PERFORMANCES IN JANUARY 2010

Photo of Melissa Block: Jim Boyden

This new decade will be getting off to a rip roarin’ start with a slew of performances in January.
 

• On January 16th, 7:30 pm at The Montecito School of Ballet we’ll be hosting a studio showing with guest artists Erin Martinez, and Noelle Andressen-Kale’s Rubans Rouges Dances.  In addition to playing some choreographic games with the audience Stephen Kelly will be showing his new trio “Lucky Ducks,” Misa will be giving a sneak preview of “Ranunculus,” Noelle will be showing “Lost Innocence,” and Erin Martinez will be performing “Time Feelers” with Kaita Lepore.  As with all of our showings, the work is being presented on a donation basis.  Hope to see you there!

• January 22nd, and 23rd we’ll be performing in the Santa Barbara Dance Alliance’s New Works concert at Center Stage Theater alongside some stellar local talent.  Our good friend Robert Salas of Moorpark College will also be on the program. You can get tickets by calling the Center Stage Theater box office.

• January 26th through February 2nd we’ll be achieving our goal of taking work to NYC!  Misa will be performing in the COOL New York Dance Festival. The event is free!   Additionally, we’ll be doing some guerilla style performances in museums, store windows, and supermarkets with our collaborators in NYC.  

2009: OUR YEAR IN REVIEW

FEBRUARY, MARCH, APRIL, MAY: Balancing creative work with company class

Photo of Celeste Pearlmen, Melissa Block, Jacque Wiley by Jim Boyden

In February, March, April, and May we hunkered down and focused on our creative process while continuing to open our company class to the community on a donation basis. 

Community service is really important to us and reaching out to dancers with limited budgets by providing them a place to train on a donation basis charges our workspace with the joy of giving. 

Misa is presently taking a short break from teaching taking time to regroup & assess whether or not the class component of the company is benefiting the community. She recently checked in with dancers from near and far (Beate commutes from Pasadena to take class with Gustavo the loveable pit bull tagging along to take it all in) about the resource and received some great feedback.

“I LOVE that you have a donation class.  Honestly, it is the only way I was ever able to come at all.”

“I was always so blown away that you opened your company class to others, such as me, and Gustavo, and that you always accepted us by donation.  It helped me out so much!  Some weeks I had made a few great tips that I was able to give you.  Other weeks were tight, and I was so appreciative that I still could come to your class.”

“Your community classes gave me something to look forward to each week (in SB) and the energy in the studio literally brightened my whole day, and the day after!”

“I would say you were one of the best teachers I've ever had in my life.   Thanks for making  your class affordable too.  It is not easy to live and get by, and I am forever grateful for you being flexible and not making someone feel guilty if they could not afford the standard rates for a dance or yoga class.”

After our flurry of January performances conclude Misa intends to open the company class to the community.

JUNE:  Studio Showing & the Jessica Chen Project

Photo of Celeste Pearlmen, Melissa Block, Jacque Wiley by Jim Boyden

In June SonneBlauma laid out its colorful Oaxacan carpets, tossed down a sundry of comfy cushions, set up a ½ dozen not so comfy chairs, put out snacks, placed a donation bucket at the door, opened the studio doors to family, friends, and curious souls & hosted one of its infamous studio showings. 

We LOVE these events as do those who attend. 

It provides us the opportunity to soften the boundaries that can exist between an audience and a performer integrating the audience into the experience in an intimate way.  The audience meanders in while we are still engaged in class and are afforded the opportunity to view the training process. 

Once everyone is settled down we begin the showing by inviting the audience to actively engage in the dance making process providing a window into our creative process.  After playing a few choreographic games, and giving the audience a chance to perform, we usually show a work in progress. After showing the work we invite our visitors to wear the choreographer's hat and give direction on how they would like to shape the work.

The showing then moves into premiering our latest work and/or revived pieces from our repertory.     

Joining SonneBlauma this past June was Jessica Chen and her dance company “The Jessica Chen Project” from New York City. 

We know how difficult it can be for a dance company to get their work to other cities and make a point to open our doors and share the space with dance companies from other communities.  Not only does it provide an opportunity to others to share they work in new places but it gives our community a chance to enjoy the work of talented lesser known companies from other cities.  

In January we will be hosting Noelle Andressen-Kale’s budding L.A. based Rubans Rouges Dances. 

We hope to see you there!

