ ” Batten Bland, who has an inviting energy and a gentle sense of humor, thrives when helping collaborators find common ground. “She shows everyone their bridge to each other,” says Kayla Farrish, a former Sleep No More performer and rehearsal director who has also performed with Batten Bland’s company.

Immersive theater has not only a diversity problem but also a training problem, Batten Bland says. Though the genre has exploded in the past decade, few collegiate programs prepare artists with the highly specific skills needed to be cast in a show like Sleep No More. Batten Bland, who recently earned an MFA in interdisciplinary arts from Goddard College, is starting to change that. Last year, she launched a physical-theater class at Montclair State University that links the dance and theater departments­. She is also working with MSU to pilot an immersive-theater summer intensive, which will include classes like clowning, acting for dancers, and physical theater, as well as opportunities to work with immersive-theater makers.

Batten Bland’s latest piece for her own company is also her most immersive yet. Coup d’Espace, which will have a residency at La MaMa next year before its premiere, asks what it takes to make communal change, to overthrow a space. It’ll take place inside of nine distinct rooms—depending on the setting, it may take over an entire theater building, or overflow onto the street.

This year, Batten Bland will also be working as the casting and movement director for a new show from the creators of Sleep No More, and taking Embarqued on tour. When not on the road, she’ll return to her home base, which is back where everything started: She lives with her family in SoHo.

“I’ve never seen someone ahead of me,” she says. “There is no template for me to follow. I’m not stepping into anyone’s shoes. I’m just stepping.”

The post The Magic and Magnetism of Stefanie Batten Bland appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Moore is one of the many choreographers working in film who’ve been shut out of membership to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the honorary trade organization for film professionals that presents the prestigious Academy Awards. In fact, out of AMPAS’ more than 10,000 members, as of this spring there was only a single choreographer: Vincent Paterson, who is known for his choreography for movies like The Birdcage and Evita and who has been a member since 2001. (Though Debbie Allen, Adam Shankman, and Rob Marshall are members of AMPAS, Allen is a member as an actor and the other two are members as directors, not choreographers.)

This spring, AMPAS announced the creation of a new branch that could be a step towards including more choreographers in the organization—and, perhaps eventually, a Best Choreography category. Unlike directors, music artists, writers, and other film creatives who each have their own designated branch, the few choreographers allowed entry in the Academy over the years have historically been members-at-large, a hodge-podge group consisting of professionals who didn’t fit into any of the existing 17 branches. Now, the new Production and Technology branch will give these former members-at-large, including choreographers, a home, albeit one that includes many disparate types of film professionals, like stunt coordinators, preservation and restoration specialists, and script supervisors. 

It’s somewhat unclear whether the new branch will pave the way for more choreographers in AMPAS or is just business as usual with a new name. (The Academy could not be reached for comment.) But for dancer and choreographer Claire Elizabeth Ross, who founded the popular Instagram account @creditthecreator, there’s hope in even the small semantic shift from a cate­gory of professionals who “don’t fit” elsewhere to the new branch where choreographers are explicitly named as potential members. “It’s saying that choreographers do fit, and we do belong, and we are important within the making of a motion picture,” says Ross. Notably, commercial dance legend Fatima Robinson was invited to join the new branch at the end of June.

Does this mean a Best Choreography category is imminent? Paterson, who, along with McDonald Selznick Associates co-founder and agent Julie McDonald, has been advocating for such a category for years, says he and McDonald were told by Academy leadership that getting more choreographers into the organization would be the first step to begin a conversation about an award. But while Paterson is hopeful, he sees the new branch as an attempt to organize the logistically messy members-at-large designation rather than an intentional step towards including more choreographers. He expects choreographers who apply will still face significant barriers: Eligible applicants must be sponsored by two current members from any branch (members may sponsor only one applicant per year), and applications are reviewed and voted on by elected members of the Board of Governors. Without other choreographers to sponsor and advocate for their peers, and with the many other better-represented film professions in the new branch vying for a limited number of spots, choreographer
applicants will have an uphill battle. 

“What’s not going to change is the need for all of us as choreographers to come together as a collective and keep advocating for us to be represented within the Academy,” says Ross. “Yes, now we have a space. But within that space, we still need to make sure our voices are being heard, because this is a massive industry, and it’s also a massive branch. I don’t think this is a win yet, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.” 

The post What Does a New Branch of the Film Academy Mean for Hollywood Choreographers? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But don’t worry: The chatbot also said that “while ChatGPT can be a valuable tool for choreographers, it should not replace the artistic intuition and expertise that come from years of training and experience.”

If it sounds like the robot doth protest too much, that may be its attempt to acknowledge a growing existential concern, as the dance world reckons with the current and possible future impacts of ever-expanding artificial-intelligence tools. These technologies are further complicating the dance world’s already-broken relationships to copyright, crediting, compensation, and consent. And, yes, they could potentially remove artists from the dancemaking process.

Even so, dance artists are increasingly inspired by the generative potential of AI, whether as a choreographic tool, a topic to probe onstage, or an entryway into the broader intersection of dance and technology. And it isn’t just dance artists who are using AI in their practice. The big data companies that wield AI are also eager to “use” dancers, as their tech trolls the internet for movement data and seeks to profit from dance artists’ embodied knowledge. The trend has the potential to create a whole new world of lucrative and fascinating opportunities for dance artists—or to unleash a movement-data-harvesting free-for-all.

“On the one hand, I’m very excited for dancers and choreographers who use these tools to generate creative outputs that couldn’t be imagined years ago,” says Sydney Skybetter, choreographer and founder of the Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces. “On the other hand, I’m concerned for how these technologies leverage data extracted from our bodies.”

AI as Dance Partner

The first time choreographer and roboticist Catie Cuan danced with an artificially intelligent robot—a machine that moves using AI—“it felt as though I had exported a part of myself into this agent,” she says. “And then I could experience it back and move alongside it, which felt as though I had collapsed space and time, and could externalize my physical being and then re-engage with it.”

Other choreographers who’ve partnered with an AI technology report feeling similarly expanded, if not in body then in movement possibility. In Valencia James’ AI_am project, for instance, James improvised with an AI-powered computer, as represented by an avatar projected onstage, that she and her team had “taught” to dance using motion-capture technology. “It really extended my idea of what dance could be,” James says. “We didn’t give it any real-world physics, so it could do movements that would not be humanly possible, but I found that was really inspiring and generative to explore what it means to move in the style of impossibility.”

Pontus Lidberg experienced this on a large scale with his 2020 Centaur, for Danish Dance Theatre, which used several AI modules to create a voiced avatar that gave nine dancers onstage instructions that varied in each performance. He found that the algorithms, which were based on elements including game design, planetary movements, and swarm technology, were adept at creating complex compositions in unexpected ways.

Exploring AI Onstage

Other artists are finding meaning in dancing not necessarily with AI but about AI, forcing audiences to reckon with its ever-expanding role in our lives.

In Katherine Longstreth’s in-process work, the last dance picture show, the choreographer gets in an argument with an AI about creativity and originality. But it isn’t really an AI—it’s a scripted voiceover: Longstreth sees the technology as a potential threat. “If the tentacles of AI reach into the corporeal data of performing artists,” says Longstreth, “the implications will be catastrophic for dancers.”

She’s particularly interested in debunking the idea, prevalent in tech spaces, that AIs don’t copy artists’ work but simply use it for training. “This is just malarkey,” says Longstreth. “Your training defines who you are—I believe that to be true for humans and for these machines. It’s baloney to say that they can train on your artwork, and yet not have your artwork show up in their creative output.”

Daniel Gwirtzman metaphorically embodies artificial intelligence himself in e-Motion, which was co-conceived and written by Saviana Stanescu and explores the relationship between a neuroscientist and her creature, and was inspired by conversations with ChatGPT. Though Gwirtzman considers ChatGPT a collaborator on e-Motion, he can’t envision artificial intelligence independently authoring true choreography. “It’s hard to imagine taking out the self, the scrutiny, the deliberation, and calling it a piece of choreography,” he says.

Mining Movement Data

In the past several years, both Facebook and Stanford University have launched artificially intelligent movement-generation tools—almost like ChatGPT, but for dance. These tools encapsulate many of the questions that will determine whether artificial intelligence empowers or erases dance artists. How were these AIs trained, and with whose movement? Were dance artists involved in their development? Will they actually be useful for dance artists? And do they have the potential to replace real choreographic labor?

As for the first question—how AIs are “trained” with movement data—choreographer and artist-engineer Laurel Lawson says that dance artists are already being taken advantage of, whether or not they realize it yet. Some technology companies, she says, are harvesting movement data directly from videos online,­ without consent, credit, or compensation. And while other big-data companies may hire dancers for a project, Lawson worries that these artists don’t know how the movement they provide may be used later on. “It is critical that artists contractually specify and have knowledge and control about how their movement might be applied, recombined, or used in training data in the future,” she says.

The training of AIs can pose other ethical issues, which is why Kate Sicchio, assistant professor of Dance and Media Technologies at Virginia Commonwealth University, always creates her own data sets rather than using existing training d­ata.­ “If I have a data set that I just got off the internet, whose body is in there?” she says. “Did they sign up for this?” She cites ­an­ instance when an AI that could create “hip-hop” dances had been trained solely on data from Japan. “It’s this African diasporic dance form,” she says. “How do we protect people’s identity and cultural knowledge when it starts to come down to numbers?”

Choreographer Irina Demina is confronting this question head-on with her KLOF. cyberographies of folk, a piece that asks an AI that’s been trained in 26 folk dances to create a new, “universal” folk dance. She says she trusts technology to perform this specific task more than she would a human, and yet it is practically impossible to create an AI devoid of human­ bias. AIs constantly make value judgments about whose bodies matter based on the data they’re trained on, points out Skybetter. And the very nature of AI—which takes that data and looks for patterns—has the potential to erase bodies that fall outside what it views as the norm.

Looking to the Future

There will likely always be human artistic labor involved at the intersection of AI and dance, even if the source of that labor is erased. But Cuan hopes that the growth of AI in dance spaces will create new opportunities for choreographers, rather than displacing them.

“I have this crazy job right now where I’m a robot choreographer,” she says. “But I think there’s going to be thousands more. We’re going to have choreographers who make gesture interfaces, spatial-audio choreographers who figure out how audio is going to track around the room, metaverse choreographers. What I’m advocating for is that the tide by which those technologies are moving can be paired with the movement of choreographic knowledge such that the two move forward together.”

This means dance artists need to be invited to the table—as true collaborators, not just as “decoration,” as Sicchio puts it. But it also means that artists themselves must “consider the notion that choreographic knowledge has so much to offer outside of the proscenium,” says Cuan. “I think choreographers have an amazing role to play in that world.”

The post How are Dance Artists Using AI—and What Could the Technology Mean for the Industry? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Here Lies Love, the immersive, groundbreaking musical from David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, is transforming the Broadway Theatre into a discotheque, making audience members both clubgoers—dancing encouraged—and active participants in the story of the former First Lady and President, whose rise to power and epic fall from it are told through disco-inspired songs and Byrne’s signature wit.

Choreographing both the performers and the audience members—who continuously move throughout the space and occasionally learn a few moves themselves—is a big job, but one that Annie-B Parson is ready for. “It’s not intimidating,” says the choreographer, who has worked with Byrne for over a decade, including on his American Utopia. “My experience with audiences is that they do very well with whatever you give them if you’re clear.”

Though Here Lies Love has had four runs in the past decade—two at The Public Theater, where it premiered in 2013, one in London, and one in Seattle—none were at the scale of the Broadway production, which has been designed to put even more audience members up close and personal on the dance floor. It also has additional seating options for a more traditional theatrical experience—an added challenge for Parson and director Alex Timbers. “We’ve always been very aware of what it looks like from different angles,” says Parson. “Alex is very good at understanding how the space can come alive from all these different points of observation.”

Though Parson researched disco when creating the movement for the show, and built movement from her years of working with Byrne,­ Here Lies Love’s dance vocabulary brings a distinctly postmodern aesthetic to the Broadway stage, not dissimilar from the movement Parson has created for many years with her company, Big Dance Theater. “Bringing that to Broadway?” says Parson. “Well, we’ll see how they like it.”

Dance Magazine’s Lauren Wingenroth spoke to Annie-B Parson as Here Lies Love was readying for Broadway, and Rachel Papo photographed the first day of dance rehearsals in May.

How does it feel to be reimmersing yourself in the world of Here Lies Love after all these years?

It’s been a dream of ours to bring it back at a larger scale with a larger audience. I always have felt that you need to really make this piece as dynamic as it can be; you need sort of a crisis of people on the dance floor. And because we’ve always been in smaller venues, we were limited to 100 or so people. Now, the relationship between the audience and the piece will feel perfect. I’m very interested in co-proximate, co-temporal bodies in space.

It will feel different for the bodies that are watching, too. It’s just crazy to see that many people doing what they’re told. The motif of the disco becomes more intense with more people. In the past, we’ve had very few people in the observer seats, but now I think it’s just as many as on the floor.

What else can we expect to see that will be different in the Broadway production?

It’s essentially the same show but updated, since it’s now and not then politically. Because of Bongbong [the current President of the Philippines and the son of Imelda and Ferdinand], we’re looking to highlight the complicity of the U.S. government with the dictatorship in the Philippines. It’s not one of those pieces that I did it and it’s over. It’s about Filipino history. So it’s never going to be over.

Are there any challenges you’re anticipating as you bring the show to Broadway?

Well, we have a new cast, essentially—not 100 percent, but pretty much—so of course that always feels unknown, like “How do these people execute my movement?” And, in this very small period of time, how do I transmit the tonality and the muscularity of my particular movement vocabulary? It will be unfamiliar to them because they come from a different tradition.

I think of Broadway as very wet material. I think of it as hot and I think of David’s early material as cool. So when you’re dealing with cool–dry instead of hot–wet, it’s very different for a dancer. We’re talking about tonality, muscularity, isolation. It’s not just musical theater dancers, it would be any dancer that wasn’t trained in more postmodern tradition.

Having said that, I’ve had very good luck with the casts that I’ve worked with on this show. So I wouldn’t say I’m worried about it.

We don’t see immersive shows on Broadway often. Are you grappling with any expectations of what a Broadway show is supposed to look like?

Look, I just did American Utopia. And that’s the only Broadway thing I’ve done. I don’t have any knowledge of Broadway, I don’t tend to see Broadway shows. And aesthetically I’m very, very far away from what you would think of as a Broadway choreographer. So I don’t go in with any knowledge of what that audience is like.

The audience for American Utopia was there to see David Byrne. And they saw him, and it was his vision. So I essentially feel like it’s his vision again, and this is just as amazing. What we’re bringing musically is as groundbreaking as Bernstein when he was on Broadway; as Cole Porter when he was on Broadway; as George Gershwin when he was on Broadway. [Byrne] is accepting no tropes—no Broadway tropes are in that show. I don’t know if that’s conscious or unconscious. He’s just telling a story through his music. And to me, it will change how people think about music on Broadway, as much as Gershwin changed it and Porter changed it and Bernstein changed it. I think it will feel super-exciting to hear storytelling in a different musical voice.

What is the storytelling role of dance in the show?

Well, story is not my middle name; I am pretty narratively challenged. I would say more that I’m creating a movement logic. I think in any piece that is made by a choreographer who’s not in a tradition of musical theater, you teach the audience the vocabulary over time. So when they first see the material, it’s not going to be familiar. There’s a diagonal slant on what’s happening in the song. So I can’t say that there’s much storytelling—I would say there’s more music-telling.

You’ve made so much more work with David since Here Lies Love first premiered. How has your collaboration grown since then?

I feel like we’ve almost created a folk dance of our own, in that there’s a world of movement that has amassed coming from my body, into the music, into the dancers. It’s like one long piece for me. And I had a lot of cues from him about what he likes and where he’s coming from through references that we share. We both really love ceremony—we share videos back and forth of coronations across the world, these ancient rituals. So that is the way I understand what interests him.

So now that you have this larger pool of references and material, will there be more layers as you build the movement? Or are you going to be true to the original movement?

I want to do more layers, but I think they really want me to keep it the same. I’m not the lead author of the piece, Alex and David are. I love being in that position. I consider myself in service to David’s music, and to the director Alex Timbers. It’s a really interesting position, because choreographers, we love limits. And then when I’m in my own room, I have the opportunity to make anything I want, and have the burden and joy of being the sole author.

Anything else you want to mention?

This time, the thing that seems very, very cool to me is that we have Filipino producers. And they are brilliant. I don’t use that word loosely. That I have conversations with Jose [Antonio] Vargas is just insane. He’s so incredible and generous and deep. I just finished his book, Dear America, and I really recommend it. I think about all the things I could have done in my life, and it seems insane that I ended up doing this. How would I have ever met someone like Jose? He’s in a completely different universe. Those interactions are really deepening for me and anything that deepens for me deepens for the dancers through osmosis.

The post Behind the Scenes with Choreographer Annie-B Parson as <i>Here Lies Love</i> Moves to Broadway appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The latest result of their collaboration: Can’t I Keep Just One?, which premiered in March in San Francisco as part of Robert Moses’ Kin’s spring season, deals with truly harrowing subject matter. Performed in front of an excerpt of the video From Slavery to the White House, originally an evening-length production written and directed by Moses’ niece, Monica C. Moses, Can’t I Keep Just One? tells the story of an enslaved woman, Cora, who must go to great, horrifying lengths to ensure her baby is not sold, as her other children have been. “It’s heavy, but I’m glad it’s on the table,” says Bell. “I’m glad Robert is willing to go there—to make people think; to make people uncomfortable. He doesn’t just make pieces to make pieces.”

When Robert sends me videos, it’s like going into a closet of everything you’ve ever wanted and being like, “I’m gonna wear this jacket.” Often­ I will learn things and then splice them move for move, building my own transitions so that I’m a part of the piece instead of just reiterating what he’s already created.

I love gestures. Because I can add legs to them, I can make them faster, I can make them slower, I can repeat them. Sometimes, I tie them to words that the actress in the video is saying. Because it’s a lot to watch; it’s a lot to listen to; it’s a lot to comprehend. So I try to pull movement that can aid in the storytelling.

It’s not about the technique. It’s not about showing that I’ve been training since I was 3 years old—”Look, I can balance on one foot.” It’s about, how are you going to gel with the audience? That is the most important thing, making that connection.

I did a piece a few years ago [with Robert] called Black Woman, Black Girl. That was the first time that I was like, “Oh, it’s an emotional thing we’re trying to do here.” We’re not trying to wow people in the audience with dance; we’re trying to make people leave the theater changed.

To have Robert’s movement and splice in just a little bit of me, like a comma, it doesn’t feel like performing. It just feels like I’m having a conversation. I haven’t been able to experience that with any other company or any other performance. I’m literally going through something every time I do something with Robert. It’s deeper than dance.

It feels almost icky to bow at the end, and get the applause. You just want to let it resonate with people. It’s tough to put myself in the character’s shoes, and think that I am where I am today because of the sacrifices that other people before me were able to make.

The post Dancer Crystaldawn Bell on the Unconventional Process of Crafting Solos with Choreographer Robert Moses appeared first on Dance Magazine.

So it was somewhat surprising when, earlier this year, Lumberyard listed the Catskill property—which only just opened in 2018—for sale for $11.5 million. Once a sale is finalized, it will mark the end of what was seen as an essential program. The organization simultaneously announced a new focus on including neurodivergent audiences in mainstream theater.

Though this seems a significant pivot in mission, Lumberyard’s executive and artistic director, Adrienne Willis, says both programs represent the organization’s goal to “identify needs in the field that haven’t been met, and find ways of addressing those needs. That’s what we’ve always cared about most—how we can make the greatest impact on the field.”

Why shutter a program that was once so needed? Willis says part of the decision came down to changing objectives from the philanthropy community, which became less interested in funding the technical residency program and more interested in Lumberyard’s outreach work. (Though Lumberyard did host some bubble residencies during the pandemic, those programs were mostly funded through the artists and companies themselves rather than through Lumberyard.) But the organization also found itself sitting on a property suddenly­ worth much more than it had been a few years prior, as property values in the Hudson Valley skyrocketed during the pandemic. “It seemed like a great opportunity for us to be able to secure our future,” says Willis, “and to make sure we are going to be relevant for the next decade.” 

Lumberyard will keep advising dance companies on their technical processes, and Willis hopes that whoever buys the property will continue to support artists in this way. “It’s a concept that we put a lot of research and time and effort and money into, and it’s ready for someone to take it to the next level,” says Willis. 

Now, Lumberyard will also focus on Fresh Start, an arts intervention program launched in 2018 at facilities across New York State that aims to reduce youth rearrest rates, as well as its new initiative addressing neurodivergence inclusivity, Seats on the Spectrum. 

“Over the past few years we’ve been bringing together the medical community, the theater community, the autism community, and caregivers and parents to create some norms to allow access to mainstream performances,” says Willis, who has a child on the autism spectrum. Lumberyard intends to publish a white paper with its findings, and to pilot a program in commercial theaters that implements accommodations that might include reserving seats for neurodivergent audience members and caregivers, training ushers, and projecting performances on a live feed in the lobby. “The big goal is that anybody with autism can go to see a mainstream performance and have some accommodations,” Willis says. “So they can participate in theater without feeling like they don’t belong, or they’re meant to be at a special performance.”

The post Why Lumberyard Is Pivoting from Technical Residencies to Neurodivergence Inclusivity appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But it need not be this way, says Joseph Gatti, founder of United Ballet Theatre and creator of the Gatti Method, which emphasizes consistent weekly cross-training and conditioning for dancers. He says that while he believes typical dance training doesn’t adequately prepare dancers for the cardiovascular demands of performing, it’s possible to build stamina to dance stronger longer.

Train Anaerobically

By and large, dancers face anaerobic challenges to their stamina—in practice, this means short bursts of intensity with rests or low-intensity moments in between. And yet, most of the cross-training dancers do (like using cardio machines) is aerobic—meaning a sustained low- to medium-intensity effort, if it’s challenging their cardiovascular system at all. (Pilates and yoga, for instance, rarely get the heart pumping.)

While both aerobic and anaerobic training are important for dancers, Leanne Wonesh, an athletic trainer at Houston Methodist who works with Houston Ballet dancers, says anaerobic work will better prepare dancers for the demands of being onstage. That could mean adding some intervals to your treadmill run, but Wonesh emphasizes that there is no one-size-fits-all cross-training option, and that it should be something you enjoy, whether that’s playing a sport or taking a HIIT class. Whatever you do, start slow, she says, and vary your workouts (including your work-to-rest ratios) to continue to challenge your body.

At United Ballet Theatre, Gatti uses a VertiMax V8 Platform—a machine that allows dancers to move with bands that connect to various parts of the body and extend more than 30 feet—to add a resistance challenge (and, ultimately, a cardiovascular one) to dance-specific athletic movement. He encourages dancers to think beyond lifting weights and doing box jumps to focus on cross-training that’s more similar to what they actually do onstage.

