Diagonals, Lines, Shifting Space, and EnCORE

Today was another whirlwind day of creation with Amanda K. Miller at the Goat Farm. It's amazing how much material has been generated within just a few days. The material isn't the most important thing for the dancers and Amanda, however. It is more important to exist within Amanda's world, the way she sees images. It is those images that we have to see in order to perform the work. The work is about lines, diagonals, shifting space, and seeing the images we create when we shift the space. This may sound difficult to understand, but once you arrive in Amanda's world, you begin to see things in a different way. Everything around you becomes a part of the dance. The performances of Amanda's work will be at the Goat Farm May 9, 10, and 11.

And now to step away from the Goat Farm for a moment. I would like to shift back to our studio in Decatur. Tomorrow night will be the kick off for EnCORE, a social gathering for the arts. Imagine an open-mic night in which any artist can participate. You don't have to be a singer or a musician. You can sing, dance, juggle, read poetry, anything you've been wanting to perform in front of someone, you can do it here. Tomorrow night we will have performances by our very own company member, Joshua Rackliffe, Cicada Rhythm, d. w. Tanner, and the Imperial OPA Circus Bodystackers. Sign up begins at 8:45. All performances must be eight minutes or less. Show off your talent. We'll see you there.

First Day at the Goat Farm!

Yesterday was our first day in residency at the Goat Farm. We returned to our work with Amanda K. Miller on a new commission to be premiered as part of the Tanz Farm series presented by gloATL. Company classes will be held the rest of the week at nine in the morning at the Goat Farm. Take classes with Amanda and check out the show at the Goat Farm May 9, 10, and 11. Here are some photos from rehearsal.

Atlanta to Houston

We made it to Houston and got to work our pieces in the actual space at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. We are excited for Thursday's performance and can't wait for it all to come together --- lights, sound, costumes, dance, paintings, audience.
Our Picasso-inspired performance Monochrome in Black, White & Gray starts at 6:30 pm at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. If you're in town, you don't want to miss it! Admission is free and open to the public on a first-come, first-serve basis. See you there!

Getting ready for Picasso

Getting ready for Picasso....

We started the week with an awesome and very informative MELT class by Karen Wells .... melting on balls and foam rollers. Great start for a packed week.
This week was just loaded with work. Creating our work for the Picasso Black & White exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, TX, Teacher Training all day on Wednesday with the amazing Ann Law, and remounting a piece for Florida Dance Festival in June....
Not sure how we did it, but we got it all done!
We worked great together as a team, supporting each other with our creative minds in the process. Great time management and working super focused allowed us to finish the week with satisfaction.
Awesome Team!

PICASSO / AOPSICS?

Hello Internet!
Here we are once again at the studio in Downtown Decatur! This has been an incredibly productive week at CORE Dance. In preparation for our upcoming visit to the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, we have been co-creating the work under the direction of Artistic Director Sue Schroeder. Our entry point to the work was developed after visiting Pablo Picasso's "Black and White" exhibit at MFAH. By using Picasso's intentions for the works, Sue guided our point of entry and allowed us to develop vignettes from pieces that resonated with us.
This is a show not to be missed! For those of you reading from Texas, we all anticipate seeing you at the show. The exhibit is absolutely stellar and we are so honored to be presenting work alongside one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.
The dancers are hard at work refining and digging, so if we don't hear the doorbell ring then just knock louder! Have a fantastic weekend and perhaps we will see you all at company class on MONDAY at 9AM! Love and light and deep plies!
CORE Dance

Painting Intentions With Dance

Today we pulled together as dancers and continued creating movement for our Picasso project. It was a full day of painting Picasso's intention with bodies in space in which we worked as a whole group, in two trios, a solo, a duet, and back as a group! With so much creative juices flowing, it was difficult having to close up the day come 4:30 pm.

I wonder how today's creations will change and develop in the coming weeks. Can't wait to do more on Thursday!

A few of Picasso's works that we are using in our project...

You can see more of Picasso's work from the Gugganheim's exhibition Picasso Black and White here:

http://web.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/picasso/

Fitness and Picasso

After our trip to Houston, we had a bit of a break on Monday and Tuesday. We started back with TTI on Wednesday. Our guest teachers were Patton White and Kevin and Megan from FitWit. We learned a lot about the importance of teaching fitness to those who need it most, those who don't have a fitness program available to them. After our class Juana Farfan, our outreach coordinator, thought it would be a good idea for us to work out with the FitWit team the next morning. These are some of the photos from our class on Wednesday and the workout Thursday Morning. After a strenuous workout on Thursday, we reconnected with the Picasso black and white paintings, sculptures, and prints we saw in Houston. We began to explore Picasso's intentions, what he was trying to get across in his art. This led to further research about Picasso's life and art which carried over into Friday. We began to take those intentions of Picasso and translate them into movement. I am so excited to be working in this way and I can't wait to see what we come up with for our performance in April.

