Alexia Beghi

Alexia Beghi
My first year with Orchesis was a toughie. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure I could go through with it a second year. The rigors of first year architecture coupled with my participation in 5 pieces in the show definitely took a toll on my health—mentally and physically. All-nighters at least 3 nights a week were commonplace for me. My parents never heard from me. My friends rarely saw me. And my roommate would be surprised to see me home before 9:30 and even more surprised if I was in bed before midnight. I kept looking forward to the end of Orchesis, to the end of our performances, to the end of all the madness, so I could at least gain some sense of normalcy and a few more hours of sleep at night. Showtime finally came along, and my architecture professor was kind enough to attend the performance with his daughter.  Backstage after the show, they both went on and on about how much they enjoyed it, but what really got me was when, a few days later, my professor relayed to me that his daughter had begged him to sign her up for ballet lessons. This really touched my heart. Bogged down by all the other crap I had to deal with, I had completely forgotten why I loved this art so much, forgotten that dancing affects people. Sure we do it for ourselves, but more importantly, we do it for our audience. We do it for the little girls who may someday have dreams of becoming the next Gillian Murphy or Gelsey Kirkland (minus the drugs and anorexia), for our families that have watched us do 10 Nutcrackers, for our uncultured friends, and for those trying to escape the monotony of their lives.  For two hours, they can forget where they are and just enjoy the purest form of expression—dance.  Yes, we all have our tough days, but if we just keep our heads up and remember why we do what we do for as many hours as we do it, we will get through it, everything will come together, and we'll produce a beautiful final product.

PHoto: Keith Mosher

Lar Lubovitch

The Lar Lubovitch Company was here at Cal Poly on Oct 24 and 25. We were so fortunate to have a Master Class with Christpher Vo from the company. Christopher’s contagious enthusiam for the Lubovitch work had many of us hooked. Not only did we get to exerience the lush movement that felt so good to dance, but also, the cannonical structure that Christopher put to the last movement sequence demonstrated how compelling a simple choreographic tool can be when the dancers are connected to each other and the movement is appropriately varied. Christopher’s charm when he chased and screamed at the dancers to scare them into moving bigger was especially memborable. This was the first time we were able to open the class to the San Luis Obispo dance community, so many dancers in the area were able to experience the work, and dancers who might not otherwise know of each other were able to share some dancing together. Once again, Christopher, our humble teacher, demonstrated wonderful care and generosity in giving us a Lubovitch experience. The performance was full of many wonderful images, ideas, sophisticated craft, amazing movement, and powerful images. There was much to interpret and enjoy. Listening to people discuss the work really reminded me how lucky we are to have dance. Even if we don’t necessarily understand something, dance speaks what words cannot, and movement seems to give us permission to feel.

Trip

Trip Oct 18 and 19, 2008
The company took a field trip to San Francisco to take some professional level dance classes and to see the LINES Ballet Company. We took class at San Francisco Dance Center and at ODC, two notable professional studios in the city. Class is always a treat, and in this situation; Master Classes with special teachers, gave us the chance to explore movement we don’t get the chance to do at home. Stacey Printz taught her own self invented “Fusion” class, which blends modern, jazz, hip-hop, african, ballet and anything else she feels like doing into a contemporary, fun and challenging technique. For me (Diana) it was great to see Stacey (a colleague of mine from UCI) and to take class, to dance something other than my own stuff. After a failed attempt at dinner - we set out in search of something decent to eat before the show. Because this was the busiest season in SF, the busiest day of the week, the evening before the SF Marathon- which brought gazillions more people into town, and our party had 30 people in it, I had dismal hope of having anything other than fast food. But, Chevy’s was there for the rescue, thank goodness. Food has a way of really making people happy. The performance gave us the opportunity to see exquisitely trained ballet dancers, and innovative choreography. It was a unique juxtaposition watching Pharoh Sanders live on stage improvizing jazz on his Sax while the “praying mantis” dancers contorted themselves into some incredible partnering sequences. Pretty amazing stuff. Bliss from the Moses company taught class at ODC the next day giving us all the chance to try on the rhythmically complex, articulated and detailed movement that some of the students will be performing in the concert. Getting to ODC on “the BART” (just kidding - it’s just BART) was fun, walking through the “interesting” San Francisco neighbor - “Hoods” was even more fun, especially with 30 people. Finally SFDC’s Saki Suto had everyone’s quads trembling in her dynamic jazz class. Tired and hungry, everyone seemed happy to see our bus as we boarded for home. It was a fast and furious 2 days. My hope is that the students noticed the generosity and the authenticity of the teachers - all seemed quite committed to the work, and the concepts and ideas they were presenting. They were talented folks with no ego. Great.

Photo: Diana Stanton

Heidi Vigario

Student Choreographer Heidi Vigario


My husband is going off to war.

