Sasha Soreff Dance Theater: Rehearsal Blog

Well, hello. It seems summer has gone by, officially now, with Labor Day Weekend. We spent much of the weekend at Governors Island. We were last there draping shoelaces on cannons and the like after FIGMENT festival-goers wrote their hopes and fears on said shoelaces. This time, we were draping ourselves. Check out the photo gallery for some shots of the wonderful shoelace troupe – Judy Aiges, Tim Cusack, Gorgas, Nancy Greco, Mistral Hay, Terrence Hewitt, Nana Hitomi, Eija Ranta, Kenya Roriguez, Marley Weiner, and Nancy Wong – in action.

I have been delving into shoelaces as prop and metaphor for almost two years now, and I am constantly surprised to discover how much can happen with them, how many configurations, suggestions, possibilities – a design element, for example, creating shapes using taut shoelaces held in various positions, or a means of trapping and freeing people from each other. Entanglement, a life line pulling one toward the next horizon. A huge mass of hopes and fears weighing a person down and down and down.

It was a beautiful weekend at Governors Island, and there must have been many thousands of people there, visiting the Arts Fair, riding bikes, hanging out. What a nice reprieve from urban life. It was great to have people on the island stop by and watch us dancing, to add their hopes and fears to the ever growing collection, and in a few really wonderful cases, joining in the dance.

For my part, I am grateful to the performers for jumping into shoelaces and reminding me what it is to investigate material and dance with joy.

May there be much sunshine and curiosity in the weeks and months to come. Happy Fall.

At the FIGMENT festival at Governors Island this weekend, the hopes & fears project took a new form as we moved from performance art to installation art. FIGMENT is a free annual festival of the arts. Hundreds of artists of all stripes converged on the island last weekend, and tens of thousands of visitors came to partake in the cultural festivities. We invited FIGMENT goers to write their hopes and fears on shoelaces and rolls of ribbons (ok, twilltape, which I have only recently discovered; a coarse material that takes permanent marker quite admirably) that were unfurled and refurled (is that a word?) as people waited to board the ferry to the island, while on the ferry and on the island itself. We wrapped the hope and fear-bearing materials around cannons and the like around the island.

It was awesome to see people of all ages lending their individual expressions to the cause, from young kids who drew pictures on the material to folks in their 70s whose energy could definitely match that of people decades younger as they took to the festival.

Here are some newly acquired hopes and fears from the FIGMENT folk:

Fears: land wars, surprise jellyfish invasions, bed bugs, falling out of bed
Hopes: inspire others to create, love, no more war, job!

The festival, by the way, was extraordinary. Everywhere you went on the island, there were sculptures and interactive activities, from wishing trees to photo exhibits to mini-golf. Performances, planned and spontaneous, all weekend long. The rain on Sunday didn’t do anything to dampen the spirits as people rocked out to music and hula hooped and just enjoyed these early summer days. Look for it next June!

I recently had the honor of working with composer Neil Rolnick, choreographing a duet to his score, NUMB, for a performance at the Flea on May 2nd. While this blog seems not to be quite up-to-the-minute, it is worth sharing about Neil and the work he is doing.

In my world, losing the ability to dance and walk barefoot, to jump and land with abandon has had a profound impact on my life and greatly informed the trajectory of my life, creative and otherwise (See: “The Dancer Who Wore Sneakers and Other Tales,” “The Other Shoe,” and all pieces relating to shoelaces.) One day a couple years ago, Neil Rolnick, composer (one whose livelihood depends on relating to sound) was listening to music and it all of a sudden the sounds starting coming through distorted. Except, that wasn’t happening in the outside world, as a quick survey of his equipment revealed. It was happening in his left ear. Fortunately, he was able to get medical care immediately and to great effect, and he got some of his hearing back (in many cases, this kind of hearing loss is permanent, so this was very good news indeed). The experience led him to wonder about the experience of others with change in perceptions/shifts in senses.

He is asking for people to share their stories, and I will therefore pass on his request directly:

“For MONO, I've been collecting stories about the experience of change or deficit in any of the five senses ... or any experience which might somehow relate to the idea of changing how we perceive and relate to the world around us. In the last few months, I've written and performed two sections of the piece. One (MONO Prelude) addresses my hearing loss, and the other (Numb) explores the partial loss of the sense of touch. You can find links to these pieces at http://www.neilrolnick.com/MONO_samples.html. You can read more about the MONO Project at http://www.neilrolnick.com/hearingblog/?page_id=91.

if you’re interested and willing to collaborate, please go to this link: http://www.neilrolnick.com/hearingblog/?page_id=85 to tell me your story. If I use your story in whole or in part, I will get back in touch with you. If you want to remain anonymous (like the writer of Numb), I'll respect that wish.”

I choreographed a 15 minute duet to the section NUMB he describes above, a riveting piece written by a woman whose sense of touch shifted dramatically post-breast cancer surgery. Neil created a beautiful and moving score out of her words. I asked Marcia-Elizabeth Thompson and Masanori Asahara to perform a new duet set to this score.

They were accompanied live on stage by a string trio, featuring Cornelius Dufallo, Kenji Bunch & Yves Dharamraj, soprano Melissa Hughes, and a table stage left at which sat Neil Rolnick on laptop and Luke DuBois creating a video projection. In this piece about intimacy, vulnerability and touch, Marcia-Elizabeth and Asa were captivating, and found the perfect balance of tenderness in partnering with each other and strength in their own movement. I am grateful to them for their work and to Neil for the opportunity to collaborate.

Send your stories to Neil and we’ll see how MONO moves forward!

PS and come to Governors Island early afternoon on Saturday June 12th and be part of the shoelace project at the FIGMENT festival. See you at the Battery ferry terminal! http://figmentproject.org/2010/

We had an open rehearsal on Thursday, April 1st. We worked on some sections of the piece and, over the course of the evening, ran the 10 minute piece twice. Some of the audience members were able to see both runs and that was particularly wonderful – I am always interested to know what people get out of it (differently, in addition to) with a second viewing. When you go to a museum or gallery and look at visual art, you can spend as much time as needed looking at the work (well, up until the building closes, I suppose).

Even when the medium changes, sometimes a work merits repetition. Certain movies, for example, bear watching more than once because so much happens in it, or the dialogue is particularly sharp and tigh. I think this absolutely can happen with a dance theater piece. Although by its nature it is pretty rare to actually see such work more than once, at least in a close time frame, given the commerce, cost and shortness of season for all too many performances. . .

When “The Other Shoe” closed last June, my sense was there more depths to plumb in that work, more to see and understand. Some of the feedback I received, in fact, was that people wanted to see it twice, to take it all in. Others were interested in getting more clarity about the concepts and premises motivating the piece and how that translated -- even though the piece was abstract, it was tied to something.

My exploration of the shoelace project has, in a way, been a direct response to that. I took one idea/motif/movement notion of "The Other Shoe", extracted it and then created a new piece around it, almost like zeroing in on one part of an image and blowing that little section up to fill the whole screen. It has been very satisfying, to continue working on this material. A lot of times in my creative life I have moved on to the next piece, because that feels like what I need to do (generate something new), or it was more realistic, financially or otherwise ("The Dancer Who Wore Sneakers", for example, had 25 performers, not very doable very often).

I had a dance teacher once who said choreographers spend their whole lives basically creating the same piece/expressing the same essential thing, although it comes out in very different ways; almost like a spiral staircase where you stand at different places/vantage points but it is still the same base material. I can only speak for myself, or course, but I think there is some truth to that. Certain things matter to me and that is true consistently. Certain kinds of expression or moments of truth resonate with me whether it is a piece about the ocean or sneakers/physical limitations. To be honest with myself about that and delve more deeply into hopes and fears has been very liberating.

Many, many thanks to Desira Barnes and Louie Marin for being part of this evolving shoelace journey. Their dancing, as soloists and in partnership with each other and the shoelaces, is beautiful and powerful. There are a couple moments in particular that several audience members referenced during the q and a -- such as when Desira dives onto Louie's back and gets carried off stage, -- memorable for the dancers' technical execution and more, their fully human, truthful expression within those moments.
And as always, Chris Becker’s score adds so much to this work. Chris is moving to Texas, unbelievably, but I look forward to using technology to help us continue to collaborate. Finally, actress Lynn Battaglia joined us for "Shoelaces, One Arm Red, April 1, 2010" and brought a wonderful energy to the piece.

