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The 2009 U.S. Figure Skating Competition takes place in Cleveland this week. This is THE premier national skating event.

 

 

                                                                           photo: Stephanie Berger for The New York Times

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I made a comment at the end of a long discussion on the role of critic to choreographer and audience at Downtown Dancer, a blog in the holler of Manhattan's dance mecca. I add it here as a way to keep track (personally) and to share my thoughts on dance with the NEO dance interested community.

I wrote this review of Joe Goode Performance Group when they visited Cleveland in 2007. It was published in Coolcleveland. Here it is gathered with my other dance musings to add to the file.

More great dance like this in NEO, please.

These are articles on dance in our NEO region and beyond.

These are some interesting dance videos from around the world for our viewing pleasure.

A booty call from my friend Colleen

Greetings fellow movers and shakers,

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If you're feeling cold, here's a little video from Irven Lewis to start your blood flowing: click here to Ignite

The October 30, 2008 Sun Press lead cover story article (strangely... not on-line) was: "New Uses For Coventry? Music School Settlement, day care, and charter school send letters of interest". This reported, "The Intergenerational School's proposal also listed several partners: Richard Fleischman Architects, of Cleveland, Star Neighborhood Development, of East Cleveland, Strategic Resource Consultants, of Cleveland Heights, and City Fresh Cafeteria, Fresh Stop and Market, of Cleveland". "Fleischman would serve as design architect, while Star Neighborhood Development and Strategic Resource Consultants would likely be development partners...". "That proposal would also include a 1.5 acre "Urban Farm"...". I submitted the proposal, a public document, highlighted below and attached as a PDF, and can say the Sun Press report is largely correct, but the story is far from complete, and far more exciting than the Sun brings to light.

Vernon and Irene Castle popularized ballroom dancing in the early 20th Century - those were high times.

From the definitive text on the subject of the Dance Marthons of the 1920 and 30s, Carol Martin

Noémie Lafrance launches a collaboration with Frank Gehry's buildings at Bard College - Annanadale on Hudson.

Image from Varone's Dense Terrain

Dance that will engage the visual arts community and the new music community.

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There is someone we have not had the pleasure of seeing here in NEO, but her work has been seen on film here, and with the spring upon us, I happened on these excerpts...

Grosse Fuge excerpt from Kinok

Beethoven's  Grosse Fugue  will never be the same for me after I saw this entire work perfomed live at Mershon Auditorium back in the 1990s.

This woman gets the architecture of music and dance. Her dancers get it, too. The stage at Mershon was raked. This is an old theatrical architecture. Now audience's sit in a raked auditorium rather than having the dancers and actors work on a slanted surface. This, by the way, is the explanation for upstage and downstage - they literally were up and down.  So in this bit in the film, when you see the dancers roll downstage, they were literaly rolling downstage toward the audience.

Rosas: choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker

more work by de Keersmaeker

Amy Miller and Damien Highfield foolin' around

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Article 19 just sent me a wallop of good dance video. Thanks Neil!

Let's begin here with Hofesh Schecter

Brenda Angiel Aerial Dance from Buenos Aires.

From Article 19 and Neil Nisbet on camera: The Self and Bitter Ripples

The work: clips from 'The Self' by Fin Walker, a duet performed by Kajza Ekberg (pictured above) and Phil Sanger. 'Bitter Ripples' choreographed by Hofesh Shechter and performed by the whole company

Read about it here.

Sense 8 is another beautiful film by Katrina McPherson and Simon Fildes.

If you are interested in Contact Improvisation, send me an email via realneo, and I will help you contact (excuse the pun) the folks in Northeast Ohio who do this every Sunday in University Circle.

I've wanted to be a professional skater for the longest time.

Too much violence in the standard hockey and too many jumps in figure skating.

So my consulation has been to clown about the city on skates. As people ask about why I busy myself with picking up trash while skating I develope new spectators for Karmic Hockey. I make it semi-professional by picking up aluminum cans. The greatest concentration of cans is a Brown's Tailgating Party. With all the snow i believe I turn in the skates for a Santa suit.