Summer of SINecdoche

We at SINecdoche Dance have been having some down time since our show at the beginning of July. We've all had a little time to explore other projects and get some other performing in!

Mandy and Ilona were in Philadelphia for a weekend of art and performance. They showed some of what they're working on with The Tree Project. Mandy is staying on in Pennsylvania for the rest of the month, continuing to pursue dance opportunities.

I have been collecting "data" for a collaboration piece with Jeremy Pheiffer for Draftworks this December. He and I are putting all our thoughts and inspirations into a blog for you to see how we're approaching the project! I will also be performing with Kirstan Clifford on Saturday, August 27th at 5Pointz in Queens from 5-8PM.

This Saturday, August 13th Erica Frankel will be performing with VaBang! Dance as part of the Waterside Plaza Dance Festival at 5PM (free!).

BUT DO NOT FEAR
We are all going to start rehearsals for our new project in September. We are going to be going away to Silo to begin work on our own version of the famed ballet Giselle. We will keep you on the up and up about all our adventures and the very involved process Belinda has developed to get this ballet made.

Life Beyond SINecdoche

As if it were fathomable.

But I just started working on

a new project.

You can get some insight on

it by following the blog

laureljeremydraftwork.wordpress.com

What Really Goes on in Belinda's Mind?

I have no idea.

But you can get a little sneak peek on the thought process behind
Work : Dance : Display thanks to Sarah AO Rosner, The Urgent Artist.

The Final Countdown

It's finally arrived - it's show week! The dancers have all started to feel it the last few nights as we've tried on costume pieces, warmed up and cooled down, refined our synchronous movements, and stood under lights.

It's been a real treat to watch Greenwich House, a true Village institution, transform this week into a gorgeous performance space under the skillful supervision of our rockin' lighting designer and tech friends. And with some help from some talented photographers. As we've been in residence over the past many many months, we've experience GHMS in all of its extremes. In the coldest parts of Winter we layered our clothes, wore thick socks, warmed up for ages, and stood by the heaters to keep ourselves from shivering. Now that it's Summer we're sweating as much as ever.

Here are some photos from tonight's tech rehearsal - our last before our videographer comes tomorrow to capture footage of our dress rehearsal. I was able to duck out and take several candids on my Blackberry. Enjoy!

Brain Games

It's been said before -- dancing for Sinecdoche is just as challenging for the brains of the dancers as it is for their bodies.

I thought I'd give you a taste of what we mean by that.

In Work:Dance:Display, the piece we are working on for July, many of us play a particular and individual "game."

It all starts with a basic phrase, that each dancer knows. You can see us doing the basic phrase from the piece, on the very first day we learned it, here.

From there, we each made a variation of the phrase by changing the order of the steps, without changing the rhythm.
For example: If it started out hop. step. kick. turn, you could make it kick. hop. turn. step.

Then, our fellow dancers gave us arms to go with our newly re-ordered phrase.
For example: kick & shimmy. hop & swipe. Turn with jazz hands. Step & clap.

This variation, with a new order for the feet and arms to go with it, became our new phrase. We had to make sure that when each of us does our new phrase, we stay on time with whoever is doing the "basic" phrase -- no small task!

When we mastered that, we got something else to do with the new phrase. In my case, I had to take the phrase I made and put one arm on a one-count lag behind the other arm.
Using the example phrase, it looks like this: Kick & shimmy one side. Hop & swipe one side while shimmying the other. Turn with one jazz hand and one swiping hand. Step & clap one hand, jazz hand the other.

I then had to do the feet twice as fast as I did the arms.
For example: Kick-hop while you shimmy one side. Turn-step while you swipe & shimmy the other side. Kick-hop while you jazz hand and swipe. Turn-step while you clap and jazz hand.

Whew! That's a lot of rules. That's how we get from our beginning phrases to the variations you'll see in part one of July's show. You'll also see the basic dance phrase -- and if you look closely -- you can see that phrase in everything we do for the first half.

This is only one of many brain games we do. All our pieces involve a similar sort of splicing-movement logic.

Want to try it out?

Here's a relatively simple to follow game that uses many of the principles of the games we play in performance. Give it a try! Each time you master one step, add on the next. See how far you can go!

