Month: March 2021
Immersive Theater Thrives on Closeness. Where Does It Go From Here?
It’s 9:30 pm on a Thursday night in November; my eyes close as I hear the familiar, haunting notes of the closing music for Then She Fell. Music I’ve heard thousands of times before. Eerie, swelling strings that have signaled the beginning of a dinner break with fellow castmates, or the end of a long…
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Re-learning to deactivate: SAFE® and dancers
The body’s innate wisdom is vast, layered and not something that science fully understands quite yet. Yet, some movement methodologies have gotten close to that comprehensive understanding — forms such as SAFE® (or Spine Advanced Functional Empowerment, which includes both SAFE® BARRE and SAFE® FLOOR), developed by former Principal Dancer for the Deutshe Oper Berlin Alexandre Munz…
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I Have No Desire to Produce a Performance, Live or Livestreamed, Until the Pandemic Is Over. I’ll Wait.
Friends, I’d like to deliver some news that might be challenging for you. As much as we have been trained to believe “the show must go on,” I can assure you right now, it will be fine if it does not. I understand. Trust me, I do. The pandemic arrived smack in the middle of…
Read MoreFor Aakash Odedra, Dance Is a Way of Looking Within and Observing the World
I consider there to be two spheres in my life: the inner world and the external physical world. Most of the time they don’t align. As a child, whenever I heard music, I instantly disconnected from the present and vanished into a world of myth and fantasy. A swing of an arm created a painting…
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What are your options for safe dance flooring at home?
Creating an appropriate and safe dance floor at home can present a number of challenges. Your first consideration is where to locate your home studio. If it is in a dedicated spot, you have options depending on what is the current floor and what styles of dance you are practicing. Generally, homes do not come…
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Eric Franklin’s ‘Dynamic Alignment through Imagery’: A lifestyle of conscious movement, in a book
You know those “a ha!” moments in your dance training, those exciting moments of embodied understanding? Think back to those for a moment. For me, most of them were connected to imagery of some sort — to something in everyday life, or to seeing in my mind’s eye something in my anatomy moving in a…
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The mind-body connection is a terrible thing to waste* but even worse to misuse
The mind-body connection, while not a novel phenomenon, has become a trendy topic in health and wellness circles. Often used as a selling point for various health programs, the mind-body connection is inherent in everyone. Its accessibility may not be so apparent, and this is where we can go overboard trying to access or “perfect”…
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