Special, special thanks to Adam Adams, Jimi Pantalon and One Arm Red. One Arm Red has long been a creative home to me and I was honored to be there again. Especially because April 1st marked the opening night for a new series there, REDThursdays which promises to bring some awesome artmaking and sharing of process to a very dynamic and creative part of town, DUMBO. I look forward to many great Thursday nights ahead at 10 Jay Street, 9th floor.

So I was headed up to Albany today. There was a hearing on public support for the arts, and I was going to testify. Alas, 'twas not to be, today anyway -- there was a whole lot of snow in Albany, and I never made it past Poughkeepsie. I did submit the testimony in writing to become part of the record, and I am including it here as well -- because we should support the arts in this state, and the more voices saying so, the better. . .



Testimony before the Senate Committee on Cultural Affairs, Tourism, Parks and Recreation and the Assembly Committee on Tourism, Parks, Arts, and Sports Development


Thank you Senator Serrano, Assembly Member Englebright, and the members of both committees for giving me the opportunity to speak today.

My name is Sasha Soreff and I am proud to be an artist in New York State. I am a choreographer and performer, and I am creative director of a small, New York City-based dance theater company.

I come here today to add my voice to the many who recognize the importance of arts and culture to our communities and to our state. I come here today knowing what a difficult time this is. We all feel it. Artists definitely feel it -- like all too many people, we are desperate for affordable housing, for health insurance, for enough income to make it through another day.

I work with a dancer named Desira, a beautiful dancer. She almost left New York because she couldn’t find work and she couldn’t find an affordable place to live. Luckily, through a concerted effort, many people who didn’t want to see her go were able to help her find enough opportunities, work-wise, living-wise, to make staying tenable. I am delighted to be rehearsing with her again. But it makes me all too aware how precarious the life of an artist is, living, as is often the case, close to the edge. I know a lot of artists who have moved out of state because the climate was so difficult here. And I know a lot of artists who are committed to making it work, against impossible odds (in fact, I just applied for a grant in which the odds are about 400 to 3).

Artists sign up for something difficult because we are called to do so. And it is ok that it is hard – the act of creation is, by nature, often not easy. There is a great moment in a West Wing episode, written by one of New York State’s favorite sons, Aaron Sorkin, who went to Syracuse University: a father is talking about sending his daughter to college, the pride he feels at being able to accomplish this. He essentially says: “it should be hard. I like that it’s hard. . .. But it should be a little easier. Just a little easier. Cause in that difference is everything.”

That’s the way it feels, to me, as an artist: in that difference is everything. We often make do with precious little, but it’s beyond difficult to do what we do without some support. I am so grateful whenever I have the opportunity to share my dance theater work, especially because I am developing ways to increase audience engagement and encourage people to share their creativity. It’s exciting to see audiences responding.

Many of the opportunities that have come my way -- be it subsidies for rehearsal space, performance festivals or artist residencies, are offered by organizations that are almost all supported in some way by NYSCA – support that is pivotal to the provision of such opportunities. Being an artist without access to an audience is a serious setback. Artists should have opportunities to share and the public should have opportunities to observe and even to participate, everywhere in this state. That takes support.

Many people here today are eloquently expressing the value of the arts in this state, in so many ways. We know – I hope we know -- about the arts as an economic engine, about how cultural organizations play a critical role in revitalization efforts upstate and down, about the importance creativity has in shaping young people’s lives and creating a contemporary, innovation-driven workforce.

We are all counting on our elected officials to make difficult choices judiciously and wisely.

So let’s play out what happens when there aren’t resources for the arts, when vital public funds are withdrawn. I thought the AIDS funding advocates, with their “Day Without Art” had it right. What happens when culture isn’t available? Turn off the music, cover the paintings on the wall, your child doesn’t go to dance class this afternoon, the new building is on hold pending an architect’s design. Take away the arts and you take away the tools and access to creativity and imagination.

Think about your district for a moment, and what it would be like, to not have arts and culture; it would so greatly diminish the joy and light in these communities. How can we even possibly calculate the loss of something so completely integrated into our day-to-day lives that we take it for granted? Especially when we are all feeling these glum times and we need the inspiration to help us find perspective and I daresay entertainment for a moment’s reprieve. Even if you say, “I support the arts, but in this moment, I cannot do so,” one cannot calculate the impact, short and long term, of that expediency. As another artist throws in the towel, leaves the state, gives up on art. As another cultural organization that was the lifeblood of its community boards up its windows.

The arts aren’t something separate from the rest of our day-to-day lives. In order for culture to continue to survive much less grow in the state, there needs to be an infrastructure that supports the cultural ecology. Keep the music on, keep the paintings on the walls, keep supporting creativity in the State of New York.
Thank you.

A thought is gnawing at me. It has been gnawing at me for a long time: hopes and fears are forward thinking.

Maybe this is incredibly obvious. But that doesn’t make it less true or relevant. When I first started down this writing on shoelaces path, I had three expressions that I wanted to work with via shoelaces: hopes, fears and acceptance/that which is accepted. It quickly became clear that the acceptance one wasn’t working so well: it was hard to write about it on a shoelace, even harder than boiling an aspiration or fear down to a few words (you can always fall back on “world peace” or “death,” to succinctly cover hopes and fears, with limited writing space, but explaining what you accept might take some doing.)

And then I began to wonder what exactly I was going for with acceptance. When I discussed hopes, fears and acceptance with the performers, we would come up with vivid memories of scary times, we could paint a picture of our wildest dreams. . . but acceptance sounded an awful lot like resignation to me. As in, I don’t really like this is happening but it is in fact reality, so I’m not going to fight it. Somehow, it didn’t seem as fulfilling or solid as the notion of acceptance that I believe is espoused in various spiritual traditions and compassionate practices. Totally possible that that is my lack of understanding, but still, resignation doesn’t seem like the kind of deep, transcendent experience of letting go with which I equate the word.

So, for lack of a better way of saying it, I let acceptance go. At least for the writing on shoelace activity, at least so far.

But I am still wrestling with where it fits in this work. I wonder if there is some way in which expressing one’s hopes and fears gives a little room to not be controlled by them, which in turn allows for being a little more in the moment. Because after all, that is so much of what we are striving for, in performance art (and, to varying degrees, in life), the experience of being in the moment. In the piece we just showed at Dixon Place, there is a moment when a whole bunch of shoelaces are piled upon the dancers, around their necks, draped across their shoulders, falling off their arms – the dancers are literally being weighed down by all these hopes and fears. Does naming one’s aspirations and dreads give even a moment’s relief and distance from this overwhelming weight?

I hope so. Because so far, the acceptance is in the owning that we do have hopes and fears, and the attempts to ensure that, however we relate to them, we ultimately recognize them for what they are: thoughts of the future and of the past. Hopefully, those thoughts don’t paralyze us, but lead us to a recognition of what we value in the here and now.

acceptance, an ongoing discovery. . .

Is it always this way? I think it is always this way. The show is over and there is this array of post performance thoughts and feelings: (hopefully) a sense of satisfaction and joy at what just happened. There is also, often, some measure of recognition of things needing to be changed for the future (a work is never finished, in some ways, I think, even if it is eventually quite close. It is like the way infinity is approached on one of those graphs, I don’t even know what I am talking about except that it looks like something is approaching astronomical numbers or, more insidiously, zero, and it will NEVER get there, whether you are creator or performer or both, there is always something).

And then there is this other thing, for me anyway, this little bit of emptiness. This disappointment, that that ephemeral live moment has now gone by, that moment of anything being possible on stage, that moment between audience and performer that defies description.

I guess that is why Merce Cunningham wrote this:

"You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.”

Such is this performance art, this dance theater experiment where we talk about hopes and fears amidst the shoelaces. . . it felt very alive tonight. What a gift.

Many, many thanks to Desira Barnes and Louie Marin, for their beautiful dancing, and Sal Blandino and Mary Wilson for their committed full expression of many people’s hopes and fears. Chris Becker’s score served as perfectly as always, and I am especially grateful to the audience for their willing experiment in interactive theater. The Field (www.thefield.org) rocks – their Artist in Residency Program gave us such an opportunity to move deeper into the shoelace material. And finally, performing at Dixon Place tonight was such a pleasure, and their staff took such good care of us in their wonderful new space (www.dixonplace.org)– thank you!

