4dancers – Page 54

Choreography: Transforming Personal Poisons Into Beauty?

May 14, 2012 by 4dancers

Atlanta Ballet’s New Choreographic Voices is exactly what it sounds like–a showcase for talented emerging choreographers. This year, the company presents three pieces–two world premieres and one Atlanta premiere. The choreographers include Christopher Wheeldon, Helen Pickett and Atlanta Ballet’s own company member Tara Lee.

Atlanta Ballet2 — Tara Lee, Photo by Charlie McCullers

Lee is a principal dancer in her sixteenth season with the Atlanta Ballet, and her choreography has also been performed by New Orleans Ballet Theatre and Emory Dance Company. Here she shares some of the ideas that inspired her latest piece, as well as what it was like to collaborate with a composer…

How did you first begin choreographing for Atlanta Ballet?

The ballet held a choreographers’ workshop years ago, where those of us who were interested could create a piece on the company and then show our work to a small audience in our studios. I presented an unfinished piece for the workshop, and (Artistic Director) John McFall invited me do a completed version for the company’s following season. “Sixteen String” was my first professional work; it premiered at the Ferst Centre in 2003.

How many works have you choreographed so far?

About 6…”Pavo” will be my third work for the Atlanta Ballet.

What was your process like when you created this piece?

The process of creating “Pavo” has been unique, because we commissioned an original score (a first for me) from Dr. Nickitas Demos, professor at Georgia State. It has been quite an experience, to create something that is in constant flux from all ends. Thankfully, Nick is a wonderful artist and collaborator.

As for the choreography, it ended up being a mixture of prepared material and spontaneous creation in the studio with the dancers. I might teach a body of material, and then ask the dancers to insert their language into those sequences. Then we would continue to adapt that new information further.

Atlanta Ballet 3 — Working on "Pavo", Photo by Charlie McCullers

Jesse Tyler (my assistant choreographer) and I might improvise some partnering work in the studio, end up teaching it to the cast, and then evolving it with the dancers’ input. We would usually put the music into the mix after the choreography was already shaped and find the dancers’ natural timing to synchronize all the elements.

Can you tell us a bit more about the inspiration behind your new work?

Initially, Nick and I had a couple of meetings to see if things clicked, and we quickly came up with a couple of themes we were interested in exploring: cycles and continuum. After deciding on instrumentation, length of movements, and general dynamics of each section, Nick began to send me pieces of the score.

I was at a bit of a loss at first. The music was dynamic, but I didn’t know what to do with it, choreographically or thematically. Then I found an article about the peacock. It resonated with me instantly, and it became clear that I wanted to base the ballet on the spiritual symbolism of the bird. “Pavo” is the Latin word for peacock.

Atlanta Ballet 1 — Photo by Charlie McCullers

When I learned that the peacock can digest poisonous snakes, and therefore represents the transmuting of one’s personal poisons, I recognized one of Nick’s sections to be “the digestion of poisons”. Some riffs even sounded like snake charmer music. I read further and discovered that peacocks dance restlessly before rainstorms; this presented the inspiration for the musical section I was worried about–it’s a very complex, feverish 3 minutes, and it made sense that it would be the storm section.

Nick had also sent me a lovely adagio for the featured duet, and when I read that peacocks also represent fidelity and faithfulness, I thought it was another great match. It was exciting to see our once broad themes become more focused and inspired. We had talked about cycles at our first meeting, and the metaphor of the peacock represented a breaking out of a cycle—a negative one. Awesome.

What do you enjoy the most about choreographing a piece?

I love walking out of a rehearsal being completely surprised at what we all just created.

New Choreographic Voices will run May 18th – May 20th on The Alliance Stage at the Woodruff Arts Center.

Watch an interview with Tara Lee:

Student Spotlight: Steffi Acain

May 14, 2012 by 4dancers

Today we have another “student spotlight” to share with you. Meet Steffi Acain from Nuevo School of Contemporary Dance….

1. Can you tell readers how you became involved with dance?

When I was four years old my parents thought I was very shy and awkward around people my own age because I was an only child. So to remedy my lack of social skills, they enrolled me into my first dance class at The Dance Spot. My parents thought it would just be something fun for me to do after school. But after those first initial years, I think they started to take notice that I actually held promise and passion for dance. I then started competing at dance competitions, performing at recitals, attending various intensives, and taking classes at other studios in order to expand my dance vocabulary.

