dandelion dancetheater

9 Jan, 2011

The Best Laid Plans…

2016-03-18T22:19:57-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater, Video|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |

A particularly challenging and fertile aspect of being a creator of experimental performance is that I often have to describe a project in detail many months or even years before I start on it. When working with 10 or more ensemble members and needing to plan out schedules and spaces that are accessible for dancing, instruments, wheelchairs, props, sets and more, I have to do a lot of advance planning. I joke often with my husband about how I have

9 Jan, 2011

Synchronicities

2016-03-18T22:19:45-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater, Video|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |

One of my favorite things about the creative process is synchronicity. I follow intuition above all else in my art making and find myself continually rewarded by the ways that relationships I never could have dreamed up appear all of a sudden. Until recently I was planning on making a piece called Don't Suck! Cycle II as part of a four month residency at CounterPULSE in San Francisco. The recent deaths of my close friend Sharon and my grandmother moved

12 Jan, 2011

Public Showings

2016-03-18T22:19:33-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |

We have our first work-in-progress showing for my CounterPULSE residency this coming Saturday, Jan. 15th. Even though we're still at the beginnings of our creation process, I'm very glad we have this showing to work towards. There are many reasons that I find public showings of performance works in progress useful. These include: --forcing us as artists to make some decisions about what we want to show --giving a deadline to a particular segment of our creation process --encouraging everyone

18 Jan, 2011

Injury as Teacher

2016-03-18T22:19:18-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater, Video|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |

I'm often able to tell other people when they are injured how much every injury can be a teacher. When it's not me having to hold back from moving with physical abandon, I see the benefit of learning about our limitations and our vulnerability through our injuries. When I have an injury, my vision is a lot murkier and I have to wade through a lot of resistance before I come to some kind of acceptance of what happened and

27 Jan, 2011

Internship Week 1: Committed Souls

2011-01-27T17:02:45-08:00By |Categories: CounterPULSE|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |

1/11/11, a lucky numerical day I believe to start something new.  I got off the BART train in high heels freezing my tiny self and toes off, noting that I never want to wear these specific heels again to the city.  I had coffee breathe and stopped by Walgreens to get some gum, I also eagerly needed to use the bathroom and wasn't familiar with the city enough to find one.  As  I walked down 9th street, I imagined myself arriving

12 Feb, 2011

Birthing Pains

2016-03-18T22:19:07-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |

I see the creation of each art work as a kind of birth. There's both great connection and great pain in this process, and I often forget that the magnitude of how connecting a piece is directly relates to how painful its birth can be. Last week we tried out a structure for performing a lot of the most salient material we've been developing in our Friend project. It's a difficult feat to imagine how to collage together all the

12 Feb, 2011

Conditioning

2016-03-18T22:18:54-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater|Tags: , , , , , , |

I'm humbled to see how deep so much of my conditioning runs. I've been learning about and experimenting with inclusive dance techniques for almost a decade now. I'm continually looking for ways to make the ways I perform, think about, create and teach dance/theater inclusive of people with diverse mobilities. And still my conditioning asserts itself over and over. I fall back on how I learned to dance. Sometimes this is wonderful and provides a storehouse of movement approaches and

29 Mar, 2011

Showings, Feedback and Protecting Clarity

2016-03-18T22:16:59-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater, Video|Tags: , , , , , , , , |

The showings that Dandelion has been doing as part of our residency at CounterPULSE have taught me a lot. Here's an incomplete list of insights, reminders, clarifying moments that I've gathered so far from the three monthly public showings of our Friend project: 1. Public showings are crucial to the development of the kind of experimental performance we create. They force us to get things together on a deadline, to try them out and then to retreat and re-tool. There

30 Mar, 2011

Entering the Temple of Tech Week

2016-03-18T22:16:47-07:00By |Categories: Artists in Residence, CounterPULSE, Dandelion Dancetheater, Video|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |

I've come to love tech week--the week leading up to a performance run in which we have tech (technical) rehearsals, dress rehearsals and last minute scramblings to finish. I notice that during this time I am highly energized with a mix of anxiety, anticipation and joy. And I notice that the main thing that keeps me grounded is spending as much time as possible at the theater. I like to get to the place we're performing hours before each event,

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