Since the middle of September we have been basically living apart because he has already started his pre-deployment training. I have known this since last January and I tried to be proactive. I am purposely trying to keep myself very busy: a full load of difficult and time consuming classes, dancing on Orchesis, trying to work in between, plus any attempt at having a social life. All summer long I contemplated choreographing for the show in February. I decided to go for it and added choreographing to my list of things to keep me busy.

The next step was difficult. The two ideas I had for my dance were on opposite directions of the spectrum. Do I create a fun, flirty dance to distract myself away from my emotions, or do I face my feelings head on and make a dance about how I am feeling right now? Well, since I’m trying to be healthy and positive about this whole situation, I realized it would be better to face my emotions and work through them than try to ignore them.

I am currently in the middle of choreographing my piece. It’s hard. I don’t like to go deeper into emotions I already don’t like to experience. I try to cover it up, but I’m lonely a lot. Creating a dance based on that idea really sucks sometimes. I force myself to reconcile with the frustration, with the anger. I constantly try to answer ‘why?’ and ‘what will happen?’ I don’t know what the future holds for me, for him, for us. There are so many possibilities that can happen. But I know that in the end there is hope. I know that I’ll be okay and I pray that my husband comes home to me safe.

So in the end, there is hope. I can feel it sometimes. Even though I feel very alone, after each practice I am full of hope. When I see my dance on other people, watching it come alive, I am so happy that I chose this difficult path to walk down. Because instead of running away from these sometimes terrible feelings, I know that I have embraced their affects on me and I am pushing forward. Some days are good and some days are bad, but after every practice I have with my dancers I am in a good place, and if I can’t be with my husband, then that is exactly the place where I want to be.

Photo: Keith Mosher

Francesca Lee

Student Choreographer Francesca "Fran" Lee, Orchesis President

My piece is about opposition. I decided this year to go with a concept that was open to interpretation. I had many thoughts when first thinking about what to choreograph. At first I thought about using an anti-gravity and free type of movement because it is opposite from my normal type of strong and direct movement. Then, I thought about an up and down concept and a sense of balance like the moon and sun. In a human relational concept, I began to think about what could and could have been in our lives. What if I chose path B instead of path A. The impact of opposition and choice in life is what brings about dissonance to how we live out our every day.

Starting off in silence and a with a soft movement rhythm, I want to represent the calm before the storm. Then, I will proceed to fast paced movement, then a quickly change the movement to a calmness that brings to life the opposition. The music that the piece will lead into is Glosoli by Sigur Ros, an Icelandic band. Its sound is refreshing and representative of the concept because of its build up in the music composition.

I want it to portray freedom and choice in a way to what we can do through opposition.

Photo: Keith Mosher

Kathleen Helm

Student Choreographer, Treasurer, Kathleen Helm
I like to think that I am a creative person. Choreography is the outlet to my artistic sense, and although I would like to be a great artist or writer, dancing is the best way I can express myself. Movement often formulates in my head while I am sitting in a classroom (obviously not paying attention) or lying in bed, which is very strange I think. While choreographing in front a large mirror, I tend to critique my dancing instead of focusing on the movement itself.
The thought process for the piece that I am currently working on has been in the works for quite some time now. A few months ago, I was able to attend a performance of Robert Moses’ Kin, and I was captivated by how the dancing was not just choreography, it was a work of art. After the concert, my mom gave me a new perspective by stating, “It was hard to tell what came first—the music or the movement.” This is exactly what I intend for my piece to relay. Music and dance as one.
I chose the music for my piece before I had a concept to illustrate. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 was perfect for my intention—beauty and royalty. The story of the Garden of Eden somehow came to mind (I don’t know how), and I decided to intertwine a very regal ambiance with an underlying theme of secrecy. Through this process, the music will guide my choreography; hopefully resulting in a masterpiece…we’ll see how it all turns out!

Photo: Keith Mosher

Meghan Hudson

Student Choreographer Meghan Hudson 10/08/08
I wanted to try something new. The wonderful women who perform for my musical selections inspired me to write a poem of my own. Here it goes:

The metronome ticks and my brain clicks but uh oh
Nothing comes out.
I try and try with the song on repeat but still
Nothing comes out.
Come on feet move yourself, make me brilliant, make me wonderful
Show the world what you can create.
I open my mind let the chaos come out as I try to relate
Human and dancer.
Make them one, make them collide.
Make them slide into neither or either one.
Something so real about the way we move
But at the same time so surreal in they way we force movement
To flow when it just won’t flow,
You know?
I’m going to sleep, maybe a new day will bring new ways to move,
Or maybe tomorrow will be just like today,
Stuck with the ticks and clicks.

Photo: Prem Ananda premphoto.com

Kate Barton

Student Choreographer Kate Barton 10/06/08
What is called dancing?