Breathe With Intention

When your breathing starts to get out of control, it can feel impossible to rein in. So start paying attention to your breath before it gets labored, suggests Wonesh, who says that while breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth is the most common recommendation, do whatever you find allows you to take the fullest, deepest breaths. You may even want to choreograph your breath, says Broadway veteran Chryssie Whitehead, who teaches at Steps on Broadway and Broadway Dance Center, coordinating it with your movement like you would during a yoga class.

Most important, Wonesh says, is matching the length of your inhale with the length of your exhale. “Often, your inhale gets shorter and your exhale gets longer, so you’re losing more air than you’re taking in,” she says. Making sure they are equal—which could mean breathing in time with the music—will ensure you aren’t skimping on the inhales.

Try to Relax

Wonesh says that performance anxiety, including worries about running out of breath, will only make your heart rate spike higher and exacerbate the problem. Prioritize any preshow rituals that help you feel relaxed and centered, and should you feel stress cropping up onstage, “put it in a box,” says Wonesh. “Literally picture yourself putting it into a cardboard box—then the box is still in your brain, and you can unpack it later.”

All Singing, All Dancing

Musical theater dancers face a next-level stamina challenge: Singing while dancing. Broadway veteran and teacher Chryssie Whitehead prepares students by getting them singing as early in class as possible, even encouraging them to sing along during warm-up. Sounding good isn’t what’s important, she says—it’s getting your body used to the demands­ of doing both. She also recommends singing while doing light cardio, like jogging.

Spice Up Studio Time

During large classes or long rehearsals, dancers can have extended periods of time waiting for their turn to dance, resulting in a lower work-to-rest ratio than what they experience onstage. Athletic trainer Leanne Wonesh suggests staying active during these downtime moments and keeping the heart rate up with light cardio, like jumping jacks. Not only will this help build stamina, she says, but it will reduce injury risk by keeping you warm for when you do have to jump back into dancing.

The post Expert Tips for Boosting Your Stamina appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Indeed, when yielded with intention and clarity, the eyes can be a powerful tool for communicating with the audience, conveying emotion and character, and connecting with fellow performers. But the eyes can reveal hesitancy just as easily­ as they can project confidence, and, too often, they are an afterthought. Ramaswamy, Youth America Grand Prix artistic director Larissa Saveliev and choreographer Marc Kimelman offer tips to ensure your eyes are conveying exactly what you want them to say.

Start Early

Often, dancers don’t begin thinking about their focus and how they’re using their eyes until they are onstage in dress rehearsals, says Saveliev. But such an essential performance element should really be incorporated from the very beginning, she says, in rehearsals and even in class. Ramaswamy agrees, and encourages her students to be “on” at all times in class to begin developing their focus early.

This means getting out of the habit of looking in the mirror, says Kimelman, a musical theater choreographer who teaches at Broadway Dance Center. If you aren’t able to cover the mirror, try looking slightly above your head instead of directly­ at yourself, he suggests, and focus on connecting with fellow dancers rather than on catching your reflection.

Be Clear

As simple as using the eyes may seem, they have myriad purposes, from directing the audience’s attention, to telling a story, to keeping track of your lines. Avoid having distracting darting eyes, which can convey nervousness, by choreographing them just as you do the rest of your body, suggests Kimelman. To make this choreography of the eyes feel natural, allow yourself time to play with where your focus should go before getting particular about it. Then, he says, be as intentional with where you’re looking as you are when you’re spotting.

When the eyes are communicating something specific to the audience in bharatanatyam (showing them that you’ve noticed something in the distance, for instance, or that your emotion is shifting from realization to disappointment), Ramaswamy thinks of the movement of the eyes as dialogue: It has to flow, be clear and linger enough to be legible.

Cheat When You Need To

Depending on the genre of dance and how naturalistic the tone is, you may want to adjust exactly where you’re looking in order for it to make sense to the audience. In bharatanatyam, for example, while following the hand is often a strong choice for the gaze, if the dancer’s hand is directly to their side, they might turn their head and look a few inches higher than the hand itself, showing the eyes and glance to the audience, says Ramaswamy. Similarly, if you’re looking at something high up or low to the ground, consider cheating down or up so that the audience sees more than the whites of ­your eyes. ­

You can also use your eyes to expand your presence onstage:­ “Your hand only reaches so far, but your eyes can reach further,” Ramaswamy­ says.

Tell a Story

In daily conversation, your eyes are key to communicating to others what you’re thinking and feeling, and the same can be said for when you’re performing. Expressing yourself with your eyes onstage is a combination of naturalism and stylization, says Ramaswamy—tapping into what your character is feeling and then enhancing it.

Kimelman learned to do this as a young dancer, when in a musical comedy class he would often start by mouthing the words to a song while he danced, and then eventually would take away the lip-syncing but keep the feelings and facial expressions that came with it.

Of course, pay attention to the context of the performance so that your eyes’ expressions can be seen, but don’t become cartoonish: A 400-seat theater will demand a different approach than an intimate black box or an immersive show.
The eyes “connect the house of the body with the house of the mind,” says Kimelman, giving audiences access to your inner world. “I don’t need to know what your thought is. But I need to know that there is one. It can be anything, but I need to know that something important is happening in your head.”

The post Expert Tips for Cultivating a Powerful, Captivating Gaze appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Lack of clarity around how much a job pays can be frustrating for seekers of all kinds. But in the dance industry, where gigs are often underpaid or unpaid, and where most performers string together many opportunities over the course of a year, the lack of wage transparency can be particularly fraught. Two new laws in New York City and California seek to rectify this, by requiring employers with four or more employees (in the case of New York City’s law) or 15 or more employees (in the case of California’s SB 1162) to include salary information in all job postings, or risk paying penalties.

When New York City’s law took effect in November, service organization Dance/NYC immediately adjusted its popular job listings page to require salary information for all postings. But Alejandra Duque Cifuentes, Dance/NYC’s strategy and research consultant and former executive director, says the organization and the wider dance world need more guidance from the city to implement the law effectively. For one: The law states that employers must list a “good faith” salary range, though some have misinterpreted the definition as outlined by the city, in some cases leading to ranges that are too large to be useful. (The California law has no language about the size of the pay scale listed.) Listings for full-time jobs on the Dance/NYC site as of press time have ranges of up to $20,000, and others for hourly work list a range as large as $40 per hour. (When the law first went into effect, postings in other industries went viral for ranges of $100,000 or more.) 

While neither law directly addresses the low salaries rampant in the dance industry, they do give dance workers the agency to choose the jobs they want to audition for or apply to based on how much they pay, says Tim Cynova, principal at Work. Shouldn’t. Suck., former co-CEO of Fractured Atlas and former executive director of Parsons Dance. This, he says, could put pressure on organizations compensating on the low end. BRAT, too, hopes that employers having to share their rates with the world will lead them to reconsider how much they’re offering—or that rates will eventually be forced up when low-paying jobs fail to attract talent. 

On the other hand, Duque Cifuentes worries that without proper support, organizations with minuscule budgets may get left behind when their low-end rates can’t budge. “Because it’s one thing to say ‘This is a requirement,’ and it’s another thing to help people have the resources to do it, so that we don’t find ourselves losing the diversity of organizational types or organizational sizes or types of work,” she says.

Cynova says that a positive but temporarily painful likely result of these laws is the systematization of pay structures at small dance organizations that don’t have robust human resources departments. “What’s required of wage transparency is a structure that’s clear and consistent aboutwhy one role is comped this and another role is comped that,” he says. “And that takes a lot of work.”

But both Cynova and Duque Cifuentes hope that wage transparency will help the dance industry move towards more equitable compensation—and that it will empower workers. “It changes who has power in an organization, who has information—the opaque system only works for some,” says Cynova. “I think in the end it’s going to make a healthier dance ecosystem.”

The post What New Wage Transparency Laws Mean for the Dance Industry appeared first on Dance Magazine.

San Francisco–based choreographer Amy Seiwert, who has often looked to Val Caniparoli as a mentor, agrees: “The way the field is changing, we’re more cognizant that mentorship shouldn’t just be like what happened with me and Val—it was very organically developed, which was great,” she says. “But we need to look beyond those immediate relationships, because who are we missing when we only look in our own circles?”

Thankfully, structured mentorship programs—such as the artistic fellowship at Seiwert’s company, Imagery—are also becoming increasingly common. Here’s the scoop on seven of them, plus insight into what makes choreographic mentorships work.

Amy Seiwert’s Imagery Artistic Fellowship

What it is: A two-year program launched in 2018 in which fellows receive mentorship from both Seiwert and Imagery’s managing director Annika Presley, plus a stipend and two commissions.

The origin of the fellowship: Seiwert was inspired to launch a program that combined artistic and administrative mentorship after noticing a pattern of choreographers being tapped for artistic director positions without training in key leadership skills, like reading a budget. So far, the program is working as intended: The inaugural fellow, Ben Needham-Wood, is now serving as artistic director of Boulder Ballet.

What fellows do: On the administrative side, fellows learn the ropes of running a dance organization and then begin to lead their own projects within Imagery. On the artistic side, fellows observe Seiwert in rehearsal, receive feedback from her (on everything from the choreography itself to how they run their rehearsal rooms), attend and analyze local performances and more.

The Young Choreographer’s Festival

What it is: Founded in 2010 by Emily Bufferd, the New York City–based Young Choreographer’s Festival presents promising choreographers ages 18–25 who may be too early-career for other festivals. Participating choreographers receive high-quality photos and videos of their work to use to submit to other opportunities, as well as a mentor who supports them through the process and an industry panel.

What the mentorship looks like: Bufferd says mentors (including Sheila Barker, Ginger Cox, Maurice Brandon Curry, Pascal Rekoert and Wes Veldink) may help choreographers with anything from editing their work down to a festival-appropriate length to landing an agent. Though mentors and mentees are only required to meet eight times over the course of four months, many relationships last far longer, says Bufferd, with mentors often hiring their mentees or connecting them with job opportunities.

Structuring a smart mentorship program: There are power dynamics at play when pairing a young choreographer with a more established one, so giving both artists clear guidelines is essential, says Bufferd. For instance, mandating a certain number of communication points ensures that the mentee doesn’t feel like they are “bothering” the mentor when reaching out.

DEVICES: Choreographic Intensive & Mentorship Program

What it is: Since 2014, Doug Varone and Dancers has held this intimate weeklong intensive in New York City, focusing on choreographic craft, followed by several months of one-on-one mentorship with Varone before a public showing of work.

The role of the mentor: Varone sees himself as a sounding board, with the goal of helping the artist discover their own voice. “I try to put trust in them, that there’s no right or wrong way, that the most important thing they should be experiencing is the process of unearthing who they are,” he says.

BalletX’s Choreographic Fellowship

What it is: A paid, season-long fellowship that pairs one emerging choreographer with one established one as they both make works on the Philadelphia-based company. (Currently, fellow Gary W. Jeter II is working with mentor Darrell Grand Moultrie.)
How it works: Over the course of at least three to five meetings before and during the rehearsal process, the fellow might bring the mentor questions or concerns, ask for feedback or discuss navigating a career as a choreographer, explains BalletX artistic and executive director Christine Cox.

How mentorship can benefit mentors, too: “I’ve heard from mentors that it has given them the opportunity to talk about their work and really hear themselves share their process, which strengthens their own sense of self and competence,” says Cox.

Jacob’s Pillow’s Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellows Program

What it is: Founded in 2018, the 10-day program invites eight early- to mid-career choreographers (who may each bring two dancers) to the Jacob’s Pillow campus for process-oriented exploration and feedback, led by esteemed dance field mentors Risa Steinberg and Dianne McIntyre. Choreographers receive housing and a stipend, as well as 10 hours of one-on-one continued mentorship with the artist of their choosing upon completion of the program.

What fellows do: Choreographers spend time working with their dancers (without the expectation of making anything), receiving feedback from Steinberg and McIntyre, hearing from other guest artists and industry professionals, exploring the Pillow archives, participating in roundtable discussions, watching performances and more.

The mentor’s responsibility: “Mentorship for a choreographer is when the mentor is free of their own aesthetic preferences,” says McIntyre. “You see what the person is going for and you help guide them to what it is that they want, and also push them into new ways of doing things while maintaining the specialness of who they are.”

CHIME (Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange)

What it is: Launched in 2004 by San Francisco–based choreographer Margaret Jenkins, the program currently supports two to three selected Bay Area choreographers with a stipend, which includes funds for a rehearsal space rental, and one-on-one mentorship. The yearlong program culminates with a live performance, where mentees present what they’ve been working on (which doesn’t have to be a finished product).

The long payoff of mentorship: “When you have someone who mentors you, you may not have it come to fruition for a number of years,” says Jenkins. “Every so often, when I’m making a work, I’ll look at it and think something particular about it. And I’ll think, Oh, that’s what so-and-so meant 10 years ago, when I wasn’t ready to hear it or didn’t hear it in that way.”

RoundAntennae

What it is: Led by Bay Area–based choreographer KT Nelson, the informal, rolling program includes group discussions, one-on-one mentoring with Nelson and other facilitators, and occasional residencies and showings.

Why Nelson started it: “As a choreographer, I realized I was missing some sort of internal infrastructure to make the work I want to make,” she says. “I felt myself trying to please a lot of people. So I wanted to address that early on in the development of the choreographer. I was also looking for a different form to pass some knowledge on, and allow me to be around a younger generation of thinking in an intimate way.”

The post 7 Mentorship Programs that Pair Early-Career Choreographers with Experienced Artists appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Train Your Brain

Attempting a fast sequence without being 100 percent certain where your feet should be is a recipe for getting your legs tangled. That’s why former Houston Ballet principal Lauren Anderson has her students start by just saying the rhythm of a footwork sequence out loud—usually with “ya-da-da-da”s—before trying it with their feet. “If you understand the rhythm, it’s much easier to get your feet to do what you want them to do,” says Anderson, who now serves as associate director of education and community engagement for Houston Ballet Academy. “It’s amazing how much quicker you get results.”

Visualization can also be key to nailing fast footwork, says Lauren McIntyre, an athletic trainer who works with dancers at NYU Langone’s Harkness Center for Dance Injuries. Repetition is essential to gaining confidence in such movement, but it’s important­ not to overdo it. “There’s so much power in reviewing it with your mind or doing it with your hands,” she says. “You can use your mind to integrate into your body without hurting yourself.”

Remember Your Upper Body

It’s easy to be so focused on what your lower body is doing that you neglect your top half. But incorporating your upper body is essential—both to giving your legs and feet a much-needed assist and to making the movement look effortless.

One cue that helped flamenco dancer and teacher Laura Peralta’s posture when she started learning footwork: thinking of lifting herself out of a pool. “It’s a totally different cue from ‘chest high, shoulders down,’ ” she says. “Lifting that little bit in your core frees up your legs so much.” Another simple way to ensure you’re dancing with your whole body, says Peralta, is to avoid marking your arms, even when you’re first learning tricky footwork.

If you’re struggling with fast foot movement, you may want to look to an unexpected but frequent culprit in the upper­ body, says Anderson: the head. “It’s the heaviest part of the body,” she says. “So if it is in the wrong place—a lot of times it’s going the opposite way—it’s going to jack you up.” Make sure you know where your head should be placed, says Anderson, and where you should be looking, since “your eyes can get you there quicker—your eyes can get to the finish line before your body does.” Mind that you aren’t holding tension in your neck as you power through footwork, too, she says.

Agility Tips From an Athletic Trainer

Fast footwork relies on agility, says athletic trainer Lauren McIntyre, who works with dancers at NYU Langone’s Harkness Center for Dance Injuries. Use her recommendations to build the speed and coordination needed for quick movement.

Rest up. Both mental and physical fatigue impair coordination, says McIntyre, so be sure you’re getting enough rest. Also take note of when in your training you’re tackling rapid footwork: “You may find that fast footwork at the end of a class or training session doesn’t yield the same results as if you’d gotten warmed up and then dived right into it,” she says. Ensure you aren’t skimping on carbohydrates, too—you need them to power quick bursts of energy.

Lean into athleticism. Athletes and dancers share a need for agility, and McIntyre says training with exercises more commonly seen on the field—like ladder drills and dot drills—can help dancers with dynamic movement. Plus, she says: “It takes some of the pressure off—they don’t feel they need to be as perfect because it’s so different.” For younger dancers, McIntyre recommends not specializing too soon; playing sports alongside dance can develop athletic agility.

Boost your balance. Often, footwork requires being on one leg and quick shifts of weight between the feet. McIntyre recommends cultivating the needed stability through balance work: Try a star excursion exercise, where you stand in the middle of a circle of dots and tap each one with the same foot. Working on an unstable surface like a wobble board can improve your reactivity, as can any exercise with perturbations (like when you’re balancing and a partner gently taps you). “That’s what it’s all about when we’re doing fast-paced movement,” she says. “How fast can our body react?”

Don’t get caught up in perfectionism. Fast sequences usually require lots of practice to make perfect. But running footwork over and over again when you’re tired isn’t always productive, and can lead to injury. Instead, says McIntyre, use visualization for extra practice, or allow yourself to leave a movement behind for the day and give your body time to process it.

The post How to Conquer Quick, Complex Footwork appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Ramaswamy’s latest work is even more ambitious: Invisible Cities, which will premiere this month at the Great Northern Festival in Minneapolis, features 12 dancers who specialize in distinct styles, including bharatanatyam (all three Ramaswamys will perform), breaking, contemporary/African diasporic­ and Gaga, plus live-drawn animated projections by artist Kevork Mourad. 

The work is inspired by the philosophical novel Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino. What got you interested in using that text?

I’ve known of Calvino for a while. I was an English lit major, so a lot of my work is rooted in literature. But I was really struck by the title—it’s so evocative. The book has a through line of this fictional conversation between the emperor Kublai Khan and the explorer Marco Polo; this idea of a colonizer who isn’t able to actually travel to the lands that he’s colonized and is asking the explorer to tell him what the cities look like. You don’t know if Marco Polo is telling the truth or whether it’s all imagined. The conversations have these ideas of, What are we doing to the environment? What are we doing to each other? It’s why I feel all these different forms uniting onstage makes a statement about working together to make something beautiful. 

Where do the live animated projections fit into your vision for the piece?

About a year and a half ago, I was speaking with one of the commissioners of the work, Kate Nordstrum of the Great Northern Festival, about how when I read this book I just see visuals. I don’t only see dance, I really see visual art being a part of it. And she suggested a brilliant artist named Kevork Mourad. 

How have you been navigating making your own choreographic work while still dancing with your family at Ragamala? 

We’re just branches off the same tree. Everything I do, the way that I create work, is all learned from them. We don’t actually see it as separate at all. So they’re in Invisible Cities and I’m hoping it will eventually become part of a Ragamala show. The reason I even started making my own work is because I wanted to know what was in there—what is different about me, what is shared. Because my mom was born in India and came here when she was in her late 20s. My sister was born in India and came here when she was a toddler. I was born here. And we all have these different experiences of living in both countries, and being from both places. So it’s kind of interesting to see how each of our work manifests out of that. But it’s all in a shared ethos.

The post Ashwini Ramaswamy on Her New Genre-Expansive Work, Invisible Cities appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Rely Less on the Visual

Anyone who has suddenly felt wobbly onstage or when turned away from the mirror can attest to the fact that being able to see yourself helps maintain balance. But relying too heavily on visual feedback means that the proprioceptors, especially the important ones in the ankles, don’t have to work as hard, and thus aren’t as strong, says Becker.

“Messing with the visual system” can help you learn to rely less on seeing yourself, says Becker. This could mean spending more time facing away from the mirror, or even closing your eyes during appropriate moments at barre or other times when it’s safe to do so.

Avoid Gripping and Stiffness

When you feel yourself starting to fall off balance, it’s only natural to want to hang on for dear life. But gripping or stiffening up is usually counter-effective. “If you’re rigid, if there’s no breath within it, you can easily knock that over,” says Angela Buccinni Butch, a former dancer and the founder and artistic director of ABCirque and the circus school The Muse Brooklyn, where she teaches acro-balance and partner acrobatics. “There has to be a sense of rootedness, where you’re actually giving your weight to your partner or the ground. Because if you’re fighting the ground, the ground is always going to win.”

Becker often sees dancers grip the tibialis anterior tendon on the top of the foot during balances. “That takes our hips out of the equation, and we have to rely more on the foot and the ankle,” she says. “We get into these patterns that aren’t as stable as if we use those big muscles up at the hip.” If you notice yourself recruiting that tendon during balances (“If you can see it, you’re in trouble,” Becker says), focus on engaging and strengthening the glutes, and relaxing the toes into the floor.

Stiff balances also often miss the aesthetic mark, and lack the sense of freedom that makes watching someone balance so exciting. Andrea Long, the principal of upper-middle school programs at the School of Philadelphia Ballet, says if hanging on to a balance means lifting the shoulders or gripping, it’s time to “let that balance go, because it’s not going to come—it’s not coming from the right place.” Just because you’re balancing, doesn’t mean you stop dancing, she says. Your balances should be “alive.”

6 Exercises to Try

Incorporate these exercises from physical therapist Dr. Emily Becker to build strength and train your visual, vestibular and somatosensory systems for better balances. “Focus on a different thing every day so that it stays interesting and your body doesn’t adapt too quickly,” she suggests.

1. Fondu with eyes closing: Without holding on to a barre, complete a fondu to the front (either on relevé or flat). When you return to a coupé plié position, look up, then look down, then, with the head in a neutral position, close the eyes, then open them. Repeat 8–10 times, then switch sides.
2. Jumping arabesques with vestibular challenge: Beginning in a parallel position facing forward, jump to face the right side of the room, landing in plié and with the left foot in a parallel coupé. Extend the left leg and arm into a second arabesque. From there, look up, then down, then right, then left. Continue by jumping to face the back of the room with the opposite leg in coupé and repeating the exercise. Continue to rotate and switch sides, for 10–15 reps or until fatigued.
3. One-legged weighted-arm circles: Standing on one leg in a parallel plié, hold a weighted ball above your head with the arms straight. Move the ball forward and backwards, side to side, and then in a circle. Continue moving for 15–30 seconds or until fatigued, then switch sides. To make it more difficult, look up at the ball. (Becker particularly recommends this one for dancers who lift their partners.)
4. Standing bird-dog: Beginning in a turned-in first arabesque with the standing leg in plié, bring the elbow and knee in towards the torso to meet one another, then extend back out. Repeat 10–15 times or until fatigued, then switch sides.
5. Standing C-curve: Stand with one leg in a parallel coupé, the other leg parallel and bent, and the arms overhead. Extend the working leg to the side while bending at the waist to reach the arms towards the leg (forming a “C”), then return to the starting position. Repeat 10–15 times or until fatigued, then switch sides.
6. Rotating skaters: Beginning in a parallel coupé plié, jump laterally towards the working leg while rotating 90 degrees. Continue jumping back and forth between the two legs while rotating to each side of the room. Repeat 10–15 times or until fatigued.

