holy thursday!!!!

is anyone else noticing how the month of january has just flown by? i can hardly believe it is thursday! tomorrow we have 3 school shows of Loco-Motion in Woodstock, GA. we have to be up and at patton's condo by 7 in the morning and then we leave by 7:05 (did i mention i'm not a morning person?)! so today we had class with "the Schro" (or Sue), followed by a run of Polly Motley's piece "Charmed Romantics," then we ran the school show with all the recent additions. i'm learning that the longer you keep things in rep, or keep dances in rotation, the more difficult it is, because you have to keep making it new and fresh every time. it definitely keeps you on your toes...hehe, did i just make a dance joke? any-who, maryjane left us halfway through the day...she may be working with gloATL...or maybe she is out finding a way to make world peace happen...she was missed...so we did more "Point" work without her.





corian and i revisited a duet that Sue started working on back in october...you can check out the video of the duet from the last blog in october...the halloween edition of the blog! so while we were busy putting that together...claire and blake began working on a "stop and freeze" assignment. i believe, they had to invent various lifts and then hold them. when it came time to show Sue the progress thus far, she informed us that we would be putting these two duets together and making a quartet; however, we would be combining the two assignments (of the duet phrase-ology AND the stop and freeze). so within the structure of this duet, we have to find moments to make contact...so we will see how that shapes up.

so that is just a snippet of what blake and claire's stop/freeze work was...with some direction/input from Sue. i always find it fascinating to watch contact work, because it is truly a skill to do partnering and make it look effortless and smooth. that is the trick of doing partnering: fooling the audience into thinking it is just a "walk in the park." so here is the beginning stages of getting partnerwork to that point...haha, another dance joke...point, get it???

oh and just for kicks...here is a video of an adagio taught in one of blake's classes...i found it while downloading videos from the camera. hope you enjoy...this is an oldie, but a goodie! peace out...alex

for the children part 2

so change of plans....due to maryjane not being here we have changed the agenda for the day. we are postponing "point work" until tomorrow. now we are watching the video of the MFAH (Museum of Fine Arts Houston) Corazon performance...there is a more recent phantom video that has up to date edits, so that we have Corazon material ready for our residency in North Carolina, and for our intense Corazon work period. we have so many school shows to gear up for...the North Carolina residency is mostly for high school kids, so we have to find, revisit, and remount things that we have in rep (such as polly, corazon, and maybe some tus pasos work). unfortunately our brains only hold so much choreography! that is when we turn to modern conveniences to help...

video watching is a good tool when collectively we cannot remember all the changes to a particular dance...i will say, that it makes me sleepy. especially since i'm already sleepy. i think it is the wednesday energy. however, this is the life. sometimes we have to rely on technology to jumpstart your brain. what did dancers, choreographer, etc do when they didn't have video, or dvds? i guess that is where Laban Movement stuff comes in handy...or just having an amazing photographic memory.

hehe...there is talk in the studio that maryjane organized the videos, hopefully she knows where this infamous "recent recording" of the Corazon material is located. now...it is time for a meeting...just like a regular job.

happy wednesday folks!

for the children

hello again my internet friends (hopefully we are also friends in real life)...it is alex here again as the blogger for the week. as we know, last week was our first official week back here at CPC...and this is now our second week back, and i for one am already tired and drained. many of us performed in The Dance Project this past weekend and in the I.C.E. showcase (referenced in last week's blog). the shows went well...but when you perform 6 times in the span of 4 days...it takes a toll on your body and energy level.

that being said, we are gearing up for a performance this coming friday in Woodstock, GA to perform our children's show Loco-motion! the past two work days (monday and today), we have had a guest director, Priscilla Smith, come in to give us some outside feedback to help with the flow of the upcoming performance. each of us really dug deep to find a character that would better suit the mood of the children's show. if you have ever performed for children, you know that it is a tricky situation. kids are brutally honest, and it is our job as performers to keep them engaged, entertained, and learning...and that is no easy feat!

