Gifts of the dance

Evan here, coming at you with some reaction to our outreach through DanceMotionUSA.

We were tired, jet lagged, and some tummies were a little askew, but, as we've found, when we step into certain situations that all goes away. We strolled into another class situation in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan a few days ago and the usual events began to play out. The company mingled with the local dancers, younger in this case, and then Sean Curran began working his magic. Introducing the dancers, talking about the tour we've been on, and introducing students of all sorts to some form or another of American modern dance. Most importantly, making everyone in the room loosen up with some good humor and kind words. As soon as class begins, every student is clearly eager to learn new information. Sean makes it very clear that WE are also learning from THEM saying things like "We learn from each other" and "we look out for each other in the class room and out there." The students in Pavlodar then expressed their love of hip-hop and urban dance forms, so Sean had us teach some of the things we know of these forms, stemming from other worldly dances, i.e. east/west African, Haitian, Argentinian etc. Then the real fun began.

Argentinian folk dance with dancers in Pavlodar

Each classroom environment we've been in thus far, from Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, to Pavlodar, Kazakhstan, has been a truly beautiful exchange of dance. There is either a sharing of dances at the end of the day, or sometimes we are greeted and class begins with an elaborate folk dance that leaves us all amazed and smiling! The case with the students in Pavlodar really knocked my socks off. After the students performed two or three short local folk dances, they begged to show us one more,"Pretty Pleeaassee." Of course we were into it and said "Rock on!" When the music started, or DROPPED, I dare say, a collage of crumping and hip-hop made me laugh out loud and start to dance in my seat. The whole company was bumping up and down as these kids up-rocked and locked to a fusion of Americana Urbana!!! They were clearly inspired by MTV and American pop culture we couldn't help but cheer them on!

Pavlodar does hip-hop

We then showed excerpts of Seans' urban folk dance "Social Discourse" and they answered similarly. Class was a smash hit, and afterwards, as it seems in every city we teach at, we were mobbed for pictures and pictures and more pictures.

The company arrived in Astana with a similar tale. We taught a class to an older, more professional dance company in this Las Vegas-like capital of Kazakhstan. When the class ended, a montage of folk dance from Kazakh to Indian to Uzbek to a rendition of "All that Jazz" left us a in state of awe that I personally could not forget if I tried. Afterward, pictures and pictures and pictures and more pictures...haha!

Terra Dance doing "All That Jazz"

The appreciation of our offerings is greater here than I have ever felt anywhere in my days. After each class it is a mob scene as I mentioned before. These people are HUNGRY for anything. Not only the students and folk that take our classes, but the locals who attend the shows. They leave us with nothing short of several curtain calls and swarms of picture- and autograph-crazed fans! After each class and show I am vividly reminded as to why I do what I do. Dance. Make art. Teach. Share. Communicate. Laugh. People come to a class or performance and so obviously leave in a different light, with a new perspective on dance, the world, and hopefully themselves. Sean likes to say, "we are artists, we're changers," that "going to the theater is work, an investigation. Entering one way, leaving another." The immediacy and clarity of this happening to the folk out here is almost tangible and I am extremely humbled and eternally grateful.

S.C.Co and Terra Dance

At home, a world away

Company dancer Tony Guglietti has some observations about meeting and dancing with people from a world away.

We have now performed in 3 cities, taught 6 master classes, and have spoken to 2 sets of high-schoolers. We've taken 6 flights, including the flight into Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. One observation I keep coming back to, and see every day, is how similar people are at their roots.

I always have loved playing with children and love watching their reactions and what entertains them. I've found that you find one thing that makes them laugh and just keep doing it until they need something new to stimulate them. Peek-a-boo is such a popular thing with little kids; it either makes them laugh or at least engages them for minutes at a time until they are bored with it and "check out", at which point they want something different. I sat and watched a little boy play with his remote control car in the airport for about 10 minutes. His grandfather was playing with him and showing him how to use the toy. The grandfather would drive the car as fast as he could in a straight line and crash it into the large marble column in the middle of the floor. The boy would squeal with that unabashed joy that boys have for destruction and things crashing and smashing. Then he would repeat 2 words to grandpa, which I assumed were "again, again!" until grandpa obliged. This went on for the standard amount of time that any 2 year old would find this funny. Then grandpa discovered that driving the car into people's feet was funnier, which went on for another 4 or 5 minutes. It was like going back in time with my grandpa and looking in a mirror.

