4dancers – Page 40

A Special Kind Of Dance…

October 31, 2012 by 4dancers

by Christopher Duggan

Some of you may not know that I have another job–or at least another version of my photographer life. I split my time between photographing dance and weddings. Just this past week I had two engagement shoots with happy couples before preparing for a visit to Chicago to make pictures with The Joffrey Ballet.

To some, my two passions sound like a strange combination of pursuits, but I’ve found a lot of connections between my work in dance and at weddings. Each dance performance (especially world premieres) and every wedding I photograph is a once in a lifetime event. It takes intense focus and a keen awareness to find just the right moments to create the perfect image.

And I’m lucky that my two passions combine in another very meaningful way – I get to photograph dancing at my weddings, too! There’s all this energy at a wedding, and when people finally get on the dance floor, it’s this huge outpouring of joy and excitement. It’s so much fun to watch close families and friends let loose.

Not only that, but the special dances – first dances, father-daughter dances – mean even more to me now that I have a daughter of my own.

Christopher Duggan bio — Christopher Duggan, Photo by Julia Newman

Contributor Christopher Duggan is the founder and principal photographer of Christopher Duggan Photography, a New York City-based wedding and dance photography studio. Duggan has been the Festival Photographer for Jacob’s Pillow Dance since 2006. In this capacity, and as a respected New York-based dance photographer, he has worked with renowned choreographers and performers of international acclaim as well as upstarts in the city’s diverse performance scene.

He has created studio shots of Gallim Dance, Skybetter + Associates and Zvidance, among others, and in 2011 alone, he has photographed WestFest at Cunningham Studios, Dance From the Heart for Dancers Responding to Aids, The Gotham Dance Festival at The Joyce Theater, and assisted Nel Shelby Productions in filming Vail International Dance Festival.

Duggan often teams up with his talented wife and Pillow videographer Nel Shelby (http://nelshelby.com). A New York City-based husband and wife dance documentation team, they are equipped to document performances, create and edit marketing videos and choreography reels, and much more.

Christopher Duggan Photography also covers Manhattan’s finest wedding venues, the Metropolitan and Tri-State areas, and frequently travels to destination weddings. The company’s mission is straightforward and heartfelt – create timeless, memorable images of brides, grooms, their families and friends, and capture special moments of shared love, laughter and joy.

His photographs appear in The New York Times, Destination I Do, Photo District News, Boston Globe, Financial Times, Dance Magazine, Munaluchi Bridal, and Bride & Bloom, among other esteemed publications and popular wedding blogs. One of his images of Bruce Springsteen was added to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s celebrated photography collection in 2010. His company has been selected for inclusion in “The Listings” in New York Weddings magazine.

DVD Review: The Bolshoi Ballet’s Giselle

October 29, 2012 by Ashley David

by Emily Kate Long

Filmed in 2011, this Giselle is Yuri Grigorovich’s version after choreography by Coralli, Perrot, and Petipa. Simon Virsaladze’s set and costume designs are gloriously light and airy, and the staging in both acts is full but polished.

Svetlana Lunkina’s Giselle is playful and modest in Act 1. Her sweetness is well complemented by Dimitry Gudanov’s casual confidence as Albrecht. Lunkina is closeup-ready; every expression is genuine and effective down to the ends of her eyelashes. It’s easy to fall in love with her, and easy to mourn her madness and heartbreak. This Giselle’s believably tragic and deeply personal mad scene is, unfortunately, somewhat cheapened by the villagers’ over-the-top reactions of distress at the close of the act.

The Giselle that appears in Act 2 is, appropriately, the emotionally spent young woman whose world collapsed around her in Act 1. Her innocence has been darkened, her joy dampened. Lunkina is completely at the mercy of a cruel and somber Myrtha (Maria Allash) until her true love and forgiveness of Albrecht break Myrtha’s spell and to save him at sunrise. The dancing of the wilis is pure magic—the suspension of one woman from a rocking mechanism to drop lilies on Albrecht is pure distraction.

The huge scale of a Bolshoi production is something that simply doesn’t exist in the West. For most of us, video is the only way we’ll ever see something so enormous. Watching that magnificence, as well as seeing Lunkina close up, is absolutely a treat, but here video simultaneously detracts where it enhances. The humanity of her Giselle, so wonderfully highlighted in close-ups, seems out of context amid the exaggerated grandness traditional on the Bolshoi stage.

