Help grow dance community: Cultivate!

Can you help make Cultivate happen? Check out the following link and see! 

Cultivate: Growing the Dance Community in Northern NH by Katherine Ferrier — Kickstarter

Dance films and performance at Stuyvesant Cove

Dancing in Public 

an outdoor evening of both live and filmed public performance

produced by Dance Films Association and presented by Solar One in Stuyvesant Cove Park’s eco-theater

September 7 at 7pm

Solar1 Green Energy, Arts and Education Center

Stuyvesant Cove Park

23rd Street and FDR Drive, Manhattan

Click here for map and directions.

Free. Donations accepted.

As a part of the Solar One Dance Program, Dancing in Public will begin with a reception featuring live performance created by Rebecca Brooks, with dancers Ursula Eagly and Emily Wexler.  The evening will progress with dynamic screenings of several dance film shorts curated by Jennifer Edwards, Content Creator/Founder of JenEd Productions, and Christy Park, Executive Director of Dance Films Association.  The pieces speak to various interpretations of dance and public space. Moving ‘bodies’ range from construction equipment to school children, and dancing is carried out in spaces ranging from deserts to grocery stores to Grand Central Station. Works by OK GO, JenEd Productions, David Hinton, and Anthony Atanasio – allow something for everyone yet promises to effortlessly carry viewers on a journey through shifting landscapes and genres.  A Q&A with the choreographer and filmmakers will follow the screening.

NYCB revises controversial ticket policy

City Ballet Offers New Discount Program
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, August 10, 2011

Dancers to commemorate 9/11

The Table of Silence Project
conceived by choreographer Jacqulyn Buglisi and Italian artist Rosella Vasta

The Table of Silence Project represents the common threads of humanity which unite all mankind into a single force with common goals and aspirations, regardless of race, culture or religion. Through this event we wish to achieve the dual purpose of celebrating and honoring peace through listening - a united moment of silence - a call for Peace in our world from NYC's community of artists. -- Jacqulyn Buglisi

Sunday September 11, 8:20 AM, ending at 8:46 AM
Josie Robertson Plaza, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Complete information here

Sarah Skaggs Dance
9/11 Dance -- A Roving Memorial
 
An 11-minute meditative dance for large groups of dancers, performed simultaneously on September 11 from Noon to 3pm at multiple locations:

• Three New York City parks (Union Square, Washington Square and Battery Park)
• Washington, DC in the atrium of the National Museum of Women in the Arts and as part of the Arts on Foot Festival
• Shanksville, PA at Memorial Park

In shaping the work, Skaggs was driven by such questions as: What is the function of dance post-9/11? What is the role of the body in an anxious and fearful climate? And can multiple bodies moving slowly in space create a shift in public consciousness?

The project will be broadcast on YouTube following the events. Visit Sarah Skaggs Dance.

Women I admire

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made
--Robert Browning ("Rabbi Ben Ezra")

So the legendary Diana Nyad, now 61, didn't make it all the way from Havana to Key West, stymied by an injury and her first-ever attack of asthma (Diana Nyad Puts Early End to Cuba-to-Florida Swim--Don Van Natta, Jr., The New York Times, August 9, 2011). She's still an exemplar of courage and human potential, of staying vital and claiming your power as you embark upon what Jane Fonda calls the Third Act. Since I'm heading in that direction--the Third Act not, unfortunately, Key West--I went to 92Y last evening to find out what Fonda, the mega-accomplished 73-year-old glamour-puss-with-moxie, might have to share.

Turns out she had a lot to share in what she called her "virgin speech" about her book, Prime Time: Love, health, sex, fitness, friendship, spirit--making the most of all of your life, just out from Random House. Baby-boomers like Fonda are "pioneers in this new landscape of aging," she said. "There's no roadmap." So, she created one.

Jane Fonda

"When you're inside oldness instead of looking at it from the outside, it's not bad at all," she said from the vantage point of her own aging as well as copious research and interviews with experts and the aged. In one treasured moment, a 104-year-old guy quipped to her, "When I was born, the Dead Sea was only sick!"

While go-go American society tends to think of aging as a process of decline, Fonda prefers the metaphor of an ascending staircase, "where our souls and our minds can be evolving upward." Because this is Jane Fonda, you'll find lots in her book about physical fitness and healthy eating and the joy of sex--"Doing the research was really fun!"--but what impressed me most about her talk and Q&A was the breadth and depth of her insight into human vulnerability and emotional well-being. Her project, now, is happiness and, like me, she's a big sharer. If she's happy, like the old song would have it, she wants you to be happy, too.

Hindsight works to the benefit of people over 50.

"We've survived things," says Fonda, remembering youth as, typically, a time of stress and hypervigilance. "We learn that this too shall pass, and we see commonalities more than differences. There is compassionate detachment."

Aside from being gorgeous, charming and very funny, at 73, Fonda really does seem to have evolved a self, one eager for reality and honesty. No longer the no-there-there "chameleon" her daughter once slyly called her, she took time to deeply examine her relationships--from her famous dad to her famous ex, Ted Turner, still a dear friend--to find out how to no longer be that woman who would dissolve and disappear into someone else's life.

"Intimacy becomes easier when you get older," she said, after a necessary period of reviewing and reinterpreting your life when you can "bring your whole self to the table, not just the part that you think is perfect."

Fonda loves the word generativity, defined by Merriam-Webster thus:

a concern for people besides self and family that usually develops during middle age; especially: a need to nurture and guide younger people and contribute to the next generation—used in the psychology of Erik Erikson

and she talks about how Katherine Hepburn took her under her wing and mentored her during the filming of On Golden Pond. Passing on wisdom and tools--that's what Fonda chooses to do now, as she glories in her Third Act, and it's a role I choose to emulate.

Besides, you gotta love this woman. She teaches that to keep our brains healthy, to capitalize on their natural plasticity, we must keep learning new things. And what does she want to learn now?

"I saw Anything Goes last night. So now I'm going to learn tap dancing!"

About Prime Time

Prime Time on Amazon.com

Click here for more 92Y programs and events.

Arts advocates struggling, too

Alliance for the Arts, WNET, Municipal Art Society in Talks
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, August 8, 2011

Make your E-Move!

Choreographers, Harlem Stage's E-Moves 13 wants you. Apply now!

E-Moves is an annual choreographic showcase representing a broad spectrum of choreographers of color making dance within a wide range of contemporary idioms (from modern dance to contemporary ballet to hip-hop to dance/theater). It seeks to bridge a gap in the existing dance world by offering a venue for choreographers of color to present work, create a greater awareness and appreciation of dance as an art form, and provide support for traditional and innovative contributions to the dance world.

Click here and scroll down to Artist Opportunities for information, including application guidelines and addressee and to download an application.

Deadline for submissions

Thursday, August 11