Dance Classes and Auditions... Again

So, I just moved.  Again.  This time to Washington D.C. and I am starting once again to figure out where the dance is, who is doing it, how they're doing it, and why they might think I could be a good fit for their company.

I, of course, tapped all of my Chicago sources before my move to see if they had any advice.  They mentioned Dance Place, Dance Exchange, Danny Burkholder, and checking out what Baltimore might have in store.  Baltimore?  Isn't that, like, in a whole different state?  This was my first lesson about the DC area.  I'm not in the midwest anymore.  Going from state to state is really nothing when they're only a few miles apart.

So, I headed on over to the Dance Exchange for Friday class with one of the rotating cast of company members.  This Friday, it was Sarah Levitt and her gentle, body-psyche-friendly style of teaching.  We started with a partner exchange of skin/muscle/bone-level touch from stillness into movement, warmed up further with a unison phrase mobilizing the spine and some undercurves, traveled across the floor in a simple structured improvisation (which always makes me work the hardest) and ended with a more complicated unison phrase which you can see below (yes, I am the one in black... I wish they would've shown Sarah just a bit to the left, then you'd see what the phrase should ACTUALLY look like ;-)

This was a lovely way to end a week full of unpacking heavy boxes.  Another bonus was that the class was mixed ages, so I was able to see a variety of takes on the improvisation work.

Next up was an audition for The Collective, a Baltimore based dance company whose members work collaboratively to create dances.  The drive took me about an hour and twenty minutes, but it was my first time driving out of DC, and I am especially cautious when approaching an interview or audition.  Well, I got there in the knick of time, which was a miracle considering that The Collective is based in The Bryn Mawr School which is tucked into a residential neighborhood whose dance studio is wickedly difficult to locate.

The Collective's audition process was a Bartenieff-based class filled with structured improvisations.  I'm starting to see a trend here in this area.  I'm not complaining one bit, since I'm improv-trained, and I'm interested to see how many other classes are going to feel like this.

Overall, the process was pretty darn painless considering the hatchet cuts and cattle calls I got used to in Chicago.  The audition was populated with The Collective company members which helped give you an idea of what kind of mover they were looking for and it helped make the 10 of us auditioning feel the flow of a company class. Then they wrapped it up with a personal interview with the company and away we went!  I'll get an email next week sometime.

Up Next: Audition at the Dance Exchange on June 18th.  Hopefully I'll be dancing again soon!