Cal State Fresno residency Sept 24-27, 2010

Day 1
I've been looking forward to this residency even though it comes in the middle of the re-creation of a new dance on Moving Arts. Professor Kenneth Balint danced in A Ludwig Dance Co (although a few years after I did!) so it's all in the dance-family!

This is a short and quick process (4 days) so today we went through what would normally be ten weeks of material about Expressive Movement Processing in three hours AND covered the basics of partnering! And that was just the audition! Whoosh!

The students are great. Young & strong bodies, eager & open minds, they'll make the most of my time here.

We have chosen 12 dancers to work with and will create a dance for the American College Dance Festival. This will be fun.. AND we have our work cut out for us!

A new start

The keys to the warehouse (former dance center) were returned two weeks ago...
We have almost cleared out the third storage area to pare down to two (so much to get rid of!)...

This has been an amazing process.
Twenty plus years of creating and one month to dismantle.

It's great to find out how many people have turned out to support us, even with just notes or a call... all the way to those who spent their extra minutes and hours helping us!

Change is hard, but this can be a metamorphosis. Now we'll find out what greatness begins and where it will take our MAD community!

We'll perform "Whispers" in San Jose next month... looking forward to it!

Count Down to be out!

Counting days
Counting costumes
Counting sprung wood floor pieces and rolls of Marley
Counting friends
Counting our luck
Counting those who are there for us when we need them most!

We have until Dec 31, but hope to be done earlier. We could not do this without the support of the many, many volunteers and supporters! THANK YOU.

We have organized and tomorrow the dismantling begins.

Counting breaths
heartbeats
steps...

and freely letting everyone shed the many tears that are necessary to grieve this process.


It's as if I have been raising a child... really for 30 years... with the help of Scott for the last decade... and the child has been severely ill for the last three years... we have done everything we can to keep it alive, at great personal cost... and now it's time to let go. But the soul of the child will live on in the creative work of the professional company.

Changing Tides

Dec. 1 and our world is about to change. There's a whirlwind waiting for us.
We have a world premiere this Sat, Dec 5
Moving Arts Dance Center and School will close as of January 1.

We've put our hearts and souls into this dance center. We have loved every step, even the most difficult, because each step brought us closer to perfection in the creation of this school and theater. Now, this week marks our last performance in this wonderful location.

So now we'll find another way to make the world a better place. But we leave knowing that we have made a difference in many lives. As dance changed my life, gave me a place to call home, physical confidence and grace, and a voice with which I could speak non-verbally, so I believe we have helped many who have crossed our paths.

I will miss the school and theater so very much. I will miss seeing everyone weekly and knowing that we are all on the path together to be more gracious, sophisticated people... to creating art on the forefront of creativity in dance... to developing this creative village that we have enjoyed for too brief a time.

So, here we go... into the whirlwind of the known and unknown.
• A very difficult move awaits us. Literally. Everything goes into storage in December.
• And then, a very difficult move awaits us in January. Figuratively. Everything must be re-created into it's new form,
whatever that will be!

Here's to the future, and the steps each day to help us achieve even higher goals than we can imagine today! Keep your chins up and your spirits high. Great things await us all.

The Beginning or the End? Day of the Dead approaches

Our "Welcome Back" concert Sept 12th was produced at the end of the first week of classes for the Fall 2009 session at the dance center. It was an amazing concert and exemplified the vision for the dance center.... to provide a venue for experimental dance theater to be produced and have audience feedback. It was an amazing concert and made me very proud of the work Scott and I have done along-side a multitude of volunteers, to make this possible.

The first week of classes showed us that we do not have the income from student fees to survive this session. If all our students were paying we would be fine. However, our studio has been hit very hard by the recession. Since about March we have been approached almost daily by a parent who have lost their job, been given furlows or reduced hours. Now, a class of nine students may have as few as one that is not on scholarship.

Our session is gearing up for performances of Night Visions on Oct 24 & 25 (Sat times: 3:00, 5:00 & 7:00
Sunday Times: 5:00 & 7:00). Then we have one more week of classes to end the session on Oct 31. Thus, Nov 1, the Day of the Dead, become our deadline for raising funds to cover the almost $10,000 a month it will take to keep us open.