The post Balance Longer With These Expert Tips appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Break It Down

Although choreographed, falls often need to appear spontaneous; falling safely actually means knowing exactly how to get from vertical to horizontal. “If the pathway is unknown, that’s where the anxiety can come in,” says Allysen Hooks, a New York City–based contemporary dancer, choreographer and teacher. “Break it down first—what is going to happen in my joints in order to get closer to the floor? What part of my body is going to touch the floor first? And then once the pathway feels clear, try it with more momentum or surrender to gravity.”

Even when you know the mechanics of a fall inside and out, there will still be an element of surprise that, hopefully, audiences can feel too. “That moment of giving in to gravity will always be spontaneous—it’s an external force acting upon your body,” Hooks says. “It will be a surprise to your body every time, so it’s just about allowing yourself to have fun on that ride.”

Disperse the Impact

Falling with minimum discomfort and injury risk comes down to physics: The more surface area you can get on the ground at once, the more you disperse the impact. This means trying to fall on large, padded areas, like the side of the thigh and the glutes, says athletic trainer Megan Richardson, rather than on bony areas, like hands and knees.

At STREB, dancers learn to land completely flush with the ground, says Joseph, usually onto a mat. “No matter what happens in the air, your body is aware enough to arrange itself quickly and take that hit flush,” she says.

Soften Into It

There are infinite ways to transition from standing to the floor, points out Hooks, from crumbling to spilling to diving. But no matter the quality of the fall, finding softness can make it less effortful, and potentially less painful. For one, softening the joints can help you get closer to the floor before you actually have to fall, making the distance you need to travel much smaller. It can also make for a smoother, safer impact: “If your body is tense as you approach the floor, that’s when you’re more prone to injury or just discomfort,” Hooks says. “Instead, think of suppleness, of the pliability of the joints, of surrendering into gravity.”

The Accidental Fall

Unintentional falls are an unfortunate but inevitable part of being both a dancer and a human. Whether it happens onstage or off, being comfortable with falling can help you rebound faster and reduce risk of injury. “If we’ve practiced it, then when it accidentally happens, our motor system and our nervous system will already have ideas of how to fix the situation,” says athletic trainer Megan Richardson. “But if we don’t practice it and we’re always upright, our system’s not going to respond. So we want to make sure we’re humans first, and humans fall.”

Strengthen to Decelerate

Strong muscles can help decelerate your fall as you approach the ground, says athletic trainer Megan Richardson. “If you’re wiggly and wobbly, then you have no real architecture to support yourself before you fall, and you’ve got all this momentum slapping you down to the floor,” she says. Use these three exercises, simulating the mechanics of falling forward, backward and sideways, to build strength for more control in your falls.

Kneeling forward hinge: Kneel on a pad or mat, with a friend holding down your feet. Hinge forward as far as you can, maintaining a straight line from the knees up to the top of the head, then pull yourself back up using your hamstrings and glutes. Do as many reps as you can while maintaining proper form. To advance the exercise, hinge forward as far as you can with control, and then fall the rest of the way to the floor, catching yourself with your hands, with elbows bent.

Kneeling backward hinge: Kneel with a ball between your knees, a few feet away from a TheraBand secured to a wall or barre. Holding the band, squeeze the ball as you hinge backward as far as you can without breaking the straight line from the knees to the top of the head. Use your quads and abdominals (with the support of the band) to lift yourself back into an upright position, being careful not to arch the back or sink the seat backward. Do as many reps as you can with proper form—if you’re able to do up to 20 reps, try without the band.

Curtsy lunges into skaters: Begin with alternating curtsy lunges: Standing with your feet hip-width apart, take a big step back with your right foot, crossing it behind your left foot and bending your knees so that your right knee hovers above the floor. Keep your torso upright and the hips square. Repeat on the other side. After 8–10 reps, advance to skaters by jumping instead of stepping, leaning slightly forward and keeping the back foot lifted as you land.

The post Tips for Safer, More Expressive Falls appeared first on Dance Magazine.

That was the impetus for the inaugural 2020 iteration of the WADEintoACTIVISM festival, a 16-day virtual event featuring performances, panels, lectures and more related to the theme of ending gender-based violence. WADEintoACTIVISM is back this year (there was no festival in 2021) as a hybrid event, with in-person performances at New York City’s Arts on Site on November 25 (the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women) and December 10 (Human Rights Day) bookending a slate of free virtual offerings.

Violence against women takes many forms, says Matteini,­ and the festival seeks to capture this breadth: The live events feature works tied to the festival’s themes by artists like contemporary Indian choreographer Ananya Chatterjea, Butoh dancer Vangeline and Isadora Duncan interpreter Lori Belilove. Digital programming includes conversations with activist, performer and drag queen Donald C. Shorter Jr. about queer visibility, with Elizabeth Yntema of the Dance Data Project about gender equity in the dance industry, and with participating choreographers diving deeper into their work. 

Though Matteini hopes that the festival will one day produce 16 days of in-person events, the hybrid model allows WADEintoACTIVISM to include perspectives on how gender-based violence plays out around the world, with performances and conversations with artists and activists from Palestine, France, Lebanon, Canada and more. Matteini­ also plans to organize watch parties for college students during certain events, like a conversation on consent education and sexual-assault prevention with nonprofit Speak About It. 

“We are dancers, we’re not policymakers,” says Matteini. “But our responsibility is to bring awareness, and hopefully bring some accountability.” 

The post WADEintoACTIVISM’s First Hybrid Festival Aims to Raise Awareness About Gender-Based Violence appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Zbikowski’s thrilling, highly athletic style is unique. But the need for dancers to be able to explode across the stage—to “eat up the space,” as some teachers say—is not. Even in dance forms with a focus on elegance or lightness, being able to travel further, and thus take up more space, can result in more- exciting, more-dynamic performances.

But “eating up the space” can present psychological challenges—sometimes asking dancers to reject socialization that has encouraged them to take up less space—as well as physical ones.

Change Your Mindset

If you’ve often been told to dance bigger, or if you struggle to keep up with the group during traveling movement, it may be worth looking inward and interrogating the way you’ve been trained. The world at large teaches women and other marginalized identities to take up less space, says Zbikowski, and traditional studio culture often doesn’t address this in a way that would empower dancers to take up more. She says she often encounters students in her classes at The Ohio State University who have fear about moving with power and explosiveness, or have a psychological block. “You’re up against this pretty picture of what people think dance is,” she says. “And that sometimes locks people in their bodies.”

Internalizing the idea that, as Zbikowski says, “everybody has the right to take up as much space as they can in a dance studio” is not as simple as flipping a switch. Know that, like any new way of moving, this may feel unnatural at first, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong, she says.

Use the Floor

In order to travel powerfully through space, dancers need to feel connected to the floor, so they can really push off of it, says Ivalyo Alexiev, a faculty member at Boston Ballet School. During his own dance career, Alexiev found that taking barre in socks helped him understand the relationship of his feet to the floor, and he recommends that dancers who typically dance in shoes experience the floor in this way during barre, if they are seeking­ more groundedness. Zbikowski agrees that using the floor is key to explosive movement, in any style: “The ground will help you get to where you need to be, whether it’s up or down or out or in,” she says. “It’s what connects us all.”

Channel Athleticism

For many dancers, one challenge lies in being able to tear through space while also maintaining the technique and artistry that the choreography demands. Zbikowski, whose approach is focused more on functionality and sensation than on making shapes, suggests that dancers tap into their power by (at least temporarily) allowing themselves to not care about what their movement looks like. To her, “dancer or athlete” is not a binary choice, and she encourages dancers not to put up a wall between dance technique and other types of movement. She helps her students channel athleticism through an “offense/defense” exercise, in which dancers partner up and “defend their space” without touching. “You’re not allowed to let your partner get by you,” she says. “So in order to make those quick breakaways, you need to drop your weight into the floor and leverage it in a specific direction. Putting people in these kinds of scenarios lets the body break out of certain strict regimens and discover things for itself.”

Short Dancers, Fret Not

Petite dancers, or dancers with short legs, may feel like they are at a disadvantage when it comes to traveling far and fast. But this isn’t necessarily the case, says athletic trainer Lauren McIntyre. Short dancers actually have potential advantages, she says, like having a lower center of gravity and the ability to turn over their stride faster.

Build Power

Here’s how to prime your body for explosive movement, according to athletic trainer Lauren McIntyre, who works with dancers at NYU Langone Health’s Harkness Center for Dance Injuries

Fuel smart. In order to explode into space, your body needs to have carbohydrates available to energize that movement, says McIntyre, who cautions that low-carb diets likely won’t aid dancers in developing more power.

Train for power. Keep in mind that endurance training, strength training and power training are different, says McIntyre, and that most of the cross-training dancers are already doing is most likely more geared towards the former two. Plyometrics and HIIT can be useful for building power, she says, as can lifting heavy weights to build muscle. She also recommends using slightly lighter weights—about 30 percent of your maximum load—but performing faster reps, especially during the concentric part of the action (for example, the “up” part of a weighted squat). Before increasing load or speed, ensure you are confident in your form.

Rest up. Tired, overworked muscles will struggle to move explosively, says McIntyre, who cites a study showing that as fatigue increases, velocity decreases. This can be tricky for dancers with demanding schedules, especially if they are incorporating cross-training like plyometrics, which can be key for building power but demands proper recovery time in order to reap the benefits. She suggests that if dancers add cross-training to their routine, they look at their schedule as a whole and consider where they can build in rest—even if it means one less dance class per week.

Tailor your warm-up. When performing choreography featuring big, explosive movement—especially when that movement comes at the beginning of the piece—make sure your warm-up involves activating the fast-twitch muscle fibers you’ll need. In addition to dynamic stretching, foam rolling and getting your heart rate up, McIntyre recommends doing plyometric drills—like butt kicks, high knees or jumping jacks—to “rev your engine,” she says. “It’s about getting that metabolic pathway activated.”

The post 4 Tips for Traveling Further and More Powerfully Through Space appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Yet Lerman was also frustrated by the feedback she was receiving on her own work, and by the idea that artists should simply sit back and receive critique rather than engage with it. “I hated being misunderstood,” she says. “I felt like we should have a dialogue.”

Generating feedback that feels aligned with the goals of your work can be a challenge—as can knowing what to do with that information once you get it. And even when feedback is conveyed with care, it can sting. Lerman’s Critical Response Process, which she developed beginning in 1990 based on her own dissatisfaction with giving and receiving feedback, addresses some of these issues in its four-step process. Its central tenets include the idea that makers should have an active role in the critique of their work, and that the best feedback is generated when there is a foundation of trust, as well as a spirit of generosity and goodwill.

Feedback can come in forms as casual as inviting a mentor to watch a rehearsal, or as formal as a traditional audience talkback. However it happens, feedback is an invaluable part of the creative process, especially for early-career choreographers, says Spectrum Dance Theater artistic director Donald Byrd. “Feedback is an antidote against hubris,” he says. “It’s an opportunity to learn; to know something you didn’t know before.”

Know What You’re Looking For

Soliciting any and all opinions about your work may very well produce some interesting interpretations. But you’re more likely to generate useful feedback by being intentional about what you’re asking for and why. “Be really clear about the question you want to ask,” says Gesel Mason, choreographer and faculty member at University of Texas at Austin. Mason, who performed with Lerman’s Dance Exchange, often uses CRP or aspects of the practice, which entails asking viewers specific questions about what they saw.

This clarity will help you shape the conversation: Do you want to ask directed questions about a section you’ve been struggling with, or about whether a theme is emerging clearly? Or do you want to facilitate a viewer’s experience of the piece, letting them lead with their impressions and questions? Early in Byrd’s career, for example, he was hungry for any responses he could get and eager to find out what his work was “missing.” Now, he is more selective about who he asks, and is mostly interested in whether his ideas are coming across.

Your motive will also shape whose feedback you seek: An artist from another discipline? A dancemaker who shares—or doesn’t—your sensibilities? A trusted friend? An educated stranger? Byrd most values opinions from those who he knows won’t approach the work with a strong bias towards their own aesthetic preferences and values. Soliciting opinions from those who you are hoping your work will speak to, says Mason, helps ensure you aren’t in an echo chamber of friends and colleagues.

Beyond “Did You Like It?”

Though it’s natural to be curious about whether a viewer “got” your piece, contemporary choreographer Christy Funsch steers clear of this idea when she facilitates talkbacks, pointing out that rarely is it so simple that a work is either understood or not. Instead, she’s “found that it’s more helpful for choreographers to receive a list of images, an expression of an emotional experience that a viewer went through,” says Funsch, who splits her time between New York City and San Francisco. “Try to get away from ‘answers’ and instead acknowledge the incredible thing that dance can do, which is make us find relational truths and reverberations that don’t lead to a single answer.”

Byrd feels similarly. “I know that not everybody’s gonna like what I do, and is that really the thing that I want?” He finds it more useful when viewers ask him questions about a piece, and, similarly, when he gives feedback, he avoids suggesting solutions and just says what he sees.

Feedback Feelings

Because receiving feedback can make you feel vulnerable, it’s tempting to wait until a work is fully baked to invite others in. But, says Amy Seiwert, artistic director of San Francisco–based contemporary ballet company Imagery, waiting until you feel ready often means waiting too long, when there’s no time left to make substantive adjustments.­ Solicit feedback early and often, she suggests, especially when you don’t feel ready: One of her most generative experiences was during a residency when her mentor, Val Caniparoli, would watch an hour of rehearsal every week, whether or not she had anything specifically prepared to show him.

Asking for feedback from people you already trust can make the experience feel less scary. But trust can also be developed in the process itself: Lerman’s CRP is set up to build trust between the maker and the responder throughout the four steps, which begin with viewers simply stating observations in step one and end with sharing opinions in step four. This process also helps artists be more receptive: “If you get defensive, you might as well stop—you aren’t going to learn anything,” Lerman says.

Learning how you respond to feedback is as important as the feedback itself, says Byrd. “At the beginning, you need to take it all in so you can learn to manage not only what you’re hearing, but your feelings about what you’re hearing,” he says.

Now What?

Byrd says that it took him years to realize that feedback is just information for him to use as he wishes. But decid­ing how, exactly, to use it—if at all—can be fraught, says Columbus-based choreographer Bebe Miller, as there’s a risk of moving in the direction of what someone else was expecting, rather than what you’re trying to make.

Even comments that are at first puzzling can spark creativity: Unsure what to make of a critique that her movement phrases are too short in length, Lerman began playing: “What if I thought about too-short lighting, or too-short costumes, or a too-short program note?”

When Mason facilitates feedback sessions among her students, she often has the choreographer implement one change right then. She’ll ask how it felt, what they learned and what they want to take or leave from that experiment.

Critiques that you don’t agree with can be instructive too, says Seiwert. She remembers a time that someone didn’t like a song she was using, and after listening to it over and over again and reconsidering her decision, she emerged able to articulate even more clearly why the song was exactly right. “Sometimes you just need someone to point out that your glasses are sitting on top of your head—you have everything you need, you’re just not seeing it right now,” she says. “To me, that’s where the feedback can be really effective. Because the choreographic process can be so isolating, but it doesn’t need to be that way.”

The Value of Embodied Feedback

Nonverbal feedback, communicated through movement itself, can be illuminating in its directness—you don’t have to imagine how a different approach might shift a piece, you can see it happen in real time.

For contemporary choreographer Christy Funsch, one way of eliciting this is by setting up opportunities for dancers to exert agency over the work, such as asking them to “perform” a piece that isn’t finished as if it were. “Performer choice is a really particular kind of feedback,” she says. San Francisco choreographer Hope Mohr, too, sees “collaboration as a constant form of feedback,” and often asks dancers how the work feels on the inside, using their somatic experience of it to shape how it unfolds visually.

For an even more direct form of embodied feedback, there’s Wrecking, a practice created by choreographer Susan Rethorst in which outside directors “wreck” a choreographer’s work, rearranging and reframing the existing material to create a new version. Funsch, who facilitates wreckings of her own work and the work of others, says the practice can be generative in its subversion of language and politeness—feedback doesn’t have to be articulated, it is simply enacted. Sometimes Funsch has used part of a wrecked version of her work in the final iteration (giving credit to the wrecker), and other times, seeing someone else’s take on her work reinforces why she made the choices she made. —LW

The post How to Get Meaningful Feedback on Your Choreographic Work—and What to do With it appeared first on Dance Magazine.

In recent years, New York City Ballet principal dancer Jovani Furlan has added a new practice to his preshow routine: In addition to his typical warm-up and meditation, Furlan will sometimes do a short session of the Japanese energy-based healing practice reiki onstage before the curtain rises. “I clean the energy and connect with all the people who were there before­ me,” he says, adding that reiki gives him a sense of peace and calmness.

According to Joshua Honrado, an athletic trainer and reiki master who works with dancers at NYU Langone Health’s Harkness Center for Dance Injuries, reiki is increasingly popular among dancers and can have benefits ranging from helping with injury recovery to reducing anxiety. Furlan likens it to an energetic massage. “Why don’t you give your energetic body a massage, like you do your physical body?” he says. “Because it needs it too.”

What Is Reiki?

Traditionally, reiki is performed by a certified practitioner, who sends energy to the recipient’s body either through light touch or by hovering the hands over the body. The recipient may feel warmness or tingling, or even experience visual stimulation.

Those who’ve received the first reiki attunement (meaning they’ve gone through the first level of training to be a practitioner) can also practice on themselves, as Furlan does. Reiki can even be done virtually or from a distance, and it doesn’t have to be synchronous, says dancer and choreographer Mina Nishimura—a practitioner can “send” reiki to a recipient that’s intended to be received at a later, predetermined time. Nishimura, who has done two attunements, received synchronous and asynchronous reiki throughout the pandemic and was surprised to find that she still felt its healing and renewing effects.

The Benefits for Dancers

Injury recovery. Reiki can be a valuable tool in the injury recovery process, according to Honrado. Once he’s ensured that an injury is healing properly, he likes to incorporate reiki to help patients let go of any tension or fear they are holding around the injured area, which can limit recovery.

Nishimura has found that reiki helps amplify her body’s natural healing process. “Your body already knows how to heal, how to balance,” she says. “Receiving reiki, that process gets amplified—you are reminded that you have that self-healing ability.”

Pain management. Though Nishimura says that a reiki session may not heal pain immediately, it has helped her experience some relief, as well as a faster, smoother recovery. “Usually when I have pain, I also have some sort of tension and anxiety, or even anger,” she says. Practicing reiki has helped her manage her relationship to pain.

Dancer, choreographer and reiki master teacher Roza Savelyeva­ agrees, and says that reiki has made her more mindful of her pain and how to manage it. Whereas prior to reiki she may have stubbornly pushed through pain, the greater awareness of her body that reiki has given her now allows her to tune in to her discomfort, which often results in greater knowledge of where the pain is coming from and what to do about it.

Anxiety reduction. Honrado says that reiki can calm nerves around an upcoming performance or audition, “so that the energy around that event is a bit more balanced.” (Studies have also shown that reiki works to reduce anxiety and depression in general.)

Furlan says he’s become a calmer performer since beginning reiki. “It’s given me more trust that it’s all going to come together,” he says. “It’s given me a sense of just believing in what I’m doing. When you’re in tune with all these things, there’s more that you’re capable of. There’s more healing that your body is capable of.”

For Reiki First-Timers

Giving reiki a try? Use these tips to get the most out of your experience.

Have an intention. Joshua Honrado, a reiki master at NYU Langone Health’s Harkness Center for Dance Injuries, suggests going into a reiki session knowing what you want to focus on. That could be a specific area of your body or your anxiety about an upcoming performance.

Be open to it. “You have to have an open mind to experience the benefits of reiki,” says Honrado. Reiki is largely a self-guided practice, in which you work in collaboration with the practitioner, dancer Mina Nishimura points out. “It’s not like the practitioner has a magical power,” she says, so it’s essential to try and let go of any skepticism, even when reiki’s impacts feel subtle or imperceptible.

Talk to your practitioner. Nishimura says that the conversations she has with her reiki practitioner after a session enrich her overall experience. “You learn a lot about what your body needed, and why you needed it,” she says.

Rest and relax. Dancer, choreographer and reiki master teacher Roza Savelyeva notes that dancers may have a hard time with resting, and her clients sometimes try to “help” her in a way that is actually counterproductive. “You don’t need to help me—the more you try to help me, the longer it’s going to take,” she says. Use your session as an opportunity to truly relax, and trust it to follow its own course.

The post A Dancer’s Guide to Reiki appeared first on Dance Magazine.

While Burns’ resumé tells the story of an extensive choreographic career, you don’t always know you’re watching her work when you see it. That’s because choreographers working in television and movies often don’t receive appropriate credit—not to mention proper protection and payment—as they are usually the only non-unionized creative leads on set. Burns is working to change that as president of the Choreographers Guild, which she recently launched with a group of industry choreographers.

What was the impetus for forming the Choreographers Guild?

Choreographers that work in TV, film, commercials, music videos and live tours don’t have a collective-bargaining agreement. In the ‘30s, we were a part of the Directors Guild of America—we used to be dance directors, which really makes sense. Now, when somebody thinks of choreographers, they just think about it as steps. But when you’re making this dance scene happen, you might be casting it, talking about shots with the director, reading through the script. It’s a lot of work. And because we haven’t been unionized, there’s no health care, no pension, no base minimum, no protections. There’s been a group of people working on this across the decades—there were significant efforts­ in the ‘90s. I got involved five years ago with the Choreographers Alliance, where we were working closely with SAG-AFTRA trying to get a contract together. That’s where we met Steve Sidawi, who has been volunteering his time leading this. 

During the pandemic, I was like, “Let’s go on the Clubhouse app,” because­ I realized that there’s such a hole in what people know. Hundreds of choreographers came, and we’ve been talking ever since. We officially formed the Guild several months ago, and there’s so much legal work and strategy that has to go into it. It’s more like a grassroots political campaign, if you think about how it needs to grow. 

What has your role been so far?

I think I’ve just been the stubborn one. I saw the rates declining—choreographers for major network TV shows are getting paid less than the dancers. The entertainment industry really needs a lot of education about how vital choreographers are, because right now it’s feeling like we’re invisible. They have no idea of all the things we do behind the scenes to just make a shootable dance scene. 

Have you seen any shifts in the indus­try since launching the Guild?

A union or guild in its most simple form is us talking to each other. “What did you get?” “What was your rate?” “What were your hours?” “How did they treat you?” I had a conversation with someone who works in Atlanta, and she was like, “You get paid for casting?” I was like, “Yes, of course. I’m on my computer for days trying to cast it, and that isn’t free work.” So that is already impactful, so we’re not on these islands by ourselves. 

