I just returned from another weekend in Chicago. I go there once a month as a part of Columbia's Graduate Laban Certification in Movement Analysis Program.
I always try to catch an early flight on Fridays so I have some time before the 6pm class to visit another one of Chicago's many awesome museums, this time it was the Shedd Aquarium. The thing I love about the newer portions of the Shedd is that they have built these amazing sculptures, structures and other interactive learning tools around the tanks to teach you and the kids about 1. what you are seeing 2. how they eat, live, reproduce 3. how they effect their environment and how humans have an effect on them. Oh, and I love the Baluga Whales.
Learn more about Baluga Whales at the Shedd here:
http://www.sheddaquarium.org/belugawhales.html
Oh Chicago, you are quickly becoming a favorite of mine.
Well, class began with a bang. We had Karen Scherwood, BA, CMA , Director of Kinese in Bellevue, WA to kick off our Body Therapy weekend. My personal revelations for the weekend were 1. I can actually see what is going right or wrong in a moving body now and identify it in Laban Terms (this is harder than it sounds - you dance teachers know what I mean) and 2. I am obsessed with how this work can be taken right down to the nitty-gritty of body mechanics and am determined to put it into use both with turn-out and with alignment right down to the toes. I'll let you know how that's working out for me.
The other portion of Saturday and Sunday's classes were to prepare us to work with a partner Repatterning Projects: addressing their physical issues and prescribing movement exercises for them. I am working on varied use of Time (If I get excited, I move faster and faster and faster...) as well as using Space and Effort cues to train my pronated feet and inwardly rotated tibia/fibula into anatomical alignment. I am working on this outside of the question of hip turn out. This obviously holds many possibilities for integration into my technique classes.
To close out the weekend, I attended Hedwig Dances' Fall Concert on Sunday night.
I had heard of this company when I lived and danced in Wisconsin, but it an account of just one of their shows, and as we all know, one show can look like night and day to another. Well, let me tell you, I was enthralled.
Stampede, by Marianela Boan was a physical puzzle. Dancers were clad in generic security/police/military guard uniforms and the stage was set with bright yellow stantions holding retractable caution tape. The piece was all about boundaries and how they contain, exclude, and tempt us to test and break them. The choreographer set up distinct physical puzzles for the dancers to explore in as many ways as they could throwing themselves over and under and around boundaries, pausing and throwing themselves again, but there was no wild flailing. It was a paragon of control and direction befitting its visage and context. This was the question of boundaries we've trapped ourselves with.
Moi Aussi by company member Michel Rodriguez was a debut. The first choreographic effort of a very talented dancer in the form of a tainted and tortured love duet. The form was very simple, A. Together and Contacting B. Solo by Michel C. Together in Unison Movement B1. Solo A1. Together and Contacting with Resolution. Less a revelation of deeper meaning and more an exploration of a feeling the work was satisfyingly simple and at points impressive, but Michel may have relied too much on his known technical strengths as a dancer to create his moments of self-torment and less on the truths of the question he was exploring to create his movement. Just a whisper of this came out in performance and I still felt impressed by his initial choreographic work. It shows only promise.
Rein, Bellow by Bill Young/Colleen Thomas was by far the show stopper. This is a work in the company's repertoire and their disappearance within the work reveals how well this work suits them. A complex physical and psychological piece about men, women, and control it tests the limits of their strength, timing, and ability to perform. It begins with a laugh and the torment of men-objects. How they are so easily put of and manipulated, reduced to "furniture movers" (this is a funny/ironic term applied to the usefulness of male ballet dancers within a pas de deux) and this is where the ingenious flip takes place, the men enter with furniture... tables to be exact and now "the tables are turned", after manipulating with a laugh, a yell, a look, the women are controlled by physical force. Placed upon a pedestal (one duet on one table reverses the gender role - it must be noted), the controller spins the form on the table about, setting them up into various pretty or merely prone positions. The grand finale is the famous table dance where the tables are cleared save for one with a lone woman on top and one underneath. The other dancers lift the table up and proceed to run around the room with it creating a rollercoaster ride for the woman on top and a stampede to avoid for the woman underneath. You can let your imagination run wild with what this means; It's too rich for words. The button on the event is merely a quiet moment made of shadows and light. A girl in the corner opening a box and seeing what spills out... If you've studied your classic literature, there are many images this conjures, I'll let you pick one.
The talk back post performance was lovely. Audiences are too timid to ask real questions of the dancers. The praise was deserved, but also a waste of time when you consider what you can actually ask about process and inspiration. I opened my fat trap a bunch of times and I wasn't sorry. I came away with lots to think about.
Home again I flew, back to Fort Lauderdale and a morning class to teach. My beginning adult students benefitted from my enthusiasm and the Karen Scherwood inspiration I brought with me. It's good to be home and with Saul again (I wish I could bring him with me!), but I can't wait to go back to Chicago.
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