When we landed in Pavlodar, I witnessed a little girl trying to play with her 3 brothers. She was the smallest and appeared to be the youngest. They also were playing with a remote control car and, try as she might, she couldn't get her turn. The oldest boy would drive it right in front of her and wait for her to bend down to pick it up. As soon as she would get inches from it, the car would drive off and the boys would explode with laughter. She would then chase it around while her brothers languished in joy at her unsuccessful attempts to catch the toy. When mom finally made the boys give the girl a chance to play, they simply moved on to a different game. we all know how this ends, right? She played alone with her car for 2 seconds, saw the boys had moved on, dropped the controller, and tried to join them in their endeavor from which she had already been excluded. How many younger sisters wanna find this girl right now and give her a hug and some pointers?

The similarities extend to the dance studio, which is why this entire project makes so much sense. No matter what dance style you try, the rigors of class, being in a studio, and using your own body remain the same. Sean is a brilliant teacher because he can engage everyone in the room and allow them to have fun and relax and thereby make the learning experience personal. So far, the most hesitant group of students we've had in a class were the Turkmen folk dancers. It seemed to us that they are trained very much like ballet students and that fun probably isn't a big part of their classes. Also, their teacher, who seemed very strict, was in the room with us for the class, watching over. I'd be willing to bet, though, that they and their teacher laughed more in the studio that day than they ever had before.

Dancers from Mengli in Ashgabat

That's how all of Sean's classes, even in the USA, seem to go. At first they don't know if they are allowed to laugh, but soon they loosen up, start having fun, and then the real learning begins. Everyone smiles and laughs, tries new things, and you can see people simply start to enjoy moving. A universal part of class, no matter the age or style or level of technique, is the joy that comes with fun music. We company members do the same thing. As soon as the music comes on for a specific exercise, everyone finds a friend, they make eye contact, they share a knowing smile, and they start to shake their hips and respond to the beat. As soon as the combination starts, we all as dancers go into "technique mode" and try to work on the exercise, but before we start and we count in the music, it's a joyous free-for-all. I also think that's why no matter where you go it seems kids are excited to do hip-hop and shake their hips and feel free and unabashed.

Learning traditional Kazakh arms in Pavlodar

Language may get in the way, our individual upbringings may be totally different, and we may not understand difficulties other cultures go through on a daily basis. But so far, I've seen that our desires to interact, laugh, and move for the joy of moving seem to be a universal want and need.

Ruskie Tsirk in Pavlodar

Privet from Pavlodar, Kazakhstan! Rachel here.

One of the privileges of this trip for us is that we get to live one, and only one, life while we are in Central Asia. That may sound strange, but being a performer in New York City means that we live many lives all at once - teacher, babysitter, waiter/waitress, florist, bartender, film editor, graphic designer etc., on top of being a performer. I am lucky that my other life in New York City is also as a performer. I am a circus artist specializing in aerials such as aerial hoop and silks as well as hand-balancing. Even though we certainly are still busy teaching and performing while here, it is amazing to be able to focus on just one project at a time rather than the constant changing from one to another. That said, I couldn't completely leave that life behind during my travels. And so, when I learned in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan that the Russian Circus was in town I got very excited. Its not often that I would get the chance to see a traditional Russian circus because in North America the circus is a lot more of what we call "cirque nouveau" or "contemporary circus". Cirque nouveau is to traditional circus what modern dance is to ballet in that it takes the idiom and brings it into the present by fusing the old with new influences from other arts forms and often is more current and contemporary. Unfortunately I found out too late to actually see the circus in Ashgabat because the only shows were that night and we'd already missed the show or the night of our show at Mukamlar Palace, so that wasn't going to happen.

