choreographer

Dance Voyages

May 15, 2017 by 4dancers

Alessa dancing Esmerelda — **Esmeralda and Kilroy’s Pas. Photo by Charlie McCullers**

by Alessa Ashley Rogers

Looking forward, looking back.

On October 7, 2014, 27 dancers waited expectantly in Atlanta Ballet’s sun-dappled studio 1. What we knew: Our resident choreographer, Helen Pickett. And the play, Tennessee Williams’ Camino Real which we had been expected to read.

What we didn’t know was how Helen would transform an obscure, largely unsuccessful play into a full-length world premiere ballet with original costumes, sets and score which would be critically acclaimed for its “sheer magic.”

Flash forward 30-some months later and Camino Real is being re-staged at Atlanta Ballet for the second time. Many things are different in our world of the studio and in the larger world. A new president has taken office. At Atlanta Ballet, change is heavy on our minds as thirteen dancers prepare to depart the company at the end of this season. [Read more…]

Dancer Profile: Justin Peck

November 27, 2015 by Rachel Hellwig

https://instagram.com/p/zkXwa3qRUr/?taken-by=justin_peck

(Peck, front right, in his own work Rōdē,ō: Four Dance Episodes)

“There’s this Diaghilev quote that I always go back to. It’s very simple. He said, “I have big plans.” Maybe I’m being overly optimistic. But that’s how I feel. ” – Justin Peck

At age 13, Justin Peck was cast as in extra in American Ballet Theatre’s touring production of Giselle. Witnessing the athleticism of ABT’s male dancers Herman Cornejo, Marcelo Gomes, and Ethan Stiefel inspired him to begin ballet training. Previously, he had only taken classes in tap and musical theater. He found ballet challenging, particularly extension and turnout. Nonetheless, within just two years, he proved proficient enough to be accepted into the School of American Ballet. He became an apprentice with New York City Ballet in 2006, a corps member in 2007, and a soloist in 2013.

Peck’s career took a unique turn when he decided to take a dance criticism course at Columbia University. There, his professor Mindy Anloff told him he had a good mind for choreography and encouraged him to give it try. Peck’s first work was a pas de deux for the student-run company Columbia Ballet Collaborative. From there he went on to New York City Ballet’s affiliated program The New York Choreographic Institute. His creations caught the eye of NYCB’s artistic director Peter Martins who invited him to choreograph for the company.

In 2014, after choreographing for New York City Ballet for only two years, Peck was named New York City Ballet’s Resident Choreographer. He was just 26 at the time. New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay has written that Peck is “the third important choreographer to have emerged in classical ballet this century, following Christopher Wheeldon and [Alexei] Ratmansky.”

In Peck’s choreographic process, music and collaboration have priority. He told the Washington Post,”My philosophy on choreography is that the making of a ballet is a team effort, and we’re in this together. It’s not me hammering on them. It’s more about how we can elevate this piece collectively to something great.”

Fun Facts:

Peck’s role in ABT’s Giselle at age 13 was a dog handler in Act I

His guilty food pleasure is Australian licorice

He admits the main reason he wanted to attend SAB was to live in New York City; he didn’t actually know much about Balanchine when he applied.

Follow Peck On:

His website: http://www.justin-peck.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/justin_peck

Instagram: https://instagram.com/justin_peck/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justinisjustinpeck

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcALX4g97mMXFZtBRSHBv0Q

Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/justinpeck/videos

Justin Peck and Janie Taylor

Justin Peck and Taylor Stanley on Peck’s ‘Rōdē,ō: Four Dance Episodes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqPDiyXjTbc&feature=youtu.be

Justin Peck & Sufjan Stevens – Excerpts and discussion of Peck’s “Year of the Rabbit”

Miami City Ballet: Justin Peck & Shepard Fairey – Excerpts and discussion of Peck’s “Year of the Rabbit”

Articles [Read more…]

Creating Momentum & Forward Progress Between Dance Competitions

May 11, 2015 by 4dancers

"Once Upon A December" by Tom Godber. Licensed under CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic — “Once Upon A December” by Tom Godber. Licensed under CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic

by Karen Musey

Each competition experience brings new highlights and challenges! How time is utilized in-between events is a big factor in determining how each dance studio and dancer excels at each event, and how they grow over the year.

