Behind the Scenes with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange!

Hi All--hope you're doing well! I've been at the Dance Exchange since August 20th, preparing to dance in the Act II "Tea" from Liz Lerman's world premiere "The Matter of Origins." I'm also a rehearsal assistant, and I'm sharing my experiences on the Dance Exchange blog. Finally, I'd like to announce my new website: www.lizzastrowdance.weebly.com. Check it out!

:) Liz

Pilgrimage Dance: Step Up Style - Hip Hop Workshop

Pilgrimage Dance: Step Up Style - Hip Hop Workshop: "Over the past weekend, I hosted a dance workshop at the Waterford Public Library. I used a dance sequence from the movie 'Step Up', and it w..."

Dancing on Impulz: Goodbye to Europe!

Dancing on Impulz: Goodbye to Europe!: "The week has been great getting back into dancing mode again. Nikka and I have been taking ballet in the morning then I am off to Improv Com..."

A Monthlong intensive starting today!

I’m hesitating to write here about my trip for fear of being misunderstood but then I’m asking everyone to share and really enjoyed the fact that they did so I thought I might as well join in the fun!

I left on August 4 th from Milwaukee by car to drive to the small town of Crestone, CO situated 8,000 feet above sea level to participate in two retreats offered by my Buddhist teacher Tsoknyi Rimpoche III. I’ve been studying with the man since 2003 when he came to visit Urbana for three years in a row offering retreats on 'The Nature of Mind.'

I should define retreat… it’s a period of time where you decide to put time aside to hear, contemplate and practice various teachings. We usually decide to be silent and not wander off the premises. (I’m presently in the space between retreats where I’ve kept a pretty rigorous training schedule but allowed myself a few phone calls to Elizabeth, but little email and no FB!) It’s a protected time that allows you to fully focus on a certain thing that you wish to learn. I usually take time to do this every day when I can and try to do it more intensively during the year by going on retreat. A retreat schedule usually involves at least 4 one hour meditation sittings and two 2 hour lectures. You get up at 5am and go to bed when you are done sitting. By now I’ve done at least 8 week-long (or more) retreats and this will be my first month-long. It is common in the Buddhist world for serious practitioners to go on 3, 9 or 12-year (Yes, you read right - YEARS not months!) retreats and many finish their lives in closed retreat. While you may think this is a lot… consider what a dance major has to go through with 4 years of intense training and then many intensives followed by on the job training for years – it’s not that different.

While in the dance studio, we are usually interested in the movement observed in the body, in coming to retreat to meditate, I’m interested in the observed movement of the mind. Not that I think both are very different… and this is what is making this a research trip and not a solely personal venture. What I know of the Alexander Technique and my mind training ends up helping me teach ballet.

The more I teach dance, the more I realize that dancers are interested in the beneficial aspects of dancing. They like how it feels to be in class away from their usual worries learning something that requires they coordinate their minds and bodies in space. They also like being able to know enough about themselves to communicate “their truths” to others through their entire bodies - independently of style. And usually if your body can speak this “truth” – you had to train the mind to some degree – even if you don’t know you did.

The Buddhists believe that you can’t just hear about knowledge/wisdom – you have to practice it. This makes dancers close cousins with them, as we cannot envision anyone learning to dance without actually dancing. In fact, many people believe it takes 10 years to make a dancer. The difference here is that dancers often don’t realize that it is their minds that collaborated with their bodies to create the dancer. Dancers can easily dismiss their intelligence (with the help of the rest of the world of course…) and think that they are “just” movers. The opposite never occurs to them… that most university students learn about their fields through a body that they have never trained to learn with. Let me repeat this: they learn subjects like math and psychology with (for the most part) an untrained, mis-calibrated, unruly and unaware body. After all, it is the body that sits in the lecture hall, listening and thinking… not just the “mind” or whatever else they might think.

So this is what I do all day. I research how the mind works by listening to the teacher and practicing. You would think that by now I would know. But while I conceptually know more than I used to – the beauty is to realize this knowledge in your whole self so that you are not dancing putting on a brave face while totally scared, but more dancing from your inner place of truth – confident, expressive, free and happy. Not a small feat but well worth the work.

I will be thinking of you and wishing you well as you start the semester.

Best, Luc.

Dancing on Impulz: Day 1

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The Unaming

Milwaukee has been bustling with dance this hot summer! I just recently performed in the Dancemakers show on July 30. It was exciting to participate in such a fast pace performance scenario. We only had a month to prepare, and for me that was a new experience. I had the opportunity to work with Angie Yetzke who choreographed the piece “The Unaming” and kept a rigorous rehearsal schedule. With three hour rehearsals twice a week, Angie didn’t mess around, and every rehearsal was mandatory for all the dancers because there was a great deal of weight sharing and it was important for the entire group to be aware of what the other dancers’ parts were.

I found myself very anxious throughout the whole process because there were weekly showings of the works to be performed as well as the rehearsals. With every meeting, there were changes to the dance. It felt very much like an experiment constantly testing many different paths the dance could take. There were even changes being made up until an hour before the dress rehearsal. I would do it all again in a heartbeat, but I would try to be more open to the changing because it would have immersed me more into the dance from the get go. For such a short time to prepare the piece, I think I was a little unnerved, but we all came together in the end.

It was a huge challenge sometimes because every dancer in the group had strong voices and opinions about dance along with different body types. The group dynamic felt rushed, and I wish we could have had another chance to perform together. We spent a lot of time entranced by the dancing that I didn’t feel very connected to the other dancers until the end. I think it worked to our advantage because the piece formed around Yetzke’s choreography and our personalities. It became a piece wrapped in our own personal struggles to find calm with one another. In the end, the final performance felt wonderful, and as we left the stage, I felt invigorated only to realize that it was the last and only time we would get to perform the piece as we did that night.

I would love to work again with any one of the dancers or Angie. It wasn’t always easy, but it was worth it all the more!

Current and former UWM students dance and choreograph in Danceworks' ART TO ART

http://thirdcoastdigest.com/2010/07/review-art-to-art-at-danceworks/

With a picture of our very own Kayla Schroepfer!