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HELP! How Do I Get Back Into Dance Classes?

December 27, 2014 by Katie Sopoci Drake

Photo courtesy of KCBalletMedia at
Photo courtesy of KCBalletMedia at https://www.flickr.com/photos/67555847@N06/

by Katie C. Sopoci Drake

Hey there. It has been a while, hasn’t it? Teaching, the day-job, kids, or just plain old life got in the way. Although you may have been showing others how to dance, practicing yoga, and even performing here and there, it’s not the same as taking class, so now you’re nervous as heck. Now, you don’t have any grand illusions of running off to audition for a national tour (been there, done that), but you wouldn’t mind brushing up on your technique, and making sure you can jump into the odd performance without tearing anything.

But here come the doubts. I don’t know where to go. All of my dance clothes are long gone. I don’t think I’ll be able to keep up. I don’t even know what level I am anymore. I really don’t want to be in an “adult” class with 12-year-olds.

Before I give you the pep talk, first things first… [Read more…]

Filed Under: Adult Ballet Tagged With: 4dancers, adult ballet, Ballet, ballet class, chicago, dance, dance class, dance studio, dance teachers, katie sopoci drake, modern dance, teaching dance

Help! My Choreography Doesn’t Fit The Dancers!

June 5, 2014 by Katie Sopoci Drake

Photo by Katie Sopoci Drake
Photo by Katie Sopoci Drake

by Katie Sopoci Drake

Oh!  What to do when you’ve been hired to set a piece on a company, school, department, etc. and when you show up, BAM!  It hits you like a ton of bricks.  You realize, “These dancers are going to F. A. I. L. if I proceed as planned with my choreography.” Whatever the reason (too little technique, the wrong technique, stubborn, etc.) you cannot allow this to happen because it is your job as choreographer to…

  1. Make your dancers look good.  Which will, in turn…
  2. Make your choreography look good. Which will ensure that you…
  3. Make your self look good by making the whole process a success. Because you want to be called again to set more work.  Perhaps this time for a piece that is more appropriate for the dancers.

It’s a sticky situation that is mostly avoided by directors doing their homework about a choreographer and choreographers doing their homework about companies/schools/etc.  But let’s be real; sometimes directors just need someone to fill the spot and sometimes you just need to get a choreography gig.  I know all of this too well because, baby, sometimes Momma just needs a new pair of shoes… or to pay the utility bill.   How do we turn this around?  Here are a couple of lessons I’ve learned from all sorts of gooey, hot, messes:

It’s time to Pivot when: the dancers are trained in a completely different technique from yours and there is no time to teach them enough of the one you’re using in your piece.  Yes, “Pivot” is horrible business jargon, but it’s also a fabulous dance move that we all can relate to.  To pivot is to efficiently turn in a new direction, which is what you’re going to have to do, and quick, if you’re going to finish the dance in the limited number of rehearsals given.  Think, “Is there a way to use their technique to accomplish my dance?”, “Is there another piece in my repertory that might suit them better?”, or, “Is there a more suitable piece in my repertory that I can pull material from to patch rough spots in this one?”.  You’ll have to have a conversation with the director about what you’re seeing in the studio and how to proceed.

Going back to the origin of the movement is essential if you decide to forge ahead with the current piece.  You’re going to need to adapt it to the dancers in front of you and reacquainting yourself with the roots of your dance is going to help you do it.  If your piece has long lines, but the dancers do not, think about why you put those long lines there in the first place.  Was it an architectural choice?  Was it an emotional choice? Was it about the strengths of the original dancers?  Work from the origins of the movement to find an adaptation that will be successful on the dancers you have in front of you.

When I recently reset a piece on a new dancer, I went back to the root of why the phrase/gesture/movement showed up in the first place.  One of the repeating motifs was a twisted and tilted arabesque that elongated to create tension, but I knew that wouldn’t work for this soloist.  I told the dancer that I needed something that stretched from two ends until it about snapped.  Then I sat back and watched her work it out on her body until the new movement jumped out at me within a minute.  I said, “that’s it!” and we were free to move on to the next puzzle. No muss, no fuss.  Dancers are quick thinkers when you give them freedom to work it out on their own bodies. The part looks completely different now, but as long as the dancer is accomplishing the goal of the movement, that is a sign of success in my book.

Get Help! If the current piece is unsalvageable, you have the time to build something new, but are hitting a wall with the dancers, then in the words of Doris Humphrey, “Listen to qualified advice; don’t be arrogant.”  Pull in the director and peers to look at the stages of the dance.  Work that hasn’t had time to be performance-tested needs another eye and the dancers are often more willing to try something new if they know the director is involved in the process.