We have arrived at the Menil Collection in Houston ! We finally got here to Houston this morning and went straight to the amazing Menil Collection to walk and walk and discover and walk and discover.... and discover! The place is huge and just feels endless in a way. It is so curious how the skylight changes as the sun moves and the colors of the fluorescent lights change when people move in the space. We worked on establishing our pathways and finding clarity in it, and within that there were lots and lots of new discoveries... We finished the day with a few costume alterations. Super excited about tomorrow's experience at the Menil Collection at 5:30pm and 6:30pm :-))

Thriving Thursday

Walking, lifting, looking, releasing, noticing, falling, exchanging, completing, driving, and thriving. Today was full of action and adventure for our creative process in our Menil piece. Can't wait to try it all in the real space next week!

Monday Funday

Happy Monday! We've had quite an exciting day in and around the studio today! We started off Monday funday with an invigorating class with the amazing Sarah Hillmer, where we took ballet to another level. After catching our breath from a couple runs of grande allegro, we revisited some of our repertory from our guest choreographers Becky Valls and Amanda Miller. It is always refreshing when we get to revisit the work even when the choreographers can't be with us. After lunch, we explored our minimalist work for the Dan Flavin installation and took it outside to the square to experience the essences of our walks using the actual distance (which happens to be double the size of our studio!) Here are a couple pictures from our adventures!

A Field Trip to the Woods

Today we were surprised with a field trip. We packed up our things and, without knowing where we were heading, took off on a journey. We ended up at a beautiful park not too far from the studio. There we played and created all while enjoying a gorgeous day. We allowed that open space, the trees, the earth, the sky to inform us in our creative choices. We made dances inspired by our surroundings. We could have been out there all day, creating, dancing, and allowing the space to move us. There was so much there to inspire. Our trip helped us to understand and deepen our work within the Minimalist aesthetic. Within a space like that, the smallest movement, the simplest gesture takes on so much meaning. Everything is intensified by the beauty and size of the space itself. It was a great experience that I'm happy to have shared with the company. Our task is to now take that feeling, that importance, that beauty into the performance itself. Here are some photos taken throughout the day as we journeyed through the forest. We can't wait to share our experiences with you in the space that Dan Flavin designed at the Menil Collection.

Lunchtime in the Studio, Walking, and Dan Flavin

Today was Lunchtime in the Studio, which is always such a great experience. Lunchtime in the Studio is a time for sharing part of our creative process with the public and getting the audience's feedback. Today's Lunchtime in the Studio focused on the work we are creating for the Dan Flavin installation as a part of the Menil Collection in Houston. For those of you who don't know, Dan Flavin was involved in the Minimalist movement, so our process is focusing on how he created work with a Minimalist aesthetic. How does one go about exploring Minimalism? We started off with the basics, walking. Over the past week we have been examining walking, how we walk, why we walk, the mechanics of walking, etc. We've learned a lot and noticed a lot just by walking. It's almost meditative. It's not only meditative for us to walk in this way, it can be meditative for the audience as well. I was surprised by just how much the audience noticed as we walked across the space, what people gathered from such a simple, minimal movement. We are asking the audience to notice just as much as we have noticed. It's easy when there are no extraneous movements to distract you. As we continue to explore this work, I can't wait to see what other beauty will be made available to us in the minimal. We can't wait to share this work with you in Houston.

Food for Thought

In our work for our site specific piece to be performed in Houston, TX for the Dan Flavin Installment, we are given moments for stream-of-conscious writing to inspire and inform our decisions to create walking patterns.

Minimalist in movement maybe, but full of patterns that may cross, meet, and pass one another with strong purpose.

I leave a thought from each of our stream of consciousnesses to start your week:

"Why not let fate be a loyal dog that loves?" ~Josh

"The world is round and that round can roll if there is an impulse to make it roll, perhaps I am that impulse." ~Rose

"Ich rolle mich vor lachen." ~Stefanie

"Green grass is all that covers the Earth." ~Deedee

"It will roll like a cat warming itself by the fire, you are the fire." ~Derrick

Wednesday. Wahoo!

It's Wednesday, the middle of the week and we are in the midst of lots of projects in the making!

