Baywood, CABaywood, CAMontaña de Oro, CA (Spooner's Cove)Bishop's Peak, San Luis Obispo, CAMorro Bay (Morro Rock), CASan Luis Obispo, CA1.4.2009Wow, I can’t believe I have not written. Life really does fly by. I have been the laziest son well… daughter of a bitch. (That sounds bad... sorry mom.) I mean I’ve been doing a lot… a lot of hanging out. A lot of exercising and be in my optimum dancer body, sans studio and indoor rehearsals... A lot of buying things that I don’t need, then going through my storage unit and keeping everything. I am trying to get rid of some nick-knacks and sentimentalities, but it’s not working. I look at the things I own and think… “Someday, when I have a house, I will put this in it somewhere and use it.” I don’t want to bring anything back to NY because my roommate will just throw it away. I can’t trust him around objects. But I can’t keep all of my things in a vault.Everything has been in storage for almost four years. That’s a long time to be separated from a life that was not quite right--without a thorough visitation. Graduate school was such a dream. Things were set-up and people just did a lot of thinking and made art and worked on papers. It was really hard, I don’t want to make it sound simple or easy… I honestly thought it would lead me to something, like a job. I’m still trying to understand what I gained from my experience there, besides debt. I know. I remember now. One of my crucial decisions in going to school there was because it was close to my grandparents.......I keep asking myself what’s wrong with me? The past 8 months on the road those questions surface… what’s wrong with me? For many years it is easy to blame others for personal or professional misfires, but when one spends so much time alone that question is both surprising and inevitable amidst the bliss of such a trip. The travel. The life. The past 8 months have been the best of my life, which states much. I have traveled in Nepal and hiked in the Himalayas. I have spent three-months living in London and a month in Vienna at a fantastic dance festival. And many other events which could lead to a full anthology of Berkeley, Olympia, Seattle, Portland, Columbus, San Luis Obispo and now New York/Brooklyn/Dominicahassidica.The past months brought me something that I have been missing my whole life, a true connection with this landmass. I was able to see such amazing natural beauty, ponder the people of this land, spend time with Isadora, go wherever I wanted when I wanted, and figure my artistic body and expand my choreographic voice. The independence was exhilarating. In NY I am depressed roughly fifty-probably-sixty percent of the time, while traveling, toward the end, when I was used to seeing new things all the time and could anticipate my encounters, then my depression entered the van. That’s when I stopped blaming anyone else but myself. The depression changed into a puzzle. What did I do? How could I change it? Could I change anything? Do I care? I like the way I am, why would I want to change? I am still pondering these things and wondering if the energy I put into thinking about other people is a personal barrier. Or is it just the way I look? I’ve wondered that too. I’m not pretty, I’m not ugly; although, I know can be beautiful in the right light. My body is not great. Perhaps I’m just so averagewowmid-sentence I fell asleep for 45 minutes. Not very interested in non-existent issues. Many other things to think about, or just sleep. Sleeping is an entirely acceptable place to go when pondering one’s own looks.Onward and outwardMorro Bay (Morro Rock), CAAvila Beach, CASan Luis Obispo, CA... Sunrise... with IsadoraRead more…
Yanira Castro+Company is at Dance Theater Workshop.this weekend. I went last night and it really creates a dynamic space within the DTW theater. She transformed DTW theater in a space that reflects the instability and energy of puberty and gestation. I enjoyed a distributed way of integrating the musicians (directed Castro and Stephan Moore) within a changing world of analog sounds and digital processing, from 8bit game toys to real vacuum cleanrs. It is surprising and quotidian. The musicians radicalize the space with their deliberate and simple actions creating a counterpoint of movable nodes. The space became a changing body flooded by "hormonal sounds". The space danced!
I you go please comment here!!
Yanira Castro + Company
Photographer: Julieta Cervantes
Title: Center of Sleep
Choreography: Yanira Castro, in collaboration with performers
Venue: Dance Theater Workshop
Date: February 26, 2008
Performer Credits
Luke Miller (audience watching)
Joseph Poulson, Heather Olson, Luke Miller
Watch interview with Yanira Castro:
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DTW consolidates as an institutional Friend!