Keeping choreography fresh and spirits high after drilling and performing the same material week after week for months at a time can be a challenge! As dancers find their groove within the choreography, sometimes they start to sit back when they feel that they’ve accomplished the task. Also, often the choreographer is no longer on hand to continue the development of the work. It is important to maintain the structure of the piece, as well as encouraging each dancer to continue to evolve their own interpretation and ideas of it.

The more dancers move out of a neutral approach to performing their piece, the more the piece will evolve and affect the audience. And PS – continually finding ways to improve, define and deepen the work is great preparation for understanding how to develop work as a professional dancer; it is also a great skill to develop for any job…

Deepening The Work

Play! – Once the piece is memorized and the muscle memory has set in, then the artist is free to explore! If you can experience your piece through different kinds of filters (just like Instagram!), you will discover new layers and depth within the choreography. For example – changing up how we work with resistance helps us to discover different kinds of qualities in a movement. Moving through peanut butter vs feeling like you are made of bubbles vs oozing like green slime all change the dancer’s interpretation of the same movement, which opens up new possibilities of expression.

If a piece has a light, carefree expression to it, try approaching the choreography from an opposite angle – tension, gravity, labored. After experiencing the opposite, turn the filter back in the reverse direction, to extreme lightness and fluidity – more than was experienced originally. You will find that the piece will naturally want to lean in a certain direction. Changing the intention will open up new ideas in how the choreographer was interpreting the music. Maybe adding more lightness creates more freedom. Maybe adding weight and stillness creates a stronger emotional impact in the choreography. Maybe the intention stays the same, but now the original movement has expanded in feeling and has more nuance and variation. Playing with an opposite intention against the original goals of the choreography can open up huge, new emotional spectrums in the piece. Finding unexpected pockets in movement for hope, sadness, sweetness, longing, and connection is wonderful to discover.

[Read more…]

The Bliss & Pitfalls Of Making The Ultimate Solo: A Group Therapy Session For Choreographers

February 23, 2015 by Rachel Hellwig

by Jamie Benson

Lights come up on a lone figure, the one burdened with putting a trance over a packed house of smart phones. It’s a tall order to be sure. You don’t just have to dazzle, you have to captivate, ooze an indisputable it-factor that dares an audience of TV brains to look away, as if they could. The best/worst part is that you probably put yourself in the position to be this dance mystic. It’s your fault.

It’s your solo after all.

In an attempt to simplify my life as a choreographer (Ha!), I recently dove headfirst into the idea of making new solos. This was after previously doing a lot of ensemble pieces. It’s more freeing and more terrifying than ever. You’ve been there right? (Or will be.) Let’s have some group therapy real quick and see if we can come out the other end a little wiser, a little more capable of entrancing our next packed house. Game? Good.

Potential Pitfall: How Does It “Read” (a.k.a Do I look nuts?)

It can be tricky to clearly represent the source of whatever emotion one is exploring as a soloist and harder to suss out how it might “read” to an innocent audience-goer. There’s a more immediate response when working with other performers. They laugh when it’s funny, look at you cross-eyed when it’s too complicated or unintentionally awkward, and so on and so forth. As audience members, we’ve all experienced that performance where a soloist goes from poised dancer to insane person in seconds flat. As choreographers we think we know how something looks from the outside because we feel it so deeply. But as an audience member, one can become perplexed and feel alienated really fast if there’s no immediate access point, such as a topical reference, a common emotional gesture, something. Even if we deliberately create space for the audience to make their own choices about what we’re doing, our job is still ultimately to communicate something through movement.

[Read more…]

Making The Most Of Chance: Choreographer Greg Blackmon

November 6, 2014 by Rachel Hellwig

Greg Blackmon. Photograph by by Cheryl Mann.

