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Whooooosh.
That was the sound of January flying by. Soon to be followed by an equivalent sound of February taking flight.
All of which signals to me that March 4, 2012 will arrive before I think it should. Our 4th season.
Time to start rallying the troops!
Here’s What I Want You to Know:
Brian Brooks Moving Company arrives for their month long residency at the Lobero Theatre on March 4.
While in residence, Brian has decided to set a work on any members of our community who want to be in on the fun of working with a NYC choreographer and his company members. Dancers and non dancers are alike are welcome to participate. Remember what fun was had with Larry Keigwin in 2010 when he created Bolero Santa Barbara?!!
Bolero Rehearsal, DANCEworks 2010
Community participants have to be available for rehearsals and both performances. We’re figuring out those logistics now. Most importantly, this work will be performed at the Lobero Theatre on March 30 and 31 when Brian premieres the work Big City, which he’ll be setting on his company while here. If you’re a part of the community project, we’ll happily award you with a free ticket to each performance so that you can share your talent with a Significant Other! Brian and his dancers are eager to get here and begin the creative process. Each time I speak with him he tells me, “I’m so excited!” Me, too.
It’s a rare event to be taught a new work by a professional choreographer unless you’re in college, or in another professional dance company. A charming, witty and fun-loving choreographer too. It’s even rarer to be a part of the company’s formal performance dates! Within the next few days, we will be setting up a time and date to meet with Brian to begin rehearsals. Stay tuned.
Brian’s career is taking off. He’s gotten NDP (National Dance Project) funding to tour Big City nationally, after it leaves Santa Barbara. That’s a BD (Big Deal.) It insures that the work created here will be seen by thousands. This is a wonderful opportunity to experience the fun, hard work and excitement that is a part of making dance and of preparing for performance.
Please help us spread the word. Post this, and email the link to friends you think might be interested. According to Brian, the more the merrier!! FYI, He thrives on challenges.
ission rose garden at the conclusion of the festival in late July. A few hundred people attended, many families included, to watch our dancers frolic and perform among the roses. Usually, at that point of the festival, I was so exhausted that I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the choices the artists would make for their brief performances. When the mattress made its appearance I was a bit stunned, but when I saw that Larry and Nicole were performing their possibly x-rated dance in their skimpy tidy-whities for this family friendly crowd, the smile froze on my face. Amazingly enough, not one person commented to me about the appropriateness of that work for the assembled audience. Everyone seemed pretty pleased. With one lone exception. A man in a pick up truck objected strongly as he drove by during the performance and hollered “Why don’t you get yourself a motel??!!” 
Choreographer Mark Dendy is provocative. When I saw his performance of Dream Analysis in 1999 at the Joyce Theatre in NYC, I was captivated. Dendy’s work was simultaneously theatrical, original, outrageous and electrifying. On the spot, Laurie Burnaby and I decided that we must bring his company to Santa Barbara. The NY Times called Dream Analysis a “phantasmagoric comic spectacle.” It was about ”a young gay dancer and his psychotherapist, who is in drag, talking their way through a nightmare inhabited by two Martha Grahams, two Vaslav Nijinskys, Judy Garland, a demented Southern mother, an even nuttier aunt, the dancer himself, two sadistic dance teachers and characters from ballets Nijinsky created or performed in. Astonishingly, they are all played by a cast of six.” NY Times, Jennifer Dunning, August 29, 1998. Just my cup of tea!
