Building Community - Park Street Style

I've been blessed to dance and play with the young folks and their teachers at Park Street School in Springfield, VT this past week and will continue moving with them through this week. Jan Rounds, the school's best-ever guidance counselor who has a massage chair in her office, helped to bring me in the dance with all the students while exploring the this month's theme: RESPECT. I go from kindergarten to 5th grade making sculptures, leading through space with different body parts, and calming our bodies down with deep breaths.

The kids are awake and ready to rock when I come into class, often surprising me with their willingness to take risks. Enthusiastic responses make me want to hunker down and stay with these groups the whole year, exploring what we could do if we had the opportunity to dance every week, but I hold these precious weeks close to me heart, breathing in life at this sweet school.

The Rutland Herald featured the residency on this Saturday's front page. Check it out here.

And because inspiration comes in many forms...

Keeping Things Whole

by Mark Strand

In a field

I am the absence

of field.

This is

always the case.

Wherever I am

I am what is missing.

When I walk

I part the air

and always

the air moves in

to fill the spaces

where my body’s been.

We all have reasons

for moving.

I move

to keep things whole.

Year 2: Life without internet...

Mmm... How sweet it is to settle in at the public library for a few minutes and update a sorry little blog that barely reflects just how much dancing is happening in southern Vermont. My home in Springfield is occupied by a great family that includes a young dancer at the Dance Factory and I have made my way over to Chester - ten minutes from the still up-and-coming metropolis that is Springfield - to live on a town farm with sheep, pigs, chickens, a turkey, Tasha the cat, and Sean the tall teacher farmer man. Although we have a slew of animals that this little vegetarian gets a kick out of, we are without internet, and I miss the opportunity to write regularly. I do relish the limited access to my overwhelming e-mail inbox.

But fall brings back paper-writing for the kids and I find myself craving written reflection of all the movement that is carrying me through my days, months, and apparently years in this country home of mine.

So far... fall has been full of yoga dance with Ms. Rebecca. We danced in Cavendish and are about to start a new session in Chester. The Dance Factory welcomes middle school modern and cradles me practically every day with teaching, taking class, and Nutcracker rehearsals. Family Dance continues regularly and the libraries are dancing as well. School residencies are up and running, including working with Springfield High School's Performance class on a site-specific dance in the lobby of the school and folk dancing with Russian and German classes. And... gulp... dance team? Who knew varsity coaching would be in my future... More soon, hopefully with pictures and video too.

Little Prince, Crane-Flying, and Bright-my-face please

Ain't no opera like opera in Vermont come summertime when the church is hot and the singers are sweet. The Little Prince sounds like a ride through the green mountains when each peak leaves you wondering why we drive on anything but dirt roads. Professional drove and flew in from New York and Texas while our kids hailed from Chester, Ludlow, Springfield, and many other little towns to preview Rachel Portman's opera before we rock in full-length come January. The Londonderry Church provided an easy, comforting rehearsal space and the fantastic Saturday farmers' market gave us a full house before we packed up and performed at Grace Congregational in Rutland.


Summer choreographing proved to be kind to me. I found myself enamored with the singers and the children were so playful and ready that often they choreographed for me. After directing the past couple years, I appreciated the opportunity to see the whole production as both a collaborator and audience member, feeling fortunate to learn from master Diana Stugger as she pulled together scenes in quick days.



I am reminded in this time where resources feel limited that when people give a little and put their heart into their work, life can feel pretty gosh darn abundant. Artistic directors Nan and Lise have made a one-of-a-kind creation that many of us are blessed to experience again and again.

Ash and Rebecca do dance and yoga

I took a yoga class in Peru this week with some snazzy singers and found myself thinking sweet thoughts of our crew of yoga dancers who participated in Yoga/Dance with myself and Ms. Rebecca Salem (check out her blog at http://yogayourself.blogspot.com/). This class was a new adventure in exploring the connection between our internal and external selves in the Chester Andover Elementary School Library, summertime style. What a gift it was to co-teach and feel refreshed and inspired by a woman so dedicated to her craft... as well as spend my mornings walking from the farm downtown to play and move with young folk I grew to deeply adore. We moved from centering exercises to space walks around the room to sun salutations and poses to improvisation across the carpeted well-loved library floor. The kids made choreography every day: creating a group phrase where every child included a movement, linked poses based on secret messages from the animal poses in yoga, and opposite explorations (hot/cold, slow/fast, left/right). Families came of the last day to partner up and learn a little more about their moving young ones.


