Qajaq Dancer

I decided to separate my post this week into two parts, as events have played out where I had more to write than seemed reasonable to put you through as a reader. I started writing once my flight from New York City to New Delhi was airborne and I was feeling torn between starting my adventure in India and staying “home.” August 29th, 2018, three hours into the fourteen hour flight from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport... Paul Taylor wearing his Ordre National de la Légion d'honneur and me backstage in Paris (2000). My desire to be “home” at this particular moment in time, is in stark contrast to the elation of having embarked on this “adventure” that has been more than two years in the making since the initial communication that sparked everything. At this particular moment in time, I don’t know if Paul Taylor will still be alive when I land in India. Mr. Taylor had been taken to the hospital a couple days ago, and had been moved into palliative ho...

For the next six months or so, I will occasionally miss the views of New York City with the comforts I take for granted in the familiar. And I will look for comfort in discovering what will become familiar as I settle into living and working in Mumbai. Here are some of my favorite shots of NYC. It’ll be interesting to see what catches my eye in the months to come. Dawn and Dusk views of lower Manhattan It's easy to forget to look up, or to miss a 20 foot tall pop-up sculpture Brooklyn Bridge As I’ve mentioned before, I have fairly easy access to Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and tickets are slightly more affordable, should I choose to see a company that might have come through NYC. (I am a firm believer in supporting dance and theater by purchasing my own tickets when possible, even when I might have access to professional consideration.) This past week ODC/Dance was performing. I went to see them out of interest in their current work and as an alumnus of the compan...

I can’t take credit for the original picture taken by my neighbor, Jan, in the Berkshires, but cropping and flipping the image to illustrate my state of mind seemed appropriate for this post. Note: As I am writing about and around my Fulbright experience, please read the  "About Me"   page on this blog website where I acknowledge these writings do not represent the U.S. Department of State or Fulbright. Why am I surprised when I observe myself acting against my better judgement? Or have my “filters” just become less restrictive as I get older and have more experience? I am referring to moments when I realize that I should have stopped talking about five minutes sooner. As is often the case, verbal diarrhea is a symptom of deeper issues, and I guess my current “tics” are rooted in anxieties or insecurities surfacing as I countdown to my departure for India. Over the next few months, I will be meeting a lot of new people and this can be a mixed bag of emotions...

In 2011, I was documenting the development of my MFA thesis project, and the above images are captured from a rehearsal video and my sketch details for a set piece I created. Currently, my compulsion to write a post seems to be driven by conversations with friends and peers. And a friend recently said to me “you must write that down right away,” in response to a comment I made about some video research I was doing. I was actually musing out loud about the ways I am trying to clarify my current perspective on the intent and the spatial kineticism (I’m probably making up that word) of the “concert dance” world from which I hail. I have some ideas about how the socio-cultural aesthetic may be reflected in the contemporary dance environment I will encounter in India. But rather than projecting an expectation, I am currently more focused on how I define my own aesthetic viewpoint on modern dance in the USA. “Concert dance,” as I am defining it here, is primarily constructed to be...

This year, my summer intensive teaching responsibilities included ballet for modern dancers, and modern classes in the style of Paul Taylor. I have taken this opportunity to observe, in particular, my personal feelings about the very first class of each discipline I am teaching. The majority of students in my classes are new to me, from widely disparate backgrounds, and our time together is limited. So the introductory class is that crucial “first impression” from both my and the students’ perspectives. In hindsight, I have observed that my time as a teacher, coach or guide, has been considerably more solitary than my time as a dancer. During my dancing years, my focus gradually shifted far beyond just what I was doing, to observing my peers’ talents, strengths and weaknesses. At times, this broader perspective was emotionally hard to balance in assessing my talents and strengths against my weaknesses. My perfectionism underpins an obsessive work ethic, but for me, compariso...