sytycd – Page 2

10 Questions With…Melanie Doskocil

October 24, 2011 by 4dancers

Today on 10 Questions With… we welcome Melanie Doskocil …

melaniedoskocil_headshot[1] — Melanie Doskocil

1. How did you become involved with dance?

I think I pretty much begged my mom to put me in ballet classes since I was little. I used to have this lamp when I was a child that was a Degas dancer painting on glass with a bulb behind it. I used to plug it in and dream of being one of those ballerinas.

2. What are you currently doing in the field?

I retired after a 17 year professional career and now am teaching classical ballet and directing a ballet school.

3. Would you share a special moment from your career with readers?

The last job I took was a European tour as part of Mia Michael’s R.A.W. Her company had disbanded and she hired 10 of us to represent her on this 6 week tour. It was tough! She was mean; brutal in fact. She looks like a pussy cat on SYTYCD, but she unleashed her demons on us through that rehearsal period. Everyone cried, everyone wanted to quit. One dancer actually told me he wished he would break something in rehearsal so he could quit with dignity. Dancers came to me (the old lady) and begged me to let them quit. I did more fast talking through that period than I ever had. I motivated, I cajoled, I cried myself and I wanted to quit, but I couldn’t, wouldn’t, let myself or Mia or the tour company down like that. In the end, we all ended up taking our dancing to a new level. Moving beyond our self imposed limitations. Luckily for us, Mia decided not to go on the tour. So we went to Europe without her, danced to packed houses, standing ovations, and shouts for encore! and never had to hear her belittle us again. For some reason I actually remember this time as one of the greatest things I ever did with dance. I feel like I over came major obstacles with that project.

4. What is the best advice you have ever received from a teacher or mentor regarding dance? [Read more…]

Musings – Skin & Bones

September 2, 2011 by Kimberly Peterson

by Kimberly Peterson

Now that SYTYCD has run it’s course, I’m starting a new column devoted to isolating specific issues and qualities of dance that speak to me in an effort to start dialogue. I am going to be utilizing embedded videos to help illustrate exactly what I’m seeing and to help further discussion. What I’d like to encourage all readers to do is to leave a comment, add to the dialogue of others and continue the discussion beyond what I lay out.

I’m calling this new column “Musings” because it’s not only a play on the word – meaning to contemplate, think about – but also because it references, tangentially, the Muses – the mythological beings said to be the source of all knowledge and to inspire all of the art created by artists. It fits with my intentions to contemplate the field of dance through examples of work and to discuss not only larger issues in play, but also the origins of work, the process of creating work and aesthetic values.

As a transition from our SYTYCD journey into this new column, entitled Musings, I begin our journey with a powerful performance by America’s Newest Favorite Dancer, Melanie Moore.

This work by Dee Caspary was phenomenal for a host of reasons and I want to unpack some of that for you. But first I feel like you should watch the piece for yourselves and then I’ll delve into some food for thought…

Initially what really spoke to me and attracted me to the work was the seamless partnering of bodies. There was no “set up”, just rolling movement into and out of the floor, towards and away from each other, that perfectly echoed the struggle between their relationship as well as their struggle between light and dark (emphasized by the stage lighting and the use of the light bulb). [Read more…]

Coming Up On 4dancers…

August 14, 2011 by 4dancers

From time to time I like to do a little preview of things that will be coming up on 4dancers, and this week I have a lot to share! In addition to the new column we have “The Business of Dance” by Lizzie Leopold, we are also adding two new features in the upcoming weeks….

Join us for “Finis” – a new monthly column that will feature a dance photo at the end of the month, and “Music & Dance” – a column that will highlight a composer/producer’s take on the relationship between sound and movement. You’ll be meeting both of the new contributors soon in our “10 Questions With…” series. And good news for those of you who have enjoyed our SYTYCD contributor, Kimberly Peterson’s writing…she’ll be staying on to write more for 4dancers on other topics…

Also–look for more interviews (on Mondays) and dance music reviews (on Wednesdays) as we finish up the summer and settle into fall. I am going to be taking more time to work on this blog, so expect to see more content overall as we take 4dancers to the next level.

Let us know if there is something you’d like to hear more about, and in the meantime, we’d just like to thank you for taking the time to visit. If you haven’t yet taken the time to link up with us on Facebook and Twitter why not join us now? There’s going to be a lot going on!

The Power of Choice: On Tools and Intelligence

August 7, 2011 by Kimberly Peterson

by Kimberly Peterson

Something has been irking me lately despite the vast improvement in critique – thanks largely in part to the guest judges – which is the role of a dancer as a tool vs. the dancer making active intelligent choices. I want to discuss the role of choice, how it relates to power and how the use of choice takes a dancer from a mere “tool of the trade” to an active participant utilizing their choice to make intelligent artistic decisions. To do this I want to walk through three very important distinctions: tools v. choice; choice inside creative process; and process with artistic intelligence. [Read more…]

Together, With A Gift

July 29, 2011 by Kimberly Peterson

by Kimberly Peterson

The Dance World is made up of several large countries, some smaller provinces and many big cities…however the sense of community between them, the community they continue to build and the community they foster all enable dance to be the cultural and societal force that it is.

Dance has long been deeply rooted in culture and tradition, pride in one’s location and the skills of their people, embodying the history of a nation to be relived over and again for future generations so they may know and experience where their people have been. It is political and apolitical, it is emotional and devoid of emotion, it is both all things and nothing and in this ambiguity there is a glorious freedom.

Through the ages, it has tied people together, bridged the gaps between spoken and written languages, expressed the common experience of a body in motion uniting us within that shared medium.

Community can denote many different things, but in this instance, I believe it is most apt to return to the Latin cognates from the French term communité: the Latin cum, “with/together” and munus, “gift”. Together, With A Gift.

As National Dance Day once again kicks off at the end of this week, it reminds me that one of the most beautiful things we can do as human beings, is to give of oneself in the hopes of reaching another person, connecting with another person. Dance is, for many reasons, a universal vocabulary and offers us the opportunity to come together, with that gift. [Read more…]

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