I swear I did not hurt this dear child...


Families connecting their way across the floor...

More to come thanks to a grant from the Cavendish Community Fund. Rebecca and I will be teaching Tuesdays afternoons, free of charge to the young folks of that community.

Breaking Rules

Rachel, Jess, Eliza, and I find ourselves making and breaking rules Wednesday evening when we gather to improvise and choreograph. The sun is still bright, the downtown traffic lights starting to work (although the promise of more construction looms in Springfield's future), and it almost feels like summer in the way we enter maybe carefree into the dance studio...

Mirroring with Rules
What's important to think about when mirroring?
slow, eye contact, how are you responding to your partner

Leader:
Cannot move your feet
Do not make eye contact
MUST make eye contact
Cannot move your arms
Much always be changing levels
Eye contact with another person
Don't know who is leading
Pushing away the floor

My partner is breaking rules and making me feel like less of the rebelrouser than I believe I am. And I like her for it.

Pathways
What do you hear and think about when I say pathways?
yellow brink road, getting from one point to another, a straight line, jagged

Start by choosing one pathway and move along it by walking. Explore other forms of locomotion. When you are ready, BREAK, and switch to a new pathway, trying to allow yourself time to explore each pathway and perhaps returning to past pathways.

Break the Rule
Everyone is following the same directions but one person must always be breaking the rule.

Rules:
Start by just walking.
Add arms.
Move in slow motion.
Pick up tempo.
Spin.
Jump.
Move at a low level.
High level.

Come get the bench...

Choreography: Sit Down
Make a dance where no one can leave the bench.

My kiddos are prop-obsessed and tonight I see why as they rediscover a tool I thought I knew well only to be surprised by legs coming down, seeing each other from different heights, and bodies being lifted. This dance is quiet with loud moments and I want them to make it again but different. And they kindly break my rules without alienating me.

Driving home

My aunt visited Vermont while I was staying at her house in Richmond, MA this week and came home praising the spot where I-91 leaves Massachusetts and finds its way winding through hilly southern Vermont. I feel my shoulder blades sink deep as I pass this spot today, leaving the Berkshires for my Springfield heartspot. I leave something good down here in the rural, picturesque towns of Sheffield and New Marlborough and feel myself smiling thinking of little bodies jumping from one array to the next as 2nd graders dip their toes into multiplication and the challenge of finding the biggest foot in a group of fifth graders to make me the largest possible area to dance in during math.

I have been treated well by these teachers, students, and Jane of Flying Cloud who is so obviously in love with living, breathing, realizing integration of arts and other curricular subjects. I found myself sitting around mini elementary school tables again, debriefing with teachers about their experiences dancing math with me and their students, and talking about how to improve my practice, develop ideas further, and what it means to be 9 and a student these days. You would never know that the end of school is right around the corner the way these folks talk about the learning and doing that is happening in their classrooms. For a moment, it feels like September when the possibilities for what will happen in school this year are rich and overwhelming.

But I cross state lines and look forward to the summer season as the lushness that is my home state envelops me and says, "Welcome home."

Burnin' Up: Sat morning love affairs

Saturday morning, in a slightly overeager attempt to clean the house, I found myself picking up the stove coils I had just used to make myself tea. The minor blistering was almost immediate and I found myself sighing as I ran cold water over my hot, hot, hot finger and thumb. The burn served multiple purposes - a reminder to slow down and think through my movements a little more as well as inspiration for family dance, which I had avoided planning by cleaning instead.

