When I was in Virginia, about two years ago as part of the Rockbridge Artist Exchange, I stumbled upon  an artist named Cindi L’Abbe on twitter. Through her web presence I found out about her work and interest in both community, interaction and technology– sound familiar?  She is the choreographer and artistic director of Dilettante Dance.   She is also an excellent writer, and I’m always a sucker for smart dance artists.  Her community-based work, EveryBody Dances is what inspired me to begin our Framing Bodies series.  LOVE ME, was our first chapter.  I’ve been following her ever since.  She’s our guest curator for Links We Like. Enjoy!

http://pinterest.com/yokoono/yoko-ono-s-13-days-do-it-yourself-dance-festival/
This one is fun. The images are quirky and cute, and the text is a score for the dances of daily life.

http://www.500miles500stories.com/
Dance Exchange’s interactive website is another way to see a piece, both in process or as an end in itself. I’m always curious about interactivity, process as product, and use of technology in conjunction with dance. I also love to ‘click around’.

http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu/
Speaking of clicking around, this site for William Forsythe’s One Flat Thing Reproduced doesn’t really get old. Someone on my Twitter feed recently called Forsythe, “the Radiohead of the dance world”. He is pretty cool.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/jan/02/top-artists-creative-inspiration?CMP=twt_gu
Artists from different mediums share their creative tools for finding inspiration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb26lYy9iWM
Rumi- Those Who Don’t Feel This Love- This is one of my favorite things on the internet, ever.

http://pinterest.com/dilettantedance/work-in-progress/
I’m working (off and on!) on a new work, which is collaborative (with a visual artist), and eventually, interactive. Right now, I’m collecting images, and using those to generate movement ideas. I’m always interested in creating inroads for interactivity in my work, and would love to experiment with inviting some kind of interaction even at these very beginning stages. So, please check out my board, and think about what these images bring up for you. Feel free to comment on the images on Pinterest or on Twitter (@dilettantedance), and if you have images to suggest, I’d love to see them as well.

Cindi L’Abbe is currently an ESL teacher in South Korea, and soon to be drifter blowing in the wind. She has danced and choreographed with/as Dilettante Dance, and is interested in technology, interactivity and collaboration in the movement arts. You can keep track of her on Twitter @dilettantedance.

This Friday our Guest Curator of Links We Like is Jo Yost Ulrich, the woman who introduced me to Yamuna® Body Rolling, which I have written about on this blog.  After years of pain and discomfort from battling scoliosis as a dancer, it is the only practice that has made me pain free.  She is a wealth of information, and can teach us so much.

I have taken my love for movement and dance to a new realm for myself and have become obsessed and intrigued by the fabric of our body and how we can manipulate it and coax it and train it to serve us to the best of its ability.  You can find me at (shameless self-promotion).

Now it’s pretty obvious that I am going to put up Yamuna’s website as it is an invaluable tool for dancers and everyday people that dance through life. On it you will find resources for teachers in your area.  If you’re in Houston, there are four of us in the city now!

Now I have to say that there really is nothing like Yamuna® and its symptomatic approach and I encourage you to find a way to learn about its awesomeness, but…
if you can’t find a practitioner in your area there is also a great “down and dirty” video blog  that makes no nonsense out of making yourself more mobile. Granted, he is speaking to the less flexible mortals in the world, but in reality we are all mortal. He encourages everyone to become a “supple leopard” and truly feels that it is our individual responsibility to educate ourselves and take care of our bodies. You’ve got to love that.

Anatomy Trains is a way to look at that fabric and see how we are truly connected from head to toe in patterns that make sense of, for example, why someone’s knee pain might have everything to do with the way they stand in their feet. I love this stuff!

In fact, I love this study of the body so much that I am attending a course in Maine this summer that will prepare me to hopefully teach this work someday (when I grow up). The link below is to a blog of Karin who went to the same course last summer and has begun to test her wings in sharing this knowledge. I have seen her present and she is ready to fly!

