Editorial
Finding Balance: An Introduction
Today I’d like to give a warm welcome to Emily Kate Long, 4dancers latest contributor. Emily Kate will be writing about “Finding Balance”…something every dancer struggles with in one form or another…
Emily Kate Long
Balance is an integral part of dance: in technique, physical appearance, partnering, staging, casting, injury prevention…and on and on. Balance is what makes dance beautiful, and imbalance is often what keeps the audience on the edge of their seats, tense and excited. In our day-to-day, balance—or the lack of it—can provide comfort, frustration, boredom, serenity, or stress.
Physical imbalance reared its ugly head in my life throughout December and January. After nothing but Nutcracker for November and early December, three weeks of layoff seemed welcome at first. By about day four, though, I was longing for full days of rehearsal again! How was I supposed to keep myself in good shape while still allowing time for recovery?
Two months of promenades on my left leg had not only eaten through pair after pair of pointe shoes, but had also done noticeable damage to the muscles in my hip and calf on the left side. Prevention, correction, and maintenance all played a part in physically rebalancing my body before rehearsals started up again.
Pilates Reformer work was, and continues to be, a really effective way to maintain balance and alignment in my body. It was also useful as a preventive measure. My trainer and I had been working to stay on top of the one-sidedness of classical pas de deux work in weekly sessions during Nut rehearsals, so by the time the run of shows was over I had a repertoire of exercise remedies to practice with her and on my own.
Pilates Work
A visit to the chiropractor kicked off the corrective steps. He’s always telling me to reverse one-sided choreography, even if that only means one time reversed for every ten times I dance it. I think there’s validity in that, though in a company of nine dancers with one full-size studio there is not always time or space (or, more often, quite enough self-motivation) to take on that extra project, however small. I did begin doing the left side first for class exercises during the layoff, which was an interesting and helpful experiment.
Long, busy days in the theater meant that I wasn’t able to stretch as much as I would have liked, and dancing on a hard stage meant that I needed it more than usual. So I ended up tighter in general, especially in my hips and lower back. Hot yoga was a nice fix for that. The heat allowed me to stretch more intensely, and the combination of turned-in work and plenty of twisting relieved a lot of the tension that had been living in my back and hips.
Maintenance, in addition to continued Pilates work, involved taking lots of time to do class on my own and really simplify things, going back to the basics and re-examining those steps for quirks that could lead to bigger problems later. I also indulged my love of running outdoors, something that I avoid during rehearsal weeks because of the impact.
Now that rehearsals are back in full swing things are starting to get crazy again—just the way I like them! Full days at the studio plus planning classes and choreography make me really appreciate any opportunity I can find for pastimes—currently, reading Jane Austen and Stephen Manes. But that’s fodder for another post!
Emily Kate Long
BIO: 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.
Finis: My Project Idea
by Christopher Duggan
This summer will be Jacob’s Pillow’s 80th Season and my seventh as Festival Photographer. My responsibilities at the Pillow have shifted since my first season. In 2006, I was primarily hired to capture several of the events and make beauty shots of the grounds. I was welcome to shoot dress rehearsals for performances, but they didn’t really need those images.
Now I’m working there to photograph dance, the dress rehearsals for press, the school for documentation, etc. I love it, and I’m always looking to do more and find new ways to contribute.
It’s been a dream of mine to make portraits of the artists and dance portraits of the performers whenever possible, but I’ve been quite timid and shy about this endeavor. Last summer I finally got my foot in the door and asked a couple of the artists to work with me doing some creative portraiture. You can see examples of what we created on my blog:
Musings: Stimulate – Intrigue – Captivate
by Kimberly Peterson
There is a quality in movement that I love to see and makes me engage with material in a completely different way than other dance. It’s hard to describe, but I know it when I see it. In fact, I find most people have a certain stylistic choice or a certain way of moving that feels good to them, or that is interesting to watch or work within.
This clip instantly captured me. I realized that it sort of encapsulated the continuous motion that intrigues me as a choreographer, stimulates me as a dancer and captivates me as an audience member. It is the union of opposites that intrigues me – lightness and weight, controlled and yet abandoned, strength and yet ease…the complexity and texture this creates in performance is breathtaking to me and yet is not accidental.
0One Dancer’s Journey…Current Day & Memories
Todd Fox is back in the second installment of our feature on “One Dancer’s Journey”…answering questions 2 & 3…if you missed his first post, check it out here…
2. What are you currently doing in the field?
I perform mostly short term or guest artist engagements abroad these days as well as teach master classes at various schools and universities. For the past 13 years I have run my own management agency, Elitedance Artists Management, which continues to collaborate with dance projects and organizations all over the world.
I also oversee the distribution of a retail product I created for ballet dancers called “Balletband” and in the coming months will be introducing a brand new product to the market which I anticipate being popular among student and professional ballet dancers everywhere.
3. Can you share a special or memorable moment from your career?
My career has spanned a little over two decades, it would be difficult to narrow down just one memorable or special moment so here are a few.
