dance
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.
From 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.
Dance And Your Smartphone
Smartphones are becoming omnipresent, and depending on what you do in dance, you may want to consider building your own app. Like applications on your computer, an app for a smart phone can do numerous things. For example, a ballet company may want to provide information on shows, tours or other upcoming events, whereas a studio might want to have class and recital information available to the public. You could also use your phone app to direct fans to your website, show them videos, and more.
Those who want to be, if not ahead of at least on the curve, can find an easy iPhone app builder or an easy Android app builder and start figuring out ways to best reach their customers. Here’s one I found doing a simple search—which I may try and use for 4dancers to build an app in the coming year.
Keeping up on smartphone technology, social media and other ways to advance your brand is always a good idea, and you can make an app work for you in many different ways, depending on your needs. After all, the more channels through which people can reach you and learn about your studio/company, the better!
Music and Dance: Arranging Music
by John Nevin
Arranging your music into a successful sound design involves the same challenges, for the most part, whether you’re working in ballet, modern or jazz, because the need for an effective through-line is important in any performance regardless of style. The essence of the challenge is to keep the audience absorbed in the Dance, and the issue is not so much to create something powerful in the musical arrangement (unless you’re working with a composer on an original score) as it is to reinforce the power of the choreography. Most important of all is to avoid anything that may distract the audience from the choreography itself.
Assuming that you’re working with two or more selections of music, the most difficult issues are always transitions and endings. If you’ve found music that has an ending that you can use, it may simply be a matter of finding useable edit points within the existing music, either to remove a section to reduce the time, or to repeat a section to extend it. This is relatively easy with music that has a consistent meter, but more difficult with freeform performances, like solo piano music or classical ensembles.
0Dance In The UK: “The Place” & Dance Education
Jessica Wilson
by Jessica Wilson
Following the comments made by British Member of Parliament David Willetts, the relationship between dance and education has now been placed under close scrutiny. Dance professionals became increasingly concerned that the position of dance in education was under threat, which consequently sparked the debate. Willetts, Universities and Science Minister, recently remarked that he believed “soft” subjects such as Dance should be of less worth if a student was to apply to attend university. The dance sector strongly rejected this argument. Willetts’s claims were controversially published on the same day in August 2011 as the examination results which precede students’ further studies at university.
At what can only be defined as perfect timing elsewhere in London was the announcement that The Place, the UK’s premier centre for contemporary dance, is to introduce GCSE Dance to their existing teaching schedules. GCSEs are national examinations taken by young people both inside and outside schools; the course offered by The Place is open to students aged 13-18 years old. A parallel to the British school examination system can be observed in the Cecchetti system, used throughout Britain and the United States and enabling students to take exams at different levels and progress to higher grades. GCSE examinations form much of the first preparation for further education and with such promotion by The Place, dance appears to be on the road to recovery. To hear Willetts’s comments on the prospective introduction of this course would be very interesting to say the least.
0To Choreograph or Not to Choreograph….That is Always My Question…..
by Lucy Vurusic Riner
Lucy Vurusic Riner
Being a high school dance teacher I typically choreograph anywhere between three to five full length dances each year for my student companies. Back in the day, when I was super young and wet behind the ears I made dances about just about anything. I might really enjoy a song and that would be my jumping off point. Or I might have just gotten out of a bad relationship or had a family quarrel and that would be enough to conjure up a combination or two. I was never at a loss for some idea and I was never afraid to try just about anything. I followed the basic rule that most high school dances (and I guess commercial dances as well) were typically three to five minutes in length and they may or may not have some sort of story line or underlying theme but they were always entertaining. And let’s be honest, choreographing on high school students can be somewhat forgiving because they can appreciate where all the above ideas might come from. Although they may have a limited movement vocabulary at such a young age they have plenty to dance about in their lives. My early dances were fun but simple. I know they were entertaining but they definitely weren’t masterpieces by any stretch of the imagination. And so why did I choreograph? Was it for me? The audience? Did I have a message or just some great moves I wanted people to see?
2Choosing Music For Choreography
by John Nevin
Choosing music for choreography is one of those things that seems so simple, but always ends up being complicated. That’s not because people underestimate the process, it’s because the process is at the same time very simple and very complicated — and that’s only the first of several contradictions that a choreographer faces when trying to choose music for a new work. To do so successfully, you have to ignore your audience, and you have to think only of your audience. You have to have to forget the whole work and think only of the parts, and then you have to do exactly the opposite. You have to trust yourself completely, and not trust yourself at all.