now we are on our lunch break...i'm still a little hungry, i think i'm craving a cookie (like claire)...mmmmmm, a chocolate chip cookie would be ideal...but anyway, we are one company member down...maryjane had another obligation, so we will continue rehearsing The Point this afternoon. i'm excited to see what kind of assignments we will be given today to help "point" us in the right direction (i love my cheesy jokes)...

workshop with allen pittman

well hello there. it is friday and we are getting back into the swing of things after coming back earlier this week from a winter break. today we are running rep and working in the studio with sue on our work in progress, the point. but yesterday we had a guest, allen pittman, come to our studio to give a workshop. he integrated concepts about human and animal evolution and development of motor skills from infancy through adulthood. allen also thought us some egyptian yoga postures, breath work, and mediation techniques. we explored the context and power of social gesture and body stance as performers. it was a wonderful, varied, and comprehensive workshop open to the public as well.

in addition to the work we are doing in the studio with Several Dancers Core...many of us are performing this weekend at 7 Stages in The Dance Project presented by Staibdance and Greg Catalier (George Staib and Greg Catalier are both Emory University professors). Corian, Alex, and Claire are in the performance...and they are also involved in the Independent Choreographer Exchange (I.C.E.) at 7 Stages as well. The Dance Project runs tonight (Friday) and Saturday at 8, and Sunday at 3...and the I.C.E. showcase is Saturday 3 and Sunday evening at 7pm. for more information call 7 Stages at (404)523-7647.

Mary Jane is also working with gloATL on their upcoming project Bloom, a site specific performance at Lenox Mall February 12th at 7, and the 13th and 14th at 4 pm. This is a free event...so please come support dance in the atlanta metro area.

also, other projects the company members have coming up are more choreographic endeavors by Blake Dalton and Corian Ellisor....but more on that later.

back to business and rehearsal....
soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ttyl

Weeee're BAAAAck!

After a month-long hiatus, CPC started back with class and rehearsals for the remainder of the 2009/2010 season.



Company Manager D. Patton White taught class this morning (yes, I did just refer to myself in the third person), and structured the class to encourage a fair amount of improvisation both at the individual and partner levels. We had a visitor, Terry, who was one of our Fieldwork participants last Fall.



The company jumped back into development work on The Point, with Sue Schroeder directing the dancers through many more improvisations.

During Checkouts, when everyone shares what they have experienced during the rehearsal, Alex shared that he really enjoyed a particular improv moment when he was cradling Claire's head in his hands.

during the break

howdy everyone...it's alex, and i hope you are all having a great holiday season. just because our season is over for the time being...the work doesn't stop at all. we are all still some dancing fools! Maryjane just finished a show last week with GLOatl, Claire is working with George Staib, Blake is busy creating work for his own show this coming spring, and Corian and I are busy working with Greg Catallier (for the same show Claire is in)...also, Corian and I are performing in The Big Freeze, a burlesque/variety show at Eyedrum this Friday and Saturday (the 18th and 19th), tickets are 10 bucks.

also...corian is busy exercising his creative energy by beginning work on a new dance to be performed in late january, actually the same weekend as the Staib/Catallier show...haha, that should be fun (since some of the people cast are in all of those shows!). logistics aside, here is a short snippet of a "fun" movement pattern we have been working on. as you can see, dance isn't always about razzle-dazzle...sometimes you gotta think too!

Happy Holidays!