Currently, I am eighteen years old and a member of the Nuevo School of Contemporary Dance. I train about four to five hours a day, five days a week, in styles ranging from ballet and jazz to contemporary and hip hop. After having dance in my life for so long, my love and appreciation for the art form has grown every single day. And if it were up to me to judge, I would say that I’m not as socially awkward as I used to be.

2. What do you find you like best about dance class?

For me, I think just having that opportunity to take class so that I can learn and grow more as a dancer is my favorite aspect. One of the most important lessons that I’ve learned from dance is that you get what you put into it. Taking class can be nothing but help to a dancer because it is one of those rare times when mistakes are forgivable and expected. This is the time when you can experiment with what works on your body and truly explore who you are & can be as a dancer. Class can only be what you make of it. So although it is important to be physically present, you will only truly benefit if you are mentally and emotionally invested as well.

Nuevo 1 — 'Palladio' with choreography by Francisco Gella, Steffi Acain - back row center

Taking class is such an amazing experience because that is when I not only get to enjoy dancing myself, but also watching my friends dance and learning from them. Seeing different people interpret the same music and choreography in their own way is very eye opening since it shows the universal language of dance. The classroom experience is so real because you can’t hide behind make-up, costumes, or stage lights. It’s simply just dance at its most authentic state.

3. What is the hardest part about dance for you?

Personally, the hardest part is staying motivated and focused. Being in high school, especially as a senior, there have been so many times when I have let my mind wander off because I was worried about where I was going to be next year and what I was going to be doing. I would especially get even more anxious when trying to figure out how dance was going to fall into the equation. However, when I stopped thinking about problems that I could not fix at the moment and started focusing on what I was doing right then and there, that is when I got the most out of the class. Fortunately, I have an outlet like dance that allows me to temporarily forget about my problems and express how I am feeling through movement.

4. What advice would you give to other dancers?

My advice to dancers would be to always have faith in yourself. As dancers, we are constantly being compared and ranked against one another. It’s then that we begin to feel self-conscious of our looks and even question our own abilities. But despite what a judge at a local competition or a random bystander may think, it’s always important to have confidence in yourself and what you do. Their opinion is just one out of many people watching. It’s only natural that we are drawn to specific dancers more than others. By letting a couple of negative comments affect how you perceive yourself, you are not only doing an injustice to yourself but also to the many hours you have worked and trained to get to where you are.

Basically, just remember to believe in yourself. Even if you may not have the best technique or you’re not as skinny as the dancer standing next to you, I think everyone is drawn to a performer who possesses confidence. Before you expect people to believe that you are good, you have to believe that you are good enough and worth their attention. Although it is easier said than done, I think believing in yourself -both onstage and off- is one of the greatest things you can do for yourself.

5. How has dance changed your life?

Dance has been such a positive influence on my life. I definitely would not be the same person without it nor can I imagine my life without dance. Aside from growing as a dancer in the studio, dance has helped me grow as a person in the real world. From dance, I’ve learned what hard work, dedication, and perseverance can bring. The work ethic that has been instilled in me at the studio has also helped me succeed in school and other activities. Most importantly, the friends and relationships that I have made through dance are ones that I will carry even after the stage lights go down. My entire dance experience thus far will forever have a lasting impression on me.

Finding Balance: Dancers On Coping With Injury

May 11, 2012 by Ashley David

by Emily Kate Long

Last month’s “Finding Balance” explored the relationships among dancer identity, passion for dance, injury, and age. A month after writing that column, I can’t get away from the topic—it utterly fascinates and confounds me. I was directed by a friend to a widely cited study by Linda Hamilton (American Journal of Sports Medicine, March 1989) titled “Personality, Stress, and Injuries in Professional Ballet Dancers.” In it, Hamilton states:

“[The] dancer must possess extraordinary dedication, a limitless capacity for hard work, and the ability to persevere through more or less continual pain, in addition to having a specific body type and talent….[The] personality traits that are programmed into success in this profession may ultimately prove detrimental to those dancers who have not learned to work within the natural limitations of their bodies.”

The italicization of that last phrase is my own—is that the key to balance between doing our best and doing too much? How can we push ourselves hard enough that we achieve highly without letting those “success traits” run so rampant as to destroy us? How do we learn what our natural limitations are? How can we expand them?