I have to admit that the main reason I find really amazing things online is that my husband finds amazing things online and shares them with me and then lets me take all the credit.

Two of my favorites from Steve are from TED Talks. The first one gave me goose bumps. It is called “Minding your Mitochondria”. This doctor has used diet and nutrition to outsmart Multiple Sclerosis. The second TED Talk is something that will speak to the amazing dancers and their amazing brains out there I think: “Dance vs. Powerpoint”. Now I have to admit there is nothing on TED that hasn’t amazed me and made me think. I propose we throw out or televisions and watch one of these per night; I’m not sure we’d ever get through them all but it’s worth a try and we’ll all be better for it.

Joyce Yost Ulrich, former dancer with the Houston Ballet,  PMA® Certified Pilates Teacher and Yamuna® Body Rolling Practitioner, introduced YBR® to Houston in 2001, sharing this unique modality with dancers, athletes and computer warriors alike.  She teaches Pilates and Yamuna® to the students and company members of Houston Ballet as well as  to the public at her own studio, Pilates Treehouse.  She shares the Yamuna® work in workshops at NIAMoves, Pure Body Studio, The Hope Center,and CenterAlign.

Yamuna® Body Rolling is an amazing tool for injury prevention. It creates space in and between the joints for greater range of motion and ease of movement. YBR® uses a small ball between 6 and 10 inches and your bodyweight, stimulating bone, lengthening fascia, and regaining the body’s natural and most effective posture which is lost through gravity’s effects on our habitual postures and movements.

You lucky ducks, you!  Guest Curator Mary Grimes has found some great links for your Friday.  Check these out, and read more about Mary Grimes below.

An interesting stance on the long standing debate of nature vs. nurture

Both brilliant in their own ways – always nice when you see something so clearly from up close and then see something completely different from a distance.

While perhaps somewhat obvious, still an interesting perspective on choreography.

As always, thank you Mr. Cage.

Something that’s been on my mind for while now – my own personal thoughts on life during and after the MFA process

Who doesn’t love to watch Jiri Kylian’s work?  Just a reminder of how beautiful simplicity can be – a concept that I know I’ve lost time and time again in my dance making.

Mary Grimes is a dancer, choreographer, writer, teacher, and working artist living in the Bay Area.  Since receiving her MFA in Performance and Choreography from Mills College, she has started working as a dance writer and critique, writing for such magazines as Dance and Dance Studio Life.  She has had to opportunity to work with accomplished choreographers including Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, Molissa Fenley, and Marc Bamuthi Joseph.  Her choreographer has been presented nationally.  In the future, Mary hopes to continue her work as a dance writer and is excited to see where this path will take her.

The first is the one we are most excited about: our new website.  Check it out, stay awhile.

www.framedance.org

I have been singing the praises of this TED talk all week: The Power of Introverts.  I am an introvert, and find this talk refreshing and essential.

Information about our show tonight, Framed! at the Photobooth on Montrose.

Fun, super slow ballet video.

Why New York City Ballet principal Abi Stafford decided to start college—and how it changed her dancing.

NYT article: Ballet audiences FEEL the performance.

This week’s Links We Like is brought to you by guest curator Melissa Brading, a stunningly beautiful, powerfully fluid dancer freelancing in New York.  Check these out!

I was trying to think of who my inspiration was as a young dancer.  If I had to tell the truth, it was Fly Girls.

I get emails and messages daily of artists asking for money to do their art. It’s hard out there and the art community is making it happen. This is an article from The New York Times about the trend of financial crowd-sourcing on the internet and how it is making art possible for the artist and accessible for the community.

I spend an enormous amount of time looking at animal videos at work when I should be working. I especially love animals which appear to be doing human-like things- especially dancing. I didn’t realize dolphins were so evil…  

This is a delightful little video about the daily life of a freelance film maker.

This is a beautiful song by my favorite modern pianist, Ludovico Einaudi– enjoy.