This is Claire the office person stepping back in just to say "Happy Holidays" to anyone who's reading the blog and to let you know that the dancers are off until Jan. 20. They'll be back in the studio and back to blogging about their adventures then!
Have a safe, warm and happy holiday!
--Claire and all of us at SDC

the point?

so what is the point, or "the point" (as a dance)??? i don't know...and maybe that is the point. i probably can't explain it in words...because we are dancers...we dance (duh). it is a performing art...it is meant to be seen. in this video, claire is trying to explain her point of view as a dancer in the trio that corian created.

maybe the point is about differences and similarities, relationships and solo studies, intention and dynamics, needs and wants...it is hard to put into words, but i think individually we all clearly know what it feels like personally. how else can we move an audience, if as performers we are not clear with ourselves as to what our own personal journey is...so that then as a collective we can move foward in this endeavor together. what is even more beautiful is that Sue (our fearless leader) doesn't even know what "the point" is...i'm sure she has ideas, but the fact that we are all in this together is comforting.

maryjane yesterday said something that spoke volumes about this dance (the point)..."we are all going for the same thing, but trying to find it in different ways."

so that is what happened the first half of rehearsal today...the second half was yet another layer added upon this whole process. we had a 25 minute improv where we took each layer from the wall drawing, our solo phrases, the laban studies, and the movements that we learned/taugh one another...and combined them to have a vast bank full of movement possiblities...and then adding onto that the possibility for human interation (or contact). sue also played DJ and gave us a varied musical pallette that affected the emotional atmosphere of the improv....

of course, this is my own recollection and experience of the work...and it was beautiful, heartbreaking, bonding, lush, and simple...all in all, it was a good day...another day we all got to live, work...and most of all dance.

tomorrow we have class, a little bit of work...and then a christmas party, but no more point work...so it begs the questions: What is the point? What do you need to survive? what is your intention? what dynamic choices do you make? and lastly, how does it feel?

once you have possibly answered those questions...i ask you this...where do you go from there?

melt with you

"i'll stop the world and melt with you"...i love that song! it is not completely off subject either...today we had a master workshop by karen wells, she taught us M.E.L.T. Method that is a "revolutionary approach to pain-free longevity that helps you stay healthy, youthful, and active for a lifetime." having experienced one class...i can agree and say that it was amazing. everyone in the workshop today vocalized how much this one class made a difference. it was instantaneous!

we also touched on work from Eric Franklin, did some exercises with Thera-Bands, and all kinds of other good cross-training stuff. the M.E.L.T. work was the most successful (at least in my opinion). there was one exercise in particular that had a vast impact on everyone...we laid on the floor and put the M.E.L.T. roller under our sacrum, then proceeded to rock our pelvis up and down that simultaneously worked out our lower lumber and engage our abdominals/work our core. after it was over, it felt as if i did melt (for lack of a better word) into the floor after just a few exercises. it was relaxing and invigorating at the same time. i feel like i had a great night's sleep without ever actually going into a REM cycle! i just thought i would share with you that experience...i highly recommend looking into M.E.L.T. and would advise any movers out there to invest in the M.E.L.T. specific rollers...you life will change!

now...onto more point rehearsal...hope you are all having a wonderful day!

p.s. hopefully karen becomes my friend on facebook and i can share various pictures and videos she took from out class today :)

where does it live?

happy wednesday! we are back in the studio from our regularly scheduled day off...tuesday. i am able to say that i did nothing yesterday...well, i did laundry (yay for clean clothes)...but it was great to sit on the couch for about 5 hours and watch tv shows and goof off on the internet! so....after a restful day, we have a very full day today.


blake taught a very relaxed and beautiful class...we just finished doing some work on the point (which i will discuss later)...now is lunch, but after that we are getting all beautified and having a photoshoot! so we all have to get our hair right and tight...beating our mugs...and practicing our America's Next Top Model couture poses in the mirror...haha! so if you are anywhere near decatur this afternoon we are having an outdoor photoshoot...come look at us make sexy faces for our close-ups...


having said all that...let's get to the real meat and potatos of it all...working on The Point. it was interesting today to see the other groups show their work. if you remember, i showed my duet with maryjane...which i had trouble finding words for...today, it was great to see different dancers struggle with trying to find the details in the movement. inherently, when you teach someone movement material...it is difficult to get all the nuances of the movement, so when you are dancing it is sometimes easy to see which are the more "difficult" parts of the movement.