Fortunately, there’s a sequence to all of this, and not a very complicated one at that. There are two parts to the process of choosing music for choreography — finding the music, and then arranging it. In many ways, the way to succeed in one part is to do the opposite of what succeeds in the other.
Finding the Music
What are you looking for when you’re searching for music for a choreographic work? You’re looking for inspiration. You’re either looking for music that will inspire movement and design, or you’re looking for music whose inspiration complements the movement and design that you already imagine. In either case, this is the time to forget your audience, your sponsors, and especially your peers, and trust yourself.
1Finis: A Different Angle
by Christopher Duggan
My job at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival allows me to experiment with different angles and types of shots and practice how these different approaches to dance photography can aid the festival and the company in different ways. When Lar Lubovitch Dance Company performed at the Ted Shawn Theatre, I was able to photograph dress rehearsal from the front of the house as well as performances from backstage.
My front of house photo session was all about getting “the shot” for the press reviewing the dances. In order to get a great shot for press I have a few things on my mind: shoot horizontal, don’t cut off hands or feet or toes, show the choreography, find trios and small groups, look for “signature” moments that showcase the piece.
Backstage, without these constraints, I was able to capture the dances more playfully. I was only feet away from the dancers and so I paid closer attention to the dancers’ facial expressions, catching little momentary exchanges between them and moments of emotional connection with the choreography. The life in the backstage photos makes them a terrific fit for marketing materials. The images are much closer and more intimate, you can see the dancers’ personalities and the hard work that goes into their performance.
You can see more of my photos from front of house vs. backstage on my blog at: http://blog.christopherduggan.com/2011/09/jacob%E2%80%99s-pillow-dance-festival-lar-lubovitch-dance-company/
Christopher Duggan, Photo by Julia Newman
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 dance photographer, he has worked with renowned choreographers and performers of international acclaim as well as upstarts in the city’s diverse performance scene. Duggan often teams up with his talented wife and Pillow videographer Nel Shelby. A husband and wife dance documentation team, they are equipped to document performances, create and edit marketing videos and choreography reels, and much more. Visit Christopher online at www.christopherduggan.com.
3The Business Of Dance: Balance & Opposition In All Things
by Lizzie Leopold
Photo by Matthew Gregory Hollis, Choreography by Lizzie Leopold - une elephante, Tickets to premiere of this work at Brown Paper Tickets ( http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/181387)
Balance seems like a potent metaphor for running a dance company. High on releve, eyes fixed on one still point, center held tight, arms strong, shoulders relaxed and just a little bit of luck…
Whether you are a one-man-show, wearing all the hats yourself, or an organization with a hundred employees, the balance of the artistic and administrative branches is a significant challenge. The priority to make new, exciting dances and the priority to run a solvent, growing business continually compete for top billing.
One of my favorite explanations of this divide comes from twentieth century German-born philosopher Theodor Adorno. He calls it culture vs. administration. Culture, the artistic branch, is the reflection of pure humanity without any regard for its functional relationships within society. It is defined by a spontaneity and is not concerned with expansion or preservation. One the other end, Adorno’s administration is the task done “looking down from on high,” that assembles, distributes, evaluates and organizes. Administration has the unavoidable tendency towards expansion, both quantitatively and qualitatively. These categories slip seamlessly and eerily onto the mold of the not-for-profit dance company.
The two branches are both completely opposed and yet completely dependent on one another. The challenge from the outset is a precarious balancing of artistic vision and commerce, a dance between art and money carefully choreographed by the artist and facilitated by the board of directors and administrative team.
0Feet–Glorious Feet
by Stacey Pepper Schwartz
Summer is a time when you see people walk around in bare feet. Usually I only see this in a creative movement or modern dance classes. People can be very shy about their feet. We tend to see feet as a mode of transportation instead of a body part. We hide our feet in shoes, boots or sneakers. But in summertime out come the feet. Sandals, flip flops, and yes, sometimes bare naked. Around Memorial day I heard a lot of my friends proclaiming they needed pedicures because summer was coming. I found this comment so strange because I don’t feel feet need to be dressed up to be shown in public.
Most kids love to pull off their shoes and socks the moment they get a chance. Whenever I ask my daughter to take off her shoes, her shoes come off and then her socks fly off in two different directions. I can’t keep track of her socks because I can’t keep them on her feet. At some point, maybe in the teenage years when feet start to sweat or smell, people become shy or even disgusted by feet. Now is the time to explore our glorious feet because they are not hidden away in some formidable boots.
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