Step 1: Start out with jumping jacks.
Step 2: On every third jumping jack, turn to face behind you.
Step 3: While jumping, say your abc's backwards. Don't forget to turn around every third jump!
Step 4: Continue doing steps 1-3, but now do a full turn every time you say a vowel. Continue counting your jumping jacks and abc's from where you left off.

Bonus Round:
Step 5: With a partner, do steps 1-4. Place a cookie (or any treat) somewhere in the room. While continuing 1-4, race to the cookie. You can only move when you twirl (that is, when you hit a vowel). Remember not to lose count of those jumping jacks! Don't let the other person know you want the cookie as much as they do -- but get it first!

Does your brain feel like jelly? Did you have tons of fun? How far did you make it? Leave us a comment and tell us all about it! Bonus points for video footage :)

Second Open Rehearsal Down, 5 More Shows to Go!

Photo by Jason Kip Thomas

Yesterday was our second open rehearsal for our upcoming performance of Work : Dance : Display and both of our open rehearsals has been really informative.

One of the goals of the dance is to have the audience surrounding the dance and moving within the performance. Having foreign bodies in the space with us was, for me, such a shock. That presence really changes how I dance the piece. A new level of awareness comes out because there are people that don't know what's going to happen next moving through the space you're dancing in.

It's this sort of challenge that keeps you on your toes when dancing for Belinda. She not only is giving you incredibly challenging movement and tasks to complete, but she is also throwing an audience worth of bodies in your trajectory and making you decide in the moment what, exactly, is to be done. There is nothing mindless about presenting her work for the dancers or the audience.

If you didn't have a chance to check out the rehearsals, DON'T WORRY! You can come to the finished product and see what we're doing for yourself. But you had better get your tickets now; only 30 people are permitted per performance so they're going fast.

You, the audience, has a huge role in this piece and it just won't be the same without you! I hope to see you there.

Friday, July 8 7:30PM
Saturday, July 9 5PM & 8:30PM
Sunday, July 10 3PM & 7:30PM
doors open 30 min prior to the show.

Loose Ends

Rehearsal on Wednesday morning clarified certain things for us, and Alex was gungho about learning the entire piece. She did pretty good. She and Aya spend some time working on getting into the Sphinx - a challenging maneuver if I may say so myself.

I'm still deciding on the ending of the piece, and this is what we are going with so far...

Shen Wei Dance Arts at the Met Museum

I went to see Shen Wei Dance Arts at the Met Museum on Monday evening, in large part because I think Shen Wei's work is usually visually stunning, if nothing else (but usually there's something else too), and also because I thought it would be interesting to see it in relation to what I have been working on. The idea of moving statues is foremost on my mind right now, seeing as a good half of 'Work : Dance : Display' moves at the sort of speed (of lack thereof) that affords the audience member a three-dimensional view of the dancer's body as moving statue. I wish it wasn't so, but I was disappointed at the piece. I envisioned a work of the utmost grandeur (not unfairly, I don't think - he has choreographed masterful pieces of art) but the end result was a little lackluster. Tickets were sold to line the balcony of the American Wing of the museum with audience members. Audience members also flanked 3 sides of the courtyard at the same level as the dancers and statues.  But the piece was very clearly choreographed with a proscenium stage in mind, and I (standing high up there in the balcony, towards the back of the 'stage') largely felt unacknowledged as a spectator, which was somewhat upsetting. Why put us there if the choreography was not meant to be seen from there?

I felt that Shen Wei could have shaped the audience experience in a much clearer and fuller way. Sure, the work itself was beautiful, and Sara Procopio is stunning as ever. However, so much more could have been done with that space. I felt the urge, the entire time, to stroll through the moving statues and the real inanimate ones, while the performance was in progress, because of the spaciousness between them, and my desire to go up close to examine the 'artifacts' in action. And I felt that the slowness at which the work unfolded really did lend itself to that sort of close(r) examination.

I did enter the performance space a.k.a the courtyard filled with sculptures after the performance was over, but all I could do then was imagine what it could have felt to have been right there in the middle of the space while the action was happening.

I think the work would have been more successful had the audience been invited to roam at will amongst the dancers. But I guess I'll have to be the one giving them that opportunity at my show. There, they WILL be roaming at will. And probably with alcoholic beverage in hand.