Disappointed, but hopeful that there might be another circus in a different city we would visit on our tour, I soldiered on. That is, until we came to Pavlodar, Kazakhstan where one of the first things I saw on our ride to the hotel from the airport was a sign for was had to be a circus! I couldn't get too excited yet because I couldn't read the writing on the poster, so I had to wait and see if there were even showtimes while we were in town. After some inquiries, the amazing consulate staff working with us here in Pavlodar were able to arrange for several of us to go see Euro Circus, the Russian Circus (or Ruskie Tsirk in Russian as I've learned).

After a day of master classes, we headed off for what was my first trip to the traditional circus, animals and strong men and all. There were tons of children but also some adults, besides us, who weren't accompanying kids and everyone had a huge grin on their faces.

The show had lots of animal acts including doves, dogs, a baboon, a black bear, snakes, cats, and turtles, as well as a few aerial numbers, two jugglers, a hand-balancer and ballerina duet, a strong man named "Iron Alex", who withstood a three-ton car being driven over him among other insane feats, and of course a pair of clowns to fill in the scene change gaps.

One of the evening’s high points was one juggler who juggled six balls while swinging suspended in the air by a harness. Quite a feat indeed! I found it very interesting that most of the music was actually in English, even for acts geared toward children probably too young to be bilingual. Overall, it was a very kid-friendly show, though, as with even the Nutcracker, there were a few jokes and bits sprinkled in there for the adults.

All in all we had a fantastic evening (Evan and Joe even got to take a picture with the baboon) and I was reminded that no matter the idiom (circus, dance, opera, theater, or music) art creates a liminal space for people to escape to from their daily. It is an inspiring, thought provoking, and communal experience and it made me so proud to see so many people attending live entertainment, especially with their children.

Dos vedanya!

Our Audiences

The company's Associate Artistic Director, Elizabeth Coker Giron, has been musing over what each of our audiences has been like and what it has done for us as performers. Here's what she has to say!

SCCo now has three performances under our belt on this Central Asian adventure, and I’ve been particularly struck by how different each show felt. There are more obvious reasons for these differences, especially highlighted by the technical demands (“surprises”) of each space. The grandly impressive Mukamlar Palace theater in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan (pretty much everything in Ashgabat is grandly impressive) provided the challenges of a slick, painted wooden floor with imbedded turntable and two-inch gaps around its seams. In Kazakhstan, Altmay’s opera and ballet theater boasted a slight (but perceptible) rake to the stage, and dancing into the intense side-lighting in Pavlodar rivaled driving into high beams on a rainy nighttime highway. Perhaps we dealt with some trials better than others, but with each show we are more fully armed for the challenges to come.

I feel much more personally affected, however, but the human differences between each performance represented by one of the most compelling reasons we are on this tour in the first place: our audience.

Turkmenistan does not have any contemporary tradition of live performative art. While local companies preserve indigenous folk dances, there are no extant examples of ballet and opera (let alone modern dance). Our schedule in Ashgabat allowed us to teach several master classes in the days leading up to our performance. Many of the class participants attended the show (in their DanceMotion USA t-shirts!). Even in such an exotic and at times alienating city, I felt accepted, confident, and driven to perform well knowing we had an army of new friends and possible modern-dance converts in the audience. The overwhelmingly warm and enthusiastic response after our show only reinforced the mutual empathy felt by audience and performers. I can say I’ve never been part of such a surprising and satisfying event.

Our first stay in Almaty (we return next week) did not include master classes, so I had a feeling of higher stakes at hand before the performance. Our audience would be strangers to us, giving us the challenge of befriending them, letting them trust us and ultimately convincing them through our performance to come along on the ride with us. Personally, I felt the increased pressure of performing in a classic European-style opera and ballet house where the traditional idioms are so well represented and full of such historic weight. Hearing that we’d sold out a thousand seat theater and inspired ticket scalpers was exciting, but also increased the jitters. What started as a polite (nervously quiet?) audience soon warmed to shouting, a standing ovation, and nine curtain calls. The success of the Almaty show felt especially sweet and well-earned.

