See it now: Movement Research at Judson Church

Catch up with Movement Research performances at Judson Memorial Church by visiting Critical Correspondence.

Choreographer Maurice Béjart Dies

"Just one month before his swan song Around the World in Eighty Days was set to premiere, a spokesperson for Béjart Ballet Lausanne announced that Maurice Béjart died in a Lausanne hospital Thursday." -- Deutsche Welle, 11/22/2007

Read the story here.

Update:

The New York Times reports today that the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's upcoming season, starting November 28, will open with a tribute to Béjart and the company premiere of Firebird (1970), the first complete Béjart ballet to be staged by an American dance company.

2008 iLAB residency program announced

iLAND–interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance has announced its 2008 iLAB residency program to be held May-September 2008 with the possibility of a renewable residency the following year.

An information seminar wil be held on December 11, 2007 at Solar One at Stuyvesant Cove in Manhattan, 6:30–8:30pm. For directions to Stuyvesant Cove and Solar One, click here. The seminar will facilitate contact between movement-based artists and scientists and environmentalists. There will be the opportunity to discuss ideas for proposals and find potential collaborators. RSVP by December 8: Click here.

For Application Guidelines and the Request for Proposals, click here.

iLAB is a collaborative residency program between movement based artists and scientists, environmentalists, urban designers/landscape architects, architects and others that integrate creative practice within the different fields/disciplines through an engagement with the ecology of New York City.

The goals of iLAB are:

1) to invigorate and re-imagine relationships between the public and the urban environment through kinetic experience

2) to engage artists and practitioners across the disciplines of dance, art and the ecology of physical interrelationships such that we create and investigate innovative approaches to science, infrastructure, urbanisms and architecture within a performative context.

3) to support the development of process in engagement over product such that process is itself a product for artistic and public action.

For more information, click here.

I brake for cats!

Okay, so this is so not about dance, but I need my cute cat video fix every now and then, and I'm sure you do, too! Enjoy!

clipped from www.youtube.com

Help for former dancer Lisa LeAnn Dalton requested

Thyrsa Da Rosa Hartel, wife of Austin Hartel of the Hartel Dance Group (Oklahoma), has sent us the following notice:

Lisa LeAnn Dalton needs your help right now.

She was one of the most powerful and engaging dancers on stage, dancing with passion, precision, dedication, power and beauty for over 20 years. She has recently suffered and catastrophic injury and can use your help, love prayers and support at this time.

As many of you know, Lisa Dalton is one if the strongest women that was ever born. She was an amazing dancer, dancing for Martha Clarke, Mark Dendy "Dendydance", Pilobolus, Elizabeth Streb, Richard Move, Julie Taymor, and had her own company with Austin Hartel for years creating and dancing the most beautiful dances, as well as co-producing the Lisa LeAnn & Terry Dean put on a DANCESHOW series in NYC for years. Well, she retired and went back to Texas to be close to her family and work with horses. She was National Rookie of the Year in 2003 for Bareback Bronc Riding, and kept getting better and better at it, winning competition after competition.

On October 13th, Lisa broke her neck in a riding accident in Denver, CO. She was in the hospital in Denver for the first week. She was paralyzed from the neck down for most of the days in Denver, but slowly started to regain some minimal movement of her arms from the shoulder. After that week she was transfered to the Baylor Rehab Facility in Dallas. She is improving a little every day but this is going to take a lot of patience a energy. She is able to shuffle her feet with the use of a walker, but really can not use the right side of her body
at this time. Her right leg and hand are not responding much and the coordination is very off.

Please continue: here.

How deep is your aerobics?

I couldn't resist posting this announcement from the irrepressible Miguel Gutierrez. I have absolutely no idea what Miguel has in mind, but you've got to see this!

*****************************************************************

YES PEOPLE

THE RUMORS YOU HAVE HEARD ARE TRUE

DEEP AEROBICS IS MAKING ITS SWEATY ASS WAY TO NEW YORK FINALLY
THIS IS FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS IT. GRANDMOTHERS, PASTRY CHEFS, JANITORS, GADABOUTS, EX-CONS, OFFICE SLAVES, DANSEURS, ITINERANTS, EX-PATS, UNDOCUMENTED, BRUNCHERS, KRUMPERS, GURUS, DEVOTEES, ET. AL.....

HOW DEEP IS YOUR BOUNCE???

DEEP (Death Electric Emo Protest) AEROBICS
led by Miguel Gutierrez

SUNDAY DECEMBER 2ND, 3PM
P.S. 122 — FIRST AVENUE AT EAST NINTH STREET

5 BUX... TO TAKE THE CLASS YOU MUST BE IN COSTUME. INTERPRET THIS HOWEVER YOU WANT.

CLASS IS ABOUT AN HOUR BUT WE MIGHT DO A “PRE” AEROBICS WARM UP AND A “POST” AEROBICS KAFFEEKLATCH

PRESENTED AS PART OF THE MOVEMENT RESEARCH FESTIVAL

what is DEEP AEROBICS?

DEATH ELECTRIC EMO PROTEST AEROBICS AKA DEEP AEROBICS, is a new workout form being invented, disseminated, and, eventually, one hopes, no longer needed by Miguel Gutierrez. It is for ANYONE who has ever had the interest in combining the joie de vivre that is the vigorous bouncing of one’s anatomical/spiritual/energetic molecules with the existential absurdity that is living in a world/country/economic system of injustice, war-mongering and cultural ineptitude. Oh wait, that’s you! Come in costume. Taste the sweat.

Bill T. Jones continues our theme...

On November 20, 22 and 24, Bill T. Jones will present Walking the Line, a world premiere, at the Louvre in Paris. Commissioned by the Louvre as part of its newly created Frontières program, which this year is curated by the German painter Anselm Kiefer, Jones will be accompanied by the Tibetan singer Yungchen Lhamo and the French percussionist Florent Jodelet.

Walking the Line, a solo, was inspired by Jones’s desire as an African-American modern dance choreographer to be free to create without restraint, to take risks and criss-cross boundaries at will, and his desire to be accepted into the canon of Western art. The dance will take place in one of the most well-known, spectacular spaces in the Louvre: the long corridor between Michelangelo’s The Slaves and la Victoire de Samothrace (Winged Victory). The audience will be seated on the steps.

On November 23, Jones will speak in a public discussion with former Le Monde dance critic Dominique Frétard, at the Auditorium du Louvre.