Here is to those single, precious, fleeting moments of performance. . .

So here is a question: is it easier to express a fear than a hope? Is there something about fear that allows for more weight and reality than a hope? That has been my experience, so far, collecting hopes and fears on shoelaces from various audience members and anyone we can get to write on a shoelace with a sharpie . . . hopes, as expressed on these shoelaces often tend to be more general, more global, -"peace," "love," "respect" (and I am COMPLETELY generalizing here, based on what I have observed. . ., and i am completely not saying these are somehow not valid, because seriously, peace and love are great hopes). The fears have often been very specific – "lobsters," "suffocating," "drowning," "pain that never goes away." The fears are vivid, visceral, uncomfortable.

And so I wonder – hopes and fears are both about the future, things that could happen that either delight us or terrify us (or at least elicit mild anxiety). Maybe we are more used to bad things happening in the world, maybe our imagination is more bent on worst-case scenarios and potential pain than potential pleasure, maybe fears reflect more of a history, a childhood memory or early dread. Maybe we save our true desires and affirmations for private moments and not anonymous shoelace sharings. Maybe I am just making all of this up, and really, people are very specific about their hopes, equal to their fear, and I just need more shoelaces to show it.

Some hopes do stand out for their detail: “One day I will own my own penguin slave.” And “building a hot rod” and “winning the lottery.” Thus far though, these are the exceptions. Maybe when writers express love or strength they have in their heads a more specific image -- themselves, with their beloved, for example, a mental snapshot that is more fleshed out than the word conveys.

Another thing that we are finding, in rehearsal, as we share these hopes and fears aloud: some people’s hopes are another person’s fears, and vice versa. Some things can really go either way, and in some cases, the author makes that clear: side 1 of a particular shoelace says “totally new adventures.” Side 2, “totally new adventures.” A hope and a fear in the same expression. So too, “Stability." How many of the things we hope and fear are one in the same, depending on how they unfold, depending on how we actually perceive them (isn't there a saying about "be careful what you wish for?")

We will be at Dixon Place this Monday night, December 14th at 7:30 pm (see calendar for more info), sharing many collected hopes and fears and inviting the audience to throw their particular hopes and fears into the mix. Come share yours!

We had a great time at the World Financial Center yesterday, performing on the Winter Garden Stage both at lunchtime and at 7 pm. What a great event, 60 x 60 -- more than 100 performers took their turn for 60 seconds onstage as the audience witnessed 60 compositions interpreted by 60 choreographers.

We were minute 44 - two giant clocks on either side of the stage showed the passage of time in 60 minute increments as the performance unfolded. No of course they were not digital clocks, this is a classy organization.

Thank you to the performers for creating such a full world on stage during our 60 seconds:

Helayne Baron, Marsi Burns, Tim Cusack, Halley Gerstel, Marge Hauser, Kaitlin Hines, Sarah Milosevich, Edna Ishayik, Lauren Currie Lewis, Sheila Massey and our special guest, Arden Hallett.

Thanks to composer AArt Uunivers for giving us such an engaging score to work with.

And thanks to Amiti Perry, Erin Bomboy, Rob Voisey and the rest of the crew that organized and made 60 x 60 happen!

Being in the dance studio, alone.

Many writers, I am told, have rituals. Can’t start typing, for example, until the window sill is clear of dust, all the writing utensils and other objects are arranged on the desk, a favorite, inspiring quote is read. This isn’t unique to writers. I am remembering my musician friends at the performing arts high school: apparently there was a lot of pacing in those little practice rooms that really only had space for an instrument, a chair and a music stand. I always admired their ability to go into one of those rooms for three or four or more hours and find the discipline to practice. As a dancer over the years, I mostly participated in rehearsals with other people. They say (what a great way to start a sentence) that dancers tend to be particularly social and community-oriented. I don’t know the context or if it is true, per se, but I do know that my experience of dance is that it is very social/community oriented – classes are a regular fixture in many dancers’ lives, and rehearsals often involve at least a choreographer and a dancer, if not many dancers depending on the project or company.

In more recent years, as a choreographer primarily, I often like to work out ideas with a group of performers, going through improvisations, testing images and throwing out movement to see where it goes, how the dancers work with certain phrases or concepts. Sometimes I need time in the studio alone to work things out, to create material for rehearsals, create phrases, think about structure, what have you. Often, for me, that alone time has been very much about preparing for a performance and planning for a group of whatever size -- it is often, in other words, ultimately moving toward a product.

Lately though, I have been spending time in the studio with less of an agenda. I am lucky enough to be participating in the Field’s Artist Residency program. For 6 hours a week, I trek over to their fabulous Far Space Studio in Chelsea (www.thefield.org). It is a total gift to have the time and space, two precious commodities in New York City for everyone, and especially dancers looking for enough square footage and sprung floors to really move.

Every time I show up at the studio, I think of the writer and her rituals, the musician pacing in the practice room. It turns out there is just this little bit of resistance one must overcome (one, in this instance, being me) before I can start working, in that raw, potential space all by myself. An order to things, an easing in, as it were. Translation: I need rituals to help me overcome the resistance and get to work.

First, I have to change into dancing gear (sweatpants and a hoodie, for example, very sophisticated). So that takes, you know, 2 minutes. Then there is warm up time, which can actually take a while, especially as it gets cold. Of course, the warm up time goes much more slowly when it is punctuated by all sorts of other curiosities – oh, do I want all the lights on, part of the lights on? Hair up or down (like this has anything to do with anything, but somehow it seems captivating when I am facing several hours of studio time). Music or no, and if so, what kind? Oh, is that cat and dog I like to visit with out in the hallway? The mirror is a particular distraction. I am drawn like a moth to a flame – this is such an annoying dancer thing (though not, it seems, exclusively a dancer thing), this always looking in the mirror. I have been, during my residency, realizing just how much gray hair has started to sprout out of my scalp, which is far more fascinating than it should be.

Back to the warm up. Floor exercises, abdominal strengthening ( ie sit ups), a new set of mime warm up movements that I recently learned and am really excited about. And then a lot of time to improvise. While the Residency does culminate in a performance on December 14th, and I do spend some of the studio time preparing for that, I am trying to carve out a substantial amount of time for improvisation. My goal is to be generative and experimental, with no particular agenda and intention except to push myself to create with abandon and non-attachment. So, I improvise. It is: thrilling. Mortifying. Intriguing. Embarassing. Thrilling. Mortifying. Intriguing. Embarrassing. The video is a merciless witness, capturing it all (unless I conveniently forget to record, in which case, it is truly an exercise in moment to momentness). You might need to go through 200 movements to find 2 that are really worth keeping, that are recognizable as a kernel of something bearing further attention. But 2 movements is great, if they are real, if they are meaningful, if they are what i want to express. And even without the 2 movements for the future, just the act of improvisation is in and of itself valuable, I am finding.

There is, in my experience, always this tension, between process and product. This is my time to put more attention on the process, on the moment to moment experience of creation and creativity. What's a few rituals as long as I have the time and space to ultimately jump in?

So I have a confession to make. I went to see “Fame.” I joined a friend who also grew up with Coco, Leroy, Julie, and the rest of the gang. We invested our $12.50 and took our seats. The opening of the movie (I don’t think I am giving too much away here) featured Debbie Allen’s familiar and very oft-repeated proclamation: "You've got big dreams? You want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying ... in sweat." In fact, that might have been the high point for me.

If you watched and loved the original of anything, is there ever any way to improve upon that particular experience? Those feelings that are attached to a particular time and place and moment in one's life. . . I am sure it does – a new, fresh interpretation that illuminates the original. It didn’t at all happen for me in this case (and I suppose, I wasn't the intended audience anyway, so what does it matter?). Fame came out when I was eight or so, followed by the tv show two years later. I was a diehard fan of the weekly episodes. I followed those characters for years as they navigated a performing arts high school. Who of my friends (we had heretofore satisfied ourselves with Duran Duran and Hall & Oates) didn’t want to be like the kids on Fame? Their struggles, their joys, the way they danced, and sang and played their hearts out. That was the world I wanted to be in.

Eight years after Irene Cara first sang out that she wanted to live forever, I went to an arts high school. Really, it was an arts college that had a high school division for dance, music and visual arts. Our days were divided between arts classes and academics (with significantly more emphasis on the former), and was in some ways very much like Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York City.