Lastly, Work with what you’re given.  Trust in your own ability to create a compelling structure, and only build phrases with material that looks strong on the dancers.  Whether you’re someone who has the dancers create the phrases, or if you create each phrase and feed it to the dancers, trust your instincts.  You will see what is working and what is not.  Be honest with yourself and cut out what is not being accomplished to your highest standards and, above all, “kill your darlings”.  Just because you loved it in your previous pieces doesn’t mean it works this time. In the end, this usually means that you are working with less material, but there are plenty of masterworks in every genre that are startling arrangements of simple movements.  Repetition will be your friend here.

Now, get out there and make those dancers look fabulous!

Photo by Katie Sopoci Drake
Photo by Katie Sopoci Drake

Contributor Katie C. Sopoci Drake, MFA, GL-CMA, is a Washington D.C. based professional dancer, choreographer and teacher specializing in Laban-based contemporary dance. Holding an MFA in Dance from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a Graduate Certification in Laban Movement Analysis from Columbia College – Chicago, and a BA in Theatre/Dance with a minor in Vocal Performance from Luther College, Sopoci Drake continues to take classes in as many techniques and practices as she can handle to inform her work and life as a curious mover.

Katie Sopoci Drake Photo by Scott Pakudaitis
Katie Sopoci Drake
Photo by Scott Pakudaitis

Katie has been on faculty at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Nova Southeastern University, Miami Dade College-Wolfson, Miami Dade College-Kendall, Carthage College, and Lawrence University.  She currently guest teaches and gives masterclasses around the D.C. area and wherever her travels take her.

As a performer, Sopoci is described as a “sinuous, animal presence of great power; watching her dance is a visceral experience.” (Third Coast Digest).  Company credits include Mordine and Company Dance Theater of Chicago, Momentum Dance Company of Miami, Wild Space Dance Company of Milwaukee, and Rosy Simas Danse of Minneapolis.  Katie has also made appearances an an independent artist with many companies including Brazz Dance, Your Mother Dances, The Florentine Opera, and The Minnesota Opera.

Katie’s choreography, described as “a beautiful marriage between choreography, music and poetry” (On Milwaukee), arises from her fascination with the idiosyncrasies of daily life, and the flights of fancy that arise from ordinary inspirations.  Her work has been performed by numerous companies, colleges and studios across the country and her latest collaboration, Telephone Dance Project, will take her to states up and down the East Coast while investigating long-distance creation and connecting far-flung dance communities.

 

Filed Under: Career, Making Dances Tagged With: 4dancers, Ballet, choreographer, choreography, dance, dance teachers, director, how to turn choreography around, modern dance

DVD Review: Still Moving: Pilobolus at Forty – A Film By Jeffrey Ruoff

April 28, 2014 by 4dancers

logoby Emily Kate Long

The dance company Pilobolus is named for a fungus that has the ability to launch its spores a distance of up to two meters—for a person, that would mean being thrown through the air at 100 times the speed of sound. The pilobolus fungus is also remarkable for its accuracy. The company makes no such claims; late co-founder Jonathan Wolken describes how Pilobolus’s first forty years brought about “the evolution of our own style…whatever that might be.” As co-diector Robby Barnett remarks, and as Ruoff illustrates, the company is process-oriented. For Barnett, that process is more interesting than any of the finished dances the company has produced.

Still Moving opens with footage of the dancers loading up a couple of cars and hitting the road. They’re on their way from the company’s studios in Washington Depot, CT to Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. Wolken, Barnett, and Michael Tracy began the collaboration that would evolve into Pilobolus at Dartmouth in the early 1970s. With no prior dance education, they worked to amuse themselves, living communally and practicing in any spare space they could find.

Forty years out, the company still embraces that experimental, simple, communal way of living and working (some interviews are punctuated by insects chirping in the background). The dancers are like a family, supporting one another through injuries and Wolken’s death in 2010.

Ruoff captures the company thoughtfully through interviews, performance footage, and clips of Pilobolus in rehearsal. Perhaps most telling is footage from the community workshops, classes in which the public get to participate in the creative process of developing movement, comfort and trust in one another to make a short dance work.

The film runs 38 minutes. The DVD also contains a version dubbed over with Ruoff’s insightful commentary. This documentary does a thorough job of celebrating what’s so unique about Pilobolus, a modern dance company that, as Barnett half-jokes, doesn’t “know anything about modern dance.”

