CriticalDance Forum

For those who live in the Seattle/Olympia/Portland corrider, Seattle's LEAVING GROUND/DANCE (do-directed by CD moderator Dina McDermott) performs in concert (after a long hiatus)at the Wild Grace Dance and Yoga Space, during the Olympia Gallery Walk, Friday night, October 6 at 8pm. I can give further info on cost, address on a later post. LEAVING GROUND/DANCE has performed internationally and their work has been hailed as "compellingly performed" by Dance International, and also has been favorably reviewed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The company's specialty is combining props with human movement to create theatrical images which are personal, magical and highly kinetic. Check it out!!

DO give us more details trina. It sounds interesting and I wish I could be there. Is this a one-off or the start of a series of performances? What backgrounds do your dancers have?<P>We're eager for more info!

This will be a duet concert; only myself and my partner/co-artistic director marty Ponte performing. It will be a dance/music performance. We're doing three pieces:<P>- solo excerpt from "Crusader", a l996 piece (a three section work)about Joan of Arc. The solo section starts as I emerge from inside a huge hoop skirt.<P>- duet called "Stasis", an athletic duet concerning an attempt to establish and maintain physical/emotional balance in relation to another.<P>-permiere of a duet called "Ubud Changes", a dance solo with live music accompaniment. This duet combines traditional Balinese classical dance with contemporary Western dance. Ubud is a village in Bali (we visited there in l996 and studied Balinese dance there)which is the dance capital of Bali.<P>If anyone lives in the area and wants more performance details, let us know!!

I was particularly interested in your Bali/modern crossover piece trina. This style of work is becoming increasingly common in the UK with two Indian traditions, bharta natyam and kathak probably the most significant as both have high quality performers/choreographers involved.<P>I have to say that I have never come across your combination. Hope it goes really well. <BR>Further mentions as we approach the date are quite in order!<P>

IN the mid 80's, I worked in NYC with a woman named Islene Pinder, who directed a co. called the Balinese-American Dance Theatre. In the particular work I did with her, she was intereted in combining Balinese traditional dance (which she had studied and documented during her several trips to Bali) with modern dance. My current work "Ubud Changes" is influenced by this philosophy and my own studies of the dance in Bali in l996.It is quite challenging for someone to train in Balinese dance who has only done ballet and modern; which is all I had done up to that time. The body positions, head,eye and arm coordination are very tricky...and I had studied Indian dance with Indrani (teacher at Juilliard)so I had a little bit of that background...more later...stay tuned!!

Stuart, I don't want to give away too much here....I'm writing an article about all this, ,,,,so "stay tuned"..hopefully, someday , you can read an article about all this!