Archive Page 2
dancing with philip
I made this video last week. It contains excerpts of a simple improv with music by Philip Glass overlayed. – Betsy
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Tags: Betsy, improv, technology, video
Rehearsal Footage
This is a brief clip of OSU dancer Kristen Jeppsen rehearsing my work-in-progress. The piece is a quartet for women and is based on memory. Music by Michael Wall. – Betsy
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Tags: Michael Wall, process, rehearsal, video
Yesterday, Ani and I visited two New York community centers to talk about bringing Propel-her’s “Group Solo Project (GSP)” to their constituents. GSP is Propel-her’s premiere arts-education, outreach progam. The idea behind the workshop is to enable participants to connect with dance as an art form and as a tool for self-expression, creative decision-making, and peer communication. The overarching goal of the workshop is to promote collaboration instead of competition by exposing participants to Propel-her’s own collaborative model.
Jackie Rousseau and Antonio Caprellan of Hudson Guild Community Works along with Adia Wilson and Basyah Prabhu at Harlem Children Zone’s TRUCE Arts & Media were eager to partner with Propel-her in bringing GSP to their young girls’ groups.
Currently, Ani, Amy, Maggie and I are in Stage 2 of planning GSP. Stage 1 involved each of us developing a choreographic solo based on a female issue of personal importance. Now that the solos are complete, the four of us have started coming together in collaborative rehearsals to create a brief group dance comprised of material from each of our solos. This dance will be performed at GSP workshops to demonstrate the ability to achieve a shared goal through compromise, communication and collaboration. Our collaborative rehearsals will continue through January 2009 and we will also use the time together to further develop our goals and methodology for teaching/implementing the workshops.
Joe Del Senno, a New York City freelance videographer, is graciously videoing our rehearsals and will eventually provide Propel-her with a concise, edited video that reveals our collaborative process and Group Solo Project goals. We will post the video as soon as its available and we hope to use it to reach out to other community centers, schools, camps and youth groups in the future. Further information about GSP can be found on www.propelherdance.com by clicking on the News & Press link.
We are so excited about this endeavor. More than anything, we were inspired by the enthusiasm of our prospective partners and we cannot wait to get started.
Cara Liguori, co-founder, Propel-her Dance Collective
Filed under: The Group Solo Project | Leave a Comment
Tags: Cara, collaborative, community, education, girls, Group Solo Project, Joe, outreach, workshop
This winter, Propel-her choreographers will embark on a new exploration in choreographic process, extending our use of the collaborative model into the artistic realm. Propel-her members will work in tandem to create two new works, to be debuted in May 2009. One of these works will be a long-distance collaboration with Propel-her choreographer Betsy Miller, who is currently in the graduate program at Ohio State University. Here’s what Betsy has to say about the potential for long-distance collaborations:
“One of the great things about making work now is the plethora of technology available to us. Technological innovation allows not only for more possibility in mixed-media presentation, (i.e. video projection during a live dance piece) but also helps artists who may be separated geographically come together in a creative medium. Possibilities exist for video-conferencing between artists, ‘virtual rehearsals,’ with a choreographer in one place intereacting with dancers in another location, and even the real-time presentation of an off-site performance through streaming video. Basically, the limits of our imaginations our the only limits.”
Check back frequently to see where collaboration and technology intersect in the making of our new works.
Photos: Amelia Montgomery
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Tags: collaboration, process, technology
The spectrum of emerging art
Exactly what constitutes “emerging art” is a hotly contested subject in the world of dance as well as other artistic endeavor. In May 2009, Propel-her Dance Collective will present an evening of new choreography by female choreographers who represent three definitions of emerging artist. Through the range of artists presented, Propel-her aims to engage the dance-going public in a dialogue about the concept of “emerging art,” to offer creative opportunities to females working in the field and to further its efforts in approaching dance through an innovative collaborative model.
The project will consist of three components:
The Collective will commission a new work by Lisa Race, a mid-career artist best known for her work with the David Dorfman Dance Company and Race Dance. Four Collective members will work with Race to create the new piece while in residency at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut in January 2009.
The Collective will also produce a short work by a young female choreographer. She will be chosen through an open application process and will receive full publicity and production at no cost. We will produce a promising artist with no history of being presented, so as to provide a much-needed stepping-stone for further opportunities for that artist and to introduce audiences to one of the fresh faces of our field.
The third and principal component of the show will consist of two pieces choreographed by Propel-her Dance Collective members. For the first time, the Collective will use its collaborative model as a basis for creation of the works. Although Collective members have a shared lineage in training, their creative works represent the range of aesthetics present in today’s modern dance culture: from introspection to physicality, from classicism to abstraction, and from subtlety to spectacle. Our aim in this process is to explore decentralized aesthetics in the creative product. You can read more about our working process in our next post!
Filed under: The Balancing Act | 1 Comment
Tags: aesthetic, collaboration, collaborative, emerge, emerging, support
Welcome!
Welcome to Propel-her Dance Collective’s blog! Here you can find out more about our current projects, read about our creative process, and see photos and video of rehearsals and events. Comments? Questions? Please participate! We want to hear from you. More info is always available at our website, www.propelherdance.com.
photos: Morrigan McCarthy
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Tags: Amy, Ani, Betsy, Cara, Maggie, welcome
