A Week of Celebration: how does your world come to life with dance?

Its spring, I am finally starting to feel it in the air. There is  potential budding everywhere. 

These past two weeks have been filled with hustle and excitement for Mocean Dance, here in the city and nationally. With Canada's first ever National Dance Week, dance organizations from across the country came together to voice our love and express the necessity for dance in one loud clear weeklong manifesto. That International Dance Day reminds us of the necessity for take part or experience rich artistic expressions of dance, the necessity to simply acknowledge the wonder of the human body and the necessity to savour the small day-to-day dances that happens daily all around us. 

Amongst the International Dance Day Celebration was Mocean's first ever intermedia dance party: ReVeRb.  

A fusion of dance, site-specific performances, intermedia installations, beautiful film imagery of Mocean Dance and a dance floor no one could ignore.  DiJi Dale and DJ Adham Shaikh filled the room with their incredible energy and undeniable beats that made everyone move.

Celebrating the power of moving together, the inner dance pulse and the beauty of movement was on our menu card. The event was a huge success and I was so happy to interconnect with NSCAD University, DJ Adham Shaikh and of course our audience, fans, and patrons of Mocean Dance.

ReVeRb: dance players in the sonic playground installed in the Pacifico's Crave Lounge

Now for this week its National Youth Arts Week! 

This menu card is for serving up celebrations to acknowledge 

engaged, connected and creative youth.

Gen Y performs at the AGNS on May 1

Not wanting to watch from the wayside, the dance youth of the HRM jumped right in and shared their talents as part of the celebrations. Mocean's Gen Y Project performed as party of the National Youth Arts Week Launch Party at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

 

Taking part in the National Youth Arts Week showing their skills and expressive selves through movement!

On Tuesday May 1 the Nova Scotia Art Gallery was a buzz of activity and the creative energy was flowing all around. The Gen Y dancers did an excellent job performing in the packed lobby and held the crowd with their intention and investment to the choreography.

How rewarding it was to watch a whole evening dedicated to engaged and creative youth! To celebrate that their medium for connectivity and exchange is through the arts, and witness them revel in their artistic platforms which serves as a channel to express their personal and collective thoughts and desires.

Where would these youth be without the arts, without their artistic practices and pursuits.  Alone?

That thought alone makes my heart sink.
On Tuesday night every youth present at the Launch party felt like they belonged to something greater, they oozed with pride and ownership, their knowing of themselves and learning who they want to be was a results of their connections to the arts. I was witness to a room full of potential and that acknowledgment of their potential was empowering and liberating for all involved.

Like young buds on a tree, nurturing and acknowledging what each has to offer is the greatest gift we humans can offer.

Mocean's Gen Y Project is supported through the Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage Cultural Opportunities for Youth Program and the RBC Emerging Artist Program.

RPP: Reverb Promotions and Preparations

Tuesday morning, bright and early. Susanne gives the thumbs up for enough dancing room. Check!

Martin tackles the sculpture puzzle and gets ready for our CTV Atlantic Morning preview.

I hold the Reverb poster at the Halifax International airport so Adham can spot me! It works!

Our kick-ass YoRodeo designed poster is the new gnome traveling around Halifax. Adham Shaikh gives a big grin and plays along, thanks Adham! Can't wait to make some magic for International Dance Week tomorrow night!

Folding to the beat, many possibilities and soooo much fun!

Mocean dancers Rhonda Baker, Susanne Chui, 

and Interim Artistic Director Sara Coffin navigate the immersive 

sculpture designed by Martin Tonner at NSCAD's Port Campus.

Mocean Dance was on-site at NSCAD's port campus on Saturday, a beautiful day with open skies and the view of the mesmerizing ocean.  Rehearsing on the 2nd floor with the ocean at our feet, we really felt as if the floor was shifting below us while the sculpture was shifting around us. 

Really observing levers, hinge points, joints, finding spaces and pause was the recipe of the day as all the options for play unfolded in front of us.  Martin jumped in and intervened when he could see a coming structural tangle. Our day in the studio was like trying to master a chess game, Martin very familiar with the sculpture could see ahead in the potential plays, whereas we the dancers, were beginner chess players just trying to remember which one was the knight and when to move the precious queen!

By the end of the day the play moves became more obvious and the risky maneuvers started to take the stage.   Framing, pause, asymmetry, mirroring were our tools at battle. 

Come see the finished product at Reverb!! There will be an added element of mini-cameras and captured frames spilling throughout the room around us. As an audience your eye will have many options to bounce from and hang onto.

REVERB: AN INTERMEDIA DANCE  PARTY, April 26th at the Pacifico Dancebar

with guest DJ ADHAM SHAIKH!!!!

Get your tickets today at eventbrite.com

Tickets: $15 advance / $20 door / $45 VIP

Celebrate International Dance Day on the dance floor with Mocean Dance and support Mocean Dance's annual fundraising event. A new event breaking the mold and finding new viewpoints.

NSCAD Sculpture meets Contemporary Dance

The Proposition...

... How does this cube,	...fill this space?

