Posts Tagged ‘dance’

Maine Island Dance Festival is hosting their second annual dance intensive June 17-22, 2013 in Chebeague Island, Maine. This festival will include a 5 day intensive focusing on Countertechnique, Reactive Body Technique, Choreography, and Dance and Technology. The week will culminate with a performance featuring festival participants’ work in the choreography and dance technology classes.  Teachers include: Andrew Cowan, Kira Blazek, Holly Rothschild, Sheldon Smith, and Lisa Wymore.

day rate | 9-12  | $35
single class rate | $20

email maineislanddancefestival@gmail.com to learn more.

The Shambala Festival in the UK brings people together to share love and happiness at a secret location with a surprise lineup of artists and programs.  This uplifting short film captures the essence of the 2011 festival and shows how different cultures and beliefs can come together as one.  With its vibrant colors and theatrical flair, the Shambala Festival lives up to its name which in Tibetan Buddhist tradition means “a mythical paradise inhabited by enlightened beings.”

This year’s festival will occur over Bank Holiday weekend: Aug 23-26th. For more information click here.

This brand new custom-made choreography for a digital tablet lets the viewer experience endless possibilities for choreography.  ”Fifth Wall” is an App designed for the iPad that uses digital technology as a new performance option.  The viewer can focus on a single dance, or move, sort, and re-frame the performance all within a touch.

A collaboration between 2wice Arts Foundation, Jonah Bokaer, Abbott Miller, Pentagram, Ben Nicholas, and Adam H. Weinert.

Click here to link to the app on iTunes.

Click here to read The New York Times article on this exceptional new discovery.

Monday, November 14, 2011 ~ 5:30pm – 7:00pm

Joyce SoHo
155 Mercer Street (between Prince Street and West Houston)
New York, NY 10012

RSVP: http://dancersvoice.eventbrite.com/

Featured Speakers

As a student in the Florida State University in NYC program, I was fortunate enough to be invited into Noémie LaFrance’s work studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to discuss her new project. Sitting in wooden chairs in the homey brick apartment, Noémie entered the room spewing information about her newest work, the White Box Project. In response to our questions, she explained that she is ever-interested in infusing dance with the everyday. The Black Box is known as a place to sit in an audience and to be spoonfed a presentation. Hence, the White Box.

Successfully, the White Box Project is the furthest thing from a proscenium, concert dance performance. As I entered the museum space, I was approached by what I thought to be a fellow observer, and naively pushed out the back door into the cement enclosed porch. The crowd chattered and looked around skeptically, until suddenly and miraculously the room fell totally silent (a brilliant tactic brought about by the performers, I realized on my second visit).  As the hour passed, it became clear that at least one of the men in the room was a performer. He, in my opinion, took on the role of the initiator; the leader. Otherwise, I was completely unsure as to who was a performer, and who was an observer. As a woman dressed in a trendy black coat and heels stood inches from my face and proceeded to lie down on the cement in front of me, I battled myself with whether I should do the same.

The feeling of uncertainty gradually melted away, as we were put into groups by a few men and women, and whispered instructions…“On the count of three, run!” By the end, I felt more like a child playing games in the schoolyard than an audience member.

Noémie invited everyone in attendance that Saturday back to another showing, free of charge, to witness the constant changes being applied to the project each day. I arrived the next week, eager to scrutinize the events I knew would happen and to identify the changes, of which there were several. This time, there was more dialogue between the dancers and the crowd; I was asked incognito to learn a succinct dance step, and teach it to another. Again, the realization that everyone was in clear groups/teams near the close of the work came with a playful sentiment. I was a participant, not a spectator. I cannot assume that this feeling fell upon every person in the ‘box’, but each individual surely brought something of their own to the experience, simply by entering the space.

The White Box is not a dance show. It is instead a mind game of sorts. Whether or not one chooses to run and turn the length of the walls at the demands of a scruffy man whose role is unknown is irrelevant. Choosing to act is participation. Choosing not to act, also, is participation. The audience ultimately, and blindly, has control of the show.

Carly Lozo is a dance major at Florida State University and an intern with Pentacle’s Movement Media this fall.