0The Curse Of Being Creative (Why WorkFlowy is Amazing)
by Lauren Warnecke
- I consider myself to be an organized person. I mean, I guess I know I’m an organized person because I usually end up where I need to end up on time. I usually pay my bills on time. People hire me to organize performance projects, and, as far as I can tell, they all turn out ok. I’m organized, but I’m also a dancemaker. Like most other working artists I can’t survive unless I have multiple jobs. Last fall I think my brain got to capacity. I had taken on more than any organized person – or rather any person – should, and it got to the point that some things were starting to slip… like remembering to brush my teeth and pay the cable bill.
- Things float in and out of my brain. It’s the curse of being a creative person. We’re not linear thinkers. I am often simultaneously thinking about the role of the American housewife, the importance of the right index finger, the best way to engage new audience members, if I have any clean pants, and what to have for dinner. One thought leads to the next in a stream of consciousness that, heard by another person, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. This is an awesome problem to have, but can also be frustrating when you are 1) trying to communicate with people who AREN’T non-linear thinkers (and yes, I realize I just used a double negative there), or 2) trying to communicate with someone who is also creative, but not your kind of creative. That’s pretty much everyone.
What a dance looks like in Lauren's head
- But it all makes sense to me. I just don’t have room for it in my brain. Enter 2012. Even before the confetti was falling on a new year, I had resolved that I needed a new way to organize my thoughts. I love paper planners, and though I completely embrace technology I’ve never found a techie tool for storing a to-do list effectively. You either have to categorize things, rank things, or otherwise pigeon hole your thoughts into a few characters. By some sort of divine intervention (that is, the “freshly pressed” feed on WordPress.com), I came across a post about a newfangled organizational tool: WorkFlowy.
- I’m in love with workflowy. It is new(ish? I think?), but its brilliance is in its stark simplicity. WorkFlowy is a big, fat, unlimited capacity, bullet-pointed typepad, that you don’t have to save, can open up wherever you have the interwebs, and share with whomever you please. No categories. No muss, no fuss. No pigeon holes. Today on my WorkFlowy, I brainstormed marketing ideas for an event I’m managing, added bananas to my shopping list, and wrote this article.
- Apart from shameless promotion for a new thing I found that I love, the point is this: in order to keep ourselves surviving and making work we have to keep seven jobs. In order to keep seven jobs, we’ve got to be organized. In order to be organized, you don’t necessarily need WorkFlowy, but you need some sort of interface that works the way YOUR brain works. That could be a paper planner, an iPad or a sheet of loose leaf paper. For me, I think it might be this. Until, of course, the internet goes away… but I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it.
Lauren Warnecke
Contributor Lauren Warnecke is a Chicago-based dance artist, educator and writer. She trained at Judith Svalander School of Ballet and Barat Conservatory of Dance before earning a BA in Dance at Columbia College Chicago. In 2009, Lauren completed her MS in Kinesiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is an adjunct instructor for the Department of Kinesiology at UIC, the Performing Arts Coordinator at the Menomonee Club for Boys and Girls, a member of the Cecchetti Council of America, and Neurotransmitter to Synapse Arts Collective (read: too many jobs).
Lauren created and maintains Art Intercepts as a platform for dance that is informed, inventive, and evidence-based. In addition to writing at 4dancers, Lauren is a columnist at Dance Advantage, specializing in dance injuries and prevention, dancer wellness, and evidence-based teaching practices. She also enjoys her freelance work as a grant writer and production manager and likes to grow strawberries, bake scones, and dig in the dirt.
Finis: What Is A Dance Portrait?
by Christopher Duggan
This November I moved into a new office space with a fully equipped photo studio, perfect for solo sessions with dancers looking for new portraits for their portfolios. I recently broke in my new space with Caleb Teicher, an 18-year-old dancer who just won a 2011 Bessie for his performance with Michelle Dorrance’s tap company, Dorrance Dance.
I knew Caleb wanted a new head shot along with some dance images, but I didn’t have any direction beyond that. He arrived at the studio completely open to the creative process, and we started the session with little else but trust in each other. Everything flowed wonderfully, resulting in a steady stream of charismatic images showcasing his signature style.
This isn’t always my approach to a studio session. Sometimes it’s best to come in with clearer goals for specific angles and stylistic ideas. (More on that in another column.)
As dancers, what approach have you taken in studio sessions? What direction (or how much direction) would you like to have from your photographer? And most importantly, what is the dance portrait? What makes the portrait useful to you and why?
Is a “dance portrait” one that features a dance move? Of these images I’m showing, which is the one that personifies “dance portrait” the most?
View more photos of Caleb’s shoot here.
Christopher Duggan
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.
1From the Mouths of Babes: Creative Choice Making and Children
Hello and happy holidays to you all. I apologize for the lack of posts, but have been busy with an internship at the MN Children’s Museum and getting some much needed perspective.
This time, spent partially observing children in active play and engaged in learning while creating, has opened my eyes to the skills of active choice making involved in creative play.