I first met Martin Tonner in the fall through David Clark's  intermedia studio course at NSCAD.  Mocean had proposed a collaboration with the media arts students, asking for proposals that included a meeting ground for contemporary dance, movement and any digital possibility....

A movement enthusiast himself, Martin immediately drew the connection between the folding joints of the body and his pliable mini structure. Curious how one can affect the other, the measurements begin and he creates a life size rubic cube type sculpture for a playground of adaptability to emerge. 

Creating spaces and making places, Mocean dancers (Susanne Chui, Sara Coffin and Rhonda Baker) will dive through and soar around the sculpture both physically and digitally. With mini wi-fi camera attached to the structure and sending their live video feed around the room, a trio is now created between dancers, sculpture and camera and the frames to enter and exit increase exponentially.

The dance will unfold in front and around the audience, through the frames of the folding sculpture and on the 15 media screens around the room. This is Halifax's own matrix adventure.

Folding spaces and making	places to exist physically and digitally

This is an experiment of the negative and positive space, relationships, shifting frames and breaking view points. An experience not to miss.

Join us at Reverb on April 26th and watch this proposition take flight and hit the stage. 

Reverb: an intermedia dance party

April 26th at 9pm

Pacifico Dancebar

Featuring: DJ Adham Shaikh (Vancouver), NSCAD Media Arts, Mocean Dance and YOU!

Tickets: $15 advance / $20 door / $45 VIP, available at www.moceandance.com

An International Dance Day Celebration!

A fundraiser for Mocean Dance!

A Party not to miss!

Mocean gratefully acknowledges the local support from our Reverb Event Sponsors: 

Celebrate International Dance Day

Reverb: an Intermedia Dance Party

featuring

DJ Adham Shaikh

NSCAD Media Arts 

Mocean Dance and You! 

April 26th, 9pm Pacifico Dancebar
Tickets available at www.moceandance.com

Come see Gen Y Perform this weekend!

In The Making

March 3 & 4, 8pm
Neptune Studio Theatre

Witness the stars of the future in this culminating performance of a shared intensive weekend of workshops and lectures bringing together four pre-professional dance companies from the HRM.  Participating companies include Mocean's Gen Y Project The Young Company of Halifax Dance, KiDanCo, Maritime Dance Performance Group and Coastal Dance.
 Co-presentation by Dancer Transition Resource Centre and Halifax Dance.

Tickets $20, $15/students
Available at Neptune Box Office: 429-7070
or on-line @ https://sales.neptunetheatre.com/Online/

     

Dancer Vivika Ballard grounding low

Dancer Kiley Burke falling way back

Gen Y 2012 cast works with Interim Artistic Director Sara Coffin

Flying Low Floor Work

Flying High Partnering Work

Breaking through the Concrete 

choreography by Sara Coffin premieres this weekend!

Performed by HRM's up and coming rising talent Vivika Ballard, Kiley Burke, Amy Campbell, Amanda Clarke, Haley Cooke, Laura Flemming, Liza Hartling, Emily Howes Vallis, Sarah Lake, Rebecca Wolfe.

Mocean's Gen Y Project is graciously supported through the Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage Cultural Opportunities for Youth Program and the RBC Emerging Artist Program.

thinking of the bigger picture in a small studio

Tomorrow is my last day with the Gen Y dancers with lots to do!

With studio visits from Emerging Costume Designer Nicole Parsons (scheduled to do fittings,) and a visit from Emerging Production Management Collen MacIsaac it is sure to be a busy day, (supported through Cultural Opportunities for Youth).

We are getting ready for the first presentation of our work together at:

'In the Making'
March 3-4, 2012 @ 8pm
Neptune Studio Theatre
Presented by Halifax Dance
Featuring Mocean Dance's Gen Y, The YOung COmpany, 
Maritime Dance Performance Group, KiDanCo, and Coastal Dance Theatre.

Breaking through the Concrete, will make its debut and find its own on stage with the rising talent of the HRM!


Working with a room full of eager energy, willing spirits and the concept of a wide open field, has been both rewarding and informing as a choreographer.

For the Gen Y creation, breaking through the concrete I seem to have been influenced by this special little  video "Back to the Start" created by film-maker Johnny Kelly, which recently has had main stream attention after being aired at the Grammy Awards. 

Working heavily in media, it was refreshing for me to shed my usual conceptual attachment of man and machine. As much as I tried to stay away, subconsciously it crept back in. I often wonder where the next cycle of human advancement and humanity will take us? The development and advancement from the industrial revolution, through to the digital age has definitely changed us forever. We have learned so much for the better and much for the worse. Where will we go next? Are we in the height of the digital age or is this just the first crest of much more. And if it is just a crest, how far will we crash?

Maybe I am over dramatizing (feeding off that teen energy in the room), but you will see these questions at play in the new Gen Y piece in the bodies and in a few bits of grass.

Costume Sketches by Gen Y's Costume Designer Nicole Parsons.

Gen Y and the Emerging Production Personnel Opportunities (Costume Design and Technical Mentorship) is generously supported through the Nova Scotia's Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage Cultural Opportunities for Youth.