Went to bed having sewn and woke up and back to sewing. If you went to see "Shorts" last night you would have seen my piece "ergo" half costumed. I did not use my very limited time management skills well enough to complete the costumes for the dancers in time for the dress rehearsal/preview Thursday night. So there I was Wednesday afternoon and part of Thursday morning running from the studio to Michael's to Hancock Fabrics then back to the studio then to my storage unit then to Gayle K then back to the studio. All of this in order to get these three tops made complete with ruffle bib. Well, two days of running around with one night and one morning of sewing and they were complete. Yay. They turned out nicely and looked great on the dancers and onstage. Tonight's performance of "Shorts" had something for everyone. Although mostly modern or contemporary the program had such a wide range of emotional and structural approaches that each piece had it's own thing going on. Stand out pieces for me were "Is That All There Is" from Adele Myers and Dancers which was mostly a solo with the incredible Diana Deaver then Adele joined her onstage for the second portion of the piece. This dance had most everything you can imagine. Humor, remorse, suspense, bewilderment, compassion. Ms. Deaver is an amazing technician with beautiful lines, incredible control and remarkable sense of timing. The other stand out piece for me was performed by Good Moves Consort lead by Annette Lewis. This group of five young dancers, and when I say young I mean 11 and 12, performed a piece that was structurally complex and was full emotion and energy with the maturity and focus of much older dancers. They did an amazing job and hold lots of promise for a future in dance. My dance "ergo" turned out nicely...my three dancers Rose Shields, Jena Kovash and Stephanie Johnson busted their butts. The piece was quite fast and extensive. "ergo" begins with a murder scene as we see Rose laying on the ground with a ribbon of blood flowing from her dead body and Jena standing still with her back to the audience as she reveals a knife from behind her body. As the music builds we see Jena's body produce a multi layered full body contraction of emotion. She drops the knife and falls to the floor and straight into a headstand showing complete confusion. Stephanie enters the scene to find a sight she never expected with one of her dead and the other upside down. As the tension builds we see Stephanie try to devour the evidence as Jena starts to come to and see what she has done. At this point I decided to reverse the story to show the scene that led up to the murder. I did this by having Jena pull the ribbon from Rose's body as Stephanie was in the process of removing the evidence even more by way of disposing the body. From this point on there was explosive dance involving rapid foot work, long extended lines and pattern changes onstage. We see the three exchanging aggressive control of passive martyrdom and then betrayal in that. By the end Rose and Jena are in a waltz duel for final destruction. The piece ends with Rose begging for mercy which is actually Jena begging for mercy from herself and ultimately killing herself using Rose as the martyr. Not sure if it all makes since but I found it interesting. I have to give it up to Joanna Brooks for curating this event. She is consistently active in and for the Atlanta dance community and Shorts is yet another testament that dance is alive and well in the city.
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