The Bolshoi Ballet and Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra in Giselle. 109 minutes. Pathe Live, Bel Aire Media, and the State Academic Bolshoi Theatre, 2012.

Assistant Editor Emily Kate Long began her dance education in South Bend, Indiana, with Kimmary Williams and Jacob Rice, and graduated in 2007 from Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School’s Schenley Program. She has spent summers studying at Ballet Chicago, Pittsburgh Youth Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, Miami City Ballet, and Saratoga Summer Dance Intensive/Vail Valley Dance Intensive, where she served as Program Assistant. Ms Long attended Milwaukee Ballet School’s Summer Intensive on scholarship before being invited to join Milwaukee Ballet II in 2007.

Ms Long has been a member of Ballet Quad Cities since 2009. She has danced featured roles in Deanna Carter’s Ash to Glass and Dracula, participated in the company’s 2010 tour to New York City, and most recently performed principal roles in Courtney Lyon’s Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and Cinderella. She is also on the faculty of Ballet Quad Cities School of Dance, where she teaches ballet, pointe, and repertoire classes.

Nourishing Your Dancer Body: Understanding The Fundamentals of Making Good Food Choices

October 25, 2012 by 4dancers

by Diana Clanin, M.F.A., AT

Dancers have such a love-hate relationship with food! Of course we need it: it gives us sustenance, repairs our over-worked bodies, and provides us with energy. And of course we enjoy it: it not only tastes good, but is part of every cultural and social life-occasion from birth to death. Yet, we are often afraid that it will make us – and I shudder to even write the word – fat. So we teeter between trying to be super vigilant about nutrition, and the fear of gaining weight. And the less food we eat, or the more we try to avoid eating, the more we focus on it. It’s an ongoing internal conflict.

As The Stomach Growls

So why is this so hard? Seems like balancing food intake, good nutrition, and weight would be as straight forward as a tendu devant. But dancers have a unique challenge: how to get the optimal nutrition we need in the fewest possible calories.

To complicate matters further, between the print and broadcast medias, and our hyper-immersion in “smart” electronic communication gadgetry, we are on information overload. Sadly, very little of what passes for nutrition “news” is fact or evidence based. If you are increasingly confused about what to believe, you are not dancing solo. Much published nutritional advice or claims are dubious attempts to sell you some product, which may or may not perform as described. Influencing you to purchase a supplement or special “food” often means convincing you that you have some critical deficiency, or are needlessly suffering from a chronic lack of energy. It is fear-based marketing psychology and you are the target.

Keeping It Simple

So let’s start by laying down a few basic guidelines for making sane and healthy – and economical – choices:

1. Eat food as close to how Mother Nature packaged it as possible.

Avoid pre-packaged food mixes (Bisquick, Hamburger Helper, etc.).
Stick with whole grains: 100% whole grain cereals, breads, and pastas. If it is white, Don’t Bite! (In the grain department, that is.)
And…if it came through the car window, is it really food?

2. Eat several small meals a day and include components from each of the macro-nutrient food groupings each time.

This means be sure you have protein, fats, and carbohydrates in your selections each time you eat. Examples: yogurt and fruit with granola, or cheese and whole grain crackers with vegetable sticks.
Try eating five or six small meals instead of three larger ones. This will give you more even, sustained energy and allow you to metabolize the food more efficiently.
And yes, this DOES mean that you may have to do a little food research!! – to learn which foods fall into which the various macro-nutrient categories (i.e., is it a protein? A fat? A carbohydrate?). In general, for dancers trying to eat healthy / maintain weight, and get good nutrition for energy, these guidelines are recommended for daily intake:

+ Protein                      12-15%
+ Fat                             20-30%
+ Carbohydrates        55-60%

Speaking of carbs, it’s good to learn what are healthy carbs (called “complex carbs”, like fruits / veggies / bagels, breads and pastas made with whole grains) and what are not-so-healthy-carbs (called “simple carbs”, like sugars and white grain products).

IADMS – the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science – has an excellent fact sheet on Nutrition for Dancers under the “Resources” tab on the left side of the home page – if you aren’t that familiar yet with different foods and nutritional information, this can be a great start.