Dancer Found! Phew!

Thanks to Alex Taylor, we have a full cast for the show. She showed up yesterday at rehearsal, ready to dance - and boy, could she! We also love her personality. She even cleared her schedule for us. What a pro! We also had 4 very enthusiastic photographers come in to take photos for our set pieces. Can't wait to see how the photos turn out. In the video here, you can see Alex in the foreground jumping right into rehearsal, and the seasoned veterans in the background preparing for a full run of the piece. You can even see some of the photographers snapping away. We ran part of the show in costumes, and everything is really starting to look pulled together. Kay our stage manager visited and had great ideas about how to direct crew members and clearly had a good handle of how to manage the event. What a relief!

Ultimate Rehearsal/Legendary Children

Today's rehearsal was full of signs that we're about to have a show:

1. Our costume designer, Kirstan, came with costumes that we wore during a run.

2. Four photographers were at the rehearsal taking photos for the images that will hang on the wall of the space during the performances.

3. The Stage Manager, Kay, came to check out what we've been up to.

4. A new dancer, Alex, joined us for rehearsal and jumped right in!

We only have a few more rehearsals before the show, so it's great to start having all the elements come together.

It also made me think about alternative performance opportunities that artists have and how they take advantage of the spaces and fellow artists that they know. Last night I saw a great show at BRAZIL. A split bill, Legendary Children, between Tess Dworman and Mariana Valencia. This is a studio space rented out for dance rehearsals, but Tess and Mariana were able to turn it into their own with use of projection, set pieces, audience set up while also highlighting the charm of the space (open windows, clip lamp lighting design). By producing their own work, they were free to create whatever experience they wanted. There were no programs, our tickets were friendship bracelets (mine's light blue and olive) and everything about the evening was inviting and down to earth.

Tess began with a solo that led her from posing flirtatiously, to extreme yoga aerobics, to enduring complicated and (possibly) painful sexual acts. Although she appeared casual in her oversized tshirt and Beach Boys soundtrack, her face and focus exposed the complicated emotional underbelly of the acts.

Mariana and her collaborator, Lydia, were two petite explosions fluctuating from dance to violent moshing. They went everywhere with their movement: sex, spit, shaking, sprinting. Again, the faces and focus of the two dancers were the audiences' guides to watching many versions of rebirth. They were cool and sexy and angry and linked in unison and costumes and integrity.

It was so refreshing and exciting to see this happening. And I thought that it could potentially escape forever without being written about and reflected upon. Seeing Legendary Children and being a part of SINecdoche Dance invigorates my belief in this form. There are ideas! There is dance with ideas!

Desperately Seeking Dancer?

It's about a month to our show, and we are still desperately seeking a dancer to replace beloved ex-company member Larissa Sheldon who had to withdraw from the show for health reasons. It's looking like we might have found someone though, but I don't want to jinx it, so I will announce it AFTER it's been truly finalized. Hopefully by Sunday. Speaking of Sunday, a cadre of highly talented and enthusiastic photographers are going to be shooting our rehearsal that day. Some of their shots will make it as set pieces on our show - photographic displays of the dancers in rehearsal. I'm really excited to see the outcome of the shoot - and it hasn't even happened yet. We're planning on videotaping the event - layers and layers of looking through different lenses and perspectives. We'll definitely share some of the footages here and on our website. Stay tuned!

Work : Dance : Display tickets now on sale!

Singapore-born choreographer Belinda He challenges conventional audience expectations, etiquette and participation in her first full-length work, Work : Dance : Display by offering her dancers up to be viewed at varying levels of objectification. She invites audience members to question their own levels of interaction with the artwork that is placed in front of them. The dancers are variously seen as art objects on display, artists honing their crafts and dance-makers deep in their creative processes. Photographs of these dancing bodies in rehearsal line the walls of the gallery space where audience members first encounter the dancer-exhibitions. As the piece progresses, the space itself slowly transforms into a stage, on which the identities of artists, art makers and art viewers conflate. Ms. He presents dance as she likes to experience it: in the trenches, involving all senses for a deep, visceral appreciation.

Tickets are available for $10 here.

For more information about SINecdoche Dance, visit our website!