Hamilton’s statement compelled me to seek out dancers I admire and view as highly self-driven, and ask them to weigh in on the subject of coping with and learning from injuries. Of those I contacted, three dancers were able to contribute to this article. My utmost thanks go out to them for taking the time to answer my questions candidly and thoughtfully.

Jeanette Hanley was a Leading Artist with Milwaukee Ballet when I was in the second company there. Her dancing and her spirit and her enthusiasm made a great impression on me—I never saw her get injured or upset, and her energy and motivation seemed endless. She was like superwoman, or the energizer bunny. She has since retired from dancing, but I still think of her as a role model. I decided to get in touch with her for this article to discover what strategies kept her going throughout her 21-year dancing career, and how she felt about retirement. She shared with me that her love of yoga and going to the gym made it easy to stay in good physical shape during layoffs, and that she never had trouble with injuries while she was dancing. With the birth of her daughter, healthy diet and exercise got her going again. Now that she’s retired, it has been helpful to have a new line of work that she loves. Always learning, Jeanette also takes karate with her daughter, and they will both be receiving black belts in the fall.

Katie Rideout and I attended Milwaukee Ballet School’s summer intensive in 2007 and spent two years together in Milwaukee Ballet II, 2007-2009. Katie has struggled with lower leg injuries as long as I’ve known her. In November 2011, after dealing with intense pain in her tibia for almost two years, she made the choice to take a break from dancing and finish her Bachelor’s degree from Point Park University. She later found out she had been dancing on two stress fractures. During her recovery period she struggled most with making decisions independently of a career-oriented framework. Addressing the reality of her injury –its severity was a direct result of overuse and denial—forced Katie to begin freeing herself from obsessive passion for dance in order to return to dancing and avoid re-injury. This, in turn, allowed her to establish new training habits: integration of Pilates work and a focus on technical efficiency rather than an exclusively aesthetic aim. Finishing her undergraduate degree also gave her another aspect of her person to cultivate: an understanding and exercise of her intellect, measured separately from dance achievements.

My good friend Jason Wang tore his Achilles’ tendon on August 30, 2011 and underwent surgery to repair it three days later. Naturally a planner, he, like Katie, found one of the greatest challenges in his recovery to be the uncertain timeframe and absence of a familiar “roadmap” in his decision-making process. The stillness that was necessary while waiting for doctors’ orders quickly degraded to depression; Jason felt he had been “stripped from [his] lifestyle without [his] own consent.” Also significant for Jason was the difference in coping with this long-term injury versus the short-term ones he had previously sustained: “…sitting and watching dancers do what I loved for weeks on end made me extremely stressed and depressed….[If] you’re not clear and sound in your mind then your physical side will become its collateral.” He felt it was important to step back and take time to clear his mind before deciding how to approach re-entry into the dance world.

I consider Jason, Katie, and Jeanette all to be high achievers. Pushing themselves to the limit and beyond just seems like a natural thing for them. However, in Katie’s case, pushing led to chronic injury. In Jason’s case, his inability to work led to feelings of uncertainty, depression, and isolation. Jeanette, however, was able to push herself through a two-decade career without major setbacks caused by injury. What’s her secret?

Could it be than Jeanette is simply older and wiser?

I recall another of Milwaukee Ballet’s leading artists telling me once that the time she spent in Boston Ballet II was the hardest of her life. Perhaps the more time we spend with ourselves, and the more adversity we face, the more we can come to understand that one of the “natural limitations of [our] bodies” is our very own psyche.

Readers, what dance-related experiences have forced you to face your inner demons and come out on top?

Contributor 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. Ms Long attended Milwaukee Ballet School’s Summer Intensive on scholarship before being invited to join Milwaukee Ballet II in 2007. She also has spent summers studying at Saratoga Summer Dance Intensive, Miami City Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, Pittsburgh Youth Ballet, and Ballet Chicago.

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 the title role in Courtney Lyon’s Cinderella and the role of Clara in The Nutcracker. Prior to joining Ballet Quad Cities Ms Long performed with Milwaukee Ballet and MBII in Michael Pink’s The Nutcracker and Candide Overture, Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty and La Bayadére, Balanchine’s Who Cares?, Bournonville’s Flower Festival in Genzano and Napoli, and original contemporary and neoclassical works by Tom Teague, Denis Malinkine, Rolando Yanes, and Petr Zaharadnicek.