I will keep this blog up to date on details. As I said at the concert when I announced our dire situation, we have done tremendous work and we are in this situation because we are a humanitarian driven, creative based, non-profit arts organization rather than a BUSINESS. Our decision in running the business have been made on strong spiritual and moral grounds. We have aimed to trian gracious, creative minds along side athletic dance artists. We are the only training of this sort in Contra Costa County. To find this sort of training you have to go to Berkeley or San Francisco. And to find this sort of training for children limits the pool to less than a handful of schools in the Bay Area.

With only Scott and I to run it, our energy has gone where the needs were immediate in order to assure the spirit and soul of the business was pure. We have tried very hard, at much personal cost, to keep the business alive long enough for the economy to recover. So we offer no apologies that we are not "good businessmen". But now, without the help of the community stepping forward to fund it, we will have to close.

We have the best team of faculty to date, each fully committed to creative-based training at the highest tenets of professional dance... for every age and level without prjudice for beginning dancers or bais toward advanced dancers. It's a rare gem. I have felt like we are "Picasso's of the dance world in Contra Costa County" in that we are ahead of our time. This training is what is offered in universty settings and where national standards in dance are taught... but California schools lag behind the national curve in the teaching of dance offering it as exercise rather than art. And, California studios offer dance as entertainment, competition or ELITE art, only for those with chosen body types and natural skill. We are completely different. I hope it is a service the community decides is improtant enough to fund. In a short time we will know.

I am at peace with whatever the community decides, and I think I can speak the same for Scott.

Scottsdale EMP Residency -last day

The last day of the residency was magical. The dance and costumes came together with a calm grace, (not that I got much sleep that week though!), so the last day was not a panic at all. We polished the piece, and did a photo shoot in the finished costumes. I had SUCH an amazing time with these dancers. They are FULL of LIFE with the rapt attention that is necessary to absorb so much information in a 5-day residency! I think that this dance is one of my all-time favorites. The students are authentic in their performance, take physical risks, and are ever grateful!!!

I can't wait to see performances of the dance and am really looking forward to the Arizona Dance Festival Oct 8-10 at the Tempe Center for the Arts where I heard they may be performing! My company will be there also! What fun! If we can raise the funds, we'll take OUR version of Whispers to perform on the second night!

Scottsdale EMP Residency Day 4

Day 4 was a delight.
The class knows water technique enough now that I can simply lead them through the warm up and have been able to begin introducing some of the influences of Graham technique and the value of core strength in movement. The dancers listen well and are not resistant to changing movement habits that are less efficient. It is wonderful to see 20 bodies moving through space with abandon. They have been well prepared for this work. Their director, Angela Rosenkranz, is the real thing. She understands and imparts the value of pure technique, hard work and risk!

In EMP I lead the dancers through a dance therapy session that lead them to their shadow self. The dancers went in with open minds and hearts and engaged their subconscious without resistance. The depth of their movement understanding through these experiences has been phenomenal. They are developing the ability to understand movement as language, even in the abstract, and the next next step: applying that to performance. It is exciting for me to open this door for dancers!

AND, in applying the movement from the EMP sessions to choreography, we have developed a dance that has many levels of sophistication. The dancers are abandoned in their ability to take physical and emotional risk, so the piece takes the viewer on a journey that brings the audience to the edges of their seat at times. The gestures the dancers have chosen to incorporate into the dance are poignant in their expressive depth. And most importantly, the dancers have learned how to perform them authentically, so there is no sense of "drama" even though it is dramatic.

The dancers, though sore and tired, worked really hard and we finished the dance. Almost 11 minutes long. It is the third version of "Whispers". I really love finding the direction of the path that our combined subconscious takes the dance. Each version is entirely different. It is a fascinating experience! I hope SCC will bring the dance to CA so our sudiences can experience this version as well. It's so interesting to compare them!

Off to the LAST DAY!