We started this week in the studio with ideas of minimalism as we explored what the minimalist movement meant in the various forms of art. All this research is informing our creation for Sue's site specific work at the Menil Collection museum- specifically for Dan Flavin's installation at Richmond Hall in Houston, TX. Check out these two links below!

About Dan Flavin's installation: http://www.menil.org/visit/flavin.php

About our site specific work: http://www.coredance.org/houston/mar-21-performance-at-the-menil-collection/

We have also been working on a performance series facilitated by us dancers and are excited to say that our kick-off for this series starts Friday, April 26th! Check out the details of our project entitled EnCORE here:

http://www.coredance.org/core/april-26-encore-open-floor-kick-off/

And to bring us to today in the studio, Amanda Miller returned to work with us on a piece she is creating for Tanz Farm in May. We moved and explored and played in nine points in space while Amanda helped us to understand that we have always been in these nine points and will continue to be. In fact, I am in them right now as I type. I'm not sure how you, the reader, is understanding this concept, but I hope it gets you pondering.

Whew! We stay busy and loving it, so a big shout to wacky Wednesday. Wahoo!

Friday's Heart of the Matter

Hello internet!

Greetings once again from CORE Performance Company. Today, we had a delightful improvisation class with Company Manager Patton White, in which we began to utilize tools and tricks for improv-based composition. What began as a deeply internal warmup soon evolved into a full-on group spectacle of weight sharing, partnering, and contact improvisation.

After a brief lunch break and regroup, we headed over to Toomer Elementary School in the Kirkwood neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia to perform Heart of the Matter for grades 3-5. In addition to the enthusiastic audience of young learners, we had some very special guests from the Horizons School, Kaiser Permanente and representatives from the Atlanta Regional Commission. We are honored to share this work with our audiences, as it gives a physical and lighthearted look into the dangers of bullying and emotional eating. Remember- when in doubt, sadness, confusion or whatever it may be, exercise is always a viable option for uplifting your day.

Overall, another successful week here at CORE Studios in Downtown Decatur. We hope to see you all next week at CORE's Salon. Have a fantastic weekend!

Love, light, and movement.

CORE Performance Co.

Our Teacher Training (TTI) experience expressed through paper.

Thrilling Thursday

Hello again from everyone at CORE Studios in downtown Decatur! Our Valentines Day began with an awesome ballet class led by the wonderful and talented Nicole Johnson. Post class we switched gears, had a bite of delicious homemade valentines treats made by Derrick, changed costumes and prepared to join the rally downtown. We were thrilled to "Break the chain" at One Billion Rising in Woodruff Park! The rally was organized to put an end to violence against women. Our participation involved helping to lead the massive crowd during the flash mob. CORE Performance Company is delighted to have shared that experience with the energizing crowd of One Billion Rising!

Checking in...

Its been a great day! We had a fabulous class with Patton this morning where we really connected to our cores, and each other in an unusual way. We also had the chance to revisit "Web" and squeeze in a good run through of Heart of the Matter - which we are performing next week at Toomer Elementary. We're all excited to have class with Nicole Johnson tomorrow morning and then to head over to Woodruff Park to show off our flash mob moves for One Billion Rising! Pictures to come!

And off to the next...

We successfully finished "Secret" at Callanwolde last week, leaving with wonderful memories, and so we are off to the next projects. We started our TTI (Teacher Training Institute) this week with an exciting start on "Diversity" with Jody Usher and Theresa Pizzuto from "It's Our Privilege". And today we were picking our brains and came up with a first draft on our business plan for our "Youth Summer Camp" for ages 7-13 years old. We are super excited and can't wait to share more details about it very soon!

It's All Coming Together

We are only two days away from the show. It's a wonderful feeling, watching a piece of artwork come together. This week we get to experience that feeling as we combine Becky Vall's and Sue's works, continue to tweak and work on transitions, and finally move into and within the space. We all know that everything we experience in the studio may change once we step into the Callanwolde mansion. The floors will be different. The amount of space in which we have to dance will be different. And the atmosphere will be completely different than that of the studio. Tomorrow we will find out just how different it will seem to move within the rooms of the mansion. But even then we will not know how it will feel to fully perform the piece because we will still be missing one crucial element, the audience. And that's where you come in. Do you have your tickets? You can buy them on the CORE website. Come out this weekend and share in our Secret. Until then, enjoy these rehearsal photos.

Creative minds...

Think big!

A Piece of the Puzzle

Like a puzzle, our performance is piecing together satisfyingly being intricately organized by our director Sue. The connections to one another are becoming more and more clear each time we fit another piece of the puzzle into our whole picture.

We are dancers even at rest... =)

Victoria's Secret... meet CORE Performance Company's SECRET.