3. Eat a wide variety of foods. [Read more…]

Dancers – Embrace Your Body

October 22, 2012 by 4dancers

Some of Lucy Vurusic-Riner’s dance students

by Lucy Vurusic-Riner

I’ve been avoiding the teacher perspective on body image post for a long time. It’s that subject that lurks in the shadows and I’m too close to want to address it. However, in the aftermath of last month’s Wisconsin news anchor debacle, where a woman just doing her job (well, I might add) was criticized for her weight (which in no way impacts her ability to report the news, I might add again). I feel that it’s time to broach the topic.

The fact is, body image plays a huge role in my day to day. In fact, to say I don’t think about it every single day as a high school dance teacher would be a flat out lie. Over the last 18 years I have thought about body image at least once a day, EVERY day, as I enter one of my classes. The issues have varied depending on the school and community surrounding it. The frequency of how many girls are noticeably affected by it differs as well. But it’s always safe to assume that there is someone in the room with me looking at their body in a distorted way; maybe even me.

Personally, I have been lucky with the gene pool bestowed upon me. Because quite frankly, I think that’s where you have to look first. We are as short or tall as we are because of how the chromosomes matched up. My long torso was not something I had to do massive amounts of bar hangs to achieve. I have it because I have my grandmother’s body, and alas, she too had a long torso.

Likewise, I have some pretty crappy feet and bad turnout as far as the dance world is concerned. My genetics could have told me that I had horrible arches as early as 7 or 8, when I tried shoving my feet into pointe shoes. I bought the do-hickey that stretches your arches and I laid on my belly in frog position to open my hips for hours at a time. To a certain degree maybe that torture, as well as determination in class and a strong work ethic, did make me a better dancer, but guess what? My feet and turn out are still nothing to write home about. But truly, amidst all of this, to the common person’s naked eye, I have always had a body “suitable’ for dancing. Phew.

So how do I approach this in my dance classes? My tactic for the most part has been to diffuse it at every turn. In my first years of teaching I had some pretty severe cases. Girls that wanted so badly to be in the highest level classes and have the most performance experience. Girls who wanted to please their parents (who often consciously put pressure on their daughters), girls who needed to live up to their friends and acquaintances ideas of what being a dancer meant. And a lot of the time, I couldn’t even blame them. So much of what being a dancer means to the general public is solely based on cheesy movies and fantasy. How many of you have ever told someone you were a dancer and then had to tolerate some stupid comment about stripping or lap dances? I found that “controlling” one’s eating was the one place that my students could feel they were empowered to do something about the way that others perceived them. They might not be able to physically alter their flat feet or poor turnout–but they sure as hell could get skinny.

With a few more years of teaching under my belt, I started to notice that poor body image was becoming less of an issue with my students. Sure, I still had the occasional one or two that popped up every three or four years; the ones that need to be hospitalized or get counseling. But it soon became an issue that was manageable.

What had happened? Had body image problems become a thing of the past? Hardly. I sat down with a group of my dancers a few years back and we had a long discussion that, at first, was simply a conversation about nutrition and diet and what people like to eat, but then turned into a riveting discussion on exercise and how to most efficiently take care of our bodies.

What I learned was that part of the reason I wasn’t seeing that problem was because we had formed a safe dance community within our classroom.

I rarely talked about weight. I never degraded my body or how I looked in front of my students (in fact, they often had to listen to me talk about how I embraced by big butt). And I ate what I wanted to eat, when I wanted to eat it, in front of them and with no guilt, because feeling shameful, about anything, has never helped someone overcome any sort of obstacle.

I want my students to be appreciative of their bodies and how to live in them. Adolescent girls have enough to worry about with their changing bodies, raging hormones and the pressure of becoming young, responsible adults.

I believe teaching dancers how to take care of themselves and respect their bodies needs to become an intuitive practice; one that we take part in each day when we talk about foods that we love, clothes that we feel comfortable in and dance classes that we take that make us feel good about ourselves. Some dance teachers might read this and say that I’m not being a very honest teacher or mentor if I don’t talk to my girls about their weight. Guess what? It’s not going to happen.

