modern dance monday with kt niehoff

Lingo Productions 
     The project of KT Niehoff.  It is the container for her creative works in all forms: performance, commissions, writing, film, teaching and research.  Lingo expands and contracts in numbers depending on the demands of the work, yet is centered around a reoccurring cast of characters who have been instrumental in the creation of Lingo's vision.
     In the last three years (2009-present), these bravehearts, lunatics, magicians, actors and yes, dancers, include: Bianca Cabrera, Shaun Kardinal, Aiko Kinoshita, Jody Kuehner, Ricki Mason, Michael Rioux, Kelly Sullivan, Ivory Smith, Aaron Swartzman, Evan Ritter, Scott Colburn, Markeith Wiley, Ben Delacreme, Joanne Whitzkowski, Alex Martin and others.
     Lingo Productions has been presented internationally in Canada (Dancing on the Edge Festival, Vancouver BC), Japan (Alti Buyoh festival, Kyoto / Tori Hall, Osaka), Ecuador (Alas de la Danza, Quito - with support from Arts International), Germany (as one of four companies chosen to represent the U.S. at the 2004 Tanzmesse, Düsseldorf) and Cuba (Cuidad en Movimento, Havana). Nationally, the company has been presented by venues including On the Boards, Seattle, The Joyce SoHo, NYC, SUSHI, San Diego, Alverno Presents, Milwaukee, Jacob's Pillow Inside/Out Festival, The Southern Theater, Minneapolis (through an NEA funded touring initiative Niehoff created called SCUBA), The Oregon Britt Festival and Vanderbilt University, Nashville, as well as many colleges and universities throughout the U.S.
      Lingo's artistic integrity has been recognized by such institutions as The National Endowment for the Arts, The National Dance Project, The National Performance Network, Meet the Composer, Seattle, Washington and King County Arts Commissions, Arts International, The Bossak/Heilbron Foundation and the Jack Straw Foundation.

     Just as I found this womyn.. there was a moment of clarity in the future for her work.
    

     The finale of Lingo Productions has happened, April 2013.  A step that Niehoff says has been a long time coming, this entails “the simple act of disbanding the company itself.  And all that goes along with the assumption, and the responsibility that a company model requires.”  In no way, however, is this a finale for Niehoff’s art-making ambitions.  Almost running parallel to her theories on movement, it seems that Niehoff’s thoughts on art are experiencing an “unhinging,” and a delving further into a new branch of creativity.  Collision Theory and her other works on a variety of platforms have given Niehoff a new kind of fulfillment, and she plans to continue experimenting even further in that direction.  “My sensibility, or my ideas of what an active art is, has really started to change and shift over the last six years, and its gotten pretty abstract,” she says.

     Niehoff’s presence as a dance maker and teacher in the community will be mutually missed. “I love the dance community here so much.” she says. “But I want to develop a new relationship with the art world and also the dance world here. I want to mentor and be present and somehow be in it, but I need to do it in a different way now.” If anyone is capable of doing things a different way, surely Niehoff is.
excerpt written by Mariko Nagashima for Seattle Dances

modern dance monday with sidi larbi cherkaoui

Valtari

Valtari

Apocrifu

Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui in Zero Degrees

Rein

Rein

The found images above are a tiny selection from various works of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.  After delving into the facts circling a background of this Moroccan Flemish choreographer, there appears to be no stopping this incredibly endearing hearth of body movement.  The production site is swarming with magik unleashed on our universe in performance.  

Faun

Puz/zle

Puz/zle

An informative biography from the debut of his choreography and works throughout the continuing years, plus some media interviews, they all offer a peek into the person behind the work.  The work is extraordinary, bodies as liquid and seamless as our dreamworlds.  He has connected the invisible cord between cultures with performance, shined a moon on gender integrity, and sweeping the cobwebs out of our past.. all for the sake of evolution into our next steps.