 

 

Filed Under: Dance Video, Reviews Tagged With: dance video, dvd review, modern dance, pilobolus

Modern Dance History In Today’s Classroom

March 14, 2014 by 4dancers

Loie_Fuller
Portrait of Loïe Fuller, by Frederick Glasier, 1902

by Janet Neidhardt

Every year I teach my students about the history of modern dance. Each student researches and presents to the class the story of a modern dance pioneer. During this process of research and presentation I see various light bulbs pop on in my students’ minds as they come to the realization that movement has origins in history. They say things like “We do this movement in class!” and “This dancer had similar concepts about dance as we do in here.”

It’s so wonderful that videos of pioneer dancers like Loie Fuller, Ted Shawn, and Mary Wigman (just to name a few) are available on the internet for free and with such easy access. Watching videos of old dances and dancers is eye opening and creates great discussion among students about how dance has changed and how it has remained the same.

I find that my students appreciate learning and studying dance movement as an art form with greater depth after they learn about the history involved in the evolution of modern dance.  Part of their assignment is to reflect on how their pioneer dancer connects or relates to our class. This often starts a conversation about the various dance forms I’ve studied that I am now passing on as well as what and how dancers study movement today.

I ask my students, what does it mean to research movement in the body and devote your life to it as opposed to learning movement from others? Can you do both at the same time?

It is difficult for them to understand the idea of researching movement in the body because they are so used to learning movement from others. This is one of the many reasons I value teaching movement improvisation and choreography in high school. I love to see students discover that they can make up and create movement that is their own. They start to understand that if they really want to be original they need to evolve from what they already know and ask questions about what they don’t know. It is this curiosity that leads them to great creations of authentic work.

We also discuss studying one technique of dance verses studying them all and how that can change a dancers’ understanding of movement.

When talking about studying one technique verses studying many we can see that as dance has evolved there is more of a trend to be able to do it all. This is clearly a huge topic all on its own, but within the context of modern dance history my students always seem surprised that dancers would study with one teacher for many years and then branch out on their own after only learning one way of moving. They are impressed with the commitment and passion for dance that the pioneers had and they realize that is what they need to have to fully embody all movement they learn and create.

I encourage all dance educators to teach their students about modern dance pioneers and relate them back to their own classroom work. Students’ appreciation for dance and movement is expanded and their perspective about what it means to study dance is altered in profound ways.

dancer posing upside down
Janet Neidhardt

Contributor Janet Neidhardt has been a dance educator for 10 years. She has taught modern, ballet, and jazz at various studios and schools on Chicago’s North Shore. She received her MA in Dance with an emphasis in Choreography from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and her BA in Communications with a Dance Minor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Throughout her time in graduate school, Janet performed with Sidelong Dance Company based in Winston-Salem, NC.

Currently, Janet teaches dance at Loyola Academy High School in Wilmette, IL. She is the Director of Loyola Academy Dance Company B and the Brother Small Arts Guild, and choreographs for the Spring Dance Concert and school musical each year. Janet is very active within the Loyola Academy community leading student retreats and summer service trips. She regularly seeks out professional development opportunities to continue her own artistic growth. Recently, Janet performed with Keigwin and Company in the Chicago Dancing Festival 2012 and attended the Bates Dance Festival.

When she isn’t dancing, Janet enjoys teaching Pilates, practicing yoga, and running races around the city of Chicago.

Filed Under: 4teachers, Teaching Tips Tagged With: high school dance, high school dance programs, modern dance, teaching dance

10 “Must Do’s” For Dancers In A New City

February 7, 2014 by Katie Sopoci Drake

file0001696162701

by Katie C. Sopoci Drake

I’ve moved around a lot and boy has it taken a toll.  It takes skill to land in a new city and hit the ground running, and considering I’ve lived in 6 states in 13 years, I’ve certainly had my fair share of stumbles. As my mother says, “You shouldn’t move to a new city unless you have a job waiting for you”, but we all know that life takes you where it wants, when it wants.  I’ve moved because I had a job, because my husband had a job, because I’d hope I’d get a job, and because I just needed a change in a big way.

Whatever your reason for finding yourself in a new city, know that it’s hard and that you’ll be practically starting over in a career that is based on your known reputation. Now it’s time to pull up your big-girl/boy tights, put on your game-face, and be really, really patient all over again.  Since it’s still considered gauche to have your resume printed on your leotard, here are some things I’ve learned along the way that will help you to hop into your new city’s dance scene as fast as possible: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Career, Uncategorized Tagged With: 4dancers, Ballet, choreographers, dance, dance companies, dancer bio, Dancers in a new city, Free Websites, how to get noticed, mailing lists, modern dance, moving, moving as a dancer, New City, newbies, Telephone Dance Project

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