Dance-tech members receive 40% discount on tickets to Dance Theater Workshop. Mention the code DT40 and bring valid proof such as a Dance-tech profile page printout, Union card, or a postcard/program from a recent performance or collaborative project. All discounts are one per person. Discounts must be requested at the time of purchase, cannot be issued retroactively, and cannot be combined with any other offer.
NOTE: this is one of the reasons that you must put your complete name and actual picture in your profile!
This benefit id only valid for individual members.
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"stylishly sexy" — The New Yorker
“I’d settle for more choreographers as hip as Laura Peterson” — danceviewtimes
(New York, NY) - Dance New Amsterdam (DNA) is pleased to present Laura Peterson Choreography in the premiere of Electrolux, choreographed by DNA Artist in Residence Laura Peterson to music by Led Zeppelin. Performances are Thursday–Saturday, March 27–29 at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, March 30 at 3:00 p.m. in the theater@DNA located at 280 Broadway (entrance at 53 Chambers St.). An opening reception will precede the performance on Thursday, March 27 at 7:00 p.m.
Imagine the kind of luxurious carpet that retains the marks of a vacuum cleaner. Every step destroys its plush perfection. Performed by Kathryn Harris, Kate Martel, Christopher Hutchings and Laura Peterson with costumes by Charles Youssef, Electrolux is about environment, texture, garbage -- and carpet.
Laura Peterson is a NYC-based dancer, choreographer and Artistic Director of Laura Peterson Choreography. She received a 2007 Mondo Cane! Dixon Place Commission. Her dances have been presented throughout NYC, other US cities and produced internationally in Argentina and Germany. Her work has been performed at Lincoln Center Out-of Doors and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, and commissioned by DROP Dance in Boise, Hartford Ballet and Pennsylvania Ballet. In 2004 LPC was a guest performing company at NYU’s Tisch Summer Dance Program. Her performance credits include Julie Taymor’s film, Across The Universe, choreographed by Daniel Ezralow. She has performed the work of Mark Morris at Radio City Music Hall, and has danced with Risa Jaraslow & Dancers, Poppo & the GoGo Boys (NYC), Paule Turner’s c o u r t (Phila), Group Motion Dance Co (Phila), and Asimina Chremos (Chicago). Laura Peterson holds an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School and a BFA from University of the Arts. She has taught at Western Connecticut State University, Rowan University and has been a guest teacher at Hunter College.
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Tonight, I attended a very stimulating evening of performances as part of the Performance Mix Festival. Cynthia Hopkins, Karen Bernard, Layard Thompson, from New York and Nathalie Claude from Montreal delivered layered, sensitive, clever and shamanic performances with humor and sophisticated craft.
Queer warriors mixed with holly madness, reflexions on mortality mixed with time/space travel. A trip!
I was taken by the complexity, risk and the evocative power of their presence. It was an evening of edges and impossible stories about our human and post-human deliriums.
Performances until April 5th!
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Conference
March 6-7
New York University
Radars and fences, satellites and walls, networks and bunkers. Two
different sets of technologies confront us: the former epitomize the
selective and flexible character of what Gilles Deleuze termed the
“societies of control”; the latter embody the “old” disciplinary
paradigm based on separation, physical mass containment, and restriction
of the freedom of movement. Most of the times control and discipline
coexist ad reinforce each other; sometimes they seem to collide. This is
due to a variety of far-reaching factors and transformations occurring
in the productive sphere.
As a matter of fact, it is the very structure of the network society,
with its decentralization of tasks and constant multiplication of
electronic eyes that threatens the opacity of physical and immaterial
bunkers. By looking at the grey areas where control and discipline,
transparency and secrecy, democracy and the state of exception overlap
and collide, Radars and Fences provide a cross-disciplinary platform
whereby researcherstists, journalists, filmmakers, and activists can
negotiate new and critical p, arositions.
Go to conference siteRead more…