Sunday, August 14, 2011

August Update

Greetings from cold dreary Adelaide (well apart from today where the sun came out and I defrosted a little bit!). What am I doing in Adelaide?
Well, currently I'm working with Leigh Warren and Dancers for their season in the Oz Asia Festival of "Dreamscape". Learning Jiri Kylian's "Dreamtime" which has been a bit challenging as it's much more classical than the work I have done lately. This week ahead we have Elka coming over from NDT which should be quite an amazing experience. Possibly a little bit scary as I am performing the part in the piece which she once performed herself!
At the same time we are remounting "Maria De Buenos Aires" for the Brisbane Festival. I am quite enjoying revisiting the tango choreography as it feels a little less foreign this time - though I do miss being able to dance with my husband in the work. Chris Aubrey is doing a fabulous job as Zaimon's replacement in the work though so I am lucky.
I'm also teaching dance classes at Gravity Dance Studios and community class for Leigh Warren and Dancers.
Recently I found out that I have been successful with my application to do the Ausdance QLD Choreographic Laboratory in October/November this year so I'm excited about that!
In other news, Brisbane Dance Artists Hub (BDAH) has successfully initiated Pro Dance Classes Brisbane and professional level dance classes commence on Tuesday mornings and Thursday evenings this week - so happy to have been involved in getting these classes up and running and hoping that they can continue so Brisbane Independent Dancers have the opportunity to maintain their technique on a regular basis.
For now, I must get back to grant writing ... but I'll leave you with a little snippet of footage from "Inhabited" - my solo for EDC's "Solo - A Festival of Dance".

Monday, July 18, 2011

A bit of this ... a bit of that ...

Gosh, well it has been far too long since I last posted on my blog! 2011 has been an exciting year so far. I have enjoyed working on quite a few different dance projects and even did a short course in web design.
In April/May, I was commissioned by EDC to create and perform a solo for their season of "Solo - A Festival of Dance". It was a fantastic opportunity and a perfect little challenge to push myself that little bit further outside of my comfort zone. I was also fortunate to be able to collaborate with Ryadan Jeavons who created original music for me to dance my solo to.
In March this year I received a scholarship from SCOPE to do a short course in web design through Dynamic Web Training. It was so great to be creative in a different way and I discovered that I did in fact have many transferable skills from my dancing that were useful for web design. Now it's a matter of finding the time in between everything else that I do to be able to put my new skills into action!
This year I have also forged forward with Brisbane Dance Artists Hub (BDAH) ... initiating the first meeting in person for the group in May. The group is currently looking to set up regular ongoing professional level classes in Brisbane.
I also worked for Ausdance QLD helping to organise some of the Australian Dance Awards (being held in Brisbane this year!). This was a great experience from which I learned so much about the behind the scenes organisation of such a big event.
Currently I'm working with Leigh Warren and Dancers learning Jiri Kylian's "Dreamtime". It's challenging to learn an old NDT piece for many reasons - one of which is because it's very balletic and I haven't really done ballet in a very long time, the other is because everyday we watch beautiful NDT dancers make the movement look so easy when it's actually not! We perform this for the Oz Asia Festival in September in Adelaide. After this we remount "Maria De Buenos Aires" for the Brisbane Festival in mid September.
Amongst all of this I danced for electropop duo, Edge of Colour's new single "Tokyo" and have been doing lots of dance teaching around Brisbane.
Work with Zaimon Vilmanis and Ryadan Jeavons hasn't finished ... we are still looking to expand upon the developments of "A Likely Distrust" that we started through a Fresh Ground Residency supported by the Judith Wright Centre and Arts Queensland.
So what's next after LWD? Well, there's a few things in the pipeline, but as to be expected ... none of them are confirmed yet ... so anything could happen!