Regardless of what anyone might say or wish, television does influence real life: one fine day, we took it upon ourselves to be like the kids from Fame at lunchtime – someone brought in a boom box (this would be the era of cassettes) and put on music. We all got up and danced. Someone jumped off the table with that side split jump we all tried to emulate from the original show. It was a fantastic split jump. Resulting in a terrible split in the actual table – in fact, the table was completely broken. Boom boxes were no longer permitted in the cafeteria after that, and I don’t remember any other dancing in the cafeteria (lawn yes, cafeteria no). But for one brief moment, our Fame dreams came true. . .

I have no idea if a young person watching this rendition of Fame would be inspired to pursue a career in the arts, and what they would imagine it takes to pursue that career. I would be surprised if they come away from the film with a real sense of how very very difficult it is to pursue such a career. Too many characters in too little time in this film, and the setbacks didn’t particularly have the kind of impact i have witnessed at the arts school and other situations. Not that I want to in any way be discouraging about a career in the arts (especially because, 20 years after my “hot lunch jam” experience in the cafeteria, I am still in the arts, everyday striving to make it work and to make work, as are so so many artists everywhere); I just think part of the power of that show, for me, was showing these young people struggle -- not suggesting a struggle -- and still finding their way.

And this, which is definitely a spoiler: a young man wants to be a professional ballet dancer. After four years at the school, his teacher says it's not going to happen, says he shouldn't even try, but go be a teacher. And that's what he does, decides to move home and teach dance. Can you believe that?

Maybe I just liked what I grew up with, and can relate to it, better. I just hope they don’t try and do a remake of Flashdance. . .

“I fear one day turning into a large toaster oven (or a walrus).” That was one of the latest additions to the growing collection of hopes and fears that people have written on shoelaces. This one came to us at One Arm Red over the weekend, at a showing for the recent Artists in Residence there. I was very happy to be an Artist in Residence at One Arm Red as I created “The Other Shoe,” and I was delighted to be able to present a work in progress there as part of the showing. Especially because it gave us the opportunity to further explore the shoelace theme with a new twist: Sal Blandino and Mary Wilson, actors, read hopes and fears off the shoelaces while Desira Barnes and I danced with the shoelaces (see the photo gallery if you want to get a sense of what it looks like to dance through and with four 1 inch wide and 36 inch long shoelaces tied together in a loop, like a completely malleable hula hoop).

The toaster expression was one of many very cool responses we received last Friday and Saturday evening as people filled in shoelaces as they got their drinks during the pre-performance reception. Laura tended bar and she did an exceptional job encouraging people to share their hopes and fears candidly, in some cases cathartically, and always anonymously. These shoelaces were then added to the hopes and fears the actors read. Other memorable shoelaces? “I hope for the wings of god and fear the cynics with their scissors.” “I hope to one day own penguin slave.” “I’m terrified of my mother; I hope to one day own a dog.”

And then this: “I fear places where I am told I must remove my shoelaces.” I would fear that too – what would keep my sneakers on tight?

Me and my sneakers. Me, the Dance Who Wears Sneakers. I wanted to perform In the showing last weekend. The only thing: dancing with shoelaces in sneakers is hard – the choreography calls for a lot of moving in and through the shoelaces, and it helps to step on them and grasp them with one’s toes. The sneakers are critical to my ability to dance, since my feet are highly vulnerable to impact, such as stress fractures. While I am very grateful that they permit me to dance, much less walk, they do not, alas, allow me purchase of the shoelaces. The solution? I danced on the floor. Me and the shoelaces on the floor, creating shapes and designs and motion, sans sneakers. I crawled onto stage as the actors read, “I fear being stuck at point A in my life, I hope to get to point B.” I don’t usually match the hopes and fears up so literally with the movement, but it just felt right for that moment.

It was such a pleasure to be dancing on stage, even if I never made it to standing. Meanwhile, Desira performed beautifully with her set of shoelaces amidst Mary and Sal’s hopes and fears and Chris Becker’s music. It was good to have another go at the shoelaces, and I look forward to more to come.

Thanks to Desira, Sal, Mary, Chris,as well as Dawn Marcoccia for her costumes, and to Adam Adams, Jimi Pantalon and the crew at One Arm Red for giving us the opportunity to share our hopes and fears. . .

so, there is a lot to say about the piece -- its rapid evolution in the last few weeks, the way the performers really dug in and found such powerful expression, increasingly so, over the course of the run, not to mention how we finally resolved the piece (at the end of the day, does the other shoe fall? now that i am not foreshadowing something, i can report it did, the very last beat of the piece. . .) . While all of these points deserve much more attention, what i have right now to offer is this: tremendous gratitude to all the creative partners, onstage and off, who brought this piece to life.


Performers:
Masanori Asahara, Desira Barnes, Janet Forward, Sarah Fried, Akiko Furukawa, Isabel Gotzkowsky, Alaine Handa, Anna-Louise Herzog, Nhan Ho, Joshua Holden, Megan Krauszer, Ryan Leveille, Malcolm Low, Jerly Marquez, Pam Wagner,
Jon Zimmerman

Original Score composed and recorded by Chris Becker
Lenae Harris - Cello
Jonathan Kane - Drums, Metal
Daniel Kelly - Keyboards
Costume Design by Dawn Marcoccia
Lighting Design by Carrie Wood
Assistan Lighting Designer - Emily McGillicuddy
Stage Manager – Susan Manikas
Backstage Support – Louie Marin, Mary Wilson
House Manager – Jeso O’Neill
Technical Crew - Joel Wilhelmi, Mike Swan
House Liason - Kortney Hensley
Administrative Support – Jessica Bonenfant
Postcard Design by Brian Dean
Photography by Michael Mastroianni, Di Zhang
Videography by James Pantalon
Publicist -- Ellen Jacobs Associates

There is always this pressure, when you are getting ready to perform, or creating a piece that has a premiere surprisingly soon. I guess I should speak for myself: I am kinda feeling the pressure. The performance is, in fact, a deadline, and it calls for a deliverable to be, well, delivered.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is the pace of a piece developing, an artist’s process, the development and experimentation necessary to find what the work is. Sometimes that process and a delivery date don’t mesh very well. I have never had a piece that has traversed so much ground and called for such exploration and willingness to NOT KNOW where one is in it, in the moment or in the arc of the piece. I set out on a path and then something else happens or wants to happen. Can you imagine? You are walking down Hudson and end up on the Bowery and then all of a sudden find yourself in Brooklyn. Fortunately, I do like Brooklyn. I just need to keep updating my map, and keep up with the piece as i keep one eye on the calendar.

Process and product, experimenting and delivering.

I remember the first time I realized that performing itself is a process. Performing one weekend, early on in my time as a downtown dancer in New York City. Preparing for the second night, I had the experience of the first within me, and knew I needed a slightly different intention as I prepared for the second, third, fourth night of performance (4 nights is not uncommon for a certain level of contemporary dance company, a category in which I find myself). It was such a powerful discovery -- this is what live performance is about, that sense that anything could happen, a willingness to commit to the moment before you only, and a trust for the process that came before.

Beyond the aliveness of fulfilling each moment in performance, there is also, when one is lucky, the chance to perform the same piece at various times and venues. Pieces change from showing to showing. You have an audience in front of you and that changes things too, in all kinds of ways.

I once spoke with an actor who had done a run of a show in NYC and then, years later, in San Francisco. I saw it in both places. He was completely embarrassed that I had seen it in previews in NYC – because there, in San Francisco, 2 years and hundreds and hundreds of shows later, he had ended up somewhere very much deeper, richer, fuller. Not that I knew that, seeing the preview intitially. But I appreciated his respect for the craft, for the process. Those performances were all part of a process, all part of a deeper realization of what is and could be.


Process and product, experimenting and delivering.

I am very grateful to be in this process with Chris Becker, a wonderfully talented composer who is bringing his understanding of the Other Shoe to life in music. He shows up and watches rehearsal, sometimes for hours. Makes his notes, asks a few questions. Comes back the next time with more sketches, more ideas. How does this sound, here, or here? What does this movement sound like? What movement expresses this score? What is this part of the piece about? What is the texture of this? Check out his blog at http://beckermusic.blogspot.com/index.html.

and buy your tickets now for the Other Shoe, June 25th-28th at the Ailey Citigroup Theater. www.brownpapertickets.com.