maryjane is trying to get corian to feel where the movement lives in his body...which is not an easy task. it is usually easiest for the person who made the movement to perform the movement, whereas due to inherent structural differences in everyone's bodies...it is challenging to translate someone's movement onto their own body.

such is the struggle in dance...however, one of the joys of working on this piece (thus far) is that there is not a huge emphasis on keeping the movement exactly the same. what we were focusing on was intentionality, if that is a word, and dynamics. we each had to change the dynamics in our movement, and to help in that we had to clarify the intentions of our movement.

my favorite part of these videos is corian's face...that sounds harsh, and maybe a little weird, but you can actually see the frustration...but he is frustrated because he is working so hard to find what maryjane is trying to explain to him. all in all...it's just another day at work!

finding the words

howdy folks...it's alex again, i'm back...by popular demand (well, not quite, but i would like to believe that is true :) any-who, i hope everyone had a great holiday and ate lots of turkey or whatever your favorite thanksgiving dish was. we are entering our last week of work for the season and then we have an extended break and resume working in mid-january. however, the work doesn't stop...we are currently diving back into "The Point" work.

i feel the objective is to really solidify and clarify any previous work we have done so that when we do return we can more easily access that information. that being said, now when we show work "in progress," we have to be really clear with ourselves (and to one another) with what our movement phrases really mean. that sounds weird, but it's true. we talked the other day about how being a dancer doesn't only mean we dance around trying to be pretty all day...we have to be clear with what we are trying to say/do with our bodies. so...we have to be able to verbalize and talk about our bodies, our intentions, our ideas....our art!

this comes in handy when you are teaching your movements to other people in the company. i take a very metaphorical approach to what i am trying to do...more concerned with how it feels, what the internal dialogue is like, or even providing an abstract visual to what i want to accomplish. dealing with the human body is really fascinating because everyone is so unique...what works for me, may not necessarily work for maryjane, or corian; so how can i best communicate my intentions to someone to get them to stay honest to my movement. hence...all the conversation...

to give some background...we were given the task of making a list of a maximum of 20 things we need to survive (sounds easy)...we made the list, each with varying numbers of things we each needed to survive. from that list, we had to narrow it down to 10...then to 3...then to one essential thing needed to survive...mine, ultimately was...love. so in exploring that i created a phrase that i taught to maryjane. from there we have been investigating and working on clarifying what i want to get at with the movement.

so now, you have an inside look on how i ramble and wax philosophically to try to communicate the inspiration for my phrase. it may only really make sense to me...but those are the only words i could find at the time. and from my body language, it is difficult for me to find anything concrete to help people understand. as a person, i am inspired images, abstraction, and feelings...so as a dancer it isn't that different. i will admit, it is hard for me to find the proper words to express how my approach to creating dance/movement.

however, i have to find the happy medium and at least attempt to find some way to help someone else understand what i want...so that they can begin the journey to find how that will work on their body. that is why dance is fascinating...we have to be able to get other dancers to find their entry point into the movement, and how it feels emotionally, physically, and mentally. then, after that is the added difficulty of getting the audience to understand...it is a task, and sometimes it is difficult, and the dancer (or audience) may not understand...and that is ok too, but if you can reach just one person...one person, that is all it takes, then it is considered a job well done.

but i will be the first to admit...it is very difficult!

Phrase Construction December 4

Claire captured some interesting moments shown above.

MJ explaining the feeling she got while performing Alex's phrase and Corian attentively watching another phrase.

Today we used personal phrase material, taught it to another dancer and then chose a specific pathway to perform it on.

Our options had to be in a square... so we chose parallel lines, right angles, three sided boxes, diagonals...

It was interesting to teach a fellow dancer our phrase because our phrases were extremely personal to us. It was fun to collaborate with eachother and give feedback to the other groups/pairings performances... it was very "show and tell."

CPC at HSPVA

November trip to Houston

During our trip to Houston we had the opportunity to teach a class at the High School of Performing and Visual Arts.

Patton began the class with focus on the spine and the relationship of the lower and upper body working separately and how they work together.

