Tag Archives: dance

Muzzle Not the Ox: Crowd Funding for the Arts

Dance and the other arts, , , ,
Something sudden swept over her? That phrase is from the title of Susan Tenney’s new collaboration with her brothers, a work that premieres in New York on June 5. But it wasn’t sudden. She’s done marvelous Tenney and Company collaborations for years. And she is crowd-funding the production on the Web, as is entrepreneurial actor/singer/composer Scott Langdon. 
Susan Tenney

Steven Mark Tenney wrote the script for Something Sudden Swept Ov3r Me (and the 3 is not a typo) with a plot that goes like this: Norbit Ufowatchin is a graduate student about to leave the field of Advanced Alien Artifacts, assume a prestigious residency, and write The Novel of His Life, when his professor entrusts him with a powerful device capable of changing planetary history. Who is the professor really, and who is his beautiful daughter?

It runs at varying times, a,Planet Connection production, from June 5 to June 16 at the Robert Moss, 440 Lafayette Street. Another brother, David Tenney, has provided music. Susan Tenney is raising money for the production through the New York Live Arts website.


In contrast, Langdon is looking to the far future for his productions, because currently he is in “Mame” at the Bucks County Playhouse with Andrea McArdle.  Some of his projects are faith-based, such as the wonderful one-man versions of “All Eyes on the Cross” and “According to Mark.” Some are secular, like a one-man version of Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” that he toured to wide acclaim.  

For what he calls the Scott Langdon Project, he aims to “crowd fund” through Indiegogo. His goal: “to enrich the lives of all people, everywhere, by presenting audiences with transformative performing arts pieces through which people are challenged to see the world, and their role in it, in new and exciting ways” 
Potential contributions start at $10 and $25 (for which you get an old-fashioned, paper mailed thank you note plus a CD of the Dickens evening.)
Support your local artists and you get it back in delight. As my father used to say, quoting Deuteronomy 25, Muzzle not the ox that treadeth out the grain. Just because actors and dancers love their work, they still need to be paid.

Janell and Jennifer: 30 years Later

Dance and the other arts,


For a choreographer, it’s all very well to work with good amateur dancers, but it’s really special to make work for an artist, who can take your movement and make it better than you’d thought it could be.

Janell Byrne, in her 30th anniversary concert for the Mercer Dance Ensemble (Kelsey Theatre, May 29), did that for Jennifer Gladney (shown right, photo by Pete Borg). A superb dancer, Gladney sometimes seemed more “Janell” than Janell. It’s been a gradual process, exciting to watch.

In Byrne’s “Confluence,” Gladney joined Andrea Leondi, Brianne Scott, and Kaitlyn Seitz – four sun goddesses in flowing gowns, with warm sidelighting (lights were by Sean Varga).

“Jig and Reel Stew” was Gladney’s home hoe-down turf. She and the above dancers, plus guest artist Karen Leslie Mascato, wore red and black in a lively evocation of different folk traditions, like syncopated slapping on the stage floor to reference the German Landler dances, where boys slap their thighs and feet. Then Gladney surprises with an off balance slow extension into a rond de jambe, a lyrical contrast to the down-home fun, and she makes the most of it.

Byrne challenged Gladney to go Spanish-sultry in “Tangos,” (her star turn was to music by Anja Lechner, but there was an Astor Piazzolla section as well). Gladney uses her shawl as weapon, as a semaphore, as a bullfighter’s cape. She was Byrne’s altar ego. She took the stage.

Byrne has a mystical streak, and her “Sacred Space,” to music by Morton Feldman had seven dancers (Danielle Atchison, Ian Conley, Charlene Jamison, Alexandra Pollard, Michael Quesada, Brianne Scott, and Scott Walters) treading with caution into devout, pilgrims, treading one organism. Evoking a mystical mood, it was my favorite piece on the program.

Gladney and Han Koon Ooi each contributed two works. Though they were good, I think it’s fair to say that they showed the contrast between a young choreographer and a mature one. Byrne simply knows how to do the most with less material and how to move dancers around the stage in out of the ordinary ways that are true to the dance’s message. That’s what the 30 years were about.

Suzanne Farrell: Stay Out of Your Comfort Zone

Dance and the other arts, ,

When you work on a new dance you are called upon to make a new world, to make something from nothing, said Suzanne Farrell, speaking after her ballet company performed works by George Balanchine at McCarter earlier this month. In the photo she is flanked, on the left, by New Yorker dance critic Joan Acocella and, on the right, by Simon Morrison, professor of music at Princeton. On the program were Balanchine works set to Mozart, Stravinsky, and Morton Gould. The latter, “Clarinade,” had been set on Farrell when she was just 18.

I’ve tried to transcribe Farrell’s post performance conversation here, or if you can’t see that, try this google doc, but this is not the final version. I’m hoping others — including Acocella, Farrell, or Morrison — can correct or add to this document.

A Princeton connection: Erin Mahoney, who trained at the Princeton Ballet School and with ARB, danced with Farrell’s company in 2004 and was reviewed by John Rockwell in “Clarinade” in 2004.

“I call Mr. B’s ballets ‘worlds.’ At first they feel foreign. You have never been there before,” said Farrell. “It takes a certain amount of inner resources not to fall back on what you have done before, not to paint the choreographer into a corner where you are comfortable. “

Sounds like risk management to me. Entire libraries have been written about that, and here a dancer is saying don’t manage risk. To be creative yourself, to put yourself at the service of a creative person’s ideas, don’t manage risk, take the dangerous chance.

That’s as scary an idea for a writer as it is for a dancer. (You mean I can’t just dish out a new version of Article Template B? I have to start fresh each time? Sounds like lots of work.)

Farrell made her challenge even more difficult: “Dancers need to rehearse different options of how it looks, different options to have in their arsenal of memory. They need to live in the moment, and if something unexpected happens, be ready to take the challenge.”

Live in the moment? That’s another truism that is easier said than done.

Both concepts — taking risks, living in the moment — are crucial to learning how to be creative. Both can be learned by dancing.

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