My dear friends Tony Radice and Patricia Crown held a house party last week to celebrate the upcoming season at the Ailey Citigroup Theater. And this is what happened: people wrote on shoelaces. Using every color sharpie imaginable (who knew they made sharpies in anything other than black and red?), more than two dozen people ranging in age from late teens to late 60s wrote on shoelaces. They wrote their hopes and fears (or some variant on those themes). Some people shared a shoelace, some conferred with each other along the way. Some went for two or three word descriptions (joy, peace) and some went from one end of the lace to the other. Someone filled an entire shoelace with designs and images.

Hopes and fears, as expressed with a sharpie on a shoelace (the trick is to write in big block letters and hold the shoelace taut):

Hope: That I will have long life Fear: That my husband will not
H: That I can keep my children and grandchildren close F: That I will not be able to protect them
H: Totally new adventures F: Totally new adventures
H: The stock market rebounds before retirement F: Won’t find a passion for retirement
H: I fear I will be stuck at point A F: I hope I get to point B in my life
H: A really good martini F: That X and Y will find a really good martini [note: X and Y were sitting next to the writer of this particular shoelace!]
H: Children will be safe and educated and healthy F: No more light
H: Rapid effective recovery; Dow 13,000 F: Tax increases that will wreck economy
Shoes that look like they would fit when they’re smaller than I would like them to be

How intimate, the relationship between hope and fear: so many times, the hope and the fear were the opposite reflections of each other (Fear: War, Hope: Peace); quite a few times, at least on this particular evening, they were related, thematically – both about family, both about retirement. Sometimes, tellingly, they were exactly the same (see “totally new adventures,” above). The things we care about are the things we care about, and why wouldn’t we hope to avoid that which we fear? Which comes first, I wonder, fear, followed by a hope for the opposite circumstances. . . . Or a sense of what one wants to see and the dread that the opposite will be so. . . a see-saw going back and forth, weighted sometimes toward hope and sometimes toward fear. . .

I love how it looks, to have the dancers moving in and through shoelaces bearing these expressions (though probably the audience will have a hard time actually being able to read the words, short of binoculars). There is something very visceral, about being wrapped up in words, someone’s words, someone’s hopes and fears. Does it mean something, that we take that on, for one another, that we want to give voice to something felt or sensed, maybe by many of us? I believe so. I hope so.

How do you show, hope and fear in dance? One of my formative choreographic mentors always used to say you can’t show fear. He would have us get up on stage and attempt to show fear. Most of us would act afraid. Not the same thing. We could of course try to scare the audience, but somehow, an Alfred Hitchcockesque dance concert (or some more contemporary expression of such) isn’t really my direction. So we go at the material another way, a way not contingent on actually showing “fear” directly. We are generating movement using specific moments and memories around hope and fear. (Can’t you just see a dancer on stage, literally stuck at point A, trying to get to point B? legs that can’t move? A line that can’t be crossed, a slow migration toward from stage left to stage right?) Not wanting to show being afraid, per se (or some wistful look of hope on one's face), but actually wanting to show some quality or notion thereof– twisted, quirky, angular, direct.

We are having an open rehearsal on Friday, May 29th, from 6:30 -8:30 pm at One Arm Red (10 Jay Street at John Street, Suite 903A in DUMBO). Come join us (you can stop by for as little or as much of the rehearsal as you'd like). See our rehearsal process, ask questions. And write your hopes and fears with a sharpie on shoelaces. . . we would love to have your expression weave its way into our creative process.


Tony and Patricia – THANK YOU.

It turns out to be not as easy to write on a shoelace as one might think. Or at least, I think. Watching the dancers get caught up in shoelaces, tangling and untangling through duets, solos and other configurations, I began to wonder what it would be like if the shoelaces had writing on them. Specifically, writing that related to the piece: what is it that you hope for, what is it that you fear?

In preparation for the June 25th- June 28th season, we are planning to have a series of open rehearsals and house parties. Participants and audience members will be asked to lend their hopes and fears to the piece. The transmission of this information, in the best of all worlds, would be writing one's hopes and fears on shoelaces. That way, we could dive into them thematically -- in terms of character and movement development stemming from what people offer, as well as physically -- the actual shoelaces used in performance would have these hopes and fears written on them: they would literally be part of the piece itself.

I am still very committed to this idea. But, as with many things, it looks a little different than I imagined. First of all, the shoelaces we are working with these days are pretty wide. It turns out that the standard variety sneaker and dress shoe shoelaces are fairly narrow, and they feel pretty uncomfortable when pulled against a dancer's waist, (count this in the "learn as you go along in rehearsal" category). So Pam found these awesome wide shoelaces at Footlocker and they are much easier on the body. But, it turns out, no matter what kind of sharpie or marker we have tried so far, writing on them is a fraught endeavor: the weave is too wide, and it is pretty effortful even to write "I fear the end of the world" or "I fear looking in my bank account" or what have you.

I like the shoelaces and what they represent for this piece. I like how they are a direct connect to shoes and that they are very familiar and widely used. I like, quite frankly, that when they are tied together the little endings stick out in a way that could possibly suggest barbed wire and its jagged points (it is the "other shoe", after all, and there is an undercurrent of darkness well-suited to the image of barbed wire in some form).

While we are still trying out a few other marker on shoelace options, we are for all intents and purposes up to Plan C, which looks like it will feature some kind of trimming or ribbon reinforced by shoelaces --goof for writing and maintaining hard edgedness.

Assuming we solve these technical issues, stay tuned for your chance to add your hopes and fears to the props of this piece. Better yet, don't wait for an open rehearsal. Send your thoughts in this moment and any moment over the next three months to hopeandfear@sashasoreffdance.com. We will add them to whatever our shoelaces finally look like (and in the spiri of discretion, no names attached to the hopes and fears!).

Thanks for offering your hopes and fears to the cause.

We are in it now. We are definitely caught in a shoelace now. This is the thing, about creating a new work -- sometimes you know, going into it, what you want to say. Sometimes that emerges. Sometimes, often, in my experience, it is some unscientific mixture of the two. Somewhere along the continuum of clear vision guiding the piece and material development driving the shape and intent, there is me, tied up in a bunch of shoelaces.

I know I am headed ever more deeply into this idea of the “other shoe,” this sense of waiting for something to happen and what that means. I am increasingly prone to random thoughts on the subject. Such as, what if you are always waiting for a particular shoe to fall, and then it turns out your back is turned on the shoe that ACTUALLY falls. What of all that preparatory worry in the wrong direction? And how would it look, to have someone onstage staring up at one shoe of the thirty hanging over the stage, and then getting hit in the head by the one just to the left.

Some things are known and some things emerge. Some things are guiding ideas and some things I am discovering along the way. This caught in a shoelace motif. I thought it was funny, this title, because these two dancers were, for lack of a better description, caught in a shoelace: bound within this shoelace loop, they can’t get away from each other. Recently, we brought in another pair of dancers, to explore different kinds of connections/relationships between dancers and between and within shoelaces.

And then a crazy wonderful thing happened: we got into the Cool NY dance festival (www.whitewavedance.com). Crazy only because we need something to show in early February, well before the season in June. Grateful for the opportunity am I. Also, keenly aware that there is nothing like a deadline to encourage forward motion quicky. I started working with the two couples, playing with different configurations of people and shoelaces (one couple inside, one outside, trying to escape each other, drawing closer to each other). Meanwhile, I was having this internal debate about 4 or 6 dancers for this showing.

Circumstances – a dancer’s availability, the need to explore more dimensions -- began to shift toward the necessity of 6 dancers. The next discovery, as I thought about the space for Cool NY: there are columns upstage and down at the John Ryan Theater/White Wave Dance studio. So, to frame the duets in the center of the stage, here are two dancers, bound to columns (upstage right, downstage left) by shoelaces that define their movements and their presence.

Some things are known and some things emerge. What does it mean to be caught in a shoelace? What do these different relationships convey? Is a resolution to get out of the shoelace, or make peace with the limitation?

And while we are asking questions: this piece is going to need a lot of shoelaces. Does anyone know a good shoelace manufacturer who would just love to donate shoelaces to the cause?