MJ took the floor next with a few combinations to get the students moving their bodies thru space with different levels of energy and intention.

Claire wrapped up the class with some educational tools using Laban Technique as her source.

Below you can watch Claire lead the class in Laban inspired phrases, including the A Scale.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just wanted to let everyone who's been reading the dancers' blog know that they've been absent from posting because they were performing in Texas on the weekend of the 14th with the Houston Met in Quirky Works, and then they had a two-day week last week in the studio. They are off this whole week for Thanksgiving but will return to the studio for the first two weeks in December (starting Dec. 2), after which they will be off for the holidays until January 18.
-Claire (Communications Manager at SDC)

Lunchtime and Salon Nov 12

Lunchtime in the studio, is always an exciting event because you never know who will walk through the studio door to be a part of our day . Some regulars, some dance afficianados, some local decatur folks, and some people who just happen to be randomly walking by the door.

Bistro in a Box and Decatur Starbucks, provided free refreshments to the first 40 attendees.

We showed a series of improvisational studies centered around the new work being developed by Artistic Director Sue Schroeder in tandem with the Core Dance artists.

I find it interesting to notice the difference in working privately in the studio and doing real improvised work for a live audience.

In the evening we delved even a little deeper into the process during The Salon.

We began with a walking meditation focused on one clear idea. Upon committing to the idea we dropped the walking meditation and began movement improvisation. Through the improvisation we found where the "idea" lived in our body, where it held the space, how it interpreted time and what energy resignated with it. This new experience invited the "audience" as viewers to see the process which created new awakenings for us as creators.

busy day...

what up everyone...it's alex. i know blake is blogging this week...but today we have an exciting and busy day. actually, blake is in the studio right now rehearsing "Tus Pasos Encontrados" because they leave tomorrow for Houston to perform in Quirky Works at the Wortham this Saturday the 14th.

any-who...here is a recording of the final "combination" taught today by Corian. the company members rotate who teaches company class...and today was corian's day.

on the schedule today...we also have a Lunchtime in the Studio at noon, til one, which is a free performance during lunch where we get food and coffee donated for people to enjoy a performance with a free lunch...then we talk and mingle too. then tonight we have a Salon performance from 6-8...which is like lunchtime...but with catered food from a local restaurant, wine and other beverages. the topic of both performances will be the current work...The Point.

so if you can...please come to either one of those if you are free. hope to see you there...

alex :)

Wednesday. More investigations with Lori, leading us through different approaches to the Laban work. It is amazing to me how this clear and simple interpretation of spatial direction and intention can take us deeply into a full and satisfying exploration that can lead us to new relations with our bodies, each other and the space around us.

Lori Teague, certified movement analyst, dancer, choreographer, and faculty member of emory university takes the CPC dancers through Rudolf Laban's Scale A. The laban work is a great tool for dancers to use their finely honed instrument of the body to find new movement vocabulary and new movement patterns, or just to have fun with some old movement patterns, as seen in this 'Disco' version of scale A.

performing

We had an informal performance yesterday for our benefactor and it brought up some things I never think about as a performer. There is the dancer in rehearsal, and there is the dancer in performance. What about those in between performances? What information can you gather from that sort of pressure/performance? There is no real right or wrong answer to the question, but it all informs us as performers.

We add layers upon layers of experience with every performance we have. As we become more seasoned, new things are discovered and explored. This is what keeps things fresh even after repeating a dance over and over again. No one performance will ever be the same as the one before so we are trained to adapt and move on. This is where the real beauty arises. Where the unexpected lives and makes itself known just when you thought this time was just like the time before.

Doing the work

Today in the studio, "Tus Pasos" is getting ready to perform at quirky works in Houston! We have Blake and Claire cleaning some intesnse dance moves! It is amazing how specific we must be as dancers! Because of our physical make up, it feels different from person to person in order to look the same...Basically cleaning is HARD! But we must do it!


"Tus Pasos" (Claire and Blake)





(Kim and Sharon)