What are some of your goals for the Guild?

The simple goal is that choreographers can show up and not have to use their bargaining power for basic working minimums that all our creative peers already have. They can use their bargaining power to work on their rate, or increase their credit. The amount of times I’ve done big jobs—Oscar-winning jobs—and I didn’t make the screen. When I choreographed a whole number; minutes of the film. Everyone else is listed—wig styling, catering, drivers—but somehow, choreographers are left out.

The post Kathryn Burns Continues to Advocate for Hollywood Choreographers as President of the New Choreographers Guild appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But whether you’re doing hundreds of turns or just one, spotting does much more than stave off dizziness: Your spot is your turn’s engine, and it can even be a tool for connecting with the audience and adding drama.

Really Look

In theory, spotting is simple: The head should be the last part of the body to turn, holding the gaze to the front as long as possible, and the first to arrive again at the front. This concept is often introduced to beginners by asking them to look at their own face in the mirror, or by placing a mark on the wall or mirror to focus on during turns.

Nivas has another suggestion that emphasizes not just whipping the head around, but really focusing the eyes after each revolution: When she was learning to spot, she’d write a phrase on a large piece of paper and read it every time she spotted. “If it was getting blurry, I knew I was losing the focus of my spot,” she says.

In aerial dance, actively looking as you spot is a necessity, says Dean, as a performer may use their spot to keep track of where they are in space, measuring their distance from the ground with each revolution so they don’t crash into it. “A lot of times we’re spotting because we’re grabbing something,” such as a silk, says Dean. “So you’re looking at it and you have to catch it. And if you don’t catch it, you’re not just going to stumble out of your turn—you’re going to hit the ground rather hard.”

Let Your Spot Lead

Dana Hanson, a faculty member at Pacific Northwest Ballet School, tells students to think of a double pirouette as “a passé relevé with two spots.” The spot should anchor the turn, she says: “It should feel like it’s the spot that’s making it happen, and not a lot of force.”

This means keeping your weight forward as you prepare—being too far back can create tension in the neck, which makes spotting more difficult. Keeping your spot even and rhythmic is also key: Hanson often sees dancers over-anticipating their turns by taking off on the “and” instead of on count 1. “It should almost feel like you’re going to be late,” she says.

Especially when turning on pointe, “when there’s no friction,” says Hanson, “you have to create some kind of solidity, and that’s the spot. The momentum from the turn comes from the force of taking off and the timing of the head.”

Be Fearless

There’s an element of fear that can come with spotting, points out Nivas. “Your nervous system is like, ‘What are you doing?’ ” she says. A solid spot requires an “unapologetic focus,” she says, which may be challenging for dancers used to wandering around the studio with their eyes, looking for guidance or reassurance. “If you’re trying to turn and you’re looking at me for approval, you’re not spotting,” she says. The temptation is heightened in aerial dance: Dean says that nervous beginners often glance at the ground instead of looking where they need to spot.

Getting over this fear, and approaching your spot with a sense of “belief in yourself,” as Nivas puts it, will help you with more than just more-efficient turns: Hanson sees it as a way of creating a sense of connection and conversation with the audience, and of “making the movement read really clearly to the front.”

A brisk spot can also add drama and excitement: “A double pirouette can be a virtuoso turn if it looks like it comes out of nowhere,” says Hanson, “and the spot is an important part of that.” For example, when the preparation for the turn is towards the corner, but the dancer, seemingly all of a sudden, is spotting front, “the spot creates that illusion of ‘How did they get from that to that?’ ” Hanson says.

The Power of Spotting

Spotting may seem like a hyper-specific skill that’s useful only with turning. But both Nivas and Hanson argue that investing in your spot can enhance your dancing even when you’re not mid-revolution.

Hanson says that learning to spot helps dancers develop their focus overall, which is key when choreography requires quick directional changes. Spotting can also teach dancers to strike a balance between filtering out distractions and maintaining awareness of what’s around them, says Nivas. After all, “If you’re seeing something at the back of the room, you’re not spotting,” she says, but you also need to ensure you’re not going to run into someone or drift into an unsafe area of the studio or stage.

“There’s such a level of control you end up having when you’re a really good spotter, even if you’re not turning,” says Nivas, who sees spotting as a spiritual practice, “because spotting teaches you that piercing focus. It’s so internal and so individual—it’s truly you owning your own body.”

The post Spotting Tips for More Efficient, Virtuosic Turns appeared first on Dance Magazine.

At a rehearsal for Emily Johnson’s Being Future Being earlier this year, she and the cast decided to wander from Abrons Arts Center, on New York City’s Lower East Side, to the nearby East River Park, where Johnson is involved in protecting 1,000 trees from a demolition project.

As they began rehearsing, trucks rolled up. “All of a sudden, we were having this moment of defending the park through dancing,” says cast member Stacy Lynn Smith. With their path blocked by land defenders as Johnson’s cast continued dancing, the trucks eventually gave up and left.

That wasn’t a performance per se. But it had all the elements that make Johnson’s work and that of her company, Catalyst, so transformational: a quiet power that gathers artists and audiences towards her vision; an uncanny alignment with the natural world; a deep connection to her Yup’ik identity; a disregard for the silos of art versus activism, performance versus protest, dancemaker versus land protector.

Raised in Alaska on Dena’ina land, Johnson grew up not dancing but playing in the woods outside her home, and hunting and fishing with her family. She also played basketball, an early instance of the love affair with endurance that has defined much of her choreographic work.

Her freshman year at the University of Minnesota, Johnson signed up for a modern dance class for fun. Midway through that year, her roommate and close friend passed away unexpectedly. After taking a break from her dance class, Johnson returned to find that students were working on improvisation. As she began improvising, with her eyes closed, “I could see the grief shift away from my body a little bit,” she says. “I remember thinking, Oh, this must be a very powerful form.”

After graduating in 1998 with a dance degree, Johnson began choreographing in the Minneapolis area, with a group of collaborators that would become an early iteration of Catalyst. A clear lineage can be traced back to those early works, which, like her current projects, were concerned with endurance, climate change and Indigenous-centered futures. Her interest in “busting up the idea that the audience is coming into something very precious, or that they’re not involved in” started early too, though in simpler terms—she recalls one piece for which her mother made popcorn from a rented machine and shared it with audience members.

Johnson came to national attention in 2011 with her Bessie-winning immersive work The Thank-you Bar, the first part of a trilogy that included Niicugni, featuring a cast of dancers and community members within an installation of handmade fish-skin lanterns, and SHORE, a multiday event involving dance, storytelling, volunteerism and a feast.

As Johnson’s work has grown in scale, it has also expanded­ beyond traditional ideas about what performance entails and where it happens. But when her pieces include a meal, or a walk, or an action, these are not peripheral side events propping up the part that is more recognizably dance. To Johnson, they are all equal—they are all performance, they are all dance.

Take Then a Cunning Voice and a Night We Spend Gazing at Stars, her most ambitious piece to date. An outdoor gathering for 300 participants—it premiered on Randall’s Island in New York City in 2017 and has toured to Calumet Park in Chicago—the piece takes place over the course of an entire night and connects moments of dancing, preparing food, eating, storytelling and sewing. When an audience member fell asleep, others would help by providing one of 84 quilts designed by Minneapolis-based textile artist Maggie­ Thompson. The quilts served as the “home” for the show and were crafted by volunteers from around the world.

In this piece, as in much of Johnson’s work, boundaries between performers and audiences collapse. This is true even in more traditional performance spaces: In The Thank-you Bar, for instance, Johnson slaps the name of everyone in the audience onto her chest with nametags. “Every person watching her work feels seen,” says Rob Bailis, artistic and executive director of BroadStage in Santa Monica, a commissioner of Being Future Being. “Emily collaborates with her audience in a way that very few choreographers do.”

Johnson’s work is at its most transformational when this collaboration with the audience intersects with the radical universes she creates. “For most artists who make that kind of destabilizing work, they intimidate their audiences to the point of not knowing how to be there,” Bailis says. “Emily does that in a way where you feel so held, so trusted and so believed in as a human being that you are drawn all the way into the possibility of seeing things without the structures that cause you to imagine that the world is fixed. She gets such trust from you within minutes.”

The new world Johnson envisions in her work is the same one she is working towards offstage (though to even draw this distinction likely goes against Johnson’s ethos). She has been integral in partnering with institutions in New York City, where she moved in 2014, in decolonial action, including acknowledging the stolen Indigenous land on which their theaters sit. (Today, it has become more common for dance venues in New York City to include a preshow spoken land acknowledgment, a shift that many attribute directly to Johnson’s influence.) She continues to work with several venues, such as Abrons Arts Center, on decolonizing their institutions, and co-leads an eight-month track with Ronee Penoi for presenters on decolonization as part of First Nations Performing Arts, a new initiative focused on capacity building for the Indigenous and non-Indigenous performing arts sector.

Decolonization processes have always been interwoven with her work, and in 2021 Johnson formalized her desire for her presenters to be a partner in not just her dancemaking but her values, crafting a decolonization rider that asks venues to take steps beyond land acknowledgment, such as paying a land-use tax to local Indigenous communities. The rider came to fruition after Johnson penned her “Letter I Hope in the Future, Doesn’t Need to be Written,” detailing her experience with Jedidiah Wheeler, the executive director of Peak Performances at Montclair State University in New Jersey. The letter describes Wheeler’s anger towards Johnson when she asked him to work towards decolonization, and calls Peak Performances “an unsafe and unethical place to work.” It was circulated widely, with scores of presenters signing a statement of solidarity with Johnson.

“I don’t believe that she deviates,” says IV Castellanos, who works as an “InterKinector” on Being Future Being, forging relationships between the artists and communities where the work takes place, with the intention of offering support, amplification and awareness for local land defense efforts and more. Castellanos describes Johnson’s approach to making, creating and gathering as a fusion of care and conviction, giving the example of Johnson requesting that the organizations that invite her think about how every dollar is spent and thus not ask her to stay in a hotel that “funds the pipeline destroying the Indigenous folks’ land that we’re on,” says Castellanos. “A lot of people would overlook that.”

A few years ago, Johnson decided that envisioning a better future through her dancemaking, and working towards it in her activism, was no longer enough. “It started to feel like we need that better future now,” she says. Being Future Being, which premieres at BroadStage this month and tours to New York Live Arts in October, attempts to conjure that future in real time through what she calls “the Speculative Architecture of the Overflow,” which has the goal of building direct response, support and action with local land rematriation and protection efforts. In the work, the quilts from Then a Cunning Voice and a Night We Spend Gazing at Stars become striking “Quilt Beings,” designed by Korina Emmerich, that transform dancers into moving sculptures. Woven into those quilts: thousands of messages from the volunteers who made them, each containing their own vision for the future. As the dancers slowly walk and rotate, the quilts trailing behind them, they could be royalty from another universe. They are literally embodying the future; dancing it into being.

The post Emily Johnson: A Catalyst for Art, Action & Promoting Indigenous Identity appeared first on Dance Magazine.

So rather than thinking of long lines as an aesthetic ideal, aim for finding stretch and elasticity in your line—an effortless line proportional to your body—as yet another tool in your toolbox, suggests Favors. “As a dancer you’re making shapes in space,” she says. “So to be able to inhabit the greatest amount of space is something that we all really strive for.”

Get Organized

Having freedom in the limbs to reach and stretch requires having a secure, aligned torso to move from, says physical therapist Andrea Lasner, who works with dancers at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Core strength is one key, but be sure that your workouts aren’t counterproductive to the lengthening of your spine. When doing a crunch, for instance, the tendency is to pull on the neck or push out the abdomen, instead of pulling the abdominal muscles in and up to create more length, says Miami City Ballet School faculty member Maribel Modrono. She also recom­mends the classic Pilates roll-up, which empha­sizes rolling through the spine on the way up and down.

Working in correct alignment is also essential to stabilizing the trunk and freeing up the limbs, says Favors, as misalignment can manifest in shortened lines by creating excess tension in the body or by causing dancers to tighten or grip their arms and hands as they grasp at a sense of control. Finding alignment is often a long journey, she says, one that can be helped along by Pilates and Gyrotonic, or a thoughtful teacher or coach. 

Create Space

Just because a line is long doesn’t mean that it has the breezy, stretched quality many dancers want. Favors points out that sometimes when a dancer is seeking a long line it actually looks like they are pulling or tense.

For easy, attenuated lines, she suggests imagining that there’s additional space in the joints, to avoid compressing them. She also likes the idea of feeling the air around you—between your fingers, above the top of your head—and keeping that air in constant motion. 

Of course, creating space for maximum mobility and, therefore, maximally stretched lines means having supple, warm muscles. Modrono stresses the importance of a proper warm-up before class and rehearsal—especially dynamic stretches for the hips and hamstrings—and recovery afterwards.

Extend From Distal Points

Modrono sees the head and neckline as an “exclamation point,” able to extend or complement the line. The hands and feet, in turn, can be either the finishing touches of a line or the unintentional breaking points. Both Favors and Modrono show dancers da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” to emphasize the idea of energy radiating from the center of the body and out through the distal points.

Even your focus can give the illusion of a more elongated line when used wisely, such as lifting your eyes slightly in a jump to suggest more height in the air, says Modrono. Favors adds that looking far beyond the walls of the studio or theater and into the imagined distance can heighten that illusion.

Angles and Circles

It’s a lesson learned by most ballet students at a young age, but worth remembering for any dancer: When angling your body, imagine you are standing in your own imaginary box. In other words, says Modrono, for consistent and flattering lines, angle yourself towards your corners, rather than the corners of the stage or studio.

Favors also finds circles to be a helpful image: “Even when you’re going to the end of your line, it’s always circling around, but you want each end to meet on the far side of the circle, as opposed to being pulled into the center,” she says.

Lengthen Through Transitions

Luxuriating in long, effortless lines is one thing when you have lots of time to play with. It’s an entirely different challenge during fast movement or moments of transition. To find opportunities to lengthen in difficult sequences, focus on efficiency, Lasner suggests, getting specific about what exactly your body is doing and how much muscular effort it will take to do it. 

Favors agrees, and suggests dissecting the movement to find the shortest routes between destinations. “You have to be very economical because you don’t want to cut the movement short, but you also don’t want to go past it,” she says. “You need to know where the movement begins and where it ends.” 

This also means not neglecting the in-between moments. “You have to make sure that you’re paying as close attention to your transitions as you are to the next big movement,” Favors says. “Because lots of times we just think of the ‘ta-da!’ but it’s the transitions that set us up for that.” 

Creating elegant lines has less to do with the length of your legs or the flexibility of your hips and more with this kind of attention to detail and careful finessing. “I love to see people with a really exquisitely worked line that they have crafted and sculpted through their own discovery,” says Favors. “That’s as beautiful as somebody whose leg goes up past their ears.”

Channel the Breath

Dancers sometimes get so caught up in “achieving the line” that they’re actually holding their breath, or look like they are, says Modrono, which can make the line appear static and stilted. But, she says, adding breath to your movements, like port de bras, landing a jump or finishing a turn, can add grace and spirit to the quality of your dancing.

The post Long and Strong: How to Find Effortless, Extended Lines appeared first on Dance Magazine.

That’s because the spine doesn’t just direct movement in the body—it has its own expressive power, says Graham 2 director Virginie Mécène: Think of the Graham contraction, or the evocative power of an undulating back. But the architecture of the spine makes it a difficult area to access mobility in for many dancers, and saying something with that mobility—having a truly articulate spine—is an even steeper task. Use these tips to unlock your spine for both movement and expression. 

Use the Breath

Breathing is key to releasing the spine, says Michelle Rodriguez, a physical therapist who works with dancers at her Manhattan Physio Group. But she says many dancers don’t realize that they’re holding their breath or not breathing deeply, which in turn can make their thoracic spine stiff. One trick Rodriguez likes to use to remind dancers to breathe: Have them talk as they move, since inhales and exhales will naturally flow as they speak.

Mécène recommends a simple Graham exercise called the “Breathings” to build the connection between the breath and the spine: Sitting with your legs crossed and hands to each side, exhale as you curve the spine, then inhale as you re-straighten.­ Keep the spine as long as possible throughout the exercise. “It’s an abstraction of the breath, but an exaggeration,” she says.

Zoom In, Zoom Out

Mécène encourages her students to visualize the small, interior muscles that line the spine, rather than the larger, superficial muscles of the back. After all, says Bret Easterling, a former Batsheva dancer who teaches contemporary and Gaga at the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, articulation doesn’t have to be about how large your range of movement is, but rather the availability of movement. Easterling has students get more specific in their articulations by focusing on micromovements. One image that helps: imagining you have twice or three times as many vertebrae as you actually do.

In addition to “zooming in,” Easterling likes to “zoom out”: He asks students to imagine that the head is their top vertebra, and their pelvis their last vertebra. “Find gentle movements between those two places at the same time, allow­ing the spine to fall into place, as if your tail and head are talking to each other,” he says. “Then there’s information that’s traveling through your spine, and that’s what we want.”

Stay Soft

Before Easterling was introduced to Gaga, he held his tension in his back and had frequent back spasms. It was former Batsheva director and Gaga creator Ohad Naharin’s concept of a “soft spine” that helped Easterling find more mobility and ease in his back. 

Easterling emphasizes softness so strongly, partially because he often finds that dancers with tight backs go in the opposite direction when searching for mobility in their spines, and try to muscle through it. “I am interested in how doing less can open up room for more,” he says. Mécène agrees, and says that trying to force an expressive spine with the larger muscles of the back tends to backfire.

To help dancers find that softness, Easterling encourages them to scan their back for areas that feel locked, and to focus on bringing sensation there—using imagery like running water or the idea of melting—whether through movement or touch. He also reminds students to give attention to any tension they’re holding in their hips, jaw, chest and rib cage, as these areas can impact how much movement is available in the spine. He’ll ask them to imagine that their chest is made of soggy cardboard, for instance, or that their rib cage consists of many different parts that can move independently instead of as one large chunk.

Though not all forms emphasize an elastic, hypermobile movement quality like Gaga does, Easterling says that the concept of a soft spine can translate to any style, even those that usually call for a very directed spine, such as ballet. “How can I stand at the barre in ballet where I need to have this directed spine, and continue to invest in softness without it being attached to an aesthetic?” he says. “Same inside of hip hop, with this idea of bounce. How can softness enable more echo for bounce to be present? Softness of the spine doesn’t have to be a movement. It’s a sensation.”

The post Tips for a More Articulate, Expressive Back appeared first on Dance Magazine.

That moment—which Barnes says was one of the proudest of her life—encapsulates much of what has been at the heart of her dance career: Joyfully embodying the legacy of Black vernacular dance in America, from early jazz dances to steps she learned at family gatherings to house and hip hop. 

Barnes not only excels in each of these dances, she also makes visible the connections between them, both historical and physical. In May 2021, Barnes expanded an investigation that was already happening in her own body with The Jazz Continuum, a performance commissioned by Works & Process at the Guggenheim that traces jazz dance and music to their artistic offspring, with a cast of Black dance and musical artists of varied specializations, including jazz, house, hip hop, funk and disco.  

“I just wanted more people to play with,” she says of the show, which got a second iteration at Jacob’s Pillow in August 2021 and will be at The Joyce Theater this fall, ahead of its tour. She got much more than people to play with: Barnes, who is 42, was showered in long-overdue acclaim—including a Bessie Award for Sustained Achievement in the Outstanding Performer category and a nod from The New York Times as one the best dance moments of 2021—after years of relative anonymity outside the Lindy Hop and house communities, where she was already legendary. 

Some of the press Barnes has received recently has labeled her as just a Lindy Hop dancer, or just a house dancer. It’s something she actively resists, because it is her multiplicity, both in the styles she dances and the roles she plays—dancer, culture bearer, teacher, scholar—that makes her so very singular. “I’m proud that I trusted the universe to make space for all of me,” she says. 

Born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, Barnes excelled academically and at a laundry list of after-school activities, including­ track and field, choir, student leadership and JROTC. “Even before I understood what it meant, my life was always full-tilt, in all the things,” she says. 

Her dance training began at home—her father was a deejay, and movement flowed through all of the family’s gatherings and daily activities. One of her earliest memories is of her great-grandmother guiding her through the “run, jump, squat” that she now recognizes as a Lindy Hop step. She also remembers learning the Barnes family line dance—which made its way into an iteration of The Jazz Continuum—and “being fascinated by how my family moved in sync, and how some of them had extra embellishments,” she says. “It wasn’t so much about perfection, just not being a distraction to the overall groove.”

Barnes took several years of dance classes in elementary school, but eventually stopped, her eyes opened by her teacher’s warning that the dance world wouldn’t be welcoming to her. As she puts it, “My formal dance training concluded, but the most rigorous dance training had just begun.” This consisted of swapping moves with her cousins and friends, who brought steps from New York City and Washington, DC, and the roller skating parties Barnes would attend after track meets, parties where, eventually, the skates would come off and everyone would dance. 

After high school, Barnes followed in the footsteps of her father, who was an Army First Sergeant, passing on college scholarships for track and engineering to quickly progress to sergeant first class. While stationed in Belgium, Barnes and her best friend became staples in the club scene, so much so that a camera crew filming promotional footage would follow them from club to club.

Back in the States two years later, Barnes was selected for an assignment at the White House. Meanwhile, she was entering fitness competitions, at one point placing second in the National Physique Committee’s Junior Nationals. While practicing a high kick in preparation for one competition, Barnes suffered a tear in her left glute, which necessitated a year of recovery. Then, just as she was getting back into the gym, she was hit by a car and dislocated her hip, injured her low back and fractured her wrist. 

It was while in recovery from that set of injuries that Barnes took up formal dance training again, starting with a class that was billed as hip hop but which Barnes immediately recognized as popping. “The popping actually was what I needed to regain mobility and control of my body,” she says. “And it’s also something that I’m now known for within the context of other forms, my ability to use a hit.”

Recognizing Barnes’ gifts, and the “residual boogie” in her body, her teacher introduced her to Junious Brickhouse, a house dancer and founder of the Urban Artistry company, based in the DC area. Barnes began training extensively in house, eventually joining the company’s leadership team—a position that required dancers to be proficient in at least five styles. This prerequisite very much aligned with Barnes’ natural inclinations. “It gave me the tools to organize that facet of myself,” says Barnes, who sought out mentorship in styles like waacking. 