“The new piece.” Right here at the beginning of a creative process. Such a moment of opportunity, with this starting of a new work, this moment where anything is possible. What can be done, with this concept of “The Other Shoe?” No idea is too ridiculous or banal to at least be considered. How far can we go with this material? How broad in our exploration, how daring in our experimentation? Who knows what idea, however ridiculous or banal, will lead to something that really is fruitful?

Unlimited possibilities, in these moments, these early rehearsals, these formative moments – what will this piece become? How will it unfold?

These questions can't be forced of course. What this piece will become, how will it unfold -- it really isn't for me to even speak to those questions right now, if ever. And yet, I an already getting into the phase in my creative process during which too many conversations in a row that don't touch on the piece somehow is stressful. I can't go too long without talking about, thinking about, writing about or choreographing about the themes of the piece. I am craving forward motion. I am trying to counterbalance a need for certainty (please tell me this piece is going to work, that it is worthwhile, that it will mean something!) with the knowledge that I can’t rush the process, on any level – and that trusting the process is the ONLY way I even have a shot at the above. Leap of faith.

Which leads me to the next thought, even as I leap, and leap and leap. A confession, really: I am kinda scared. Scared that it won’t come together in time, that the ideas won’t translate, that it won’t be more than the sum of its parts. Scared that it won’t be seen. Scared that I will put my life savings into this and have nothing to show for it. Ironically, this line of thought is exactly the subject matter: What is the thing one waits for with apprehension, what is the thing one dreads?

Of course, I can be scared and keep having rehearsals. I can be worried and I can keep having conversations. I can be filled with a sense of dread and think, bizarrely, how excellent, that is actually intrinsic to the subject matter of this piece, that waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-fall kind of trepidation. Source material. And anyway, all part of the process.

Anything is possible. What could be more thrilling, nervewracking or truthful than that?

You never know, what is going to happen, when you first put something on stage. Isn’t that part of the deal, live performance?

We showed an excerpt of our incredibly new piece, “Megan and Janet, caught in a shoelace” recently at Isabel Gotskowsky and Friends’ benefit, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the company. I was delighted to be a part of it, since I was part of Isabel’s orginal company and I am such an admirer of her work.

Isabel had invited dancers past and present to show their own work, and I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to get this new shoelace piece idea off the ground, or at least in front of an audience. There is nothing quite like a showing deadline to encourage activity: we were rehearsing and changing the “ending” of the two minute segment five hours before the benefit.

So there we are, at the Baryshnikov studios. We are the third piece on the program. Isabel gives a very gracious introduction, the two dancers come out into the space, red shoelaces surrounding them as they take their starting position (around their waists, with about two feet between them. Lights come up and the piece begins. . . . . and a different piece of music comes on! The dancers keep going, professionals that they are. I am in the front row, and I am stupefied. The music is quite intense, quite a contrast to the low key, somewhat melancholy piece we had been working with. And yet the dancers were moving through the material, and the audience of course didn’t, couldn't know -- although the music that is on is so intense I don’t know how anyone can SEE anything (totally my editorial content, since I heard from more than a few people after they thought the intensity matched the movement perfectly).

I had been playing with the idea that Megan and Janet are bound together inside these three shoelaces tied together and slowly come to realize the implications of the situation. They are supposed to start out with deference, toward each other: one moves, then the other (I totally am confessing that I was momentarily inspired by that famous ballet classic, “Pas de Quatre,” choreographed by Jules Perrot in 1845. As I remember it, the piece,which originally featured Lucile Grahn, Carlotta Grisi, Fanny Cerrito, and Marie Taglioni, the ballerinas trying to outdo one another with increasing vigor.) The conceit of this duet hinges on a slow recognition of their respective roles and a growing sense of resentment. But this more intense piece of music escalated the activity to catfight level fast. There was no where else to go, even though not more than ½ a minute has passed.

So the super intense music is on, the dancers are matching the intensity as they move through the choreographing. . .and one set of shoelaces come apart. The loop is a loop no more.

The dancers keep moving. They become entranced, staying in "character," with the bringing of these shoelaces back together.

Me in the front row, watching these dancers trying to salvage a piece that is no longer recognizable. Before I even know what is happening, I have sprung to my feet; laughingly I tell the crowd, given that it is an informal benefit type situation, that this is in fact the first time we have ever shown this piece, and this is a little technical difficulty and I am going to give the ladies a chance to re-tie those shoelaces. A quick sound adjustment brings us to the intended piece of music and, with a cry of "let’s go from the get go!" we go from the get go.

There is always this thing, that "the show must go on." And it does. But what a gift to be able to stop something that isn't as it should be; to say, in this informal setting -- wrong piece of music, shoelaces undone, let's take a moment and do over.

Sometimes, there is nothing you can do -- far away stage, formal setting, let the chips fall where they may. But sometimes, it is quite simple and actionable: an overwhelming need to see an artistic intention realized, however, whenever. An unintended and wonderful consequence: several audiences expressed their appreciation for the do over – the reality of it, the sense that they were actually part of what was happening. And indeed, they were.

For me, it was the best of all worlds – not only did I get to see the piece with different music (which was in and of itself useful), but I got to see my dancers improvise and find a way through (go Megan and Janet!), while still getting to see the piece as it was intended to be shown that particular December evening. And as Isabel pointed out to the audience after, this is the way it goes, really. It's all part of the process. There is nothing like the chance at a do over (how often in life, really, do we wish we had that opportunity for that?) And of course, there is nothing like live performance, whatever the setting. Thanks to Paul Siskind for ALL his music, and thanks to Isabel for giving us a place to be real.

Happy New Year.

Thanksgiving week. I am a little behind in writing of late, and am taking advantage of this holiday time to catch up. First there is this: I have started the new piece. Really it is "a" new piece, but somehow calling it “the” new piece gives it a certain focus and specificity, as if pieces weren’t all new at some point along the way. The new piece, as it were, is really a sketch right now, an opening effort. It has often been this way for me, when I am creating new works in general and bigger pieces in particular. When I first did “un/shielded,” which ultimately had 6 dancers, 2 actors and a cellist who played on stage, I started with the kernel of an idea, in the form of an image and some language (it was one of those text and movement pieces that at a certain point became ubiquitous). I had the opportunity to present some work in a showcase and so I took to the stage with 1 other dancer and 1 actor, offstage. And I asked another actor at the performance space to step in at the last minute because I wanted to hear how an additional offstage voice echoing the words would sound (it didn’t exactly work as such, but the only way I knew that was to try).

My idea for the new new piece is about this notion of “the other shoe.” What is that, anyway, the other shoe? Along with investigating the origins of the phrase and what people think of when they hear the phrase (what do you think? Please share your thoughts on this subject in the guestbook. Yes, you!), So far, I am finding the subject lends itself to strong visual images, what with shoes filled and unfilled, a waterfall (shoefall?) of shoes cascading as a backdrop, people stepping into various pairs, duets in which only one shoe is present for four feet, and who knows, maybe even a shoe falling. I am also quite drawn to shoelaces as a prop. Used as rope,as connectors, as interceptors, as dividers. As the owner of lots of sneakers, I have quite a deep appreciation for shoelaces.

Starting a new piece. I was going to take my time beginning to play with material when a very lovely offer came my way: Isabel Gotzkowsky and Friends is having its 10th anniversary benefit concert on Tuesday, December 2nd: http://www.isabelgo.org/calendar_current.html.
In addition to showing some excerpts of her recent choreography, Isabel has generously invited her current and past company members to show some work. A perfect setting to try out some of the new piece, this beginning of a process that will hopefully lead me to an evening length in time for a premiere at the Ailey Citigroup Theater in June (when Sasha Soreff Dance Theater will next have its full season.) At the benefit on Tuesday, we will be unveiling the first sketch of this new adventure. The sketch is called, “Megan and Janet, caught in a shoelace.” Surprisingly enough, it is about these dancers interacting with and bound by some shoelaces: picture two dancers inside a hula hoop except instead of a rigid circular hoop, think three red 45- inch long shoelaces tied together. As the dancers move in various directions, they are pulled and yanked by the movements of the other, courtesy of these shoelaces encircling them. I am not sure this makes so much sense on this screen, which is why you could come Tuesday to the Baryshnikov Arts Center and see what it is all about!