Bal-loopers: When Ballet Dancers Fall From Grace

May 10, 2012 by 4dancers

by Risa Gary Kaplowitz

Risa Floor — Lee Bell, Paolo Porcino, and Risa Kaplowitz from 2002 Easy Lessons, Choreography by Stuart Sebastion, Dayton Ballet, 1987

Last month, I attended a week-long training session for the American Ballet Theatre National Training Curriculum in Orlando. The sessions are akin to being in a ballet nunnery, with attendees concentrating hard on learning, thinking about, and discussing the logical progression of technique. So when, on the last day, our instructor, Raymond Lukens, Director of the NTC, went off on a tangent about ballet bloopers, or what I like to call “bal-loopers”, we were ripe for hilarity.

In an instant, we transformed from nail biting, head-scratching teachers-turned-students into guffawing former professionals who had each survived a major on-stage mishap or two. One woman recounted her awful experience of having her skirt fall off mid-performance. Another in the class—a former male principal with a thick French accent—told us about a time when a faulty lift left him holding his female partner between his legs “like a piece of dental floss”. We were rolling.

Ballet is perfect; dancers are not. And thank goodness! A blunder now and then is just enough to remind the audience that what looks easy is actually brutally difficult, and it reminds us that we are not the gods and goddesses we sometimes think we are.

My most embarrassing stage moment came unexpectedly during a performance in Japan. I became disoriented onstage after a lift, and I continued the pas de deux facing the backdrop instead of the audience. It felt like an hour passed before I figured out where I was. My partner laughing at me didn’t help, and the fact that that the Prince of Japan was in the audience made it all the more humiliating.

But my encounter with a backdrop was nothing compared to what I saw a dancer from a major company do. During a guest performance for a ballet competition of which he was a former winner, he did a circle of gorgeous split leaps directly into the scrim. The impact sent him flying backwards. Ever the warrior, he went on to do a final double tour en’lair to his knee and toppled. No doubt, a performance he’ll never forget.

Thanks to youtube, bloopers like the above are no longer left to memory alone. Hundreds if not thousands of people can view what’s embarrassing to the fallen. A student has graciously allowed me to show this clip, which occurred during a performance of The Nutcracker, which Susan Jaffe choreographed for DanceVision, a company she and I founded and of which I am Artistic Director. The repeats in slow motion—courtesy of videographer Jamie Watson—could be overkill, but oh my, they are funny. Thankfully, the dancer survived to tell the tale, and now when she sees it, she laughs almost as hard as the rest of us.

I googled “Ballet Bloopers” (only for this post, I swear), and I found the mother load of unnamed dancers of yore having, shall we say, less than stellar moments. The clips that are most endearing (aka funny) are the ones in which the victim attempts a very noble cover up.

But not everyone tries to pretend a fall didn’t happen. Ever the noble himself, Edward Villela chose to bow after a crash to the tush. According to my friend Anne Levin, who was the dance critic for Trenton Times, the former New York City Ballet principal and Miami City Ballet Artistic Director, got up from his fall, bowed to the audience, and took his place upstage to start again.

While surprising bloopers can be funny, so can those that are planned. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, the company of men that parodies classical ballet while dressed as females, makes audiences laugh at prat falls and the like. Here, in a snip from Swan Lake, one can see every corps member’s worst nightmare come true. (As an aside, the bowman is Serge Manolo Molina, who teaches at my studio.)

On a more serious note, in the vast majority of cases, a slippery Marley, the vinyl floor covering that every ballet studio and company uses, is the culprit of bal-loopers. At Youth America Grand Prix gala a few years ago, nearly every ballet dancer, some of who are major stars, took a spill or two on the ice-like floor. This weekend I witnessed similar problems with performances of my ballet, The Secret Garden. After watching one of my company members take a nasty fall during dress rehearsal, I’m convinced that, as wonderful as Marley is for dancers, there has to be something better for ballet.

Have a favorite bal-looper of your own? Share the fun!

Have an idea for a better floor? Please make it!

Risa Gary Kaplowitz

Contributor Risa Gary Kaplowitz is a former principal dancer with Dayton Ballet and member of Houston Ballet and Manhattan Ballet. She has also performed with Pennsylvania Ballet and Metropolitan Opera Ballet and as a guest artist with many companies nationwide.

