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2 years ago
A summer of jobs…
Well, this summer has been packed full and I am sad to see it come to end, but excited for what’s in store. After finishing the project with Dance Theatre of Pittsburgh I attended the Southeast’s Regional Dance America conference in May in order to see one of my newest choreography’s “ReConstruct” being performed on the Saturday night Gala. My dancers did a phenomenal job and I ended up getting the Project Tier Choreography Award for the entire region. This award is important to my story (or trust me I wouldn’t be informing you) because the award presented an experience of traveling to Seattle for two weeks to choreograph a full length work on the dancers attending the Craft of Choreography Conference. The experience was priceless and I met fantastic new choreographers around the country while under the brilliant direction of Rob Kitsos and Paul Moore. I would encourage any dancer and choreographer who wants to enhance their craft and be pushed to the limits to attend this amazing conference.
Now, backing up a bit in my story…I spent the first part of the summer in Atlanta teaching and enjoying the beautiful weather of the south. Then, I was asked to judge a National Competition in Madison, Wisconsin at the Kalahari Resorts for a week in June. Along that adventure I met some wonderful new friends who shared their passion of dance while sitting beside me at the judges table. A long and tiring week, but a great opportunity and experience nonetheless. After my journey to Wisconsin, is when I departed to Seattle for the Craft of Choreography conference like I was mentioning earlier. While in Seattle I also got to spend a day with five of my closest friends from San Francisco who were in town. We celebrated the coming birthdays of two of them and had a birthday extravaganza that will forever go down in books.
After Seattle, I returned to Atlanta to teach a summer intensive for a week in Roswell, GA while assisting my parents with a huge craigslist garage sale…in the hopes to empty out a bit of our basement. A day later I left for Pittsburgh to go teach classes for a week at an intensive. That’s my current location now. Three of my colleagues and one brand new one have taught beside me this week and we have instructed and inspired the dancers through our different backgrounds and styles.
I am getting ready to finish out the week of the Pittsburgh intensive and look into my planner to go over the rest of what summer holds. My next stop is North Carolina to dance as a guest artist with a brand new company there called Winston Salem Festival Ballet. The performance will include four dancers (two guys/two girls) executing a new work by Gary Taylor that will be performed July 31st. Finally, as the summer comes to a close I will be teaching in Atlanta and spending my last week creating a new work for adjudication for this upcoming years RDA.
Whew, what a great summer it has been and I can’t wait to see what adventures unfold as it comes to a close.
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