Maida Withers Receives John Muir Award

TUK I / Maida Withers , GW Professor, Department of Theatre and Dance

Received the John Muir Award - Environment Film Competition

In Recognition of Excellence in Filmmaking

At the 2009 Yosemite International Film Festival

Who owns it?

Who owns a dance: the choreographer? the dancers? the viewers? Kate Mattingly reports from Chicago...

What’s the difference between being influenced by and stealing from another artist? Did you know Loie Fuller sued a woman who imitated her Serpentine Dance in the 1890s?

Kate Mattingly goes to Serbia

Faculty member Kate Mattingly goes to Serbia to meet contemporary artists

The invitation to attend the Balkan Dance Platform from October 1 to 3, 2009 in Novi Sad, Serbia came from Dance Theater Workshop (DTW) in NYC, an organization that has an established reputation for supporting and promoting contemporary artists from around the world. In 2002, I worked with DTW on an Eastern European Criticism Initiative which recognized the essential role criticism plays in offering context and amplifying the work of new choreographers.

GW TRDA SOLO DANCE FESTIVAL

GW TRDA SOLO DANCE FESTIVAL
Inaugural Season

Dancers to present an evening of original dance works for the GW SOLO DANCE FESTIVAL. This inaugural festival, the first such festival at GW, is open for all dancers interested in presenting original solo dance works and performance art.

WHEN: Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 7:30 PM

WHERE: The George Washington University,
Department of Theatre and Dance – Dance Studio, Building J2131 G Street NW (rear)
Washington, DC

COST: The FESTIVAL is open to students, faculty, and general public FREE OF CHARGE

2009 SOLO DANCE FESTIVAL promises to be a highly charged event featuring such diverse forms as post modern dance, performance art, hip hop, and other world cultural dances. The FESTIVAL is under the direction of GW dancers, Ashley Nitzen, Daniel Bandong.Elizabeth Barnett, Jessica Mann, Kathryn Boland, Melanie Gutmann, Molly Berger, Sarah Wilson, and Tal Schapira, students in TrDa 182 Dance Composition taught by Professor Maida Withers. Festival participation is open to all GW dancers without adjudication or audition. The dances must be original dances, only. Derek Jones, Theatre major, will be the light designer for the program. Individual student choreographers will post dances performed on individual blogs following the performance. Students should sign up for performing in Building J on the bulletin board.

Please contact Sarah Wilson for more information: 412-848-1485

Premiere of Island

On Oct 9-11 at the Dance Place, 3225 8th Street, NE, I am premiering a new work entitled Island. I hope you will attend. It is the outcome of my research on historic Angel Island, the immigration outpost on the West Coast, built to uphold the Chinese Exclusionary Acts of the late 1800's, early 1900's. It was a site of many dreams to become an American, but ultimately a site of great sadness and exclusion. The work is sublime, subtle and emotionally moving. I have been collaborating with the Theatrical Design team of MIT on the multi-media component. I look forward to speaking with all of you about the connection between scholarly research and the creative process. For tickets call 202 269 1600, see you at the show!
All the best,
Dana

Velocity DC- Bodies in Urban Spaces

Students from TrDa 185 Trends in Performance class are working with an Austrian choreographer on site specific work for performance this weekend. Here is one of the reports:

For this entire week, we are rehearsing every day (4-6 hours per day) for Urban Bodies Velocity DC. It is a group of around 15 dancers/climbers led by an Austrian choreographer, Villy and his American assistant, Mike. Villy's ideas are about creating art by filling spaces involving the architecture of the city to form a structure or a pose. We are in the process of creating 30-40 structures with our bodies using the architecture around us. Some involve all 15 of us and some are solos.

All of us have a background in dance, some are professional, others not, but all of us are passionate enough to take the risk to injure ourselves, for the beauty behind the artform. We hold each structure for 2-6 minutes and then move on to the next. Because we are often climbing builds, squeezing into spaces and doing headstands on the ground, we have been getting very dirty and accumulating plenty of scrapes, bruises and ripped clothing. Our transitions from sculpture to sculpture consist is us running from one location to the next. However, these are not included in rehearsals, so we will be pushed even harder the day of the show.

Every rehearsal up until the day before the performance is trial and error. Villy and Mike have scoped out spaces in a 4 block radius downtown. We go up and down blocks and try to form the images he had in mind when he first saw the space. However, there is almost never a space that fits exactly to what he had in mind. The positions of our bodies and limbs are constantly being tweaked. The structures we produce also range in level of simplicity. We can spend up to an hour creating one structure or we can spend 2 minutes testing a space out. Villy and Mike have also warned us that the poses we spend an hour constructing are not necessarily the ones we are going to use for the final performance (October 5 and 6 at 5:30 pm).

Although the actual performance with Velocity DC is next weekend, every time we form a structure we receive a great deal of attention. The pedestrian reaction however is different to the one we received at the Arts on Foot festival. Tourists do stop and take pictures, but many come up to us and politely ask what we are doing and what it is for. Some homeless people, seated by our sculptures would even use our sculptures as a deal for attention, one man called individuals and guided them to see us. There are also pedestrians that are concerned and wondering if someone actually got "stuck" up there. Jeff from The Washington DC Performing Arts Society attends and travels with us during each rehearsal to hand out Velocity DC flyers to those who are interested.

Prof. Valerie St. Pierre Smith's Design Work On Stage at the Kennedy Center

Prof. Valerie St. Pierre Smith's costume designs will be seen this September on stage at the Kennedy Center. Working in collaboration with renowned director Paul Douglas ("PD") Michnewicz, Prof. St. Pierre Smith's costumes are a part of the VSA arts presentation of 'For the Love of Goldfish.' "In For the Love of Goldfish, co-workers Julia and Evan attempt to hide their romantic feelings for each other, along with their respective disabilities. Reminiscent of The Office, this hilarious comedy is about love, self-esteem, and the importance of being honest. VSA arts is an international nonprofit organization founded 35 years ago by Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith to create a society where people with disabilities learn through, participate in, and enjoy the arts." -http://www.vsarts.org This is the second year that Prof. St. Pierre Smith has had the honor of working with PD and VSA Arts. "For the Love of Goldfish" premieres Tuesday, September 29th at 7:30 in the Kennedy Cent
er's Family Theater.