Playing is learning for children and is directly derived from their ability to make assumptions, try them out, learn from them and engage in the decision making process with others. It is their opportunity to learn from, socialize with, engage in and develop their sense of self and to context that self within their understanding of the world.
This doesn’t really change all that much when you become an adult either, though adults get far less constructive and creative play time than children tend to. Creative play is one of the amazing elements exemplified in contact improvisation.
The video below captures perfectly the duality of play, creative choice making and learning:
Immediately, we see active choice making from the little one. At :18 we see a decision to find a connection, seek hand holds and shift weight in an appropriate way to execute that choice. At :21, :25 and :32 we see her decide to leave that position – even using “safe arms” on her way out, to maintain a physical connection with her partner, make independence choices away from her partner, but re-engaging contact. At :38 there is a serious test of trust between the two partners – trust that is rewarded with a brilliant series of movement in :50, 1:43, 1:55 and 2:43 and carries over to her new partner at the end of the clip.
0Making Space To Make Dances
by Lauren Warnecke
When I write, my environment is really important. There are two spots in my house that I like to sit and write: the dining room table and the desk in my office. When those aren’t working, there’s always the neighborhood coffee shop and my desk at work. I’m not sure what it is about those spaces in particular, but something about the “energy” of those spots let’s me write.
Katie Matteson and Vienna Willems performing Lauren's latest work, Grind. Photo by Kelly Rose/ Savage Rose Photography
If you want to make dances, you need space….
… and you don’t always have a choice of what that space will look like or if the “energy” there will be conducive to creating. As a dancemaker, there are restrictions to the types of workspace you can use. There are considerations such as having a safe floor, a convenient location, and finding something that’s affordable and matches up with your dancers’ schedules. These are things that just don’t factor in to other creative endeavors like music or writing.
As a result, we sometimes find ourselves in strangely shaped rooms with polls, late at night, where we’re forced to crank out as much material as we can in one or two hours.
In other words, there are obvious challenges to finding physical space to make dances. However, more and more programs are becoming available to offer rehearsal space to choreographers for little or no money. In Chicago alone, there are several programs such as LinkUp and DanceBridge that you can apply for to receive free rehearsal space in exchange for volunteer hours. Additionally, there is a long list of alternative affordable spaces that are really suitable for dance.
You might also consider joining an artists’ cooperative. By paying a monthly “share” of a workspace, you give yourself consistent access to a space you’re comfortable in, and often end up paying less than the hourly rate you might pay somewhere else.
0Dance In The UK: Auditions For EDge
by Jessica Wilson
The London School of Contemporary Dance’s postgraduate performance company, EDge, is preparing to invest in auditions in cities across North America for 2012-2013, continuing to widen international dance connections and develop the art form we all know and love.
Additionally, auditions will be taking place for other postgraduate and undergraduate programmes at The Place, extending this investment across the breadth of London Contemporary Dance School and connecting dance further. It is the third year of their holding of auditions in the States, with a number of American students currently company members of EDge, extending dance horizons positively in the direction of further development.
Auditions for EDge have been held yearly in the UK and Europe for both postgraduate and undergraduate programmes, with the transition to incorporate US auditions extending dance even further. As the cultural context of dance continues to widen, the future of dance looks extremely bright indeed.
Throughout dance history – and ballet and modern dance particularly – practitioners have travelled extensively, spreading their dance influence and initiating their own dance strands within distinctly differing countries. From Isadora Duncan to George Balanchine and beyond, dance contexts have gradually developed and flourished beyond conception through choreographic and training work in many different cultural contexts. The investment of London Contemporary Dance School in auditions within North America is a clear symptom of an increasingly global approach to contemporary dance training. EDge, amongst many other dance companies, is continuing this through their international auditions and further through the appointment of American artistic director Jeanne Yasko in September 2010.
0Dance In The UK: NYCB’s Nutcracker Production
by Jessica Wilson
The Nutcracker
There’s an extremely Christmassy privilege heading to the UK on 22nd December, in the form of New York City Ballet’s brand new production of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, with tickets priced at just ten pounds. This multi-million dollar production includes a forty foot Christmas tree which weighs a staggering one tonne, seventy ballet dancers, fifty children from the School of American Ballet – the official school of NYCB – and a sixty-two piece orchestra. It is ultimately described by the New York Post as “the Christmas show of all Christmas shows”.
NYCB has an unparalleled active repertory of more than 150 works, many of which are considered modern masterpieces. The Company was established in 1948 by choreographer Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein, joined by Jerome Robbins in 1949 as associate artistic director. Now under the artistic direction of Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins, the company performs an impressive annual 21-week season in New York, the longest home season of any dance company in the world.
The production’s defining feature is its vast scale, described as a ‘virtually live performance’ to be screened in cinemas all over the UK. This will ultimately provide mass audiences with the chance to view such an iconic and prestigious work by Balanchine, who is generally argued to be the father of modern ballet. This great accessibility is proved unhindered by the extremely limited run, due to the fact it is the ‘golden ticket’ of ballets for all dance lovers, available nationally.
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