In 2011, Barnes and her house partner Toyin Sogunroplaced first at Juste Debout in Paris, one of the biggest battles in the world. “We were almost mobbed at the airport in France, and then we came back to the U.S. and nobody knew anything,” she says. But Barnes knew she was at a turning point—just before leaving for Paris, she’d given notice at her job. “I could feel the universe pulling me back to dancing,” she says. “I felt like I also needed to make some grand gesture to be like ‘I receive it.’ ”

It was around this time that Barnes was becoming more interested in jazz dance—Lindy Hop in particular—and more aware of its origins as a Black art form. She began to feel its connectedness to the other styles she danced. She exchanged movement with Lindy Hop champion Bobby White, for instance, sharing her knowledge of house and other styles and learning about authentic jazz and Lindy Hop. True to form, she caught on quickly. At the International Lindy Hop Championships, which Barnes now co-owns, she won accolades for her dancing. But these experiences also reiterated to Barnes the need to bridge the communities of house and Lindy Hop, “that are so tethered to one another, yet have no awareness of each other,” she says. 

Barnes began exploring this in her dancing—she’d throw in a deconstructed jump Charleston during a house battle, and afterwards people would “acknowledge something different in there.” Switching between styles can sometimes look forced, or disjointed, but never with Barnes: The ease with which she layers them on top of one another is masterful, and a powerful illumination of their shared lineage. Michele Byrd-McPhee, founder of Ladies of Hip Hop and a Jazz Continuum cast member, says that before working with Barnes, she “thought of authentic jazz dance as something that was in the past.” Barnes’ work, Byrd-McPhee says, grounds her “in who we are as Black people.”

But investigating the ways that hip hop, house and other Black vernacular dances evolved from the work of early Black jazz dance pioneers left Barnes with questions. Why weren’t Black dancers more aware of or engaged with jazz? Why were jazz and Lindy Hop so disconnected from those other forms that had sprung from it? 

As Barnes was becoming a culture bearer in Lindy Hop, paving the way for the form to be reclaimed by Black dancers and accepting the proverbial torch from legends like Norma Miller, she was also digging for the answers to these questions in her self-designed master’s program at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. When she realized how few Black dancers outside of Eurocentric dance forms had been cited in existing scholarly resources, she began interviewing them for her thesis, canonizing their experiences as she did so. 

“I thought when I started my master’s program it was going to be about figuring out how to bring Blackness back to Lindy Hop and jazz,” she says. “But you can’t make something more Black that was Black already.” 

You could see The Jazz Continuum as the ultimate embodied­ thesis. “People are certainly lecturing about this,” says Melanie George, founder of the Jazz Is… Dance Project and associate curator at Jacob’s Pillow. “But she’s doing it onstage,­ drawing that line very clearly to say that jazz, funk, hip hop, house—they are all of a family. If there isn’t an embodied aspect of that, we’ve actually broken part of the continuum.”

Barnes is currently on tour with SW!NG OUT, where she is both a performer and a core collaborator, and this month, she’ll teach and rock cyphers at the Ladies of Hip-Hop Fest. In the fall, she will be a guest artist in residence at Point Park University and will return to teaching at Arizona State University, where she’s been on faculty since last year and where she models what it means to be a tradition bearer for her students, says her ASU colleague Dr. Christi Jay Wells. “It’s about responsible stewardship of what she’s been given by her elders, her ancestors and her peers,” Wells says. 

Indeed, you’d be hard-pressed to speak to Barnes about dance for more than a minute or so without her naming a mentor or teacher who’s shaped her path, or a jazz forebear who never got their rightful flowers. She vacillates between deflecting praise, careful that her success doesn’t fall into a false narrative of individualism, and proudly accepting it on behalf of herself and her predecessors.

“I’m recognizing that by running away from those moments,­ I’m not making space for those who came before me who didn’t get the chance to be acknowledged,” she says. “Because I absolutely carry them with me. And so, I have no problem standing in it now.”

The post LaTasha Barnes: Reclaiming Black Vernacular Dances, One Performance at a Time  appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Stillness can be loud or quiet, virtuosic or receptive. It can be a powerful magnet for the audience’s focus, says Vangeline, a New York City–based teacher, dancer and choreographer who specializes in Japanese butoh. “When someone stops moving, our attention zooms in because we are trained as observers­ to catch movement,” she says. “It’s a little trick butoh dancers use to shift the perspective of the audience,” adding that audiences’ mirror-neuron response to stillness can help them calm their own bodies and minds as they watch.

But there’s much more to stillness than simply the absence of movement, and for dancers used to near-constant motion, being still can be a physical, mental and emotional challenge.  

The Power of Stillness

Musical theater choreographer and teacher Al Blackstone has a surprising request for the pieces he judges at competitions. “My biggest wish for young dancers and up-and-coming choreographers is please, just for a second, stop moving,” he says. “I just want to see you.” One reason why he craves stillness and employs it in his own work: “When someone stops dancing, you tend to all of a sudden see them as a human. You’ve stopped seeing them as what they’re doing, and you’re able to just see them as they are.”

Stillness can have a variety of compositional purposes, says Blackstone, each of which will impact a dancer’s approach:­ Is stillness being used to freeze or expand time? To shift focus to someone or something onstage? To draw attention to the shape the body is making? To powerfully contrast the movement? Whatever the intention, Portier says, keep in mind that “there’s a difference between stopping and just holding a shape versus really engaging with stillness as an act of composition and performance.”

For Vangeline, this means allowing the momentum generated by movement to continue into stillness, instead of “deflating like a balloon” once the motion stops. After all, we’re never truly still; we continue to breathe, and “a lot of small, internal currents begin to animate the body,” says Vangeline. “The nervous system is like a river—we can’t really shut down the river, but we can create a dam if we want to irrigate it in different directions.” Playing with these currents is a way of dancing inside of the body, she says, of “crafting a very delicate sculpture.”

How to Cultivate It

Stillness goes against dancers’ natural inclinations, for obvious reasons. But Vangeline says there is a deeper reason why stillness can be so hard to embody: “It’s a cultural thing—we don’t experience stillness much in the Western world,” she says. In addition to requiring patience, being still invites dancers to sit with their inner selves in a way that can sometimes be challenging, says Portier.

But just like movement, comfort with and command of stillness can be gained with practice. Vangeline recommends meditation as one way to start engaging with stillness. A breathing meditation at the beginning of class or rehearsal can help calm the nervous system and cultivate a feeling of centeredness. And a meditation or pause at the end of class, which both Vangeline and Blackstone often incorporate, is an opportunity not only to engage with stillness, but also to assimilate information learned during class. Portier, too, sometimes chooses to close her classes with stillness, which she sees as a chance for dancers to “sieve out anything they don’t need to take with them.”

If being completely still feels too daunting at first, Vangeline says that simply slowing down has benefits. Try starting with a very slow walk, either in the studio or on your own. “What we think of as normal speed is actually very fast for the nervous system,” she says. “By going slower, we start paying more attention to the sensitivity of the body and the internal experience of dance.” She also likes this Noguchi taiso exercise: Close one hand into a fist, then take three minutes to open the hand very slowly and three more minutes to close it back up. She recommends dancers try other movement practices that emphasize stillness or slowness, like butoh and tai chi. 

Why Practice Stillness?

Dancers focused on growing as movers may struggle to justify time spent being still. But for Portier, engaging with stillness means “having access to my full range of palettes” and can have benefits beyond dance as a space for reflection, gratitude and catharsis. To Blackstone, being still means acknowledging that you have value even when you aren’t moving: “True confidence is to be able to be still and know that that is enough.”

The post How to Harness the Power of Stillness appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But it’s also its own language, says Andrew Suseno, who teaches contact improvisation and his own contact-based style called Parcon Resilience: “Our intentions, our emotions, our relationships—all of it can be communicated through touch, and through sharing weight,” he says. “When we share our weight, we’re sharing ourselves.”

This makes weight-sharing both a physical challenge and an exercise in vulnerability and trust that some dancers may find difficult. But with a strategic approach, dancers can build more comfort and confidence in any partnering environment.

Start With Yourself

The biggest problem ballroom dancer and teacher Ana Jurenec sees with dancers learning how to share weight is a lack of connection with their own bodies, “and then trying to do something with another person,” she says. “Instead, where is your body weight? Where is your center of gravity? How is your spine moving? Then, invite another person into that.”

Suseno believes it starts with listening to yourself. “What are the signals that are telling you to shift your leg so you’re more stable? What are the signals that are telling you to yield?” he asks. Once you can begin to sense this in your own body, you’ll start to be able to sense it in others.

A thoughtful preparation can help with this: Suseno suggests­ warming up by connecting all parts of the body, especially the torso, to yield with the ebb and flow of the breath. You can “wake up the body to yielding” by using your own hands, objects in the room or another person. You can also practice yielding your weight to something that’s more predict­able than another human, like the floor. Exploring a stable surface with different parts of the body—Suseno recommends slowly rolling on the floor to awaken the core—allows dancers “to find coordination and get primed for the unpredictability of being in a dynamic relationship with another person,” he says.

Create Trust

For Suseno, weight isn’t just our physical bodies. “It includes our identities, our histories, our struggles,” he says. “To create a safe and healthy place for that weight to be held, the conversation needs to go beyond the physical.” For example, if someone is struggling with a loss, “their sense of balance, their weight-sharing, is going to be different,” he says.

For this reason, checking in with fellow dancers before beginning a weight-sharing practice is essential, says Suseno. He uses community or partner agreements that set expectations in a weight-sharing space, making a point to address things like dancers’ lived experiences and preexisting imbalances of power. One of his favorite agreements: “Everyone is empowered with their ‘no,’ ” meaning that dancers can say “no” to any movement they aren’t comfortable with, and that “no” is respected. While this may not be realistic in spaces with more hierarchical power dynamics, being open about injuries, aches and pains, and other issues can go a long way towards building a safe and trusting partnership, as can a practice of continually asking for consent, which Jurenec does with students.

Learn to Listen

It can take practice to be able to hear what your partner is telling you through their body. Jurenec has beginner students start classes by walking around the room in pairs while maintaining a point of connection. As they become more comfortable, she’ll have one partner close their eyes while the other leads them around, building into more complex movement and more weight-sharing, and eventually having the leader and follower constantly shifting.

Starting simple and slow is key, says Jurenec: Lots of movement, or fast movement, can make it difficult to sense your partner’s body. Try not to rely on visuals—it may not always be safe to close your eyes, but be sure you aren’t looking in the mirror, or thinking about what you look like from the outside, at least at first. Especially when you’re improvising, “discover something that’s unique about these two bodies coming together,” says Suseno. “Don’t just go towards an image, like, ‘I’m gonna balance you in this way.’ ”

Lean In

Andrew Suseno, who teaches contact techniques in New York City, says that leaning can be a challenge for dancers learning to share weight. “We’re so used to being in our own vertical alignment,” he says. “Oftentimes, instead of leaning, a lot of muscle and a wide base of support will be used. When people get more familiar, they learn to have a smaller base of support; they learn to lean in and to use less effort, and more of the skeletal structure.” It can feel scary to lean off your axis, says Suseno. To counter this, try downregulating the nervous system by connecting to your breath, moving very slowly to start and then discovering where shared momentum can take you.

Exercises for Safer Weight-Sharing

Dynamic core strength is key for the unpredictability of sharing weight with a partner, says physical therapist Mia Ronson and athletic trainer Jennifer Beach, who work with dancers at Richmond Ballet. Use these exercises to prep for partnering—they suggest two to three sets of 10 repetitions.

1. Plank with alternating leg lifts: In an elbow plank position, alternate lifting each leg slightly off the ground, holding briefly.

2. Bird dog on exercise ball: In a high plank position, with the hips and lower stomach balanced on an exercise ball, simultaneously lift the opposite arm and leg, while maintaining stability on the ball.

3. Rotational core press: Stand with feet hip-width apart and knees slightly bent, with a resistance band anchored at chest height to the side of yourself (step to the side until there is tension on the band). Hold the band with both hands at the chest, then press the arms straight forward, resisting the rotational forces. To advance the exercise, stand on an unstable surface like a BOSU ball, a foam pad or a pillow.

4. Hip bridge on exercise ball: Lie on your back with knees bent at 90 degrees and feet resting on top of an exercise ball. Perform a hip bridge while maintaining stability. To advance, add a hamstring curl while in the bridge position (rolling the ball towards your hips).

5. Shoulder press: Anchor a resistance band to a low, stable object. Grab the band with one hand, holding it near the shoulder while in a squat position, and press up to straighten the arm and the legs. Alternate pressing straight up and pressing diagonally up to the opposite side. Switch sides. To advance, try standing on an unsteady surface.

The post Pro Tips for Getting Comfortable With Weight Sharing in Partnering appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Sudeikis will bring her signature class to the Dance Magazine audience with a Dance Media Live! event scheduled for May 2. She’ll also premiere a new work at the Kaatsbaan Summer Festival on June 4 and 5, a collaboration with choreographers Danielle Agami and Jessica Castro.  

Why do you think people connected with FORWARD__Space so much during this time?

People want to connect to their bodies. We don’t start with the idea of it being for mental health, but where would any of us who dance be without that outlet? There is no other modality that does what dance does for people, because it’s just so primal, and it’s so life-giving. I think the mental health of our dance community is just tender right now; not having an outlet to move in a physical space—that’s such a part of how we process.

Tell me about JOURNEY, the piece you’re premiering at Kaatsbaan next month.

The producers, Melanie Hamrick and Joanna deFelice, connected with me in 2019. It almost happened in all these different spaces—it was going to be in Los Angeles in April 2021. And now it being birthed in upstate New York, outside at Kaatsbaan, feels so resonant and right. It’s a live experience with music, and there will be moments of breaking the fourth wall. It’s a response to wanting to have an experience where you’re not just watching, but you’re also partaking. But not in ways that feel invasive, because I’m not comfy with that. 

It’s to the music of The Rolling Stones and Amy Winehouse, and there’s a composer putting it all together. I’m choreographing the third act and it starts with an a cappella version of Amy Winehouse’s “Tears Dry on Their Own.” It’s looking to go on tour—I can see this happening all over the world. 

Anything else you want to mention?

For anyone in New York, especially in the dance community, if they want a FORWARD__Space class on me, I want to offer that. Because it’s just a dark room for dancers to come in and just totally drop and let go.

FORWARD__Space is offering readers one complimentary sweat session at 24 Spring Street in New York City. To redeem, go to forward-space.com/buy-classes, add a single class to your cart and use code FORWARDSpaceDance at checkout.

The post Kristin Sudeikis Talks Mental Health, FORWARD__Space and Her Collaborative Kaatsbaan Premiere appeared first on Dance Magazine.

And yet, many dancers who’ve found other outlets for movement—even beyond the traditionally “dancer-approved” ones like yoga and Pilates—have found them to have a symbiotic relationship with their dance practice, each informing and growing the other.

Dance Magazine spoke to four artists with unique physical practices about what they’ve learned from them, and how they balance them with dance.

Cecilia Iliesiu, Pacific Northwest Ballet soloist

How she got started: In 2016, Cecilia Iliesiu was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré, an autoimmune disorder that caused her to lose her nerve function and, for about five months, her ability to walk and dance. Going on hikes was how she started gaining her strength back, and eventually, it became “an obsession.” Iliesiu now goes on hiking or backpacking trips nearly every weekend that she isn’t performing, sometimes hiking up to 20 miles in a day. She’s summited Mount St. Helens twice, and seeks out hikes in her travels to places like Iceland and Spain.

“The hiking dancer”: Ilisesiu has developed a bit of a reputation at PNB. “I’m known as the hiking dancer,” she says. “Everyone comes to me if they want to go on a hike and need a recommendation.” She’s taken other dancers on intro backpacking trips, and often hikes with PNB principal Elizabeth Murphy.

How it feeds her dancing: “It really helps with ankle mobility and strength, as you’re pushing off different rocks and surfaces,” she says. Hiking has also improved her endurance, she says, and “has helped me become more grounded as a person, and that’s helped me in and out of the studio and onstage.”

Knowing her limits: Iliesiu says she’s sometimes had to fight her perfectionist dancer instinct when it comes to hiking, especially when she encounters trails that don’t look so safe. “As dancers, we’re so focused on the goal,” she says. “And the goal in hiking is, let me get to the mountaintop, let me get to the end of the trail. And to be okay with not doing that has definitely been a lesson for me.”

The power of time away from dance: “I’ve been very focused during my career on not being 150 percent ballet all the time, because I don’t think it’s healthy for me to do that,” she says. “So I feel like hiking is an extension of that choice to take a step away, because then it makes stepping back so much more powerful.”

Constance Stamatiou, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater company member

How she got started: As a kid, Constance Stamatiou was always fascinated by martial arts, but it wasn’t until the pandemic, when she had more time and was looking for a way to stay in shape, that she decided to start taking classes at her local taekwondo dojang, where her two children go. Stamatiou also liked the idea of learning how to defend herself after a few scary incidents on tours. She’s now a red belt, and hopes to have her black belt by this summer.

How her dance training helps her: Stamatiou has been able to skip several belts (making her kids very jealous), thanks to her ability to quickly pick up movement. “It’s very parallel to dance,” she says. “When I post videos of practice on my Instagram, people are like, Of course you can do that, that’s just like when you do a hitch kick in Cry!”

One step closer to her dream job: “I have always dreamed of being a stunt woman, of playing a superhero. With my gymnastics background, my dance background, and now having a taekwondo background, I feel like it’s the perfect combination.”

Building strength and stamina: Stamatiou feels stronger than ever in her dancing, which she credits partly to her taekwondo practice, especially with its focus on speed.

The hardest part: “It’s very shocking when you break the board with the palm of your hand or your foot,” she says. “It definitely hurts, and it’s something you just have to build a tolerance to. But I do enjoy feeling like a superhero.”

Erin Arbuckle, San Diego–based ballet dancer and teacher

How she got started: Erin Arbuckle started running while on a break from dance, when she was trying to quit smoking. “It was really hard to quit cold-turkey without another goal in mind,” she says. So she signed up for a half-marathon. For a while, “running replaced that buildup you get with dance—you’re rehearsing for something, you’re looking towards the show. The races were the show, and the training was the rehearsal.” When Arbuckle returned to dancing, she continued to run. Today, she’s done 12 half-marathons, 8 marathons and 4 ultramarathons.

How dance helps her through long runs: “When you feel like you can’t go any further, but you have 3 miles left, those 3 miles feel like 20. And as a dancer, the 8-count is very much ingrained in me, so I just literally count to 8 over and over. And all of a sudden you’re a mile and a half in.”

How she balances running and dancing: When Arbuckle is training for races while in rehearsals, she follows a lighter running schedule than is typical for marathons, doing short, easy runs on days when she’s dancing and saving her long run for her day off. She sees dance as cross-training for her running, and vice versa.

Post-marathon rehearsals: On several occasions, when Arbuckle was living in New York City, she had rehearsal the morning after running the New York City Marathon. Although it was helpful to keep her body moving, she did feel “a little crunchy.”

How running has improved her dancing: “The first thing that flipped a switch for me was feeling more confident in harder pieces. It was like, ‘If I can run for 18 miles, I can do this.’ I learned how to pace myself, and how to breathe.”

The freedom of running: “It’s nice to be a bit more gritty, a bit more untamed and sweaty. When I was growing up with ballet, it was like, ‘We must be delicate.’ It was less about power. It’s gotten better, but it’s still very much ingrained. So being able to go running and come back and feel completely demolished and disgusting is a nice departure from being in tights and a bun. It’s a different kind of freedom.”

Garnet Henderson, New York City–based contemporary dancer and choreographer

How she got started: A year after moving to New York City’s Inwood neighborhood in 2013, Garnet Henderson discovered the local canoe and kayak club, where she soon became a member. Henderson now kayaks—usually on the Hudson River—on a monthly or weekly basis, depending on the weather. On her longer trips, she’s circumnavigated Manhattan, explored abandoned quarantine islands and kayaked with groups of seals.

The simple satisfaction of kayaking: “It’s a good break from the perfectionism of dance, because everything you’re doing is in service of moving a boat forward in the water,” she says. “It’s very rewarding, because if you work hard, you move, you get to where you’re going. There’s not that frustration that so often exists in dance where you feel like you’re working really hard, and still somehow it just doesn’t work.”

Kayaking’s demands on the body: Henderson says she caught on to proper kayaking technique quickly, thanks in part to her dance training. She says it’s more of a full-body sport than people realize—you use your legs to stabilize—but with its primary focus on the upper body, it’s a nice balance to her dance practice, which mostly challenges her lower body.

The mental health and cross-training benefits: “Kayaking is an endurance activity. It’s not super-intense—it’s that long, low and slow sort of cardio that is good for reducing stress,” she says, adding that it’s helpful for training for longer works. “It’s also a really nice active recovery, and I love the chance to be outside.” She says that some of her more difficult kayaking trips, where she was fighting the current and the wind for hours, built “a certain degree of mental toughness that translates to dance.”

The post Beyond the Studio With 4 Pros on Their Intensely Athletic Nondance Hobbies appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Jump Like a Human, Then Like a Dancer

When working with dancers on their jumps, athletic trainer Megan Richardson always starts with athletic jumps and postures—no turnout, only functional arms, and allowing the push-off and landing position to be more like a squat than an upright plié. As dancers master the basic mechanics, they slowly progress to “dancerly” jumps. “First, you’re learning to jump like a human and produce force like a human, then you can stylize it for dance,” she says.

Contemporary teacher Shelly Hutchinson takes a similar approach in her jumps and turns classes at Broadway Dance Center in New York City, encouraging dancers to aim for height first, then add everything else. “I can’t get my legs straight, turn them out, stretch my ankles, get my shoulders down, until I have height off the floor,” she says. “So first, let’s get as high as we can, and then we’ll have all that time in the air where we can do those things.”

Hutchinson structures her across-the-floor series with this in mind, asking dancers to focus just on height on their first progression, then adding a focus on technical elements, like lengthening the legs or stretching the feet with each subsequent pass. While dancers not in a jumping-focused class may not have this opportunity, they can still implement Hutchinson’s philosophy by focusing on height first, and then slowly adding other areas of focus over time as they improve.

Hutchinson also finds that pedestrian, task-focused images­ (like jumping over a puddle, dunking a basketball or reaching for something you really want that’s up high) help dancers tap into their natural jumping power without getting too much in their heads.

Put Your Brains in Your Feet

“It all starts with the feet,” says Jhung. He finds dancers often focus too much on muscling through jumps with their legs and not enough on pushing off their heels and rolling through their feet. After all, he says, the feet are what allow dancers to bounce off the floor.

Hutchinson emphasizes the preparation of the feet in her warm-ups, helping dancers find their heels in pliés and rolling through demi-pointe and full pointe and then pushing all five toes off the floor, “because that’s how we’ll pick up our feet eventually” in jumps.

Dancers with high arches may struggle with this. Richardson says it’s especially important for them to warm up with dynamic stretches and massage or roll out the bottoms of their feet to keep them supple. Tight or weak calves can also hinder jumps by limiting a dancer’s ankle flexion—just be sure to save any static stretches for after jumping, says Richardson, since they temporarily decrease the muscles’ power.

