'Flipped' / The Process - Or, what I've learned so far

Flipped rehearsal May 27th 2012

1. Choreographers talk too much.*

2. My body has changed much in the last ten years. Dancing every day from age 3 to 19, and then focusing on choreography rather than class from 20 - 30 - although continuing yoga / running / gym - created bigger changes in my body than I was aware of before starting this piece.

3. Regular workouts - even 'thorough' ones - do not train many of the muscles dancers use on a regular basis. Only dancing can do that.

4. Epsom salts are awesome, and necessary. And not just for painful muscles - but also to create space in the body, where newly learned material can start to take root.

5. I still have that tendency to want to 'get' everything right away and still need to learn patience.

6. It is humbling** to dance movements that I personally wouldn't choreograph, and, moreover, to embrace them.

7. It is a relief to let go of control, and also requires willpower and reminders to do so.

8. Some of these rehearsals feel like private dance lessons, and that is an incredibly nurturing thing.

9. I often work better when someone else is around. They don't even need to be working with me - just physically nearby.

10. Judging myself doesn't make my dancing better. It just upsets me and others around me.

11. I still look as stern ("like you want to kill someone!") when executing other people's movement material - as I did when I was seven. Matthew wrote to ''[be] engaged but not too severe in focus''. As did every Royal Academy of Dancing examiner who ever had the misfortune of being in the same room as that scowl.

-- Rachel 

* This is not necessarily pertinent to all the choreographers I worked with. I noticed it for myself - I, as a choreographer, while creating, talk too much. It took being outside that role to see it.
** I did not have this humility age twenty, which is why I didn't dance for others and instead took the choreographic route.

Thank you to everyone who has given their time and support to this piece.

Choreography: Hunt Parr, Erica Frankel, Krista Racho-Jansen and Matthew Westerby.

Mentoring: Savina Theodorou

"Flipped" will be shown at Movement Research Open Performance Series as a work-in-progress on

Wednesday May 30th at 8pm 

The Great Room, 138 South Oxford Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, New York. 

Free / donations welcome

Map of the area and nearby subways here.

New Solo

Hi everyone,

Well, India was amazing, and I'm back in New York now and working on a new piece. This one is quite a departure from the last 9 years or so! I've been choreographing and choreographing for almost a decade, and not doing very much actual performing. And for the last year or so my dancers kept saying things like 'ah, you should be in this part' / 'this is your solo, I don't think I should do it' / 'you should dance more' etc. (You can't get much clearer than that last one really.)

The gracious people at Movement Research gave me a performance date this spring as part of their Wednesday night Open Performance Series, so I figured this might be a good opportunity to listen to the dancers, dust off the leotard (read: get into shape) and step out.

The idea for 'Flipped' (working title): Most dance pieces have one choreographer and several dancers. In this case, I wanted to flip the convention, and invite several choreographers to individually set material on one dancer. I would also flip my familiar, safe and established role, and be the dancer rather than the choreographer.

The learning curve in this process has been steep so far, and incredibly rewarding. So far, I've had the pleasure of working with Hunt Parr, Krista Racho-Jansen, and Erica Frankel in the studio, and tomorrow I work with Matthew Westerby. I intend to write more about the process in upcoming posts. 

In the meantime, here's the date for your diary for the premiere of this work:

Wednesday May 30th 2012
8pm
Open Performance will be held in the “Great Room” at the Space located at 138 S. Oxford St. in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

- Rachel 
Twitter @expandance

expandance in India

Hi expandance friends, if any of you happen to be in Bangalore this Sundayn I'm teaching a workshop in the expandance technique. Here are the details - Rachel

https://www.facebook.com/pages/NaVaRaSathe-Joy-of-learning/163150289137?ref=ts

Photos from Rock Om in Boston

http://www.lizavoll.com/

Post-show round-up

Thank you to everyone who came to see our shows with Zoe Dance in Cambridge, MA at the weekend. It was wonderful to be able to travel as a company to Boston and to share a stage with another company, to get to know them, to learn, to exchange ideas and information. Like Callie Chapman, director of Zoe Dance, I firmly believe this kind of cross-cultural live performance not only enriches the cultural landscape of the local community, but also broadens the dancers horizons, enabling them to bring home to their communities new concepts, approaches, and energy. See some footage of our Zoe Dance / expandance improvisation and open rehearsal at Green Street studios here.

Rehearsal of the 'Phoenix' section in Oberon

Post-show

Snow, dancers, and dancer holiday lights in Cambridge

Thank you Trader Joes, Whole Foods, and Tommy O'Doyle's pub in Harvard Square for helping us feed the dancers while we were in Boston. 