JULY:  Celebrating “Go five-oh”, travelling to Venice Beach, experimental work and the Weston Exhibit

Venice Beach: Electric Lodge - MAX10

Sarah & Noah: Venice Road Trip

Also in July Misa drove down with company member Melissa Block, her family, and Joanna Nobbe to Venice Beach. Melissa and Misa premiered the fruit of their spring choreographic labor, “Grit”, at the Electric Lodge participating in their max10 series.  What a fantastic, supportive, inspiring venue.  The way that it works is that 10 non-adjudicated works are shown on the first Monday of the month with the series occurring 10 months out of the year.  Each piece can be no longer than 10 minutes in length and they are serious about that.  If you begin to go past ten minutes a bell is rung and that’s it, the performance is over.   Critics are asked to NOT write about the works.   After the show there is a raucous & lively reception.  The beer, chips, and other snacks come with the price of the $10 admission and most everybody hangs out for awhile to talk about the show.  They are a super supportive and appreciative community and although we had a long drive back to Santa Barbara we hung out a good while (well, that was also due to locking our keys in the car accidentally.) It was a priceless experience and we are grateful for all of the hard work the Electric Lodge does to keep this resource alive and thriving.  We look forwards to going back in 2010. 

The Weston Exhibit

Joanna Nobbe

Former company member, frequent guest artist, and ongoing collaborator Joanna Nobbe was in town this summer.   Joanna is a risk taker, loves to push boundaries, is a brilliant mover with a brilliant mind to go with, and approaches her work with a fierce passion.  She has just spent the last three years living, working, and growing as an artist in Istanbul & she spent some time in the area with family before moving to NYC. 

While Jo was in town both she & Misa carved out some time for some experimental work.  Jo facilitated movement explorations outdoors twice a week and the two of them met one on one to work on Sundays beginning the day by heading to Yoga Soup to take Eddie Ellner’s 8:30 am yoga class.  After class they ventured to ROCO to philosophize, chow down on bagels and scones, and tank up – Misa leaded, Joanna un-leaded.  Inspired by the taste of conversation with their bodies prepared to move after yoga they headed out into the community for their exploratory work.  Their first excursion led them to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art to view the Weston exhibit with no intention of moving or dancing.

They made their way through the exhibit together and then began to separate as each was drawn into different photos.  In one magic moment, without communicating to each other in words, they each began to dialog with the image they were in front of with gestures and movement of the upper body.   They paused to whisper excitedly to each other how incredibly satiating the experience was and how it seemed impossible to NOT respond to the exhibit with movement.

Other museum goers thought nothing of it.  They didn’t seem to notice.  The museum guards did and they were fabulous (shhh…don’t tell!)

Little amused smiles as they worked there way by.  One young gentleman quietly applauded in a corner when we were done working one room of the exhibit.  They simply let us carry out our explorations without interruption.

We returned to the museum other Sundays for further exploration & questioned whether or not we should invite an “audience.”   We decided to invite a small group of friends and set a “performance” date.   When we entered the museum “intending” to perform we felt a shift in consciousness & a gathering of energy that hadn’t occurred in prior sessions & took note of this integrating it into our discourse about deconstructing performance definitions at a later date.

When our “audience” arrived we gave them a brief description of what would occur and we went to work.  At the conclusion of our exploration we whispered quietly with those who encountered the work by chance, as well as the small group we had invited, and described our process.  We then invited them to give it a go by walking around the exhibit and engaging in the process of moving in response to the images.

Talk about joy - seeing some members of a family from Michigan going about gesticulating and moving in front of Weston’s photos while others held back.

I am sure it was a first for them. 

They were absolutely delighted!  

We gathered in a circle after the session to dialog about their experiences & had a wonderful hushed exchange.

Only in Santa Barbara. 

I don’t think we could “get away with it” in a larger museum in a larger city so we are particularly grateful for our success with a little guerilla style performing. 

With that said, come January, we are toying with the temptation of doing a bit of guerilla style visual art interaction at MOMA with Joanna.

AUGUST - Making More Dances

Celeste Pearlman: Photo by Jim Boyden

In August we focused primarily on the creative process achieving our objective of creating  a good chunk of new work in 2009.  Following is a brief description of the four works developed this year.

RANUNCULUS: Ranunculus will be premiered at our January 16th Studio Showing.  The work will then be shown at Center Stage Theater January 22nd & 23rd.  After that we will take it to NYC to present at the COOL New York Dance Festival achieving our objective of getting our work to the east coast.  Yipeee!!  Misa’s dream of getting some work to NYC is finally happening!

