Well, I guess that makes it official

From my inbox:

Greetings,
We are forming an Historic Dance Troupe for the Ohio Village events!! OHS Volunteer Genevieve is conducting these workshops for us with the premiere performance at All Hallows Eve on Oct.16 & 23. The main emphasis will be on mid 19th century dances, but will eventually expand to other time periods. We want to use this troupe at all our major events. The thinking behind the formation of this troupe is another way to draw our visitors into the village experience. So it is more than just demonstrating to the public - you will learn the dances but you will also learn how to have our visitors accompany you in the dance. The classes will be held on 9/2, 9/16, 9/30 and 10/14 from 6-8 pm. (The first 3 sessions will be held in the Museum, the last in the Village Town Hall). If you are interested in joining you must commit to all four training sessions.

We are also in search of folks with musical instrument background to accompany the dance troupe and to play at our events.

Please let me know if you are interested in either of the above mentioned opportunities. It will add a great new dimension to our programs!

Best regards,
Susan

And with that...it is finally happening and real. I'm nervous and such, but hopefully people will enjoy it. I've become a much better teacher than when I first started, thankfully. Its always very daunting starting from scratch though, no matter where it is. Luckily, there are a few volunteers who already have dance knowledge - I am so grateful for them!

Wish me luck, and if you're in Columbus, come on by!

Completely fantastic video to share

This morning, I was pleased to receive an email with one of the best dance instruction videos I've ever seen attached to it. The dance in question - The Black Nag - is one that is found in the earliest versions of Playford's The English Dancing Master, and it also happens to be one of my favorite dances to both teach and do. Take a look!



What I actually love the most about this video is the perspective. One of the most beautiful parts of English Country Dance is the patterns that they trace on the ground while you are dancing. When I first learned this style of dance, the floor patterns never occurred to me at all. Which, honestly, is a little bit odd. I had been marching in the band in halftime shows for many years by that point, and was very aware of how everyone worked together to create a picture that was only truly visible from the bleachers. I even remember thinking about line maintenance and dressing right and left appropriately, but the overarching pattern never entered my mind. Well, not yet.

In 1995, I was co-dance captain for the very first year of Cavalier Dayes of Texas. That year, I was a lady of the court (which was much less taxing then my next role there, but that's a story for another day) and somehow ended up doing the bulk of the dance instruction. To be fair, when I began teaching, I wasn't particularly good at it yet, but we had a good time out on the tennis courts at my apartment complex running the Nonesuch over and over again.

That year, we were performing for four days at Waterloo Park in Austin, Texas. For a variety of reasons, I absolutely adored that site. One of my favorite parts of the park was the huge tree that the concession area was built around. The way the park is situated, the tree was at the bottom of a small cliff, and the pub was located at the base of the tree on the bottom level. From the top side of the cliff, you could walk out on top of the pub and look over the grounds. We took our breaks up top there, and it was always very enjoyable to sit for a moment and overlook the festival grounds.

Primarily because of the flat terrain, we had chosen the area in front of the pub to do evening dance. For some reason, which is now lost to time, I had to step out of evening dance one day to run up to the porch. I had been rushing to get back down in time to at least Nonesuch, but sadly I was too slow to make it for the beginning. As I was digging through my baskets, I chanced to look over the railing at my dancers below me on the ground.

It was like a whole new world opened up. I'd never even considered what the dance looked like from above! I stood there the entire time, watching the lines form and reform, the heys circle around, all the slipping as they meshed the sets together. Suddenly all the circles and squares in the dance manuals made sense. There was a system - a pattern - in here that I suddenly recognized. It was the largest, clearest a-ha moment I have ever had in dance, and it remains one of my most cherished memories. Even as I write this, I can see them dancing in my mind, and it never fails to bring a huge smile to my face.

All's Well that Ends Well...In New York!

I am so stupid excited right now!

Last week during the snowpocalypse, my friend Reesa and I were both trapped inside for a while. She is living in New York City, and I'm of course here in Ohio. Both being from warmer climates, neither of us is dealing with all the snow in quite a sanguine manner as others are. Meaning: we're cold and cranky. We started chatting on AIM about the cold, the lack of food in the house, and how much we missed the blazing hot Texas summers (ahh....105 degrees and 99% humidity...you never seemed so wonderful...), and eventually ended up talking about what the heck we were doing all the way up here in the cold.

Reesa has been working with a really great company in New York called Bare Shakespeare. As she put it, they are working to strip away all the layers that tends to build up around a production of Shakespeare's plays and instead focus on the actual words he's using. Her thought, and it seems to be very successful, is that if the actors truly understand and feel what Shakespeare wrote, the play becomes more real, more visceral and more approachable by both the actors and the audience. From the reviews I've read, they're doing great!

Anyway, during the conversation, it came up that they were going to be tackling "All's Well that Ends Well" next - and then things got interesting fast. Would I like to come to New York and teach a dance workshop for their performance? Would I ever!

So now I'm knee-deep in the play, doing research and altering some period (and not so period) dances for their stage. As added fun, we're going to be searching out more modern music for them to dance to - keeping the period steps. We do this all the time for fun and for practice, and while it seems silly, it is actually a great way to teach, and has a surprisingly strong visual impact. Dance is dance; the movements tell a story, and it doesn't always matter what voice one uses to tell it if the end product elicits the emotions the director wants.

End of March! New York City! So excited!