Thank goodness I don't have to wear a skirt!

As the artistic director of The Dance COLEctive I think it is so important for me to be active as a performer having to engage with others in their creative process and to work in this way with my peers.  As Margi Cole the dancer, I crave the opportunity to be inside of a work with others, discovering new creative juices, to be questioned, to be challenged and to experience the fear and joy of performing in someone else's work. Work that I am not producing but that I have the simple pleasure of participating in. Normally, I bring someone to us or me, to work with under the umbrella of TDC.  As the company has gotten older these opportunities have been fewer. But you never know what can happen from a random casual conversation about someone's upcoming project, sharing admiration for their work and the simple inquiry of when auditions are being held.  (Yes, that really happened!)

I have been so lucky to have been working with choreographer Peter Carpenter for the last several months.  He has put together a pretty cool quartet comprised if himself (Welcome to the gunshow!), Lisa Gonzales (whose beauty and generosity as a person spills into the studio and her artistry) and Matthew McMunn (poor Matthew...Having once been one of my students he has had to endure all my teasing but, he has more then earned my respect as a dance partner, collaborator and artist) and little ole me.  Pete's process has been rich with fun, discovery, SPARKS of curiosity, sheer physicality, and lots of heavy breathing.  I am happy to report that I have lines to remember, gained some new skills with a fancy tape dispenser, have bodies to move through space, a sassy costume to wear designed by Jeff Hancock and an enormous amount of gratitude for this opportunity.

You can see a teaser here.  Go ahead... Click on it!

Pete is sharing the bill with Same Planet Different World October 10-12 at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago.  Pete is a sophisticated and thoughtful dancemaker and I am so proud to be part of this work!  I hope you will be able to come to the show. 

Submitted by TDC Artistic Director Margi Cole on October 2, 2013.

Dancing with the Chicago skyline as my backdrop

-->

As a first year Chicagoan, I still get excited every day when I ride the train downtown and see the breathtaking beauty of the skyline. When I’m downtown, I feel dwarfed by the towering buildings. The architecture can be overwhelmingly powerful. I  love the feeling of being part of something so much bigger than myself.  

So it is a thrill for me that The Dance COLEctive’s spring concert will use the city’s actual skyline as our backdrop. When we perform at Millennium Park’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion stage in April, the audience will face the opposite way from its usual summer perspective when concertgoers gather on the lawn of the park. Instead, the unconventional orientation will have the audience facing the lawn and the back “wall” of the space will be a large glass panel that looks out onto Millennium Park, with the city skyline as our backdrop. The space itself will be intimate, but with the glass wall, it has the capacity to seem endless. This perspective should add an interesting layer for the audience as well as for the dancers.  

The chance to perform “Moving Stories” in this space is especially powerful for me. Moving to Chicago has been the biggest move of my life and was a huge leap of faith for me. Dancing with the city as my backdrop is the perfect metaphor. The audience will see the dancers in the foreground, framed by the architecture. Our movement and bodies will be enclosed by shapes and lights outside the stage. We will be the focus, dancing within the city’s overwhelming mass and power. This encompasses my moving story. 

The Dance COLEctive’s spring performances at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion are April 12 – 14 are part of the official flight of FlySpace.  FlySpace is a resource-sharing consortium, conceived and launched by Jan Bartoszek (Hedwig Dances), Margi Cole (The Dance COLEctive), Michelle Kranicke (Zephyr Dance) and Joanna Rosenthal (Same Planet Different World).  The venture supports creative independence and institutional growth by combining and coordinating offstage work and cutting-edge technology to grow audiences.  FlySpace’s commitment to new forms of cooperation shares each director’s passion for content-driven contemporary dance, discovering fresh aesthetics in live performance, and engaging its audiences. Working together on new tools for audience development, all four organizations ascend together.  You can find out more about FlySpace by reading this article http://www.dancecolective.com/crain.html.

-->

For tickets visit http://flyspacechicago.brownpapertickets.com/.

Submitted by TDC Apprentice Molly Kirkpatrick on Monday, February 25, 2013. 

           

-->