Friends and lovers of dance,

If you are on my mailing list, you already received a heads up, but if not, I have sad news about our chashama windows performance:

Friends,

Last night we arrived to the chashama Performance Window for rehearsal to find massive sidewalk construction involving large barricades and concrete breaking and jackhammers. As a result, chashama has pushed back our week of performances until construction is completed. We hope you can still join us sometime in August (dates TBA).

Thank you so much for all of your support,

Sarah Dahnke/Round Tuit Dance Project

This extended silence is for a reason: I’ve been hard at work.

I’ve been rehearsing continuously with Rachel and Meredith, developing the piece I posted about a while back. I’m now tentatively calling it grasp. We’ve come to a decent stopping place, but I still have quite a bit of work to do, sketching out the larger structure and figuring out where to put this little 6-7 minute piece we’ve been developing. I’m really, really happy with it. Perhaps happier with it than anything else I’ve ever made. But it definitely isn’t finished. If you want to keep up with the work, make sure you’re keeping a close eye on my Vimeo page. I always post rehearsal videos there without shame, even if I later regret letting you look at these dances in their beginning stages. It’s part of my process.

The biggest performance-related news of the past month is that Chashama will be presenting four performances of from in their window on 42nd Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues). I begin rehearsals with three of my favorite dancers (Rachel and Meredith, plus the lovely Vesna, who will be new to the group), to rework the piece and make it appropriate for a window space. There will be an element of the performance that remains in the space when we are not dancing, asking people to reflect on where they are from. It’s my hope to not only allow people to celebrate their heritage but to also reflect on why they consider they are “from” a certain place anyway.

Lastly, I found out today that my work will also be part of a “Enhancing Dance with Art” at Staten Island Modern on August 30. This will be the formal premiere of my new piece. I’ll post more information as soon as I have it!

To those of you who have donated funds, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. To those of you who are still pondering about it, perhaps this video will convince you otherwise?

I’m back in the studio with the lovely Meredith and Rachel these days, and we’re working on a new section for from. We’re working with the concepts of magnetism and repulsion to find a relationship between the two dancers that displays a particular force and momentum. Our first rehearsal with this idea was quite productive, but the movement vocabulary is still being formed. I actually wish I had videotaped them earlier in rehearsal because after spinning around for a couple of hours, we started to lose the momentum. This video is from the last repetition of the pattern before we called it quits.

I have had a hard time getting organized without a particular deadline (i.e. performance) looming over my head. While in theory I like having the freedom to work and build in the studio, it’s hard to get focused when I know I’m simply working through the creative process. I have found that spending at least an hour in the studio alone before my dancers arrive is a huge help. I stretch, listen to music, take notes about ideas that are floating around in my head and write a journal entry about my thoughts on the piece and the idea I want to convey. It helps me be a better communicator to my dancers and helps me find a greater purpose for the work. These are all good things.

So, I kind of sucked at the challenge already. I’m on spring break, and I’ve had less bloggy time than usual. Anyway, a brief round up in the world of dance:

- I just learned about the Epiphany Epsicopal Church in Chicago and its role as a new dance venue in town. I’m really excited to see something like this happening in Chicago. That city has gone too long without enough alternative spaces, meaning the breeding ground for small companies and experimental dance artists was not very fertile. I look forward to seeing what they do with it and will investigate when I’m in town next week. Perhaps there’s an opportunity to show my own work…

- This video of Henry (below) has been making the rounds via email/Twitter/Facebook for a few weeks now, and I will be the first to say it’s with ample reason. The reason this video appeals so much to me is because this little boy, who is probably 6 years old, has such innovative dance moves. You can tell he didn’t just learn a dance from TV then start copying it in the living room (ahem, I see you, parents taping their children doing the “Single Ladies” dance). He uses an insane amount of muscle control to support the syncopation in his improvisation. He’ll be moving very fast then suddenly stop and just isolate one body part. I just wish he’d stop slapping his ass. (Maybe it’s because his parents are encouraging him to strictly dance to Hot 97 jams?)

- I’m going to see my friends Francis and the Lights tonight, and I was reminded of this video, where Francis shows off his signature dance. It’s good until about 2:03, then shit really goes crazy.

Doug Fox posted a challenge to dance bloggers this week, and since I feel this blog is often neglected by me (because I spread myself a bit too thin on the Internet), I am going to accept it. He writes:

I would like to make a very simple proposal. I would like to encourage people in the dance community to link to or share at least one dance website, dance blog, dance story, video, picture, performance or other dance-related content once a day.

If you have a website or blog, I’m recommending that you link to one dance-related story that you find interesting. Links from your website or blog are very helpful because they have a direct, positive impact in terms of the search-engine rankings of the sites you link to.