Is your man embarrassing you on the dance floor? This could be why:

I had the privilege to see the show Traces a couple months ago. The scene with the wheel was my favorite and I found it mesmerizing and for some reason very touching. Here is a behind-the-scenes look at the wheel.

This is a great little interview about Jonah Lehrer’s book about creativity. He discusses some interesting things such as creativity in young people and the link between depression and creativity. It’s a long one, but definitely worth a listen.

I currently work at The Joyce Theater and we are gearing up for our big gala.  This year we have a special guest: Sylvie Guillem. She is in her 40’s and her feet are unbelievable. I am pretty pumped about the performance and wanted to share a clip.

This week’s “Links We Like” is brought to you by Cortney Piper, who comes to us from the world of visual arts.  She is an educator, facilitator, and advocate for the arts and specializes in integrating digital arts into student curriculum.  She’s a perfect match for our Links We Like.  And she just happens to be my best friend.  Pay special attention to these links today:

Cortney’s Links She Likes:

Dr. Henry Jenkins, Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, speaking on on digital media’s role in creating opportunities:

http://video.pbs.org/video/1767423195/

Also, his blog.  Theoretical, but worth perusing ideas on the participation in and creation of media and contemporary culture:

http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/

Sir Ken Robinson, PhD, author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative (2001) and The Element: Finding Your Passion Changes Everything(2009), art educator and leader in the development of creativity, innovation, and human resources, speaking on collaboration and creativity in the 21st century:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63NTB7oObtw

Dr. Ronald W. Neperud, former Professor of Art and Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, addressing the crisis of contemporary art curriculum, presented on artist and leading art educator, Olivia Gude’s, Spiral Workshop Website, an online resource for art teachers to share innovative approaches to curriculum developed by research projects out of the University of Illinois in Chicago Art Education Program where she is a professor:

http://www.uic.edu/classes/ad/ad382/sites/AEA/AEA_05/AEA_05a.html

A daily go-to for what’s happening in the art world at large, a great channeled stream of articles for multiple arts disciplines:

http://www.artsjournal.com/

The Google Art Project, explore museums from around the world.  The digital resolution of images is INCREDIBLE. This, arguably, revolutionizes thew way we “see” works of art:

http://www.googleartproject.com/

The iMovie app link.  Movie making, editing, and global publishing in the palm of your hand:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/imovie/id377298193?mt=8

The University of South Carolina Arts Education Pinterest page. Musings of our department; a way to share, appropriate, brainstorm, curate, dialog, and discover:

http://pinterest.com/scartseducation/

Because even in the world of Web2.0, color speaks for itself:

http://prettycolors.tumblr.com/

Cortney Piper is currently completing her Masters in Art Education and Arts Teaching Certification at the University of South Carolina, where her research focus on the integration of digital media within art curriculum to empower students’ participation in and creation of popular visual culture.  She teaches art to a wide range of students in both school and community settings, including a hands-on media literacy class for undergraduate students, film and animation workshops for the Girls Juvenile Arbitration program, afterschool art classes for at-risk 4^th grade girls, and summer art camps for four to seven year olds.  Piper advocates strongly the need of arts education to embrace new media in a dance between student relevancy, process focus, artist intentionality, and social participation.

Where do you stand on the “snark” in dance criticism?

An interview of Jamar Roberts, about his own choreography, his career and how he really feels after an 18 week tour.

Many congratulations to the Houston Metropolitan Dance Company on their new building! There’s a walk through the future building tonight.

Who said this? To put it simply, I make dances because I can’t help it. Working on dances has become a way of life, an addiction that at times resembles a fatal disease. Even so, I’ve no intention of kicking the habit.

What I would do to have dinner with this man… science, creativity, and why brainstorming doesn’t work??

Photography catches dancers doing every-day things

This was a refreshing encouragement.  Flattered to be this student’s teacher. 

This is a fun dance video and animation that reminds me conceptually of our piece Points and Coordinates, which premiered at the Contemporary Museum a year and a half ago. 

Yumiko Takeshima on retirement and what she puts in her pointe shoes.  Not just for the trinas.