Greg Blackmon is a new choreographer and DanceWorks Chicago alum. DanceWorks Chicago was founded in 2007 and gives early career artists an environment where they can build a foundation and hone their artistry through training, collaboration, performances and mentoring opportunities. They also showcase work from established choreographers.

Greg recently choreographed “PACK: And for All the Lost Ones” for DanceChance, a showcase which features choreographers chosen by chance. Afterwards, his piece was taken into the DWC repertoire – marking the first time that DWC dancer has become a DWC choreographer.

“PACK: And for All the Lost Ones” will make its premiere with DWC on Sunday, November 16 at DanceMoves.

What inspired your piece “Pack: And for All the Lost Ones”?

The piece is actually about a friend of mine and former DWC dancer, Marco Antonio Huicochea Gonzalez, who passed away during his time with us. It was a really rough loss for all of us, and after a few months of reflection I decided I would like to honor him through the art form we got to share with one another. So I dropped my name into the fishbowl at Dance Chance and wound up getting selected, which allowed this idea to come to fruition.

What music did you chose for this piece?

I chose a song by an Icelandic band called Sigúr Ros, “All Alright.” I’d heard it when a friend of mine used it years before for a piece of his own and I’ve always been in love with the juxtaposition of the music’s reflective, emotional tone and its instrumental minimalism.

What style is “Pack: And for All the Lost Ones”?

I would consider the piece to be contemporary. I’ve implemented some ballet principles, but re-imagined and reconfigured them to fit more organic movement.

What is your choreographic process like?

Since I’m just starting out, I think I’ll say my process from piece to piece will be different every time. I like to believe every task– not just in dance, but in life in general– has a formula specific to itself that will breed the most success in terms of what your goals are. This piece started with me taking a lot of note from the emotional displays of animals, mainly dogs/wolves, and fusing that honesty and the body language with styles of contemporary movement that I love.

When did you find out that “Pack: And for All the Lost Ones” was going to be added to the DWC rep?

A few weeks after Julie saw the piece at Dance Chance, she asked if Matt (the other original dancer and a current DWC company member) and I would like to perform “Pack…” at the Dance for Life kickoff gala this summer, which was exciting in itself because so many people that I admire in the dance world got to see it. And then about 3 or 4 weeks after that, Julie asked if we could meet to discuss how it would work its way into the DWC repertoire.

How did you feel when found this out?

I was absolutely ecstatic! This was my first creation as a professional choreographer, and I didn’t even aspire for it to be anything more than what it was– a short, sweet dedication to a very dear friend and to the family that I’ve found in DanceWorks Chicago, as well as a sort of memorial for everyone who’s ever been lost from this world (because everyone means something to someone. And everyone is loved very dearly by someone.). And it’s grown into something that a ton of other people will get to see and hold dear to their hearts because of one idea that I had.

What did you learn during your time at DanceWorks Chicago and how has it helped you?

I could write a book on everything that I’ve learned here. One of the most important things is that you really are a person first and THEN an artist. I think a lot of dancers can get really caught up in the idea of this art form we dedicate our lives to and all of the prestige surrounding the mental and physical dedication it takes, and we forget that we have to be people inside of the movement. Otherwise, you’re just someone else who can throw a leg up or point your foot and pretend to say something, or imply an idea, but never really say anything…never really give it meaning.

I’ve also learned to be more patient and a bit less of a perfectionist. I’ll never forget Julie Nakagawa pulling me aside one day while we were on your and telling me “Just do the work. Don’t fuss or obsess about the mistakes. Just… do… the work. That’s really all anyone can ask of you. But you have to really do it.”

Greg Blackmon. Photograph by by Vin Reed.

What are some of your dance goals and dreams for the future?

I think my biggest dream for the future is to continue exploring movement and manifesting both my own ideas and the ideas of others through dance. It’s so much fun translating something as abstract as a simple thought into something as tangible as dance. And I love knowing that the things I can put on a stage will touch each audience member in a way that’s unique to them and their experience, because that’s what art does. It stirs people in a multitude of ways and the beauty of it lies in the undeniable sincerity of their response.

Deepening The Work

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