The story I’d like to link to is actually one Doug linked to yesterday on the dance-tech.net blog involving children and dancing for the camera. It struck me because this was an idea that I had literally just been thinking about hours before while in the shower (where I do my best thinking). I’m headed to grad school in a matter of weeks to study ITP at the Tisch School of the Arts because I have an interest in gathering the necessary technical skills to integrate multimedia elements into dance while working in a collaborative environment. As a result, I’ve been feasting on as much technology/dance-related information as possible. Because I have also been really trying to utilize the same process in the classroom as I do with my art, it only seemed natural to wonder “why have I not attempted using technology as a greater presence in the classroom?” I use my Flip camera in almost every class to document works-in-progress, and I often post these to my Vimeo channel and/or to the Urban Arts blog. But why don’t I try to take this further and develop an innovative curriculum where my students will be able to take advantage of the technology available to them? Why not take them on this journey with me? By the end of the summer, I plan to have a strategy devised.

**Remember,  if you’re reading this post on wordpress.com, I feed this blog to the front page of sarahdahnke.com. Take a visit sometime!

Sunday morning was a rainy crap of a morning, but my lovely dancers Rachel, Tonya, Hatzes and Meredith (who was vomiting all morning and I’m not really sure how she got out there and danced), were bright and cheery and delightful to watch toss colorful pashminas around the stage. Here’s a video from the performance, from the studio of the DUO Multicultural Arts Center:

And don’t forget! On Saturday Jigsaw Soul will be presenting a brand new show titled “About Face” at Monkeytown in Williamsburg. There are still a few reservations available. This may perhaps be the best hour of your life. Be prepared.

Since I began my resdiency at CAVE, I’ve been almost solely dedicated to working on this new piece, which I have tentatively titled from. It combines Indian-inspired and African-inspired music and dance with contemporary/modern movements and explores the idea of cultural conflict within one person. I know that sounds a bit heady, but trust me, it’s done with a touch of lightness. It’s not necessarily a humorous piece, but it is at times upbeat and has a consistent momentum that suggests racing to get to a certain point and becoming relieved once you finally make it. These were not all my intentions, but now that I watch the piece, this is what I see.

This is the first time I’ve created a dance for adults that I didn’t also dance myself, and it’s been a very nice experience to remove myself as a dancer who is worried about the performance and execution of the movement and to solely focus on the creation aspect. I feel more like a sculptor than an athlete in this role, and I rather enjoy it.

An excerpt of this piece will debut this Sunday as part of the dancenOw NYC RAW festival. The show takes place at the Duo Multicultural Arts Center at 11 a.m. View the calendar for more details.

Here’s a tiny excerpt (of the excerpt!) from our first rehearsal:

So much is going on, and I have barely had a chance to let anyone know about it.

My days have seen at least two rehearsals per day, as I was preparing for This Dance is a Cliché: Live last Wednesday, a big show with Jigsaw Soul at Galapagos last Friday and a performance with The Next Stage Project, which will occur in one week. As last week’s shows were winding down, I received news that This Dance is a Cliché would have a chance to be reincarnated as an interactive installation in the Bushwick SITE festival and that I have been asked to present work in the DancenOw NYC festival at the end of March. So, the work (and fun) never stops!

If you’re in the New York area, please come by Grace Exhibition Space on Saturday, March 7 at 3 p.m. to take part in what I hope will be a fun experiment utilizing performance and technology and the concept of a community project. I’ll divulge more details as the week goes on, but I will tell you that Twitter will be involved.

Also, please check out my recap of last week’s show at Open Performances on thisdanceisacliche.com. Video and photos and text! Something for everyone.

I’ve been so so so busy with rehearsals and teaching that I haven’t even had time to call my parents. Seriously. They’re going to disown me. Needless to say, the blogs have been a little neglected. However, something awesome happened last week, and I wanted to tell the Internet about it.

I was chosen to be one of five new artists-in-residence at CAVE in Brooklyn. I’m very excited, as now I’ll have guaranteed space for about 11 hours a week for the next six months in a very cool collective that involves other movement artists, musicians, visual artists, etc. There’s a great energy in the place and a general excitement about creating art. Oh, and there are two cats named Franny and Zooey.

Also, don’t forget! Wednesday! This Dance is a Cliché: LIVE. Dance Theater Workshop. 8 p.m. Check the calendar for more details.

I’ve been back in the studio this past week, putting together some material for an upcoming show. The concepts are outlined in my head, but the movement is coming out slowly. I started on Thursday setting one phrase on Karilyn:

On Friday I started messing around with a phrase for The Pen Pal Project just to clear my brain and get in a choreographic mindset, and I came up with this:

I realized the two phrases could be manipulated to contrast and match up, so I began working with putting them together:

There’s still work to do on these two pieces; I want Karilyn’s to be smoother with no stops, while I want mine to be more staccato and envoke the feeling of struggle. Using my camera (even though it has to be propped up on a bench, risking falling to the ground or at least shaking as we dance) has been an incredibly helpful revision tool, allowing me to instantly see what movement looks like from the audience perspective and manipulate as necessary. I’ve always used my camera in some capacity in rehearsal, but I usually wait until I get closer to the final product to begin this revision process. Revising as I go along, I believe, will help my final product be of a higher quality. We’ll see …