Ranunculus is a rambunctious 8 minute solo choreographed and danced by Misa that celebrates a rite of passage that softens the wrinkles of time, brings sparkle to strands of hidden grey, and surfaces from the sea of the integrated collective unconsciousness a thing she calls a dance: driven, riveting, determined, and universal.    The work is energetic, athletic, emotionally charged, & soul rich.  The diverse movement vocabulary was generated via improvisation with the company & community dancers, expression surfaced by Misa solo in the studio, & bits and pieces generated “in the moment.”   

The eglectic music mix is broken down into three sections comprised of: Joan Jeanreneaud’s avant-garde composition “Kaleidoscope” for stringed instruments, the poetic classical music of Mozart’s “Diveretimento in E flat”, and the outrageously zany sounds of Bliki Circus’s 6 piece orchestra from Kyoto, Japan. The primary mix is accented with sound samplings such as that of an old telephone ring, laughter, and the haunting sound of a homeless woman’s wailing gleaned from freesound.org adding extra flavor and a bit of an edge to the work. 

Anaya Cullen is costuming the piece!  We had our first fitting last night and gosh is this work fun!

GRIT: Premiered at the Electric Lodge in Venice, CA in July & performed at Center Stage Theater in October.


In the studio: Jacque, Melissa, Celeste - photo by Jim Boyden

Yes, as previously mentioned, I turned 50 this year and as a birthday present to myself I draped myself in a quirky duet and danced it with Melissa Block. 

As with much of my work, each time pen is put to paper to describe a new work words skitter to secret places refusing to reveal themselves - which isn’t to say that the work doesn’t have rich and layered meaning – because it does.  Sometimes a poem comes forth that kinda sorta conveys “what it is about” and sometimes nothing comes and I have to make something up to satisfy those wanting me to say SOMETHING for P.R. purposes.  Aggravating and frustrating truth be known. 

Dance is a  language of the heart, the spirit, the soul and at times words fall short of conveying what wants to be “said” in the moment through a choreographer and the dancers he/she works with.  Without a doubt, if you ask any two people who saw the dance performed on the same night, they each walked away with an interpretation just right for their heart, spirit, soul in the moment.  That’s the beauty of abstract work.  

The music mix has a quirky european flavor to it that begins with the sounds of an “old fashioned” typewriter – one of Misa’s favorite sounds.  It then moves through three sections the first a cabaret flavor created by the french musician Yann Tiersen.  The mood changes with the sounds of lively Les Gardemes gypsy jazz, and concluding with the driving sounds of Warsaw Village Band’s Polish folk music.

The costumes are way too fun!  Black fru fru dress mid-thigh in length that puff out age appropriate to a four year old, black knee pads (to cope with the agro bits of choreography), and black trunks cut up a bit to reveal the shock of hot pink boy shorts underneath. Oh, and baby pink bows bouncing about in the hair.  Very appropriate for fifty.

YouTube Link
10/4/09 Center Stage Theater, videography by Penny Little

LUCKY DUCKS: Premiered at Center Stage Theater October 4th and will be shown again on January 16th at our Studio Showing

This year was the first year that SonneBlauma shared the rehearsal space with another choreographer resulting in the creation of Lucky Ducks by Stephen Kelly.  It is a playful trio that Stephen describes simply as “a tragedy in 3 acts inspired by African Rhythms.”  The piece was danced by Melissa Block, Misa, and Monica Robles.  In that Stephen is a musician it is no surprise that the music mix he created is exceptionally rich.  Misa commented that although she knows Stephen loves her (duh) she never understood the depth of his love for her until she danced in his choreography. 

YouTube Link: 10/4/09 Center Stage Theater, videography by Penny Little

UNDER NO CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES: Premiered at Center Stage Theater on October 4th – a one shot deal but we hope to revive it in the future

Portions of this dance came out of Joanna & Misa’s work at the Weston exhibit in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. She also sourced movement from improvisational exercises played with company members, 3 Stooges slapstick comedy, fencing competition, tango, and inspiration drawn from surfing Youtube seeking originality.  The music for Under No Certain Circumstance is an intriguing melange of musical flavors including gamelan, Tuvan folk singing, the haunting voice of Turkish artist Arto Tuncboyacian accompanied by driving percussion, and closing with a whimsical piece by Phillip Glass for strings and a male voice.  Patrick Block served as the  lighting designer for this piece and Misa followed Melissa’s suggestion to costume the piece in white.   Misa vowed to never wear white as a dancer in herself in that she was convinced she wound up looking like a short, stout troll.  Stephen tried to persuade her that it was the angle of the video camera. 