With your help in our last IndieGoGo campaign, we were able to pay the dancers a small dividend to perform in Boston - not enough to cover our costs, exactly, but enough to take the sting out of leaving our day jobs for four days. We also paid our composer, our costume designer, and covered our props, travel and marketing expenses. However, as we didn't reach our fundraising goal, we still need to pay the venue and the photographer, which totals over $1,000. Please consider donating today - every donation helps and is tax-deductible. And no donation is too small. Thank you for clicking here and choosing 'expandance' from the drop-down menu, and donating tomorrow afternoon's coffee money to a good cause: ART! 

There's a Groupon deal!

Hi folks - 14 hours left on the Groupon deal - get half off tickets to our show this weekend in Cambridge, MA at Oberon. See the full length, 14 months in the making, experience that is ROCK OM, plus brand new dance from Wicklow, Ireland and new work from Boston's very own Zoe Dance.

Here it is!


http://www.groupon.com/deals/gl-zoe-dance

The week before...

 Callie Chapman at Zoe Dance, with whom we are presenting Rock Om next week, made this video of some of our rehearsal footage from this week. Check it out!


The Week Before... from Callie Chapman on Vimeo.


LEFT / Cnoic Chlaonta / Rock Om
Triple Bill - Boston / Ireland / New York City dance
Sunday January 22nd and Monday January 23rd
Oberon, 2 Arrow Street, just off Harvard Square, Cambridge MA
Tickets available here.
18+ / Full bar

Merry Everything!

2011 Round up!

Dear friends of expandance,

Whoa - 2011 has been a busy year! We've worked hard, expanded and grown. Thank you, you who supported us by coming to see shows, by 'liking' and sharing videos and photos we posted on social media, by your kind donations, by giving up your time to help us out with events, and by generally being the wonderfully supportive and loving people that you are. 

This year, we performed new works at:

Bushwick Starr, Brooklyn, NY as part of SITE Fest
I.F.O.N.L.Y. Festival, Birr, Co. Offaly
Backstage Theatre, Co. Longford as part of LD Dance Fest
Fusion Dance Platform, Waterford, as part of Imagine Arts Festival
The Church Bar, Dublin (completely improvised performance)Back Loft, Dublin as part of Mamuska 
Block T, Dublin as part of TransversalCourthouse Arts Centre, Tinahealy, Co. Wicklow as part of Bealtaine

We hosted a dance talk at Riverbank Arts Centre as part of Culture Night 2011.

We gained a fiscal sponsor in the US, meaning you can now make tax deductible donations to expandance at any time through our 501(c)3 Non-Profit umbrella, The Field.

We volunteered our time to help raise awareness about Dance/NYC's census, the results of which were published last week. 

We took part in NACHMO - National Choreography Month.

We produced 4 short films:

* International Dance Day video for UNESCO I.D.D., edited by Lauren Auricchio and shot in Dublin, New York and Wicklow
* 'Úll' by Laurie Schneider (currently in post-production) 
* A video showing our Over 60s group Ré Órga, generously supported by The George Bernard Shaw Theatre, performing new work in Carlow. 
* A short dance film, 'Black Monday', made in collaboration with our Riverbank Arts Centre teenage group and film maker Joe Cleere.

We auditioned in Ireland and NYC for new dancers, and gained some new and lovely people to work with - two of those dancers - Irish Independent dance artist Ailish Claffey, and new Rock Om cast member Matthew Cichon, will be performing with us and Zoe Dance in Boston in the new year. 

We also turned 5! Founding members Laurie Schneider, Rachel Wynne and Alicia Christofi-Walshe managed to be in the same country, in the same city, and in the same bar on the same day we founded expandance 5 years ago. It was a special evening, and had some of been less jet lagged it might have gone on later than it did. I can't quite believe all that we've created and accomplished in those five years, it's remarkable, and I'm so grateful to all of you for your continued interest and enthusiasm in our work. 



The National Dance Archive in Ireland (University of Limerick) has begun a collection of expandance studio and choreographic notes, sketches, promotional materials and reviews from the last five years, and we're excited to continue to share our work with them. As a company, we're mad about documenting our process, so we were honored when the N.D.A. asked if they could archive some of our materials.

Thank you to The Field, Wickow Arts Council, Dance Ireland, Culture Ireland and all our donors for supporting us through our IndieGoGo campaign this year. 


We look forward to meeting more of you in 2012 - we have some exciting things coming up including performances in Boston, New York and Ireland, and more opportunities to meet the dancers in person.


Here's to a fabulous New Year for everyone!


- Rachel, Alicia, Laurie, Krista & co.