Last night in Pavlodar we performed to an oversold house including the regional mayor, the US ambassador to Kazakhstan and his wife, and dozens of master class participants from our events the previous day. This city is less privileged than the others on our itinerary and probably better portrays the lives of most Kazakh citizens. I was reminded of what a great privilege it is that I am an artist not only by training but also by trade. Many of the dance students I met were surprised that I was a 30-year-old adult whose profession is “dancer.” This didn’t seem to be a feasible category for employment in most of the students’ imaginations. Once again, our audience went gamely on that ride with us and presented us with a humbling show of appreciation both during the performance and afterwards.

The morning of the Pavlodar performance I was honored to attend the opening of the first American Corner in the city and was really excited to see DMUSA’s gift of some truly stellar books on American dance traditions for their English-language library. I hope that our visit and the success of this American Corner’s programs will encourage a generation of Kazakh students to pursue live dance performance, whether as producers, performers or most necessarily, as a voracious and demanding audience.

Postshow Ashgabat and on to Kazakhstan

     Hi folks, David here again!

     Our performance in Ashgabat completed and our time in Turkmenistan coming to a close, the company moved on to our first stop in Kazakhstan: Almaty. As the former capital of Kazakhstan, Almaty is an enormous city rich in history, framed by the Trans-Ili Alatau mountain range. Our stay there, which is to be the first of two visits, was short but very sweet. We arrived Friday afternoon, had interviews with press, and spent all day Saturday in the theater preparing for that evening's concert. Our performance was to a completely sold-out crowd who must have enjoyed our concert quite a bit seeing as they continued applauding through 9 or so curtain calls! That night the company was able to enjoy some of what Almaty's night life has to offer, going out dancing at a local hot-spot, where we were recognized by a few very enthusiastic audience members. Much merry-making ensued and we left Almaty the next morning delighted that we would be returning in a week for another few days to enjoy the city.

     Our next stop was Pavlodar. Located on the northern steppe of Kazakhstan, Pavlodar's scenery is very different from our previous two stops. From the airport one sees the endless, flat expanses of this region of the country, which is a chilling and beautiful sight for me, since I grew up in New York City where the average visible range is the distance from wherever you are standing to the nearest 30-story building. Pavlodar is a much smaller city than the others we had yet seen, which meant we were able to do most of our travel on foot rather than by van; a welcome change for us! Being able to see the city at less than 30mph was great for us to soak up more of the feeling of where we were. 

     We spent two days in the theater in Pavlodar. The first we spent doing an all-day workshop with a group of local dancers, all around high-school age, who study a wide range of dance from traditional Kazakh folk dance to MTV-style hip-hop. Spending the whole day with them gave us a real chance to get to know them and let them get to know us. That night, a few members of our company were able to attend a performance of the Euro Circus, which Rachel will have a post on later! 

     Our performance night rivaled our evening in Ashgabat, with all of our master class participants (and I think all of their friends as well!) in attendance. Their energy was so palpable from the stage that it really pushed the entire company to give the best show we had in us in gratitude. I hope they had at least as much fun watching us as we did dancing for them, because I think it was the most enjoyable performance I've had yet. As modern dancers, we're used to a fairly reserved audience, so having such unbridled enthusiasm coming at us during the whole show was a real treat for us, and i think shaped our performance quite a bit. After the show we were greeted backstage by a group of cheering fans asking for pictures, hugs, and autographs that we were more than happy to give! Being treated like rock stars is still quite a novelty for us and is something that we will hopefully never grow tired of. Post-show can be an interesting time for a dancer emotionally, and to come out of your dressing room to see your audience waiting to tell you just how much they enjoyed the show is really magical and a great reminder to us of why we do what we do.

    We are now in the new capital of Kazakhstan, Astana, a couple hundred miles west of Pavlodar. Astana is one of the newest cities in the country and has been built up almost entirely over the last 15 years. It is a city of competing skyscrapers and buildings of infinitely varied shapes and sizes. We will have two days of master classes here with local professional dancers and then one performance at the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation. We can't wait for a chance to go exploring while we're here!

More updates soon!