More News in the New Genre Chapter

Last night, I spent approximately seven hours working with choreographer, Kathleen Larrick, in preparation of the New Genre Festival in March. Diverting from our original grant proposal of four dancers, we will now be attending with only two dancers due to time conflicts in the men's schedule. I know Kathleen felt extremely disappointed to have a cast of only half the people originally planned. But I managed to help her look beyond this speed bump and to work with the dancers she does have, herself and me. Choreographers are often expected to think quickly on their feet in an event like this, that their original plan is not possible. I am proud of her for not being too uninspired by this minor setback.

We have been assembling a press kit that we can release to the festival coordinators. Our photographer, Michael Ross, spent time helping us create the images that we will advertise for the event. Kathleen had originally envisioned sculptural connected shapes involving the four people. So with the absence of two dancers we created some weight share with the two of us and also had a third model, Sharon Choi, step in to create some images of three dancers.

After the photography, we shot video clips with the help of friends, Josh Johnson and Sharon Choi, of the phrases that Kathleen has choreographed. The video is being sent to our band, (the) giants of gender, a new age classical improvisation troupe based out of Youngstown, Ohio who will also be traveling with us and performing at the event. This will give the band some idea of the themes and motifs of movement that we will be improvising onstage.

The improvisation performance will last for 1.5 hours onstage without exiting the stage at any time. The square stage will be indoors and surrounded by audience members on all four sides. Currently, I believe that this festival may also include a second indoor performance occurring in the setting of an office building.

Kathleen and I are extremely grateful to the Redick's who were kind enough to loan us their studio space at the Reston Conservatory Ballet. This gave us the space for rehearsal and our photo shoot.

Hopefully I may be able to post some of those photographs and/ or video to give you all an idea of the work we are creating and taking to the festival. I am looking forward to when we can start improvising with the band in preparation for the actual festival.