I nursed my hand with an icy beverage as I unlocked the dance studio Saturday morning, always wondering who will show up for these random gatherings of young folks and their elders every few weeks. The music was playing when I found myself sweetly surprised by a mother/daughter set, a mom with her just walking son and prancing daughter, and a friend with a student from her school. We gathered and met each other, waking up our bodies with gentle tapping and hand rubbing (my blisters just barely survived), exploring shapes at different levels, twisting and stretching. It felt good to move in the company of these folks. I sometimes find my insecurities early in the morning on these family dance days, wondering if I'll find something comforting to offer these folks during the beginning on their weekend together, and yet they always come eager to fill the studio with their own dancing joy.

My burn showed up later in class. I told the young ones my story and they quickly responded with stories of their own burns and we moved like we were hot, hot, hot before feeling the opposite coldness in our fingertips, our tummys, and our legs. And then we found our own opposites, or opposites of sorts - in and out, fast and slow, ocean and sky - and brought them to life, moving with our loved ones and teaching our new friends. I wanted to thank these creatures of movement for welcoming me to class, for inviting me into their moving worlds, and for letting me in some way feel like part of the families they were trying to build and love in their attendance of family dance.

So I do. Thank you.

Berkshires: Moving mathematically

Am I allowed to write a blog post in a different state if the landscape is still rich with green and hilly attempts at mountains and small towns that disappear into back roads? Hope so because the wifi is good and I'm feeling fully charged after cafe caffeine. I'm in Lenox, the town of Tanglewood fame with nearby Kripalu housing yogis and transformation-seekers, after spending the morning at New Marlborough Central School and the afternoon at Under Mountain Elementary in Sheffield, MA. The Berkshires are pristine, but if you veer off route 7 for long enough you'll find what's left of the milltowns that feel near and dear to downtown Springfield. I drive hard and thorough, using this Mass getaway as an opportunity to put some more miles on the bright red Camry without feeling too guilty about my carbon footprint.

But what a day! In grad school, we have these dreamy classes where we imagine best case scenarios for artists working in schools with luxious amounts of time to co-plan with classroom teachers and walk around the spaces you'll be using before you even breathe in the same room as the children you'll be art-making with. And somehow, I got myself a gig that not only embraces this idea but is wanting to believe it is a necessary first step to good work. I found myself sharing a little table with little chairs (brightly colored and plastic) in the hallways of a rural school with about 80 kids in multi-age classrooms making explicit connections between math concepts and dance-making. Fractions became opportunities to split up classroom spaces while multiplication arrays became moving bodies row by row. All of this is in theory of course. Tomorrow we open the classroom doors and invite the kids in to jump around, think around, and mess it all up for us.

I drove south a wee bit for the afternoon to actually teach, a one-time shot with a fourth grade class whose teacher gave me a rockstar introduction while handing over masking tape we would use to break her classroom into eighths. Teaching felt good after a morning of talking. The kids gave me oxygen and my pumping blood made me a happy mover. We explored 8 counts of music, making movements for 1/8 counts, 2/8 counts, 4/8 counts, and finally an 8/8 count movement. These fractions dances demand more but the time passed so quickly. How sweet it is to be wanting more though, right? And the tape is staying on the floor.

well-(movin')-ness week

If I had to do it all over again, would I give up my castle on a hill in Spring-a-ling Springfield for the bohemian rhapsody of work and live Exner Block in Bellows Falls? No. Although I imagine different scenarios driving past bright windows full of making-it-now art where I knock on my neighbor's door to find her covered in charcoal and spend my mornings dancing in the street, I find myself happy to return home to makeshift small-town suburbia this evening after a dancing adventure in BF.

Mind you, the Bellows Falls grit is easy to pick out from the fingernails of children who grow up there. I find the comfort of my own struggling town in choppy haircuts and new names like 'Justus' and 'Angel.' I met every child at Bellows Falls Central Elementary, a K-4 school boxed between residential streets, which shares a playground with the town's YMCA. And I fell in love like only teachers who feel they know kids before they know kids really can.