Why? Because my dancers already know if they need to lose a few pounds. They knew before I did; they stared at themselves in the mirror long before I did, and they will continue to find things about themselves that aren’t good enough–just like I did. Yes, I want them to be healthy and make smart nutritional choices, and when it’s appropriate I talk to ALL my dancers about this as a group. Because–let’s be honest again…

Some of those skinny girls need to hear about how to take care of their bodies far more than the bigger girls. In the end, all that matters to me is that they love the body they are in.

Contributor Lucy Vurusic-Riner is a native Chicagoan who has been supporting and contributing to the dance community for over twenty years. She received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Dance Performance and Dance Education from Illinois State University. Lucy has been a member of Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak, RTG Dance Company and Matthew Hollis’ “The Power of Cheer.” She has also had the opportunity to be part of the community casts of White Oak Dance Project and David Dorfman Dance.

Lucy has taught modern, hip hop, and jazz at numerous studios and high schools in the Chicagoland area. She was the Director of Dance at Oak Park and River Forest High School from 1999 to 2012. In 2005, Lucy completed her Masters Degree in Education from National Louis University and also received the Midwest Dance Teacher of the Year award and was the youngest of four finalists in the running for the National Dance Teacher of the Year award. Lucy and artistic partner, Michael Estanich, formed RE|Dance Group in 2010. RE|Dance Group investigates humanity in movement through long distance collaboration.

In 2012, Lucy joined the dance faculty at New Trier High School in Winnetka, IL. When she is not immersed in dance, she is at home with her two great kids, Margie and Luka, and her very supportive husband, Jim.

Reflecting Chagall: Hubbard Street’s “One Thousand Pieces”

October 19, 2012 by 4dancers

by Catherine L. Tully

The world premiere of Alejandro Cerrudo’s One Thousand Pieces was the first full-length work ever presented by Hubbard Street Dance Company, and it is indeed a reflection of Marc Chagall’s America Windows in the very best sense of the word. Despite using the artist’s famous blue panels of stained glass as his inspiration, the piece is conceptual, shaking off any literal interpretation in favor of a multifaceted offering of mood and emotion.

This performance kicks off Hubbard Street’s 35th Anniversary Season, and Cerrudo appropriately uses a large cast of dancers, including members of Hubbard Street 2. Rarely are all of them on stage at once–he seems to prefer more intimate numbers for choreography using two, three or four dancers at a time. Even so, there were moments where the entire group took to the stage and it was a powerful sight to see all of these talented dancers move in unison.

Costumes were kept simple but the set design changed throughout and Thomas Mika’s work here contributes to the atmosphere considerably. The “windows” are represented by a series of mirrored rectangles that are intermittently raised, lowered and even spun, adding impact by occasionally catching the light like a shard of glass in the sunshine, or in this case, moonlight. The subtle yet brilliant lighting design by Michael Korsch meshes perfectly with every dance sequence, complimenting the group work and adding intensity to duets and solos.

Throughout the piece there is no doubt that Cerrudo is the force behind the choreography; his signature touches are everywhere–from the tender partnering with its distinct flow to the dancers appearing and disappearing quickly and quietly. Even so, he succeeds in remaining fresh by delivering the unexpected, such as raising the curtain to reveal a stage floor drizzled with water, with three misty “waterfalls” serving as the scenery. Until this moment, only the music of Philip Glass accompanied the dancers, but then the sound of bodies kicking up spray and sliding through puddles is added to the mix as well.

Cerrudo plays with the idea of light and reflection through the choreography, crafting a vision complete with mirror-like movements and even some kaleidoscopic imagery. Bodies come together, transform and change shape in a variety of pretty patterns with a progression that is uninterrupted and exceedingly graceful. So often the movement and shapes created by Cerrudo seem as if they are the most natural thing the body could do–despite the obvious complexity. The match is a perfect one since the skilled dancers in this company have no trouble making it all look easy.

One’s reflection in a window is never quite an exact replica–the light is never as bright and the features blend more easily, revealing a doppelganger that is far more abstract than real. Although this shadowy image is never a true duplicate of the original–sometimes the filter of softness and mystery actually makes it more beautiful.

That is certainly the case here.

One Thousand Pieces is at the Harris Theater through October 21st.

Behind the scenes at Hubbard Street:

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