Turn Your Legs Into Springs

Through years of studying slow-motion recordings of Baryshnikov­ and other greats jumping, Jhung has developed his own philosophy, called “ping, slam, bounce,” aimed at helping dancers train for bouncy, springy jumps. The “ping” refers to the­ action of the knee in plié—Jhung empha­sizes that the knee doesn’t bend itself, but rather the feet and toes pull the knee into plié. The “slam” is the heel pushing into the floor, which should then allow dancers to “bounce” up.

The idea of pushing off the heel is key for Hutchinson’s approach, too: “It’s a strong platform, and it’ll help us connect to the hammies and glutes and inner thighs.”

Travel Forward to Get Up

One trick for finding height in traveling jumps: a big, powerful step in the direction of the jump. “For people who jump high, the foot that’s going to push off the floor is way out in front of them,” says Jhung. “Whether it’s a grand jeté or an assemblé, or you’re going forward in fourth, you’ve got to get that pushing foot out there, because when it hits the floor, it propels you into the air.”

Exercises for Higher Jumps

Without core strength, “you’re going to be like a wet noodle in the air,” says athletic trainer Megan Richardson. “Even if you have the strength and the technique, if you don’t have core stability, you’re not going to be able to get off the ground.” Richardson recommends this plank series to build core and hip strength for jumps:

Crouching hover plank to burst plank: Begin on all fours. Keeping a neutral back and pelvis, engage your abdominals and press your knees up to “hover”­ off the ground. From there, bend your knees and crouch backward, sitting slightly back onto the feet, then burst forward pushing from your legs, sliding the hands into a regular plank. Repeat as many times as possible while maintaining good form (neutral pelvis, core engaged, feet flexed, pushing through the quads).

Elbow plank with leg lift: Start in a side elbow plank, with the bottom leg bent and the knee on the floor, making a straight line from hip to knee, then lift your hips off the ground. With the top leg extended to the side and slightly behind you, lift it up to hip height. Do three sets of 8–10 leg lifts on each side.

Teachers: For tips on teaching your students how to jump higher, visit dance-teacher.com.

The post Expert Tips for Bigger, Safer Jumps and Leaps appeared first on Dance Magazine.

It sounds like this was a research-heavy piece. What was that process like? 

It was completely accidental. I was standing in the supermarket on Martha’s Vineyard, and I happened upon this book about the African American Heritage Trail. Then I started noticing how present the trail markers were and how they were such regular parts of daily lives, as opposed to monuments that you have to look up to. These were made with rocks and things that you find on the island that people just add to as they move through their lives. And I thought that that was such an exciting way to express memory, because you’re actively being a part of the memorialization. My youngest son picked up a pebble and added it to what used to be the home of a freed slave—it’s really amazing to watch anyone participate. And that just spun me down the line of going on the trail and discovering the different areas. 

How does that show up in the work?

Embarqued is taking place on the board of a ship, at the feet of new land, or old land, wrapped up in the stories that made this land. We’re telling stories inspired by the Heritage Trail that are really paying homage to the idea of memoriali­zation and how we’re interpreting the idea of making memorials so that they live both in the past as well as the present. And these are stories that take place through fabric in particular, as textiles are often there in place of written testimonies—they somehow make it through the centuries. It’s a work that allows us to honor all the ways in which stories are told, and all the ways both positive and horrific in which voyage occurre­d and the population of the United States occurred. 

How did you end up working with fishermen?

One of the women who worked at The Yard, her husband is an extremely well-known fisherman, and we had access­ to boating materials that were no longer being usedor things that washed up that he could identify. My scenic designer also happens to be a boat captain. And these wonderful ideas started taking form through trial and error. We created the replica of what a schooner mast would be of that era with true boat materials. And we’ve now turned all those items into theatrical materials because you can’t tug along a huge steel thing. 

Why are textiles so important to you and your work?

I think I must be a failed visual artist because that’s all I ever work with. I’ve always been attached to how items help us tell stories, because I think quite often we’re less keen to touch someone else’s hand. But surely, “Hey, could you pass the pepper?” And then, next thing you know, you’re touching hands.

The post Stefanie Batten Bland Explores Memory and Voyage in Her Newest Work appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Age: 30

Hometown: Rehovot, Israel

Training: Aharon Katzir School, Batsheva program for outstanding students, Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, University of the Arts, ImPulsTanz’s ATLAS program

Accolades: Excellence Award (The Jerusalem Foundation), Outstanding Dancer (Israeli Ministry of Culture), 2021 The Workshop Fellow, 2021–22 New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks residency

Mixing movement: Orenstein studied both ballet and karate (she even won some championships!) from a young age. “Having this energy of fighting but also an energy of softness” influenced her movement style, she says, in addition­ to later training in Gaga and contemporary dance.

Creating multiple perspectives: For the virtual iteration of her 2019 She Will Come on Her Own, Orenstein invited five collaborators to document the piece. “The space was 360 degrees, so there was not a point of orientation where you could say, ‘This is the right way to film it,’ ” she says. She broadcast each interpretation simultaneously, allowing audiences to choose which one to watch.

What her dramaturg is saying: One of Orenstein’s talents lies in helping audiences rethink their preconceived notions,­ says Meredith Glisson, who often­ works as her dramaturg. “She’s guiding us through something that maybe­ we already know about”—like the Israel/Palestine conflict, for instance—“but then there’s this small twist, where it’s like, ‘Wow, I’d never thought about that before,’ ” she says.

On her new residency space: Orenstein and Glisson recently opened MOtiVE Brooklyn, a community dance space launched in response to the pandemic that aims to create a more customizable residency model and offers international exchange programs. Their goal is to put the artist first: In its inaugural year, they met with each of the 50-plus applicants to talk about their needs, and plan to find a way to support them all.

What she’s doing when she’s not dancing: Taking walks in nature, tending to her plants and working with her partner, a computer engineer, on software that can support multiple simultaneous livestreams.

The post This Rising Israeli Choreographer is Bringing a Fresh Perspective to NYC appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Works & Process at the Guggenheim’s LaunchPAD

LaunchPAD is an innovation on Works & Process’ successful bubble-residency program, which hosted 25 residencies between 2020 and 2021. Bubble-residency hosts—like the Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill and the Pocantico Center in Tarrytown—were eager to continue working with dance artists, and the resulting partnerships just made sense: Residency hosts, including newly added partners, had space to spare, but couldn’t necessarily pay artists a living wage, while Works & Process had the budget for artist fees but no space. These partnerships allow the organization to make good on a request that Works & Process executive director Duke Dang was hearing from artists: that they needed support that wasn’t necessarily attached to a performance, and more time and space to devote to the creative process.

LaunchPAD officially began in December, and will support at least 17 residencies in the first half of 2022, including Ladies of Hip Hop, Ryan McNamara and Samantha Figgins. The initiative, which will continue throughout 2023, aims to prioritizes artists who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. In addition to one to two weeks of onsite housing, round-the-clock devoted space and a living wage, each recipient will have opportunities to share the creative process with the local community: Les Ballet Afrik’s recent residency at The Church in Sag Harbor, for instance, included a screening of Paris is Burning, an open rehearsal, a vogue class and a final “show and tell.” Works & Process also organizes presentation opportunities for the works, once they are ready, at venues such as the Guggenheim, Lincoln Center and Jacob’s Pillow. 

Chelsea Factory

Founded in late 2021 by First Republic Bank chair Jim Herbert, Chelsea Factory was built to last for only five years—the idea being that, as an organization with an expiration date, time and resources can go almost exclusively to artist support rather than long-term planning and fundraising. 

The organization is leasing the building formerly occupied by Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, which was recently renovated to include a variety of modular performance and rehearsal spaces. To start, they’ll be put to use by a multidisciplinary cohort of resident artists, including choreographers Hope Boykin, Andrea Miller and Leonardo Sandoval, who will each receive an unrestricted $10,000 stipend and a large menu of additional resources—from production support to coaching to transportation. A film fellow will also work with each resident to create video content tailored to the artist’s needs. 

The program aims to restart momentum for artists who may have been slowed down by the pandemic, says executive director Lauren Kiel. And though Chelsea Factory itself will only last five years, she hopes to see “the trickle effect of this flexible, nimble, stay-small concept,” she says. “We could leave behind a legacy that allows for a more sustainable institutional fabric in the city.”

The post LaunchPAD and Chelsea Factory Are Reimagining How Residencies Can Serve Artists appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Today, Duffy has written a book about improvisation, Tap Into Improv, and has taken her signature improv-for-tap-dancers class all over the world. The lesson: Improvisation is a skill that can be learned, and it’s one that is becoming increasingly crucial for dancers in nearly any style.

Rethink Improv

Improvisation doesn’t have to be scary: Dr. Susanne Ravn, who studies dance improvisation at the University of Southern Denmark, suggests reframing how you think about it:

1. It Isn’t Just Making It Up as You Go Along
   We often think of improvisation as movement that happens spontaneously. In Ravn’s research, “that’s definitely not true. There’s always some planning or preparation before the improvisation takes place.” She says that skilled improvisers don’t just start improvising out of the blue; they might have specific ideas about improvisation or different topics they want to explore. She also says that while our conception of improvisation places the movement’s intentionality solely with the dancer, that’s not really the case either: Dancers are highly influenced by their settings and the people around them. “There’s something about moving with others where there’s a contagious effect,” she says. She suggests dancers embrace what is offered to them in the space, whether that means allowing yourself to be inspired by someone else’s movement quality or interacting with the architecture.
2. There’s Always Context and Expectations
   There’s sometimes a myth that dancers can truly move however they want while improvising. That is almost never the case, Ravn says: There is usually a context and an implicit expectation that will inform the movement. For instance, a dancer performing traditional ballet steps at a contemporary improv jam may make up movement on the spot, and in that sense improvise, but she likely won’t appear to be improvising within that context. Knowing the expectations can help dancers narrow down the movement options available to them, which can make the task feel less overwhelming.
3. All Dance Is Improv
   Ravn suggests that dancers think of all dance as having some element of improvisation. Even the most tightly choreographed pieces leave room for a dancer’s interpretation, and won’t look exactly the same every time they’re performed. “Any kind of dance performance comes with a certain kind of openness,” she says. This mindset can make what we traditionally think of as improvi­sation less intimidating—after all, you do it every time you dance.

The Improviser’s Toolbox

Set a Framework.
In many settings, you’ll be given a task or exercise to help direct your improvisation. If you aren’t, make something up for yourself, suggests Ravn. Some of Duffy’s favorite exercises include taking certain foundational steps away from students (like shuffles and brushes), so they can get out of their comfort zones or requiring them to move continuously throughout the room.
Discover what resonates most with you. Amy O’Neal, who teaches hip hop, contemporary, improvisation and other subjects at the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, experi­ments with sensation-based prompts (like embodying the texture of a particular instrument in music) and intellectual prompts (like initiating from different body parts sequentially).

Acknowledge Your Habits.
“Break your habits” is a common refrain in improvisational circles, and it can be a helpful way to think about improv. But it can also feel stifling. Duffy, for instance, used to beat herself up for doing the same steps over and over again. When she started to think about them differently—as steps she repeated because she loved them and was good at them—and allowed herself to do them without judgment, she found that her improvi­sation opened up, and she relied on those steps less and less. If the idea of breaking your habits feels too restrictive, try just noticing and exploring them.

Play.
Moncell Durden, who explores improv in his hip-hop, house and jazz classes at USC Kaufman, has an improv acronym: Intuitive Meditation Playfully Revealing Objective Variables. The “Playfully” part is particularly important for him: “I want to play in the sense that a 5-year-old plays,” he says. “What colors are going on? What sound? What is this character? And to realize the depth of the narrative you’re creating, the world you’re creating, and to venture into whatever that is.”

Face Your Fears.
Duffy starts many of her improv classes by asking students: “What is your biggest fear about improvising?” A common answer for tap dancers: Being out of time with the music. To help them overcome this fear, Duffy will tell them to try to dance off-time, and often they realize it’s hard for them to do. “It gives them the confidence not to worry about that so much,” she says. O’Neal does a similar exercise when her adult dancers express the fear of looking stupid: “What do you even think a stupid move looks like? Let’s all just move in a way that we think looks stupid. Let’s face it and reevaluate.”

Why Learn to Improv?

“There are endless professional and personal benefits to being able to improvise,” says Amy O’Neal, who teaches at the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance. “What if you are injured—how can you still explore your body in a safe way or create in those circumstances? What if you have to improvise at an audition? What if something happens in a live performance that is out of your control? Improvisation is also therapeutic; it is a space to learn about yourself and to release or move through di cult emotions.”

TEACHERS: For tips on helping your students improve their improvisations, visit dance-teacher.com.

The post How to Cultivate Improvisation Skills and Live in the Moment appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Here’s how five dancers across styles approach their veganism, and the plant-based rehearsal snacks, sweet treats and meals that they love.

Yosvani Ramos- Principal dancer at Colorado Ballet

Ramos became a vegan in 2019 after watching the documentary The Game Changers, about elite athletes who are vegan. Intrigued by the possibility of decreasing inflammation and injury and being able to dance longer (Ramos was 40 at the time), he did more research and decided to go vegan himself—but not before having one last dinner party where he bid farewell to his favorite meat dishes, like his mom’s chicken fricassee recipe.

Favorite protein sources: Ramos swears by beans (“I’m Cuban!”), Beyond Meat products and tofu.

Typical meals: He starts his day with a large smoothie with fruit, spinach, carrots, oats, spirulina and hemp protein powder. He’ll snack on peanuts or a banana if he needs a boost between rehearsals, and for lunch he’ll have a salad with a protein like tofu, vegan chicken or beans. For dinner, go-tos include a Beyond Burger, a tofu scramble or tempeh fricassee, and always some sort of beans. Dessert is usually fruit sprinkled with hemp hearts for added protein.

The hardest part of being vegan: “Desserts,” he says. He misses meringue cake and chocolate ice cream in particular.

Shauna Davis – Commercial and contemporary dancer and choreographer in Los Angeles

Davis has been an on-again, off-again vegetarian since age 12, when she did a school project on PETA. Five years ago she went fully vegan, after encouragement from a friend. “It started originally as an ethical thing, but now it’s morphed into so much—for environmental reasons, for health reasons,” she says.

Favorite vegan products: Field Roast sausages, Miyoko’s cheese, Abe’s blueberry muffins

Recent vegan discovery: “I was performing at a music festival and I went to Panda Express. They’re making this orange chicken with Beyond Meat. I didn’t know that I missed orange chicken!”

The social challenge: “On the road, even if I don’t feel worried or hungry, there’s always someone who is like, ‘Are you okay? Do you have enough food?’ I’m constantly being checked on, which is so sweet, but I feel like it can be a burden for others.”

Robbie Fairchild – Broadway dancer and former New York City Ballet principal

Fairchild went vegan in 2019 while filming Cats, when a friend in the cast explained­ why he was vegan (and, Fairchild admits, the meat offered on set did not look appetizing). Fairchild soon made the switch himself as he became more interested in the treatment of animals and the sustainability of his food sources, and imme­diately found that his body “became so efficient,” with leaner muscles and reduced inflammation and recovery time.

Go-to breakfast: A tofu scramble, with soy chorizo from Trader Joe’s, quinoa, mushrooms, broccoli and tomatoes, seasoned with turmeric, paprika and garlic, and topped with hummus. “You get so many different types of protein that last you for so long,” he says. “When I have a big day, that’s what I go for.”

The tool that makes vegan life easier: Fairchild subscribes to the PLANeT Based Meal Planner, an app that can help plan vegan meals and grocery hauls based on how much time you have and what ingredients are in your fridge already. He says it’s made him a better cook and has taught him quick, delicious vegan recipes, like the TLT (tempeh, lettuce, tomato) sandwich.

The non-vegan treat he still craves: Burrata

Favorite vegan dessert: Van Leeuwen ice cream, especially the honeycomb flavor

Brandi Pinnix – Philadanco dancer

A vegetarian on and off since high school, Pinnix went fully vegan in 2018 after realizing that dairy wasn’t working for her. “My skin has cleared up so much,” she says. “My stomach feels better, and I just feel happier.”

What she eats in a day: Oatmeal or a green smoothie with spinach, coconut water, mango and banana for breakfast; a veggie wrap or salad for lunch (she likes making a chickpea salad similar to a tuna or chicken salad); favorite dinners include sweet-potato tacos with an avocado crema and chickpea curry.

Go-to rehearsal snack: Peanut butter cookie Larabars (she likes to refrigerate them)

Favorite vegan makeup: Kylie Jenner’s makeup line, which is fully vegan, and the vegan products from Fenty Beauty

Pandemic cooking habits: “Before, I was just ordering food out and being a lazy vegan. But during quarantine I started to experiment more in the kitchen. I had that time to investigate—what am I really putting in my body?”

One of her favorite quarantine recipes: vegan banana bread.

Derick K. Grant – Tap dancer and choreographer based in Boston and New York City

Grant went vegan in 2017, after a period of panic attacks and other health issues that doctors were having trouble explaining. At first, “it started off rocky,” says Grant, who calls himself a survival chef. “I had my moments of weakness,” he says. “Provolone was my mistress.” But once he gave up dairy for good, “daily functions like mucus and breathing and moving and joint repair changed instantly.”

Rehearsal snack: “I used to chew on Twizzlers just to chew the grass, so to speak, anytime I was in the studio working on something. They happen to be vegan in their own strange way. But then that became nuts and seeds.”

Late-night vegan treat: “It was a curse in disguise when Burger King got the Impossible Whopper. Now I have a late-night option when we come out of a show and nothing is open because I’m not in New York.”

Go-to vegan milk: “I’m kinda addicted to oat milk. It’s so creamy.”

The meal he still craves: “My favorite thing that hasn’t been veganized yet is bourbon chicken and rice.”

What Vegan Dancers Should Know…

According to registered dietitian nutritionist Emily Harrison

• Keep protein in mind, but don’t stress about it. “That’s the one everyone worries about, but I’ve been doing this so long that I know my vegan clients usually get plenty of protein,” she says. Just make sure you’re mixing and matching protein sources throughout the day, such as beans, lentils, peas, nuts, seeds, soy and whole grains.
• Get your other key nutrients. Harrison says all vegan dancers should be taking a B12 supplement (preferably a methyl B12 or a methylated B12 because it is easier to absorb) and a D3 supplement. You can get most other important nutrients through food, she says. The only other ones you might need in supplement form are zinc and calcium, depending on how much beans, greens, soy, nuts and seeds you eat. She also suggests making sure whatever nondairy milk you’re buying contains calcium, and to shake the container since the calcium may have been added in powder form.
• If you’re vegan and cutting out other food groups, see a dietitian. Harrison emphasizes that a vegan diet is completely healthy and doable for dancers. But for those who are vegan and cut out gluten, or have some other restriction, things become trickier. “It’s possible, but it’s an opportunity for professional guidance,” she says. “We just have to make sure they’re getting what they need.”

The post Plant Power: 5 Vegan Dancers Share Their Approaches appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The project adding another line to Peck’s already packed resumé is City Center’s new Artists at the Center series, launching March 4–6. It gives dance artists a curatorial platform to explore ideas that they wouldn’t have an opportunity to anywhere else, says president and CEO Arlene Shuler. (Artists at the Center will be one of Shuler’s final acts at City Center; she will step down at the end of the 2021–22 season.)

The concept for the series, which City Center hopes will be annual, has been in the works for several years, and grew from conversations with artists close to the organization about what else they’d like to be able to do there that they can’t normally do in their artistic­ lives. It’s an extension of a vision that Shuler has been developing throughout her tenure: making City Center a place where companies and artists don’t just pass through for a weekend of shows, but where they have a creative home. 

Peck was a natural fit for the series due to her strong relationship with the venue, and her entrepreneurial streak (in 2017 she curated BalletNOW at The Music Center in Los Angeles, though Shuler says Artists at the Center will give her even more control and responsibility). Peck’s program will feature the premiere of a collaboration between herself and tap artist Michelle Dorrance, plus additional works by William Forsythe, Alonzo King and Peck, who will be making her New York City debut as a choreographer. Artists at the Center almost started with an even bigger bang: Prior to COVID-19, the plan was to launch with the announcement of three separate programs by three separate artists. “It was a little crazy,” says Shuler, who says that future programs will “only be limited by artists’ imaginations,” suggesting that someone else might want to mount a full-length ballet. 

The series won’t just be for ballet dancers, says Shuler (though the other name she notes as part of the extended “City Center family” is Peck’s NYCB colleague Sara Mearns). Nor is it just for dancers—she mentions choreographers “who might want to work in a different way than they do for their own company or an existing institution.” But expect names familiar to the City Center stage, at least to start out, says Stanford Makishi, vice president and artistic director of dance programs: “These relationships are built on trust—them in us as a supportive institution and us in them as extraordinary talents.” 

The post New York City Center Gives Artists the Curatorial Reins appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But not only does Skeleton Crew have dance, it opens with dance, and dance is the thread that weaves the fabric of the show together. The man doing the weaving: Bessie winner and Broadway veteran Adesola Osakalumi, who joins the elite ranks of artists (like Savion Glover and Tommy Tune) double-billed on Broadway as both performers and choreographers. 

Osakalumi, who previously appeared on Broadway in Fela! and Equus, has been with Skeleton Crew since its 2016 Atlantic Theater production and has a host of other credits, from Across the Universe to the Drama Desk–winning Jam on the Groove. He blends popping, locking and other hip-hop styles to dance us through each of Skeleton Crew’s six transitions, embodying the spirit of the factory and of the city of Detroit itself, almost like a silent narrator. Dance Magazine spoke to him about his unique role and what it means to be using hip hop to tell stories on Broadway.

How did you get involved in Skeleton Crew?

I was introduced to Ruben through a friend, another choreographer, Darrell Grand Moultrie. He explained what he wanted to do and how he envisioned it. And I was like, “I can do it. I’m the guy.” So, it was not your normal audition process. And then he called me back five years later and was like, “Hey, so, the show is going to go to Broadway, and I want you to come back.”

How do you conceive of your role?

It’s only alluded to in stage directions. It’s like, “the factory hums contentedly.” Or “the workers continue to move as the machinery starts to slowly break down.” That’s all. And Ruben envisioned bringing that spirit of the factory to life, but also showing the actual physical work that is done, because the play is set in the break room. And work is alluded to, but you never see anybody work. So Ruben was like, “Let’s show the dancing body, the Black body, at work.” He wanted something sharp and clean that expressed the power and specificity of the workers. He always talks about Detroit at one point being the center of America and by extension almost the center of the universe, because of the output of work and cars and factories, but also the music and culture that came out of Detroit. So he wanted a nod to both the auto industry and the musical legacy of Detroit.

What was your process for developing the movement like?