As it is Thanksgiving, gratitude is in order: first to the dancers, and to my creative partners, most notably and recently the wonderful composer Evan Wilson. I am also incredibly grateful to the many people who support Sasha Soreff Dance Theater through coming to see open rehearsals and performances and through contributing financially. Thanks is also in order to Chester College of new England in Chester, New Hampshire, which recently hosted the company for a performance of "If you can't get there from here. . . Stand Still" followed by a Q and A during their fall parents weekend, particularly Dean Laura Ives, Katie Orlando, and the very talented photographer, Jessica Eastman. Thanks also to dad for his help with the Chester tour. Not only was it wonderful to be there, but the questions and observations we received about the piece from student and parent alike was incredibly valuable. I spent a year on and inside this piece, and at the Q and A, I learned things I had never known about this work and what can be taken from it, including how audience members viewed the relationships between the dancers and that sense that, even in stillness, the performers were all still moving toward something. What a gift!

It is a Friday night in DUMBO. Outside, the rain is pouring and there is a slight fall chill in the air. Inside, my dancers and I are in the basement space, along with many other dancers – there are about 30 of us, moving around quietly as a dance festival unfolds above. We are preparing to go onstage at the DUMBO Dance Festival, a wonderful annual event created by White Wave Dance, housed in the John Ryan theater, down at East River water’s edge.

Dancers are always adapting. I am sure, really, that all artists are, especially performing artists who find themselves in different venues all the time. The DUMBO Dance Festival is a great event – its free to the public, and shows a tremendous range of contemporary dance –in the course of the weekend of performances, more than 50 companies get featured, with 5-7 pieces shown every hour on weekend evenings.

As with many showcases with multiple performers, there is a tight turn around time for the technical (tech) rehearsal – establishing the lights and sound cues for the space. The John Ryan Theater, like many spaces in NYC, has columns. The columns are downstage, close to the audience. Adaptations – staging the piece with more width than depth and of course, ensuring that the dancers don't find themselves knocking into columns. Space dimensions vary wildly – depth and width are always shifting depending on the venue, and it can really change the way the piece looks and how it is received. We were on a huge stage in Portland at a classic high school auditorium, and the time before had performed it in a Queens warehouse-turned studio space. In each space, we want to stage the piece so that it makes sense choreographically and from the point of view of the audience. And sometimes, we have to do that staging pretty fast (20- 30 minute tech rehearsals are pretty standard for showcase programs).

During the tech rehearsal, we have to make as lot of quick choices – where to move at what point, how to frame the piece with different site lines, columns included. Those choices continue into performance – how to adjust in space. In performance, there are always subtle timing variations – a moment gets sustained, partnering happens a little more quickly or slowly, smaller spaces means less time traversing the stage. One of the benefits of getting to do the same piece over and over is being able to trust that the spontaneous spacing and timing choices dancers make are congruent with the intent of the piece, not to mention what everyone else is doing onstage (not crashing into another dancer has a lot of immediate value).

Timing choices, spacing choices. There is also, importantly, how to handle the floor. First there is the question of whether the floor is sprung or not (is it designed to minimize impact or is it a concrete floor, meaning one would want to be careful when jumping.) Another defining characteristic is the amount of slide/glide available: is the floor slippery or sticky (or mercifully, somewhere in between?). Barefoot dancers have a noble history of blisters, splits, and callouses and all manner of foot bruises navigating various floors. In my case, it’s all about the sneakers.

When we went to our tech rehearsal before the festival, the wood floor had just been mopped. I have a bunch of different sneakers, all with slightly different soles (as part of my orthotics maintenance, the soles of all my sneakers are refurbished as a rocker sole is added to the basic sneaker, and there are a few different materials that get used for this).

Pair 1: wood Capezio jazz shoe soles on my standard New Balance black sneakers. Me: sliding all over the place as if on ice skates.
Pair 2: gray new balance sneakers, black rubber soles. Surprisingly slippery, too. No traction.
Pair 3: my standard black New Balance sneakers with yet another kind of rubber sole. More purchase! Less slipping! Problem solved.

Fast forward to Friday night. The rainy night. It is steamy inside the studio, with all the dancers, piece after piece, sweating on stage, and then like 100 people who had been graciously waiting outside in the rain for that particular hour’s program shuffling in. The dancers are all downstairs, finding little corners to warm up in and listening to the music of the pieces above. I had just a moment in between shows earlier in the evening to get on the stage and check out the floor in my sneakers. Totally sticky. The slipperiness of the tech rehearsal had been completely replaced by the stickiness of a very humid, packed dance studio.

Sticky. All my sneaker checks earlier in the week didn’t prepare me for this floor, and most of my stage experiences have involved managing slipperiness, not stickiness. A new performing adventure! It took all the force I could muster to do a turn and overcome that resistance. On the other hand, I had more freedom in stationary moments/balance points -- I KNEW I wasn’t going to be moving, without a lot of effort.

Dance is a concentrated experience of adapting, in rehearsal and on stage. Sticky floors, slippery floors. Columns and changing dimensions. Real time adjustments and shifts. Pretty much like life.

My first international gig – Canada! The company with which I was dancing (Isabel Gotzkowsky and Friends, a wonderful company) was going to Toronto. Awesome. That was August. August 2000. The thing was, I had started having this pain in my right foot the month before. It had taken several weeks to even realize that maybe I needed x-rays – it hadn’t occurred to me that there could be something going on with the bones in my feet, as opposed to muscles or other soft tissue. I had no memory of landing particularly hard or some specific traumatic moment. I just remember that one day, around the 4th of July, I was out walking and there was this sharp pain by the ball of my big toe. But I was supposed to go on tour! My first tour, and all of a sudden, I could barely walk.

The x-rays didn’t show much. Nor did the bone scan, which can often detect stress fractures. Too much swelling in my little foot. Given the information we had, and my Doctor’s blessing, or at least, non-intervention, I went to Canada. On crutches. On crutches at the airport with seven other dancers helping me around. Crutches to the dressing room, to backstage, where they were abandoned as I took to the stage, right foot taped up with padding for those glorious moments of performance; then back offstage, back to the crutches, feet plunged into buckets of ice. Cabs to the swimming pool while the other dancers wandered around Toronto. Feet are so vulnerable, I think. But then, when we have any injury, any pain, we are all vulnerable. . .

There was a lot of why me-ing, in those early years, when they couldn’t even ever really tell whether it was stress fractures or a particular (and somewhat unusual) bone structure. There was more why me-ing a few years later when I started experiencing that inordinate amount of pain on the left foot (MRIs confirmed the particular and somewhat unusual bone structure, and other congenital issues on my left foot as well). Crutches came and went several times, as did various visits to orthopedists and anatomists and physical therapists. Surgery was ruled out as a viable option, so we focused on minimizing impact. There was a phase of taping gauzy foot pads onto the bottom of my feet in rehearsals and at performance time. It turned out to be pretty unstable, all that foot tape wrapped around both feet – I had no purchase. I was sliding all over the Kitchen, the Theater at Riverside Church, Dance Space Center and lots of other NYC venues.

The last significant round of impact injuries to the left foot, December 2004, pretty much clarified that, for the foreseeable future, I would be the Dancer Who Wore Sneakers (not to mention wearer of very elaborate orthotics that look like a contour map of the wilderness, with mountain ranges and valleys upon which my feet rest).

Like many people, I have developed this close relationship with pain over the years. I have been learning, always learning, constantly relearning, to balance that great necessity of foot pain – SLOWING DOWN, stepping thoughtfully, stepping judiciously – while struggling not to give into the paralysis that foot pain can induce. Any kind of pain, for sure, but there is a primal pain, I think, and a fear, when one’s ability to move is threatened (this was never more clear to me than on September 11th and the days immediately following: hobbling around on crutches, I wondered what would happen to me if running became a life necessity).

There are those that believe that specific kinds of pain/injuries suggest a particular “lesson” – hip pain may mean trouble moving forward, shoulder pain, taking the world on your shoulders (I didn’t look these up right now, I am confessing, but they sound like something I have heard and moreover, they kind of make sense). I know a lot of people have found this to be a valuable approach to pain and pain management, even resolution.

Maybe every injury does have a particular kind of message, a particular nuance relevant to that person in that time. But take a step back (slowly, gingerly) and I am coming to understand that it is all the same essential message: we are none of us in control. Maybe pain comes about for physical reasons, maybe emotional, maybe it is some inexplicable combination. But being in pain is some pointed reminder that we don’t call all the shots. We don’t call most of them.