YouTube Link: 10/4/09 Center Stage Theater, videography by Penny Little: 

SEPTEMBER: 1st Thursdays & NECTAR

Jacque Wiley: Photo by Jim Boyden 1st Thursdays In Santa Barbara there is a wonderful event called 1st Thursdays. http://www.santabarbaradowntown.com/go.asp#About 1st Thusday On the first Thursday of each month, from 5-8 pm, local galleries and art-related venues offer free access to visual and performing art. In September the focus was on dance and once again we found ourselves at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, this time outside rather than inside. We performed a structured improvisation on the corner of State and Anapamu drawing inspiration from the architecture of the space and the division of space made by the design of the concrete and stones. Misa described improvisational guidelines to those watching and invited them to perform. Of course kids can never resist & once a kid gets involved the adult follows suit. We hope to bring more work in spontaneous ways into open spaces in 2010.

NECTAR: Love & War Cybil

Gilbertson has launched a fabulous project called NECTAR. Every two months artists of all disciplines gather at Yoga Soup to present work grounded in a particular social or political theme that is connected to a related organization in our community. NECTAR got off to a rip roaring start September 26th this year. The first installment was built on the theme of Love & War. Misa presented a slide show of her visual art that, by chance, juxtaposed against a 20 minute performance art element. As synchronicity would have it the two elements fused seamlessly, as if they were made for each other. It seemed like it was a long stream of moments of just the right image emerging to provide the perfect commentary of movement that included not only free form dancing around a tall stool but sassy snips with silver scissors at each others buttoned up chef jackets. Bit by bit pieces of fabric fell to the floor until all that was left was a lot of skin and scant white undergarments.

Elizabeth Schwyzer wrote a great preview of the event for the Santa Barbara Independent called “Nectar explores darker themes through art”

A really good read. It will give you a fuller sense of Cybil’s vision. Keep an eye out for more of these events!

OCTOBER: Dance at the Top of the Hill

In Fall of 2008 Teresa Johnson approached Misa about participating in a project geared towards dancers and choreographers over 50.  Being only 49 at the time she bristled at the idea not wanting to place her self in any age category hedging the query with “well, I’m not 50 yet.”  Teresa decided to redesign the project to extend the invitation to choreographers over 40 using at least one dancer over 40.  Misa decided to “think about it” & by the time 2009 rolled around Misa decided “I’m in” and committed to helping Teresa produce the show at Center Stage Theater! 

Gosh, is she ever glad she didn’t miss out on this opportunity.

The intent of the concert was to inspire people to abandon an “over the hill” mentality and daringly adopt a “live at the top of the hill” attitude instead. 

Mission accomplished.

Teresa Johnson, and 10 other choreographers: David Alvarez, Beth Amine, Derrick Curtis, Trudie Olsen-Curtis, Mindy Horwitz, Stephen Kelly, Misa Kelly, Steven Lovelace, Robert Salas, & Erlyne Whiteman presented an array of stellar work.  These seasoned professionals presented a wide variety of dance forms:  contemporary, jazz, swing, Latin, dance theater, and belly dance.

Misa presented “Grit” and premiered “Under No Certain Circumstances” while Stephen premiered “Lucky Ducks.”  We were fortunate to have Patrick Block light the works and Penny Little captured the works on video. 

Thank you Penny and thank you Patrick!

Website: Dance at the Top of the Hill

Santa Barbara Independent Preview by Elizabeth Schwyzer

Santa Barbara Independent Review by Elizabeth Schywzer

NOVEMBER: Fluffnik: R.I.P., NECTAR, Jim Boyden

I am sad to pass along the news that on November 9th of this year our beloved company cat, Fluffnik, passed.  She lived a long and rich life of 20+ years.

Stephen laid Fluffnik to rest in our backyard between the pepper tree and the plum tree.  He buried her wrapped in a colorful piece of fabric with zinnias, orchids, a stuffed sock on a string she used to like to play with, and her little kitty comb. 

For several days we could feel her presence quite strongly.  At night during story time she loved to lay on the bed, doze, and listen to me read while Stephen stretched – it felt nice to feel her presence with us one evening.  She loved house concerts and would come out into the living room among the guests after dinner to listen to the music with everyone – it felt so nice to feel her around the Saturday after she passed.  

Although we don’t feel her spirit so strongly these days, she’ll always live in our hearts, and she’ll always be our number one company cat. 

We love and miss you Fluffnik!

sniff, sniff