The school nurse, Anita, invited me in to dance with these young ones as part of their Wellness Week and I found myself rolling on the floor, sculpting little bodies, and pulling imaginary strings as I bonded with a new batch of kids in an unknown school. I keep waking up in these small schools: These kids are way less inhibited than I want to believe. I'm ready to talk down the emo-fourth grade boy who preaches dance equals gay in order to start his own mini-revolution and instead find this child showing me new ways to think about moving my elbow through space. I want to watch them grow up into dancers who know their bodies as capable and curious. I want to sit back and let them take over, to remind me how little I know of my form. I find myself craning my neck to see more, stepping on their toes in attempts to guide them, and getting lost in the possibility of limitless movement. But I wake up with so-and-so won't partner with so-and-so and to "I'm bored" becoming a fashion statement. Neither lasts long.

Today I ate my lunch in the sunshine, hoping to burn slightly as I longingly crave the desert. It was quiet. This was my break from children so I read a little after I finished my salad. The fourth graders who started my day with go-go-go talking competitions ran outside to catch the sun too before their own lunch. One stringy-haired, skinny-legged blond child found herself enamoured with my leftover salad bits and I told her to indulge herself. It is this moment, when we talk about the dancing, our families, and school in general that I feel a dull ache deep in my chest... a reminder that this child, these children, this school, and this town aren't mine, but merely holding me as I visit.

This ain't no small town dance recital... except it is.

Mother's Day is for the the Moms, but in Springfield it is also for the dancers. May 9th and 10th welcomed the Dance Factory's spring recital with epic dance adventures filling both days to the max almost beat by large audiences who say, "Yeah. We'll take this," and cheer, baby cheer.

I take moments in between costume changes backstage at the high school that left me craving new beginnings to notice the kids that let me call them my students own their dancing bodies and claim my naive attempts at choreography for themselves. This is daring. This is confidence. This is a desire to let people in and give them a chance to see what you are all about. And I realize I have much to learn about what these moving', groovin' bodies and minds are all about.

I felt community in my dirty toes, my sore lower back, and my searching-for-air chest as I made my way out to greet the people I see in school, in the grocery store, after rehearsal during the quiet time before I close my eyes. I know dance in some ways, but these people tell me about dance in new ways. And I'm a'lis'enin'.

Spring Dance

Classes at the Dance Factory for movers and groovers interested in all things modern...

Class meet for five weeks and cost $40.

Beginning Wednesday, May 13th from 6-7pm
Choreography/Improvisation
... time for exploration, play, and dance-making ...

Beginning Thursday, May 14th from 7-8pm
Modern
... welcome multiple levels for a reflective and energizing class ...

Mmm. Sweet dancing.

slow dance

...In the midst of it all I am reminded what it means to move when the deadline is not fast approaching and the children are not waiting for genius.

There is quiet and the floor is malleable and grace is something innate in the way space succumbs to body. The answer comes in following the movement while it leads to the discovery of a new sense. In these moments, the ache of not being enough is cradled by the realization of that being just what one needs.

And this makes it easier, more necessary to love the day to day explorations in the company of ever-changing, ever-questioning young folks who don't let me rest too easy in my own understanding of what it means to move...

Chester Contra Dance

Don't miss it...

Picturing America: Dance Style

I enjoyed leading a workshop exploring art through movement at an event in Concord, NH yesterday exploring the possibilities for collaboration and interdisciplinary connections in a project called Picturing America. This event was sponsored by the above organization and it funding by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which the intention of helping students and citizens "gain a deeper appreciation of our country's history and character through the study and understanding of its art."

Check out the project here.

I enjoyed spending time with the following images:

Looking Down at Yosemite Valley, California, 1865
Albert Bierdstadt

American Landscape, 1930
Charles Sheeler

Fallingwater, 1935-1939
Frank Lloyd Wright

Cityscape 1, 1963
Richard Diebenkorn

Brooklyn Bridge, 1919-1920
Joseph Stella

... before leading this eclectic group of teachers, artists, historians, academics, and humanists in the following activity...


Main Activity: Time and Space Tableaux

Break into groups and share images - each group receives one image to focus their work, movement, and conversation on. Begin by asking participants to create a tableaux of some part of their piece of art using their bodies. They can attempt to represent a piece of the image or the whole image. Encourage group members to take turns viewing the tableaux from the outside to get a better idea of what their statues may look like to observers.