This is what we get to do (I will speak for myself here, this is what I get to do): find the best way to live and live that way, as a daily and fallible practice. Even with pain. Even with fear. Even with the knowledge that dancing barefoot is not really on the table, and hasn’t been for a bunch of years. Dancing in sneakers is. And for that, I am grateful beyond words.

Joy and pain. Sunshine and rain. At the risk of dating myself, I am remembering that Rob Base song from high school days. This entry is about joy and pain. The joy of performance and the pain of, well, pain.

I have been thinking a lot about pain in the last few weeks. I had stumbled upon a relatively unusual kind of pain for me – knee – and working with a genius neuromuscular facilitator we were really able to get me realigned and out of extreme knee pain. Of course, it is likely that my knee was trying to deal with my body's attempts to take the weight off the vulnerable parts of my foot (the big toe/2nd toe area). That compensation eventually put another joint into jeopardy. Anyway, I had been thinking about how scary unfamiliar pain is, when you don't know how long it will last or what it means, in contrast to familiar, chronic pain. But in the last 24 hours, I have been remembering that, really, nothing about “familiar” pain feels good.

We performed this weekend, and it was wonderful. Wonderful. So alive, that experience of being on stage, of committing fully to those precious moments of expression, immersion in total presentess. The actor Freddie Kareman always used to talk about that, the unique experience of aliveness in performance. He had such reverence, describing actors who wait all day to get on stage, to be the most alive they could be. He made all of us who had the privilege of studying with him long to experience those moments. I kept thinking about that, performing this weekend in Maine: all day was about the anticipation of performing, of getting to dive into that aliveness.

We stopped at the beach on the way out of town on Sunday—how could I bring dancers to Maine and not bring them to the beach? We couldn’t go on a performance day, too draining of energy, too drawing away of focus. So we went for a few hours before getting caught in many, many hours of traffic. And it was there, at the beach, that I overstepped. And in overstepping, I came back into the truth of my foot pain, a truth I have come into many, many times over the last 8 years: I don’t know I am crossing the line until I am on the other side. My brave little feet do whatever I ask and it is only later that the deep ache begins. It has been a while since my last real flare up, and of that I am grateful. But the pain is sharp and jagged in my left foot right now, and I am wishing I could take a few steps back.

People often ask, or suggest, that it is dance that somehow did this to me. I always feels concerned about that notion, and a little protective of dance – this is, alas, a confluence of several structural issues, notably thin fat pads on the soles of my feet, congenital, bound to happen across my life. And, importantly, it is rarely from rehearsing or performing that I have the intense pain. It is usually too much of something else. In this case, at the beach yesterday, a few passes from the towel to the water’s edge in my specially-modified flip flops proved too much. Not even barefoot, not even barefoot (I am virtually never barefoot, at the very least I use the specially-modified flip flops that are designed to minimize impact on most vulnerable parts of my feet).

It wasn’t just the beach, for sure: the accumulation of performances and a lot of intensity/stress in life generally added to the impact. Shifting my weight back onto the center of my foot to help my knee out (the body’s genius for compensating) absolutely played a role. Not to mention that my sneakers are wearing out and I am due for another set. But I can’t help but think, with some dismay, that it does seem those few extra steps not in sneakers on the beach was a few steps too much.

Joy: I am relishing the performances, savoring how it felt, to be on that beautiful big Portland High School auditorium stage. I got to dance with three fabulous dancers to a beautiful original score by Evan Wilson. I am celebrating that we got both a preview photo in the Portland Phoenix and a reference in the Portland Press Herald review about the successful integration of music and movement – great news, especially considering there were 20 (!) pieces on the program.

Pain: I am back with ice every evening. I am back with the night pain that has been, over the years, achingly familiar, and, it turns out, still more than a little scary. I am back to lock down mode, pulling the number of steps I can take per day down to the barest minimum to do what i need to do.

Moving forward: I am not able to end on that pain note, I don’t want to. I am remembering that I have been here before and come through the other side; I reach for faith that this too shall pass. One step (or choosing not to step right now, as the case may be), at a time.

When I first found out that Pam wouldn’t be able to go to Portland for the performance in mid-August, I was pretty bummed out. Aside from the fact that Pam and I started dancing together almost 20 years ago (!) at school, Pam has been integral to almost every piece I have made in the last few years, and was instrumental in Stand Still getting to where it was. I couldn’t imagine replacing her for this set of performances. On the other hand, I am grateful for opportunities to show the piece, and as they say, and I don’t mean this glibly, the show must go on.

As I began to consider who the fourth dancer in the quartet would be, I realized that replacing Pam wasn’t really the goal: it would be impossible to find someone who would replicate her extraordinary dancing and performance quality, so why make that the intent? Instead, I realized I wanted to find someone who was a beautiful mover in her own right, who knew how to execute given movement fully and with strong focus, and who could learn quickly. I have found all of that and much more in Megan Krauszer. I couldn’t be happier that she has joined us for the August performances, and for some dates to come in the fall.

What started out as a less than desirable situation – having to bring another dancer in to a preexisting piece - has actually become a surprisingly good opportunity to go deeper into the work. In particular, it has helped us to reconnect with the idea of the piece, especially since it has been a few weeks since we were in last in rehearsal. With Megan joining us in the last week, I’ve been able to articulate what impulses led to what choreographic choices over months of rehearsal. Her questions and approach to the movement have brought my attention to certain moments and given us the chance to define and redefine according to the intention of the piece and how it looks/wants to look.

The other thing going on in the last week or so is some new kind of pain in my left knee. It is always very disturbing to have pain/an injury, and sometimes, it seems unfair and unjust. I know I have been prone to this kind of thinking sometimes. Even more so since I am already so bound by my feet's susceptibility to injury: I devote a lot of attention to how much impact I ask of my feet on any given day. Sometimes I have this idea that I have already (and on an ongoing basis) paid my pain dues, so how could I possibly have more injuries?

It doesn’t take long for me to remember that the world doesn’t necessarily have such ideas of fairness, and I have certainly had enough anatomy to know that in fact, the opposite is usually true: an injury in one place can easily trigger compensatory patterns that ask a whole lot more of another, previously unaffected joint. You know the song ("The foot bone connected to the leg bone. . .") It’s all connected. So, in addition to bringing Megan in and making sure that she feels confident and that we all feel connected and move cohesively in our quartet, I am keeping track of my left knee. Were that this weren’t so. But it is. So I am officially acknowledging the frustration (and, really, some fear), and the longing to move freely, and meanwhile attending to my exercises and monitoring my knee joint/alignment as best I can.

Despite the knee situation, I am pretty excited to be bringing Stand Still to my hometown!

Some families we are born into, some we come to along the way. When Lynn Simonson, Laurie DeVito, Charley Wright, Michael Geiger and Danny Pepitone founded Dance Space Center nearly 1/4 of a century ago, they created a family that extended its embrace to anyone who wanted to come dance there. Jim Garvey is universally remembered as he was at the front desk, registering dancers for class: always with a smile, always with a genuine interest in who you were and how you were. He was also, incidentally, almost always in very short cut off shorts and barefoot, his mane of hair tied loosely at the nape of his neck. He welcomed dancers as they arrived, sent them back into the world with well wishes, and was as generous of spirit as any i have known.

Today was the day we all came together to remember Jim, who died on June 3rd.

It was also the day that Pam, Yuki, Janet and I were performing Stand Still at WAXworks, a commitment we made months ago. So I went to the memorial service for just a little while before heading out to Triskelion Arts in Williamsburg. During those precious few moments, I got to see people I hadn't seen in years -- people whose class I have taken, people who have taken my class, people who I danced alongside in studios and theaters, colleagues and friends. We went to celebrate Jim and to express our gratitude for our time with him.

I headed to Brooklyn somewhat remorsefully, wishing I could have spent more time sharing the stories and laughing and crying with this community, this family. But we got to the performance space, did our tech, and got ready to perform. Just before we went onstage, we had our moment together. In addition to wishing Pam a happy birthday (happy birthday Pam!) we paused to think about Jim, and to dedicate our performance that evening to him, to his spirit, to all that he has and does inspire.

It was our best performance yet.