We had a creative team that was Jimmy Keys, who is Dominique’s husband, who did all the original music, Rob Kaplowitz, who did sound, and Chesney Snow, who did beatboxing. We would go in our own room and they would create music. It was really collaborative—I was able to request certain sounds. My own process was to use each transition as a storytelling element, either illuminating what just happened in the scene or leading us into a scene. My intention in the prologue is to tell the story of the whole two hours in two minutes. I give little physicalizations of what each character does. I think when people hear “hip hop,” they are like, “How can this be used as storytelling?” And I totally disagree. This shows that there are a variety of styles of dance that are worthy of the Broadway stage.

Why do you think those stories needed to be told through movement specifically?   

Two reasons: The energy of the piece—it’s set in Detroit, it’s a natural extension of the music, culture, spirit. And, the rote, repetitive nature of a stamping plant. There are parallels between the rote, repetitive nature of people studying dance and training. It’s been one of the most-produced plays in the last three or four years, and not all of the productions have used dance, but a lot of them have, and I think that speaks to the validity of what Ruben and I set forth.

The post This Double-Billed Performer/Choreographer Is Bringing a Surprising Amount of Dance to Broadway’s Newest Play appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Start From Neutral

Many dancers are taught from an early age to strive for good posture, often being told to keep their shoulders down and their chin lifted. But as Bryant puts it, “It’s almost like they’ve listened too well.” Pressing the shoulders too far down or lifting the chin too far up can minimize a dancer’s range of motion by not allowing them any more down (in the case of the shoulders) or up (in the case of the chin) to go, points out Chicago-based physical therapist Julie O’Connell, director of Performing Arts Rehabilitation at Athletico. 

Starting from a true neutral position allows dancers to move in whatever direction the choreography requires. For the shoulders, O’Connell suggests thinking of wrapping the shoulder blades around and into the spinal column instead of pushing them down. For the head, imagine a candy cane hook from the sternum bone to under the chin, with your eyes looking forward towards the horizon, says O’Connell. This also helps eliminate the tension in the back of the neck that comes from lifting the chin too high. 

Make It Natural

Bryant says that the movement of the head and neck should come to us naturally, but students sometimes lose that natural instinct when they are so focused on technique. To counter this, Bryant tells her students to pretend that their chin has a plié, which encourages them to allow the chin to rise and fall.

Another way to channel a natural sense of movement: Allow the head to go where the eyes go. “If you have real direction with your eyes, I think your head will go in the right place,” says Bryant. 

If you’re not sure where to look, try following your hands or arms. In classical Indian dances, where “the head and the neck are the primary focus of movement” and are often used to tell stories, says Amit Shah, this is usually built into the choreography. “Anytime there’s an arm movement, the head and neck will move in that same direction,” says Shah, founder of New Jersey’s AATMA Performing Arts school and company. 

The same can often be said of ballet and other styles, says Bryant, who sees it as a way of dancing with the entire body. “The movement has to start within in order to come out,” she says.

The Care and Keeping of Your Neck

Neck soreness and stiffness can restrict your range of motion and potentially lead to long-term issues. Keep your neck healthy with these tips from O’Connell.

Avoid stomach sleeping. O’Connell recommends ergonomic pillows with neck support that can encourage side or back sleeping, or rolling up a towel to support the neck on a regular pillow. She cautions against using multiple pillows, which can position the head too far forward, and warns that “the fluffier the pillow, the worse.”

Mind your sedentary time.Many hours spent sitting at a computer, hunched over a phone or driving can adversely affect the neck. 

Watch your bag. Instead of a heavy dance bag slung over one shoulder, try using a backpack, and consider reassessing how much weight you
really need to carry around. 

Manage soreness.O’Connell recommends muscle rubs with lidocaine, wet heat (like wrapping a heating pad in a moist towel or taking a hot shower) and massage—whether from a professional or with tools like a Theragun. 

Know when to seek help.If you begin experiencing headaches, swelling or bruising, or referred pain into the shoulder blades or hands and fingers (such as your hand falling asleep or feeling tingly or numb), make an appointment with your doctor. 

Exercises for Neck Strength

O’Connell says that strengthening the muscles at the front of the neck is the biggest thing dancers can do for greater mobility. Here are some of her favorite exercises. 

For proper head alignment: Dancers tend to hold their chins too far forward or too lifted, whereas the “chin shelf” should simply be parallel with the floor. To correct this posture, place a tennis-ball–sized foam ball under the chin and nod the answer “yes,” or place your pinky finger on your sternum and index finger on your chin, and push your chin back. You can also stand with your back against a wall and gently push your head into it. 

For greater freedom in the neck: “The neck is easier to move when its role is to move the head and not hold up the weight of the arms,” says O’Connell. “So stronger upper backs and shoulders are a better shelf for the head to sit on.” O’Connell recommends strengthening with shoulder rolls and arm circles backwards and forwards, or shrugging the shoulders up and down. She also suggests lying on your back and punching both arms up toward the ceiling, then squeezing them back into a T on the floor, and bringing them back up towards the ceiling. Do two sets of 10. 

For upper-back mobility: Having a mobile upper back can enhance the articulation of the neck, but O’Connell says most dancers have a very straight, often stiff, upper spine. To encourage more mobility, she recommends lying on a foam roller placed horizontally across your midback and arching over the roller into thoracic extension. 

To prep for whiplash choreography: O’Connell says choreography that involves quick transitions or throwing the head around can put the neck at risk. To strengthen the side and front muscles (which O’Connell calls “the abdominals of the neck”), try neck sit-ups: Lying on your side, bring your ear up towards your shoulder, or, lying on your back, do a mini-oblique sit-up, lifting the head on a diagonal and bringing the chin towards the sternum. 

The post 4 Tips for Expressive, Safe Head and Neck Articulation appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The result of these pairings is programming that “takes the basic concept of the master class and animates it with intellectual ideas and practices that are interesting to the choreographers,” says the Hopkins Center’s director Mary Lou Aleskie. What that has looked like so far has been as distinct as the artists themselves: Phuon led participants on a tour through the local forest while teaching them nature-inspired movement; Coates conducted a dance investigation outside the school’s observatory and discussed how her work is guided by astronomy. 

“Fundamentally, this is about finding ways for everybody to feel like they’re people who can move—that they can move together, that we can know things together, that we can learn things together and that the movement actually propels us forward.” Mary Lou Aleskie

“We went into Big Move last year thinking it’s going to be a movement thing and then a talk,” says Michael Bodel, the Hopkins Center’s director of external affairs. “And instantly that didn’t fit—people wanted to do things that exploded that notion.” Bodel sees these events as a way to bridge the two disparate audiences that the school’s dance programming previously served: The dancers who go to the master class, and the “people wearing collared shirts paying full ticket price who go to the preshow talk.” 

Next up is choreographer Faye Driscoll, who will collaborate with psychology professor Viola Stoermer on a guided workshop exploring touch and sensory perception on February 2.

The post How Big Move at the Hop Fosters Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration appeared first on Dance Magazine.

This month, two shows she’d be working on—Cannabis! A Viper Vaudeville, a time-traveling theatrical concert about the history of cannabis that she was co-choreographing and performing in, and The Hang, a queer jazz opera by Taylor Mac that imagines the final hours of Socrates’ life, which she was choreographing—were scheduled to run simultaneously in New York City’s Prototype Festival.

But like many of the experimental festivals that were set to kick off the year in New York City, the Prototype Festival postponed their programming just as it was about to begin. Cannabis! will have to wait to make its premiere, although The Hang will open this month at HERE Arts Center, just a few weeks late, on January 20.

Prior to the postponement, Dance Magazine spoke to Judson, who is also the co-artistic director of Urban Bush Women, about working on these two singular productions, and the role dance plays in them.

How did you get involved in these shows?

Cannabis! grew out of my relationship of working with Talvin Wilks [Cannabis! dramaturg and co-director], one of our longtime collaborators with Urban Bush Women. He’s someone I’ve grown fond of as a collaborator, as a mentor. My relationship with Taylor Mac has a similar genesis—I worked with Taylor first in “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,” where Jawole [Willa Jo Zollar, UBW founder] had done some choreography.

How have you navigated working on both shows simultaneously?

What’s useful is that they use different parts of my brain and body. In Cannabis!, I’m a collaborator, a dance captain and I’m in the work, so it asks for different preparation in terms of my body being the primary vessel. And so there’s a different level of responsibility—there’s definitely homework that I take with me in terms of really listening to the music. But it’s not the same amount of homework as the creative leads. I think that that gives breath for The Hang, where I do take on that responsibility. It’s like puzzle-making that sometimes happens in my body as a way to understand where the truth and the answers lie inside of the work. But it also happens inside of charts and diagrams and index cards. So that’s a different way that it asks me to show up in the room.

Tell me more about The Hang, and what the process has been like for you.

The Hang has 26 songs that you look at and you’re like, “How did all of this come out of a singular mind?” Matt Ray literally improvised the entire score—Taylor would send him a poem, and Ray would put on his recorder and improvise.

The story of The Hang is that the ensemble of radical fairies wants to mourn over Socrates, who is at his last day of life—Socrates is drinking the hemlock, and it’s about to be over. And they want to make a grand affair of it, and Socrates says, “Actually, I want to spend this last day the way I have modeled my life, which is in acts of consideration, so let’s hang this day.”

The work is incredible—it’s massive. And it’s funny, because initially we wanted it to not be massive. Taylor was like, “I always do these big, epic things, and I want to do something more intimate, and less like this outward thrust into the audience.” And in some ways, particularly in terms of how the audience engages, it really does hold true to that. And in some ways, it’s still pretty massive. It’s a dense work—one of my challenges has been to make sure that I don’t put so much movement and staging inside of it so that people can hear the words, because the writing is really brilliant. I want to make space for the audience to hold it and grapple with it and for it to leave an impression.

What is the movement like for each show—what role does it play?

Inside of Cannabis!, the movement offers the culture or the frame for the songs. And the dancers, we’re like vapor or smoke; we morph and shift in time, starting from the beginning of time, being the embodiment of a cannabis bud.

The Hang starts with this big idea. And the way the trajectory of the show is, it actually simmers down, as opposed to “Let me grow to the moment of ‘Now I move.’” We talked about scale and modulation a lot in the music and the movement language, and so we start in high drama and we work our way to the sensibility of what I call “kiki cool.”

What’s the through line between these works and your work with UBW?

They’re both ensemble works, and my involvement with them is absolutely related to the body of knowing that I have from working in UBW. It’s really one of the things that I lift up about UBW in terms of the methodologies that Jawole and collaborators have grown; it’s very intentional ways of working in collaboration and ensemble.

The post Socrates, Fairies and Cannabis: Chanon Judson on Her Surprising Recent Theater Projects appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But achieving a plié that’s both functional and has that luscious, effortless quality can be more difficult than it appears. Use these tips to deepen this foundational step.

Start With Alignment

“In terms of plié, tension is one of your biggest enemies,” says Gretchen Vogelzang, director of the Greater Washington Dance Center, where she teaches ballet. One source of this tension, Vogelzang says, is often misalignment: “If the pelvis is not aligned properly, everything has to grip to hold on.”

Assess your plié from top to bottom to make sure you are lined up correctly: Is your pelvis in a neutral position? Is your core engaged? Are knees tracking over toes? Are all 10 toes on the floor, with the arch of each foot supported? Vogelzang says that addressing misalignment higher up the kinetic chain often helps with problems lower down, and allows dancers to plié with more freedom.

Loosen Up

Tightness in overworked muscles often limits dancers from reaching their plié’s potential, says LaBelle. She often sees this in dancers who skip or rush through their warm-up (which should include dynamic stretches) and cooldown (which should be at least 10 to 15 minutes long and include self-release and deeper static stretching). 

Make sure what you’re doing outside the studio is helping keep your muscles pliable too: Wearing supportive footwear is essential, says LaBelle, as is getting enough rest and hydration. 

Work With What You Have

Sometimes a plié’s depth can be limited by anatomical factors, like a short Achilles tendon or ankle impingement. Ballet dancers often face a particular dilemma, says LaBelle: They have lots of plantar flexion, which helps them to get on pointe, but in turn they may have less dorsiflexion range of motion, which is needed for a deep plié. 

Even when you’ve reached the limits of the shape of your plié, there’s still much you can do to get that juicy quality—and create the illusion that your plié is deeper than it actually is.

One tactic: Use the strength of your quadriceps to modulate the speed of your plié’s descent, says Vogelzang, playing with the idea of resisting gravity. She also recommends coordinating your exhale with your plié and masking a short plié with the upper body. “It’s one thing to come down suddenly and abruptly,” she says, “but it’s another thing if you come down and let your arms continue the motion.” 

Just don’t resort to unsafe cheats, like lifting your heels at the bottom of the plié, says LaBelle. 

Use New Words and Images

Find Pleasure in Plié

Dancers plié thousands of times a year, says Long, so they might as well enjoy the experience. This is especially true at the beginning of class, says LaBelle, pointing out that doing pliés at the barre is a dynamic stretch in itself and should be treated as such. “You want to work in that nice springy range that doesn’t feel forced,” she says. “It’s a critical part of warm-up—
it can activate the glutes, the quads, the hamstrings, bringing all the big players into readiness for class or performance.” 

For Long, plié is an opportunity to get into her body. “I research how bending the knees connects me to my body as
a whole,” she says. “Most of us start our day with plié—look for pleasure in the start of your practice.”

The post 5 Tips for Getting Deeper, Juicier, More Powerful Pliés appeared first on Dance Magazine.

And yet, when Thimmaiah was younger, he was so unsure about being upside down that his mother, attempting to help, would sometimes hold him by the ankles to get him comfortable with the feeling.

Indeed, going upside down can be intimidating—whether it’s the fear of falling, the rush of blood to the head or just the disorientation of seeing the world from a different angle. But “if you can go upside down, it provides you more options to express and to move without limitations,” says Thimmaiah. And that’s not just for breakers—modern dancers need this tool for inversions, for instance, and ballet dancers for partnering.

So what does it take to become as confident moving upside down as you are right side up?

The post Heels Over Head: 5 Tips to Get More Comfortable With Inversions appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“Group work is very human,” says Denise Vale, senior artistic associate at the Martha Graham Dance Company. “It’s a commitment from the individual to immerse themselves in the group but retain their individuality.” Use these tactics to become a better team player for compelling, powerful group performances.

The post Dance as One: 6 Tips to Improve Your Group Work appeared first on Dance Magazine.

It’s a small gesture, but like all the movement in the show, it says a lot. “It’s a moment of such confidence and prowess,” says director Danya Taymor. “It lets the audience know, ‘You’re good. I got you. I’m the leader and I’m telling this story. So you can keep your eyes on me if you want to know what’s going on.'”

Equally in conversation with the Book of Exodus and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Pass Over, the first play on Broadway post-pandemic, reimagines Beckett’s “tramps,” Vladimir and Estragon, as young Black men (Moses and Kitch) living in a police state. And it does so with an economical, poetic script by Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu, and with movement that’s tempting to call dance but is certainly not choreography, according to Taymor.

“There’s not even blocking,” she says. “I mean, there’s a little blocking.” The movement, which is partially improvised and changes from night to night, was created by Taymor and the actors, Hill, Namir Smallwood and Gabriel Ebert, and a special guest—clown and Beckett expert Bill Irwin, who served as movement consultant.

“It was like kismet—Bill had to work on this,” says Taymor. “And so we tracked him down and didn’t let him say no.”

Dance Magazine spoke to Taymor and Irwin about how they developed Pass Over‘s striking non-choreography.

Danya, you’ve been with Pass Over since 2017. Bill, how long have you been with the project?

Bill Irwin: Hardly at all. It gives me an opportunity to just go on record as saying that this quite astounding piece of work on that Broadway stage has zero to do with this physical artist.

Danya Taymor: That’s not true. What’s cool about what Bill did was he gave us a few really direct links to different ways of moving, different embodiments, different traditions. He let us all be tramps, and we’d been investigating that. But to get to work with Bill just opened up different doors that we have been knocking at and Bill was like, Let me just open this for you.

How did the movement in the show evolve into what it looks like today?

DT: A lot of the movement in my work comes from mirroring, which is like the most basic of all theater exercises. But it allows connection between performers—they really have to gaze into each other’s eyes, and there’s nothing more intimate than that. I also like to do these weird partner stretches. So it creates a trust and dependence on your fellow ensemble members. Antoinette and I have also talked about different comedic duos through time, like Abbott and Costello, Nichols and May, Laurel and Hardy, Key and Peele. Obviously, Vladimir and Estragon. So many of these duos are working with great physicality. We wanted to find ways to bring joy into all the bodies onstage and freedom and looseness and goofiness. These young men should be allowed to be just silly. Especially considering what their day-to-day is.

Can you talk about how the idea of “trampness” translates into movement in Pass Over?

BI: Here’s a stage direction from Mr. Beckett’s play: “They stand motionless, arms dangling, head sunk, sagging at the knees.” I mean, he is that particular.

DT: Bill came in one rehearsal and literally just brought them big shoes and big pants with suspenders. So they could just feel their bodies in those clothes. Something else we experimented with on a day when Bill was in was the exploration of the feminine body. So often in Pass Over the way the characters can be intimate with one another is when they embody women. I had a friend come and she was like, I just think women are going to flock to this play to see men given permission to be so vulnerable and so free, because society doesn’t like to let them do that.

BI: And it’s happening on a truly movement dimension. Actors are told all the time, “Be vulnerable here. So as you’re reading text, you’re looking for ways to find that. But finding it in the standing body is a different craft.

What is the role of movement in the show?

BI: I think it is inextricable. And that is part of the joy of watching this work. It is a weave that is very hard to disentangle.

DT: When they think of movement, people think about choreography or something set, or something that somebody decided upon and then taught. And as a director, that’s never how I go about it. I will let the actors do the play on its feet for, like, 10 days before I come in and even give a suggestion, because I’m hoping that if you have performers that are strong enough, as these three men are, they’re gonna figure it out. It’s always better if it comes from inside them. That’s why it feels so alive and so precise. I’ve given them full permission: If they can’t get there, do what’s real. Part of why it’s so striking is because of the trust they have with themselves and with each other.

How much are they actually experimenting with the movement each night?

DT: I’d say 25 percent of it is different every night. The three actors before every show huddle up, and they say, “What shall we play tonight, gentlemen?,” and they suggest a different musician. It could be a musician, it could be a genre, it could be a song, it could be an album. And then after half an hour, they go and they all listen to that music. And then that’s the show they do. And so there are certain sections of movement where the line of it is known, but how you get from A to B, as long as you can honestly go from A to B, get there however you want. That keeps it alive, especially in a long run. It keeps it really playful for them. It’s the same story being told every night, but it’s a different show.

Moses and Kitch move through space in such a specific way. How did you develop that shared movement language?

DT: A lot of the Moses and Kitch stuff really is just mirroring. And they’re letting their different bodies inform that mirror. So it’s not like Moses and Kitch are the same and they’re doing the same movement. Moses will mock Kitch and filter it through his body. It gives this permission for repetition, which I feel like is a really Beckettian thing, and really part of Moses and Kitch’s everyday. They play these games; they recycle them. Kitch especially gets real comfort in the routine of it.

Do you each have a favorite movement moment from the show?

BI: At the very end, when Moses takes his clothes off, it is a glorious moment of theater.

DT: Yeah, the disrobing is exciting. I like when they take off their microphones. I like that final acknowledgment that, yes, we’ve all been in this room together. And we still are in this room together. And that acknowledgment through movement is singular to theater to be able to say, “Yeah, we’ve been breathing the same air this whole time and we’re not asking you to pretend otherwise. That happened. That all happened.”

The post Don’t Call It Choreography: Inside the Propulsive, Powerful Movement of Broadway’s First Post-Pandemic Play appeared first on Dance Magazine.

For example: You don’t want to overstretch, but you’re not going to see results if you don’t stretch enough. You want to focus on areas where you’re tight, but you also can’t neglect other areas or else you’ll be imbalanced. You were taught to hold static stretches growing up, but now everyone is telling you never to hold a stretch longer than a few seconds?

Considering how important stretching correctly is for dancers, it’s easy to get confused or overwhelmed. So we came up with 10 common stretching scenarios, and gave you the expert low-down.

If You Have A Tight Upper Back

You may not think the flexibility of your upper back is relevant to, say, the height of your extension or your ability to get into a full split. But dance physiotherapist Lisa Howell says a tight upper back could have major implications for your neural mobility. “If your upper back is very tight, then the nerves and fascia that lie along the spine can get restricted,” she says. Try these exercises to increase mobility in your upper back.

If You Want Better Feet

Dancers have long been using aggressive methods (read: foot stretchers and making our friends sit on our feet) to try to get archier, stretchier feet. But it turns out, there are safer ways to get better lines—and they don’t necessarily even involve stretching your feet.

Mandy Blackmon, a physical therapist for Atlanta Ballet
, recommends dancers stretch their calves instead, as tight calves can restrict the movement of the ankle joint.

Work on strengthening the feet instead of stretching them, she says, using the tried-and-true method of working through your foot with an exercise band. (Try writing the alphabet or your full name.) If you’re really aching for a foot stretch, use your body weight to push over your pointe shoe; a safer stretch since it requires foot strength as well, says Blackmon.

If You’re Stretching As A Warm-Up

Well, don’t.

“Static stretching is not warming up,” says Dr. Nancy Kadel, co-chair of the Dance/USA Task Force on Dancer Health. “It’s much better to walk, or do anything else to elevate the heart rate.” Kadel says that static stretching can temporarily weaken muscles, impair coordination and reduce balance and jump height—not what you want pre-class or rehearsal.

Instead, your warm-up should focus on getting your heart rate up. This can include dynamic stretches, like moving through lunges or a yoga flow. Save short static stretches—30 seconds maximum—for after class or rehearsal when you’re warm.

If You Feel Pain

Stretching should not be painful—in fact going too far in a stretch could actually limit your flexibility. According to former dancers and stretch therapists Ann and Chris Frederick, the brain interprets pain as a signal that something is wrong, and if a muscle won’t let go, it’s probably because it’s protecting itself.

As dancers, it can be hard for us to judge what’s actually painful. Meredith Butulis, a doctor of physical therapy who frequently works with dancers, says that if you feel a line, like a muscle is stretched taut, that’s okay. But, “if you feel a painful spot, like in your kneecap or hip socket, it may indicate you’re tugging at a joint or there’s scar tissue, so ease up.”

If You’re Cross-Training with Yoga

Yoga can be a great place to work on flexibility. But be careful that you’re not throwing away your stretching rules because you’re in a new setting—or because the warm temperature tricks you into thinking your muscles are warm.

Yoga classes sometimes involve holding stretches longer than is recommended, and dancers may push themselves too far in classes that are not designed for super-flexible bodies. Go easy, focus on alignment and don’t hesitate to leave a position before you’re cued to.

