The newest youtube phenom…congratulations to Jill and Kevin!

One of the best for last. Thankfully she is still around and one of the few leading lights of contemporary dance. Although she has a bit of disdain for the U.S. she regularly appears in Minneapolis and where I first laid eyes on her work. Her use of repitition is utterly amazing, breathtaking, and keeps one insanely engaged! I think this is clip is one of the best examples of this work…Enjoy!
*A random personal side note: I found her work so inspiring I actually attempted to audition for her school in 2008. They only have auditions every 2 years and they cut it off at age 27.  I made it through a 5 hour audition down to the last five, but didn’t make the last cut….and that was just for the preliminary audition! Yikes!

Click here for Jennifer’s bio.

You get two clips for the price of one here because I love Batsheva Dance Company purely for their pure dance technique. I first heard of them only a year a go when I saw them perform at the Northrup, but they’ve been around for much longer. You can tell these dancers could do anything you give them from Classical to Contemporary. Even more important they seem to have fun doing it, they make it look effortless, gritty and beautiful whether they are in normal every day clothes, dance gear or suits or asked to dance to techno or classical music. I just couldn’t pick so…enjoy both!

Click here for Jennifer’s bio.

This clip was picked because, again it’s fun to see dance creators and movers thinking on a grand scale. It’s like Elizabeth Strebb meets Cirque De Soile and you shook in a modern dance troupe or ballet company. Sometimes it gets a bit showy, and cheesy, but most of the time they seem to keep the integrity of it being an art form. I love the element of physicality involved, the chances created by something that is a bit out of the dancers’ control or basically another dancer or partner that they create with their objects. It’s a number three pick because this clip is a demo.

Click here for Jennifer’s bio.

Again….a Pina Bausch piece….I fully admit I am biased towards her work. It’s so nice to see a female creating such powerful work. This is the first piece of hers I viewed after reading an article about her in Dance Magazine. How she created such a visual scene with the water and large rock formation amazed me and captured my attention from the onset. I was also drawn to the visceral feeling a got watching the dancers in the water; not to mention the emotional relationships and states created by the numerous duets. The performance sucked me in completely. I found myself lost in their drama and also found myself relating or placing my drama in their world.

I also feel this bloggers quote is important:
It’s important to remember that she makes each work in collaboration with the dancers. It isn’t just one mind that goes into the creation of any one piece. Her performers create most of the dancing as responses to questions she asks (about any number of things) and then they present their material to her. But it’s her eye, her vision, and her genius that selects what to include, what to develops, and that has created a whole new way of contextualizing dance and a new type of theatre.

Click here for Jennifer’s bio.

Jennifer currently lives in St. Paul, MN and finished her 5th season with the Continental Ballet Company. This past October she was invited to perform in Montreal with Rosy Simas Dance Project and Debra Jinza-Thayer’s Movement Architecture. She also appears regularly with the up and coming MN jazz ensemble, Eclectic Edge Ensemble. Jennifer has also had the pleasure of doing guest artist work with companies: Spandrel, Vox Medusa Dance Company and choreographers: Joseph Bingham, Kari Jensen, Anna Resele, Dawn Strom, Sharon Varosh, Vanessa Voskuil, and Cathy Wright. Her own choreography has appeared on various stages in MN in collaboration with local musicians, ‘Ada Jane’ and Ben Siems. She also teaches at Metro Academy of Dance Education, Summit Dance Shoppe, Janet Lang Dance Studio, and Tonka DanceWorks. Previously she danced with Ray Terrill and Dancers from 2004-2008 and worked as the Assistant to the Director for Rochester Dance Company in 2004. During 2003 she spent time training and performing in Szeged, Hungary and Dublin, Ireland for a little over a year. She holds a B.A. in Arts Administration and Theater Arts-Dance from the University of WI-Stevens Point. You can spot her performing this summer at the Ritz Theater in Karis Sloss’s ‘Reeling Over Love’, Cathy Wright’s ‘Thrower of Light’ as well as Kari Jensen’s work as apart of the MN Fringe Festival.

t’s so sad that one of the last great innovators of full fledged dance visions on a grand scale with such raw emotive movement has left us as of June 30th, 2009. I picked this piece because I feel it best captures what I believe is the real intention of the story, energy and emotion behind this music and is a great example of the power of movement with music!