The second tableaux will focus on an artist’s earlier version of this image. What happened before the image we see now? Were the lines simpler, the space more open? Did the image start small and become bigger? Did the artist focus on one piece that developed into the image we see now? Did the image start as something completely different?

The third tableaux will focus on reinventing the form. What theme/element of this picture has your group focused the most on? How lines connect? The context of the image or the space the image exists within? Change it. Make it something different. Show us something new.

If time, participants can find ways to move through tableaux to tableaux. If not, each group will share in a sequence of their choice, their 3 tableaux. Allow for questions, comments, conversation after each group or after all groups have shared depending on time constraints.

Debrief: What, if any, nuances to these works of art did you have through playing with them kinesthetically? What did you learn about movement exploring it through the lens of art? What were the major themes that came up for you during these activities?



If only we were encouraged to experience interconnectivity more often...

Moving Opera: Kids invited

Opera Theatre of Weston's January's performances of "Hansel and Gretel" included local kids as singers in the children's chorus and dancing as Angels and the Witch's cat, Safronia (remember Eliza from an earlier post?).

Check out the review here at the Rutland Herald.

Getting psyched for next year's "The Little Prince." You're invited too, you know.

Family Dancing

Anneka is 2 1/2 and Aria is 4. The bell sounds of their names are reflected in their whisper running straight to the big girl barres on the far edge of the dance studio, where their little girl bodies dangle, feet pointed, knees in action. Their mother Erica tilts her head and sighs, knowing that bringing them to the center of the room will happen only after they've played the parts of the older kids they find so awe-inspiring.

Today it is spring. We are greeted with sunshine and melting snow, even though the end of March, April, and perhaps even May could snow in store for us in our corner of southern Vermont. We celebrate by sharing our favorite spring things... jumping in mud puddles, pedaling around the airport on bicycles, watching things grow, and playing outside. We sculpt our bodies into flowers, bikers, and puddle-splashers, watching our statues come to life before dizzying ourselves with an extra run around the room.

"Birds they fly and birds they rest.
Which pretty birdy do you like best?"

We practice flight, exploring different wing shapes as we glide through space, and then find ourselves resting in different positions on the dirty marley floor. Our birds quickly morph into other animals as we perch ourselves on a tree to end our poem dance, which we repeat over and over again, finding rhythm in repetition.

As Erica and I rub our hands together and place them on different body parts, quieting our bodies, little Anneka and Aria use their mother as a jungle gym. Erica tells me this is the most practical part of class - learning to find calm in the midst of chaos.

Contra thoughts at 1:14 am

Although the rest of the 20-something world is perhaps enjoying the peak of their evening at this time, I am returning home, tired and riding a coffee high from my drive back to Springfield, VT from Greenfield, MA, where three teenagers and a 7 year old enjoyed one heck of a contra dance with me. Usually this type of adventure would end with me curling into bed, my deepest thoughts concerning whether the below zero temperatures require me to wear a hat to sleep or not, but tonight my inside's burst not only with the tingling effects of caffeine but also sweet joy.

You see, tonight I watched three girls emerge from their existences as mill-town observers to find themselves surrounded by and active participants in a world where men wear skirts to feel air rush between their legs when they turn and no one says no when asked to dance unless there is a bathroom emergency. I messied myself in attempts to remember steps and follow after months of leading, feeling very much a peer to these teenagers I may have eyed at a distance even recently. There is comfort in this western MA world for me - this is where I spent my undergraduate years and I know these people - and yet being here is a good reminder of how quickly we adapt to the places we live in. The sparkle in my eyes matched Eliza, Shena, Kamryn, and little Shanikwa.

I danced with my lady friends and with another child, El, who at 8 could have taught most people there how to dance in lines, changing partners, twirling and coming together. I also sat and held the head of the child I brought with me, the rest of her body bundled up in a sleeping bag as the night grew late, and I imagined what it would be like to have a child grow up with such comfort in this social, free space. Eliza, Shena, and Kamryn bring a little of this dance home with them, which may be seen in sparkley shoes and vocal attempts to convince their male counterparts to join the party next go around. And I bring home another reminder of happiness found in the firm hand of another pressing against my lower back, relaxed and smiling.