She was originally trained at Maryland Youth Ballet by Tensia Fonseca, Roy Gean, and Michelle Lees. She spent summers as a teen studying on scholarship at American Ballet Theater, Joffrey Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, and Houston Ballet. As a professional, her most influential teachers were Maggie Black, Marjorie Mussman, Stuart Sebastian, Lupe Serrano, Benjamin Harkarvy, and Ben Stevenson. She has performed the repertoire of many choreographers including Fredrick Ashton, George Balanchine, Ben Stevenson, Stuart Sebastian, Dermot Burke, Billy Wilson, and Marjorie Mussman.

After spending ten years in a successful business career while building a family, Risa returned to the dance world and founded Princeton Dance and Theater Studio (www.princetondance.com) and DanceVision, Inc. (www.dancevisionnj.org) with Susan Jaffe, former ABT principal ballerina. Risa is now PDT’s Director, and the Artistic Director of DanceVision Inc. Risa also founded D.A.N.C.E. (Dance As a Necessary Component of Education), an outreach program that brings dance to New Jersey schools.

Risa has choreographed more than twenty pieces, and her original full-length ballets, The Secret Garden and The Snow Queen, premiered with DanceVision Performance Company in 2008 and 2011, respectively. Additionally, she has choreographed for several New Jersey Symphony Orchestra family and school outreach concerts.

Risa is an ABT Certified Teacher, who has successfully completed the ABT Teacher Training Intensive in Primary through Level 5. She has lectured the ABT/NYU Master candidates on starting a dance studio. She is most grateful for her teachers who gave and (in the case of ABT Curriculum) give her the exceptional tools necessary to have had a performance career and the opportunity to train others in authentically. She also feels fortunate to have had the opportunity to dance with and learn from many exceptional dancers.

Choreography & Following Directions

May 8, 2012 by Ashley David

Today we’re continuing our series on choreography, thanks to the dancers from The Dance COLEctive who are choreographing for a show that is coming up in May…

Alaina Murray’s trio is about following directions. “Everything comes with directions: driving, cooking, games, taxes, school, work. What is the outcome of following, or not following, directions? Can not following directions prove to be its own path altogether? Routine movement sequences layered with surprising detours will explore these questions.”

Alaina’s pieces is called “Please read carefully. Here’s more about it…

1. How did you decide on this idea for your piece?

Recently the concept of rules has been a point of interest in my life. I’ve been thinking a lot about how this affects my life and the decisions I make. The initial broader concept of rules seemed to narrow into following directions as I thought about it further. This idea seemed to naturally lend itself to movement, and I was excited to explore it.

2. How did the idea of following/not following directions inform your choreographic process?

We were able to generate movement from very literal directions. We used a bread recipe, directions for changing a tire, and directions for being a good housewife. I wanted to convey the sense of order and repetition that comes from following directions in the structure of the piece. I also asked the dancers to write about their own experiences with following directions early on in the process. I wanted to know if they see themselves as rule followers or not; this was helpful in creating their individual characters for the piece.

3. Do you think that the piece would have been the same if you worked with different dancers? Why or why not?

Absolutely not, the dancers invented most of the movement vocabulary in the rehearsal process. I then was able to piece it all together with the dancers’ writing in mind. The dancers were very creative and thoughtful throughout the process, allowing the dance to unfold naturally. It has been a very collaborative process.

4. Did exploring this idea leave you with any new ideas once the dance was created?

The movement that we generated started to take on a very feminine tone early on. This was not my initial intention, but I went with it. What evolved was a vintage feminine theme that naturally displays the order and uniformity of following directions.

5. What was the most enjoyable part of this process for you and why?

I have loved quirkiness in the piece. It was not my intention, but there are several humorous moments that evolved unexpectedly, and I love them.

BIO: This is Alaina Murray’s seventh season with TDC. Originally from Michigan, she received her BA in Dance from Western Michigan University. Alaina has also worked with Open House Dance Collective as a choreographer, dancer, and teacher for many years. She performed with Inaside Chicago Dance as a guest artist in 2006. Alaina shares her love of dance with little ballerinas every day at A Fairytale Ballet, a children’s ballet and creative movement program. She is the Chicago Regional Director of A Fairytale Ballet and Starbright Dance and manages four studios in the city.

Disclosure – Affiliate & Ad Info

Copyright Notice