Summer... no rest for the weary?!

Summer... No rest for the weary?!  Well, anyone who knows me knows that I like to be busy and summer is not only an important time for me creatively but it is also an important time to elevate visibility and generate income for The Dance COLEctive.

I have a jam packed summer which is in full swing and for which I am truly grateful!  Here is a taste of what I will be up to. 

June 8-15                   Alabama Ballet Summer Intensive

June 9                         Contemporary Dance Summer Series Master Class

June 13                       My Sufi Tale performance in the Summer Choreography Salon Birmingham
June 14                       Master Class at Downtown Dance Conservatory in Gadsden, AL

June 17-22                 Attendance at the DanceUSA Conference in MN

June 27                       Master Class at Northwest Ballet Academy

June 27 & 28              My Sufi Tale performance at the Going Dutch Festival

June 29                       Thodos Dance Chicago New Dances Mentoring Project

July 14-25                   Indiana Ballet Theatre Summer Intensive

July 21                         Chicago Dance Day Master Class Dancewerks Intensive

July 27-Aug 3             Joe Goode Workshop in San Francisco

August 18-22             TDC Summer Technique Week

August 23                   TDC Audition

I will share more later!  In the meantime, happy dancing everyone!  Hope to see you this summer! 

Submitted by Margi Cole, TDC Artistic Director on June 15, 2014. 

Layering of text over movement

For me one of the most intriguing developments in modern dance is the layering of text over movement. I have been excited about speaking in dance since the first time I saw/heard it. I was in high school when I first saw it, but in college when I finally exercised it. I was extremely impressed when I saw Joe Goode Performance Group perform Staying Together and Deeply There (stories of a neighborhood) at The Dance Center of Columbia College in 2007. The next semester I was thrilled to have Liz Burritt as a Dancemaking teacher. From her I picked up techniques and determination in the world of text and dance. It is quite possibly the scariest thing to do on stage for a dancer; dance while speaking. And in my fourth season with The Dance COLEctive, we still continue to create with text.

In our upcoming show we are restaging 13, a comedic dance that explores the oddities of being 13 years old, we are adding the element of text to our movement. This has been both
stimulating and amusing. At one point in rehearsal I felt completely tongue tied, both vocally and throughout my body. We were working on a section improvising our text with our movement phrases. It was a huge challenge for me to think of words, let alone the right words, while dancing. Connecting movement is so natural for dancers. It happens in our bodies and really takes little thought processing. So when we are faced with challenges like improvising text while moving, interesting things happen. I found myself blanking on my movement, stammering my words, and sometimes standing blankly among the rest of the dancers. We have had several laughs, head scratches, and plenty of mess-ups. However, we are all deeply invested and Margi has had patience during this process. It is always a challenge to speak authentically while dancing, but it's such an awesome challenge. The work hits the stage in January and we are all enthusiastic about it.

Submitted by TDC Dancer Shannon McGuire-Edwards on Thursday, December 13, 2012.