If You’re Stretching With A Partner

Working with a friend can help give you a deeper stretch. But it’s easy to push it too far. Butulis says it only takes a pound of pressure from a partner to give you that added stretch. “Gentle pressure can activate sensors that allow the muscles to contract and relax,” she says. “However, if you use excessive force or move the limb too quickly, the sensors will react to protect the muscle by tightening, preventing the stretch.”

If You’re Hypermobile

Hypermobile dancers still gotta stretch. But if you have already-loose joints, be extra-intentional about avoiding overstretching.

For one, pay close attention to alignment, says Lastics Stretch Technique teacher Donna Flagg, holding positions with muscular strength rather than hyperextending or flopping into them. This may mean not going as far into a stretch as you’re used to. Focus on lengthening, rather than pushing into joints.

Stretch areas where you’re tight (hips and quads for many dancers) rather than continuing to stretch areas where you’re already flexible, says Flagg. Instead, work on creating stability in loose areas.

And even if you can split your legs further than 180 degrees, you probably shouldn’t, says Flagg. Only stretch as far as you actually need to.

If You Have Tight Hamstrings

If you can’t seem to be able to get your hamstrings to budge, it might be because you’re not taking into account the fact that there are actually three muscles working together, says Butulis. Most often, dancers aren’t stretching the outermost muscle correctly.

“After you’re warm, work a foam roller or lacrosse ball down the full length of the outer hamstring, and hold in tight spots—you’ll feel them—for about 30 seconds,” she says. “Then roll the whole muscle set for four to five minutes before you move on to dynamic stretches.”

Be warned: If your hamstrings are extremely tight, it may mean that your medial and lateral muscles have adhered to one another, which will require the help of a physical therapist or massage therapist.

If You Want More Flexibility ASAP

Developing flexibility takes time. If you’re determined to make progress fast, it’s tempting to go to extreme lengths. But overstretching in positions like frog or straddling between two chairs is just dangerous.

Instead, maximize your flexibility by being consistent with your stretching. Jennifer Green, founder of PhysioArts in New York City, suggests stretching your biggest problem areas five times a day, holding each stretch for 30 seconds.

If You Feel Like You’re Not Getting Anywhere

If you’re stretching consistently and strategically and still aren’t seeing the improvement you want, consider one of these factors:

You need to be foam-rolling, too.
If your tightness is caused by restricted fascia rather than muscle, stretching won’t help—but foam rolling will. “Foam rolling can be done prior to activity, even on cold muscles, or post-activity to release inhibited muscles,” says Leigh Heflin, program coordinator of the Harkness Center for Dance Injuries at New York University’s Langone Medical Center. “Although it doesn’t necessarily increase range of motion, it can allow more freedom in a muscle that was otherwise restricted.”

You should see an expert.
They can help you find imbalances and recommend stretches. Or, a massage therapist can work out areas that have become overly tight.

You should be focusing on strength. Flexibility can only do so much for a dancer. If you’ve worked on flexibility but aren’t seeing the results in your extension, it could be because you haven’t built enough strength. Work on strengthening your core, hip flexors and quadriceps as much as you stretch your hamstrings.

You’re neglecting some muscles.
Stretching some tight areas but not others can create imbalances in the body, says Heflin. If you’re overstretching your hamstrings but neglecting the opposing muscle group, the quadriceps, the quads can become tight and overworked.

You’re stretching in the wrong order.
“There are 34 muscles across your hips—why would you start with the toughest hamstring muscle?” says Chris Frederick. Try stretching the small muscles in your hip and back first to increase your hamstrings’ range of motion.

You need to create space in the joint.
Try gently pulling the limb away from the socket before stretching to help you go further, says Frederick.

The post The Dancer’s Ultimate Guide to Stretching appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Land acknowledgments like these have become a bona fide trend in institutions of all kinds—from business conferences to major universities to art museums—across the country. (And in Canada, New Zealand and Australia, where they are even more common.) But they’ve particularly caught on in socially conscious dance venues.

It’s possible that this bandwagon effect stems from the embodied nature of our form—as dancers we physically feel our connection to the land and the space we occupy. Or perhaps it’s just a matter of people wanting to jump on a trend. Either way, their rising popularity in dance raises questions about who these acknowledgments are really for.

Though land acknowledgments are now most visibly practiced by non-native people as a kind of reparatory action, they stem from the ways in which native people have been relating to the land—and to one another—for centuries. This can take the form of welcoming newcomers onto a piece of land, or of asking permission to travel into a territory.

“We have always acknowledged, paid respect to and been in relationship to where we are, whether in our own homelands or when we travel,” says Emily Johnson, a New York City–based Yup’ik artist who has helped venues like Abrons Arts Center develop their land acknowledgments.

In dance, most land acknowledgments are practiced as part of a preshow announcement—sometimes lumped in with information about fire exits or a thank-you message to donors and board members. For audiences who have never experienced one, they can feel out of place or jarring. More importantly, there’s a danger of trivializing their meaning, or of them becoming so scripted that audiences tune out.

“Sometimes they sound like reading off a list of people who died in a war,” says Rosy Simas, a Minneapolis-based Seneca dancer and choreographer, adding that this can further invisibilize native people, or perpetuate the myth that there are no native people left.

Rather than reading words off a page at all, some native dance artists instead practice nonverbal land acknowledgments. Santee Smith, for example, a Toronto-based artist from the Six Nations of the Grand River, has a solo work called Blood, Water, Earth, which she considers to be like “an embodied land acknowledgment.” In Christopher K. Morgan’s piece Pohaku (“stone” in Hawaiian), he enlists community members to help gather stones from the land and return them after the performance. This teaches the audience about how Hawaiians use stones traditionally, and about the natural environment where the piece is being performed.

Not all native people do land acknowledgments, though, and there are nearly as many protocols around acknowledgment as there are tribes in the U.S. But these nuances often get lost when organizations introduce land acknowledgments without proper research, says Simas.

Some make the mistake of grouping all native people together, she says, while others fail to realize the full history of the land they’re on. For example, with forced removal and voluntary relocation, the descendants of the original inhabitants of a given area may now live across the country. Or in New York City, while some land acknowledgments mention only the Lenape people, Simas points out that the island of Mannahatta was for hundreds of years a place of trading where many nations came and went. “When you exclude the complexity of the history of native people, it adds to the damage of colonization,” she says.

Learning the full history—and creating a land acknowledgment that has depth and intention—requires connecting with local indigenous communities. This process should be a collaboration; find out the community’s protocols and discover what kind of relationship would be meaningful to them (which may or may not even include land acknowledgment).

For institutions that have historically not engaged with native artists, this can be an uncomfortable step. “Indigenous people want to make connections with organizations, but they don’t want to come in through the usual door, which is a revolving door,” says Sandra Laronde, who is originally from the Teme-Augama-Anishinaabe in northern Ontario and is director of Toronto-based Red Sky Performance. “Imagine the distrust of not being included in an institution forever and now people want to build relationships.”

But that discomfort can be generative, says Ali Rosa-Salas, director of programming at Abrons Arts Center. While writing Abrons’ land acknowledgment, Rosa-Salas consulted with Johnson and the Lenape Center, both of whom she has since worked with on other projects, such as a series of ceremonial fires featuring dancing, food and sharing of indigenous knowledge.

Rosa-Salas emphasizes that acknowledgments should say something specific about the institution itself: Its relationship to colonization, the commitments it is making to indigenous people, how it will be held accountable to these commitments.

Acknowledgment must be paired with action; otherwise it amounts to tokenization, or what Johnson calls “performing solidarity.” “If you are performing solidarity so that you look good, you’re not going to look good,” she says. “That’s seen from the very beginning. You are continuing colonizers’ efforts.”

Some organizations even use their land acknowledgment as an excuse not to do more, she says. “If you’re not embedding this within the DNA of your organization, your board structure, your policies, your curatorial practices, your bylaws, you are at the risk of losing the steps forward,” she says.

Laronde points out that sometimes institutions may want to do a land acknowledgment, “but indigenous people are not on their boards or staff and are not the artists they program,” she says. “It has to be more pervasive. They have to start somewhere, but they can’t stay there.”

Indeed, acknowledgments are often framed as a starting point for organizations. Simas takes issue with this idea: “It’s like, What do you mean, ‘start’? As if there hasn’t already been constant activism for the last seven generations of my people.” Even the word “acknowledgment” can feel passive. “We can say something happened, but if we’re not working to rectify that, things are remaining in a stasis,” says Rosa-Salas.

Building a meaningful land acknowledgment, and doing the work that should go along with it, takes time. Morgan, a native Hawaiian who serves as executive artistic director of Dance Place in Washington, DC, says his organization has been working to form a connection with DC’s indigenous community first. This coming year, it plans to develop a land acknowledgment through community engagement work associated with Simas’ project Weave.

Forming real and long-lasting relationships with indigenous communities and artists can help organizations form deeper connections to their sense of place, says Laronde. And when done with intention, an acknowledgment can be someone’s much-needed first exposure to the history of the land where they’re living.

“As an indigenous person it feels so good when I hear others acknowledge the land,” says Johnson. “It means we are being seen more and more.”

The post Who Are Land Acknowledgments Really For? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

On paper, Trey McInytre’s Big Ones sounds like it shouldn’t work. But risky choices are par for the course at BalletX, and this risk pays off. Founded as a summertime pickup troupe in 2005 by Christine Cox and Matthew Neenan when they were dancers at Pennsylvania Ballet, BalletX is dedicated to performing new work—and lots of it. Its repertory boasts a whopping 76 world premieres in 14 years.

Concepts that wouldn’t work at other companies work at BalletX, says Neenan, because the dancers are so acclimated to taking risks, and the artistic staff is so enthusiastic about supporting them. Although he stepped down as co-director in 2014 to focus on his choreography, the company has been a launchpad for Neenan, who attributes much of his success—including recent commissions at New York City Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet—to his work on BalletX.

The company has served other choreographers similarly: Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, perhaps the most prolific woman working in ballet today, received her first American commission at BalletX in 2008. She’s now made five pieces for the troupe, including her recent full-length The Little Prince.

“With young female choreographers, if your work is just okay, companies tend to wait a long time to invite you again,” says Lopez Ochoa. “But BalletX has given me a platform to make pieces that are not perfect.”

Cox commissions choreographers of a range of experience levels, and delicately balances giving them the freedom to experiment while also setting extremely high expectations. The company’s prestigious Choreographic Fellowship, for instance, invites emerging artists to make new work under the guidance of an esteemed mentor. Applicants not chosen for the fellowship are welcome to participate in a peer-to-peer program, where they can observe choreographers like Lopez Ochoa in rehearsal and have intimate lunch conversations with Cox.

The company has begun fostering choreographers internally, too: Dancer Caili Quan will be making her first main-stage work on her colleagues next summer.

In its 14 year history, BalletX has only performed six works that were not originally made on its own dancers. “Everything is very genuine, the feelings that we’re feeling, because they were developed over six weeks,” says Perkes, who’s been with the company since 2010. “Not because we saw someone else do it.”

Many of the dancers were drawn to BalletX for the opportunity to experience the creative process more often. Though most have a strong classical foundation, they are anything but cookie-cutter. They don’t just look different from one another, they move differently from one another—and this difference is cultivated rather than discouraged.

Yet when dancing as an ensemble, they are a powerful, unified force. That’s partially because most of them have been performing together long enough to predict how the person next to them is going to interpret a phrase, says Quan, who joined in 2013. With 40-week contracts and health insurance, the company has an incredibly low turnover rate.

BalletX’s growth hasn’t been seamless. At the beginning, there was the misunderstanding that the company was somehow affiliated with PAB. “Even when we went to Vail in 2012, everyone there was like, ‘Oh, are you here with Pennsylvania Ballet?’ ” says Neenan. (Cox retired from PAB in 2006; Neenan in 2007, serving as PAB’s choreographer in residence ever since.)

When Neenan transitioned from BalletX’s co-director to choreographer, Cox had to convince her board that she was capable of running the company alone. Still today there is confusion about who is leading the troupe: Because Neenan has made so much work there—and his Sunset, o639 Hours, about the first airmail flight across the Pacific Ocean, has become one of the company’s signature pieces—some are mistaken that BalletX is “his company.” (The fact that there are still relatively few women leading ballet companies likely has something to do with it too.)

Cox used to choreograph on the dancers as well, but stopped because she didn’t want her personal insecurities to interfere with her ability to advocate for the choreographers she was commissioning. “I wanted to be excited about everything that was happening onstage, and I was so critical of my own work that I couldn’t do that,” she says. “It made me too vulnerable, making work, to be able to build a company at the same time.”

Her dedication and lack of ego has trickled throughout the company, says Perkes. Cox’s office door is always open, and her influence is apparent in how close-knit the company is, as well as how they are cast: Though some dancers (notably Perkes) have seniority and star power, roles are generally distributed evenly.

A native Philadelphian—a fact she often proudly announces at shows—Cox still hasn’t lost the sense of hustle that’s transformed BalletX from a pickup troupe to a major institution. There’s still something endearingly old-school and personal about her approach, whether it’s keeping postcards in her back pocket to hand out to potential audience members, or calling every single person who makes a donation—no matter how small—to thank them.

The past five years have skyrocketed BalletX’s national profile, thanks in part to repeat appearances at Vail Dance Festival, New York City’s Joyce Theater and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. Last year, the company started touring internationally, with stops in Bermuda and Serbia.

And after many years of schlepping from studio to studio across the city, last April BalletX opened a home base, a sprawling 5,000-square-foot warehouse space in South Philadelphia aptly named the Center for World Premiere Choreography.

It’s already transformed the company physically, says Perkes. “It’s like dancing on top of a mountain. When you have 50 feet above you, you can imagine your arm reaching through that.” The space invites community engagement, too, with huge glass windows and a set of stylish bleachers where patrons, community members and students are often welcomed in to observe rehearsal.

Up next: More original work, at an even faster pace, and more performances, at new local venues (their seasons at Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater almost always sell out) and, hopefully, nationally and internationally.

Over and over again, Cox has manifested the company’s success through sheer willpower and her belief in the value of new work. “She grew the whole thing. I watched it happen,” says Quan. “And just by force. Nothing was beautifully handed to her, and she fought for us.” She’s not done fighting yet.

The post BalletX is Taking All the Right Risks appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Schlenzka took her seriously. Throughout 2020, control of Performance Space New York (previously known as P.S. 122) is being shared between the staff and a cohort of artists, who have offices and salaries. The cohort—which includes choreographer Monica Mirabile and interdisciplinary artist Jonathan González, as well as members of art collectives BRUJAS and New Red Order—also controls Performance Space’s programming budget. (Michelson is technically not part of the cohort, but is the group’s “ecologist,” bridging the gap between the artists and the institution and “witnessing” the activities so that the model can be replicated elsewhere.)

The post What Happens When a Group of Artists Is Put In Charge of a Presenting Organization? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

This is, of course, alongside a host of other jarring lifestyle adjustments dancers have had to make, most notably transitioning their dance practices into their homes. Combined with the high levels of stress many are experiencing, and the fact that most of us are sitting around a lot more than normal, it’s not a great time for anyone to lose access to the bodywork practices they depend on.

Though nothing can truly replace the real thing, we rounded up tips on how to stay pain-free and create your own bodywork routine at home.

The post How to Stay Pain-Free When All Your Bodywork Is Canceled appeared first on Dance Magazine.

And when she’s not dancing, she’s known to be out and about experiencing other art forms—from classical music to theater to visual art.

Now, like all of us, Mearns’ world has shrunk to her apartment. (Though you can still catch her dancing as part of NYCB’s digital spring season.) But true to form, she’s still knee-deep in all things dance and culture.

We talked to Mearns about everything that’s getting her through quarantine for our “For Your Entertainment” series:

The post The Music, Books and TV Shows Getting Sara Mearns Through Quarantine appeared first on Dance Magazine.

We will not come out of this unscathed. And it most likely will not be pretty.

But it could be a chance to reimagine the dance world as we know it.

In many ways, we’ll have to start from scratch. So why not learn from this moment and rebuild our community on a stronger foundation? Why not use this opportunity to enact the desires, the dreams, the radical changes that we haven’t been bold enough to voice before? Why not reevaluate the systems and structures we’ve long seen as immutable?

We talked to 10 leaders from across the field about how they’d radically reimagine the dance world.

Sydney Skybetter

Alice Sheppard

Wendy Whelan

Miguel Gutierrez

“I think we can bring more attention to the incredible precarity that freelance dancer artists are always living with. During these cancellations, people aren’t even mentioning money in their initial email. There needs to be an awareness that this isn’t just the loss of income of this one-off I was going to do. This is how we earn our living. I know that these institutions are also experiencing their own precarity, so that’s the way it ripples outward. We allow this incredibly flimsy economy to be the way we all live.

“Right away, you see artists creating emergency funds. I get these emails asking me to donate to emergency funds for me to fundraise for myself. I get it, we can’t rely on the government. But it’s this entrepreneurial American thinking and it’s like, no, we should have a better social safety net.

“I really hope that performing artists will be more politically active. We’re really removed from the political process. We don’t talk about cultural strikes; we don’t talk about shutting things down. I would hope that people demand more accountability from our representatives.

“We shouldn’t be thinking of ourselves as distinguished. We should be thinking about how we are aligned with other cultural workers and certainly other poor people. The problem is this hyper-specialization of thinking. It’s a very effective way for us to stay apart from each other. That happens at the educational level; the dance program is in some random building on the other side of campus. The dance field is siloed so often. We have to be ready to collaborate and align with other people.”

Miguel Gutierrez is a choreographer, performer, writer and educator.

Jodie Gates

Jon Arpino

“Everyone has been forced to realize that there are great supplemental tools and programs out there and that students are resilient in terms of loving in-person classes and still loving the online learning. I think both things will stick: the openness and the willingness to embrace technology.

“I think people will be more prepared for this type of occasion happening in the future. There’s a financial management aspect of preparing for these kinds of events. It’s not an industry where you can keep money squirreled away. But it is tough to keep customers’ and parents’ money when people are filing for unemployment. Like with the financial crisis in 2008, you saw a lot of companies change their practices. Hopefully that happens in the industry as a whole.

“More unification will come of this. Other groups have really big lobbying efforts in Washington, or have more collective sway. Dance is a big industry in the U.S., but it doesn’t have an equal say.”

Jon Arpino is the founder and CEO of CLI Studios.

Emily Johnson

“I see so much possibility in this shifted moment, and I get really down when I see reformulations of things going as they were. For example, some emergency funds were created very quickly, and that’s great. There was one open to women artists over 40, and it was meant to be open for applications for two days but it closed down in five hours. Yes, we need the emergency funds but if we look at it deeper, it’s just reinforcing an old model that we knew didn’t work and was not healthy. It pushes the individuals to have to scratch over one another.

“What’s a way that we can move into the future in which artists can have more say? Why do we in the arts world reflect hierarchies that we try to dismantle in our work? That was so clearly evident when all those cancellations were coming through without any real consideration of where the financial impact would be. The trickle down funding—the funding goes to the institution, and it trickles down to the artist—why don’t we flip that? Maybe there are ways that model is completely changed so we are not valuing the institutions to dominate ideas or to determine what our cultural values are. If artists are determining what our cultural values are, we might have more diversity, we might have a deeper level of engagement, we might be able to create that deeper consciousness shift.

“In the work that I do with decolonizing and indigenizing institutions, we talk about this word equity. We don’t know what equity is, none of us have ever experienced equity. So maybe this is the moment to figure out what that is. That’s a big upheaval. Transformation is not nice. I’m not calling for any more pain or grief, but to move through pain and grief in a way that is transformative is part of the process.”

Emily Johnson is Bessie-winning choreographer and performer.

Rhee Gold

“Our value system is going to change. In the community I’m involved with, what the advanced students want more than anything now is to hang out with their friends. They used to win awards together; now they are supporting each other. I’ve seen women who didn’t have as much confidence in themselves as business owners—because our world was focused on, to be good you have to win, or to be good you have to have the largest school—but the community they were building is now what they need in a time of crisis.

“This is a long-haul journey. I think everything about our year could change. That teacher who runs a recital in October for the first time may always run their recital in October. One woman said, I’m going to rent a big tent, and I’m going to do one class at a time. When I listen to her, it’s like, thank you for not trying to hang on to the way it was. I see a complete overhaul.

“Who do you want to be when you make your grand entrance into the new world? As a business owner, I knew where my business was going for the next two or three years. Three weeks ago, that plan was over, so I have to look at this and say, What is my place in this new world? Everyone can do whatever they want at this moment. You don’t have to have an excuse. You just have to do what your instinct is telling you to do.”

Rhee Gold is the founder of the DanceLife Teacher Conference and
the International Dance Entrepreneurs Association, and the former publisher of
Dance Studio Life magazine.

Indira Goodwine

Christy Bolingbroke

“As we look to bounce back—and we will—let us redefine the terms of success. Can we all agree that the dance world was not perfect before the pandemic? What will this mean for presenting venues that relied on selling their houses, if the first performance back they’re required to limit their convening for health reasons? Remember: The previous dance ecosystem was developed over 70-plus years. So the next iteration will take time—to experiment, to fail and to finesse–as well.

“I would love to see some artists who only make work online moving forward. Often the dance field has relegated online content to be only for marketing purposes. Digital dancemaking can be an artistic genre within itself. Some artists could excel in creating for the screen more so than they have been able to gain traction offline. Live performances will happen again, but this moment highlights other creative opportunities and needs across the field to reinforce a system of support for making and distributing digital dances, too.”

Christy Bolingbroke is the executive and artistic director of the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron.

The post How Can We Radically Reimagine the Dance World Post-Coronavirus? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But right now, that can be easier said than done. Many are living with limited access to food, whether your local store has a poor selection or you’re working with a smaller food budget than normal.

We talked to dietitian Kristin Koskinen, who specializes in dance medicine, about how dancers can keep eating healthy—and delicious—meals during this uncertain time.

The post How to Eat Well If Your Food Supply Is Limited appeared first on Dance Magazine.

At that point, a few virtual class opportunities had emerged, so Disenhof decided to aggregate them on an Instagram account called Dancing Alone Together.

She launched the account that Monday, and by mid-week she’d also created a website. Now, just a few weeks later, Dancing Alone Together has 22K followers—and virtual classes are more than just a growing trend, but a phenomenon that has reshaped the dance world at an unprecedented speed.

The post How This Dancer Created the Go-To Hub for Virtual Classes in One Weekend appeared first on Dance Magazine.

For those who still have work—and, odds are, some newfound free time—it can be hard to know the best way to help the many artists who are suffering.

We asked Dance/USA and Dance/NYC about the best ways to support dance artists right now—whether you have money, time or resources on your hands:

The post The Best Ways to Help Dance Artists Who Are Out of Work appeared first on Dance Magazine.