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Kazutomi Kozuki

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui by Koenbroos

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui by Damian Siqueiros

body movement tuesday :: denishawn school of dance

Denishawn School of Dance
The Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, founded in 1915 by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn in Los Angeles, California, helped many perfect their dancing talents.  Some of the school's more notable pupils include Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman and silent film star Louise Brooks.  The school was especially renowned for its influence on ballet and experimental modern dance.  In time, Denishawn teachings reached another school location, as well, Studio 61 at the Carnegie Hall Studios. Because St. Denis and Shawn believed that all dance techniques were valid and instructive, the school offered classes in Oriental, Spanish, and primitive dance; the fundamentals of ballet; their own innovative techniques; and, later, the modern dance techniques that had been developed in Europe by Rudolf Laban.

"The art of dance is too big to be encompassed by any one system.  On the contrary, the dance includes all systems or schools of dance.  Every way that any human being of any race or nationality, at any period of human history, has moved rhythmically to express himself, belongs to the dance. We endeavor to recognize and use all contributions of the past to the dance and will continue to use all new contributions in the future"

body movement tuesday :: gearshifting performance works

Gearshifting Performance Works
Jolene Bailie is the Artistic Director
Gearshifting Performance Works is a not for profit Arts Organization dedicated to the advancement of the art form of modern dance. Committed to promoting modern dance, raising public awareness of the form and enriching the community, the Company has three main activities; these include the advancement of education, creation and presentation of modern dance.
The endeavors to create accessible and artistically daring works. The body of work encompasses a broad range of new creation and respected traditional works.  The subject matter often stems from psychological reactions to environment and reflections upon trends in Canadian lifestyle.  The presentations strive to be rewarding to both the audience and the creators as well as suitable for a broad range of audiences and performance venues.

body movement tuesday :: viceral dance company

Visceral Dance Chicago will bring dance to an extensive population, challenging audiences to examine their perception of the dance experience. By providing thought provoking and innovative performances, VDC will push itself to bring new explorations of movement and theater without limitation of specific styles.  It is a goal of Visceral Dance Chicago to reach wider audiences, obtain great arts support, and form a universal dance audience.  Audiences should be taken to a different place and be exposed to something extraordinary, something that makes them think and ask why.  VDC intends to reach to a deeper place to help the audience
experience something that is not easy or simple but that cultivates conversation both for the individual and the audience as a whole.  Visceral Dance Chicago wants to change the way the audience thinks and views dance.  By driving dance in a different direction, VDC hopes to make the art form accessible to everyone, providing an avenue for deeper thought, understanding, and appreciation.

body movement tuesday :: the seldoms

Dan Merlo




The Seldoms
"The Seldoms make contemporary dance that translates inquiry into 
movement and amplifies its impact through collaboration with image, 
sound, text and location, providing an avenue for audiences to 
experience relevant and engaging dance.  We are a Chicago based 
dance performance company that values making intelligent, visual 
dance theater driven by inquiry.  We ground our inquiry in the history 
of ideas, art history, and our personal experience to find complex and
faceted ways to describe the nature of our question."

"The center of our work is dance, however, our vision extends to the 
whole of action and environment on stage."

body movement tuesday :: empire of ecstasy

Empire of Ecstasy
Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 1910–1935
Karl Toepfer
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford
© 1997 The Regents of the University of California

Empire of Ecstasy offers an interpretation of the explosion
in German body culture between nudism and nude dancing,
gymnastics and dance training, dance photography and criticism,
and diverse genres of performance from solo dancing to mass movement choirs.
Karl Toepfer presented a dynamic subject as a vital and historically unique construction of modern identity.

The modern body, radiating freedom and power, appeared to Weimar artists
and intelligentsia to be the source of a transgressive energy,
as well as the sign and manifestation of powerful, mysterious
inner conditions. Toepfer shows how this view of the modern body
sought to extend the aesthetic experience beyond the boundaries imposed by rationalized life and to transcend these limits in search of ecstasy.
With the help of much unpublished or forgotten archival material
(including many little known photographs), he investigates the process
of constructing an empire of appropriate impulses toward ecstasy.

Karl Toepfer presents the work of such well known figures as Rudolf Laban,
Mary Wigman, and Oskar Schlemmer, along with lesser known
but equally fascinating body culture practitioners.

body movement tuesday :: league of extraordinary dancers

LXD
League of Extraordinary Dancers
no special effects. no wires. real people, real powers.
series begins July 7, 2010