The inspiration for my piece for Orchesis ’09 came from living in Florence for the past year. Being away from my company and having my dancing limited to a few classes per month gave me distance and perspective on the direction my choreography had taken in the past year. I hadn’t danced in 5 months by the time I found my studio in Florence, and the pure joy to be moving in that way again made me realize that my choreography had become too focused on creating characters and a story, and not on how fun it is to just move your bones. Dancers like to dance, not act, so I decided when I got back to SLO I’d do a really, really “dancy” piece.

That decision didn’t leave me very much to start with in terms of concept, so I let my surroundings influence me, as they inevitably would. Italy has this incredibly old culture, and Tuscany in particular celebrates that by relishing in the acts of doing and making in traditional ways, whatever the task or craft. (“Do” and “make” are the same word in Italian, so that makes a little more sense when they explain it.) Their worship of tradition seemed to resonate with my “back to basics” dance-for-the-sake-of-dancing concept. But I couldn’t ignore the fact that I’m an American, and Americans don’t sit around and talk about the good old days of the 1400’s. We’re modern. So to create a dance that was truly “me” I couldn’t just choreograph like Petipa 2.0 and call it a day. It would have to be a mix of traditional ballet and modern influences alla Kate.
Sitting in my studio for the hundredth gray, somber day in a row, a tango trio came on my iPod and my dance suddenly crystallized. In Argentina, tango is waging a fairly well publicized war between glitzy show tango and raw traditional tango. It was perfect. The “angsty” conflict between new and old was already balled up into the dance form. It asked the right questions. What is dance really about? Who is it for? Is it about performance for an audience, or is it for the dancers themselves performing for each other and enjoying one another? I think everyone’s answer is that it’s a little of both, but for me, at least for this piece, I’m leaning more toward my dancers. I want the rehearsals to be as fun as the show for them. I want to give them the opportunity to relish in the doing and making (again, better in Italian), as much as in the applause at the very end.
So, with those thoughts in mind I chose 3 songs from the trio: a tango, a waltz, and a milonga, and started writing down little snippets of choreography that would come to me whenever the songs got stuck in my head. When I got back to the States I still had the tattered bits of paper with the pencil almost rubbed off sitting in my purse, and I finally got to set those fragments on my dancers last night. In a way, this dance has made as long of a journey as I have, and I already love it for that.

Photo: Keith Mosher

In Progress

Diana Stanton 10/5/08
The Orchesis dancers are lovely. We had an initiation ceremony, a tradition here at Cal Poly since Moon Ja Minn Shur founded Orchesis in 1969. What a terrific lineage of dance history we have here at Cal Poly. Maria Junco directed the show for the past 9 years, and passed the “torch” (candle) to me this year to direct the show. In reality, I would like to think that we all direct the show – we all are the substance of what this show will become. I feel tremendously excited by the ideas and energy of the group. The student choreographers demonstrated that they have deep, unique and creative thoughts as they presented their ideas for choreography. Some struggled with feeling silly as they put the ideas that are in their imaginations into words – of course it seems silly – that is why we have and need dancing; sometimes there is expression that finds itself no other outlet than dancing. In the words of Isadora Duncan, “If I could tell you what I mean, I wouldn’t have to dance it.” To some of us who call ourselves dancers, movement is as essential to our life as breathing. Thank you dancers, for your courage and commitment.

Crystal

From
Student
choreographer:
Crystal Valdez Oct. 2, 2008
So the time has come to choreograph another dance! These words instigated two different feelings in me: first, happy just being able to dance (not the fact that it is my dance I’m dancing to….I’m just happy because I’m dancing) and second, instant panic, terror and memories of all the time and sweat you have to put into your so called “vision” that doesn’t make sense to you or anyone else around you and you’re freaking out because you feel like your work is not very good. Now it seems here that I’m making choreographing sound like I’m pulling my hair out or like something I am being forced to do. But that’s not what I’m trying say. Choreography has proven to be the only outlet I have in life to express my frustration, sadness, happiness, etc…. I begin each one of my dances with some type of “inspiration” that comes from an unknown and unexpected source at that time. This year I started with a series of questions I wanted to try and answer:

Ever feel like you want to make an impact on the world, but don’t really know how? Volunteer in Africa or India? Help with Hurricane Katrina relief? Somehow aid injured American soldiers in Iraq? How do we continue with our lives while all this is happening in the background?

How do people who realize this background noise, as it has come to develop, deal with it? It all depends on your path in life I think. Can you drop everything and travel across the globe? Can you go to school and learn about ways to help? Or are you stuck in a job that you have grown dependent on? Which ever situation we are in, how do we express frustration? How about through dance? Can we make an impact through the dance of our frustration? African Americans have used rap music as their outlet to express their feelings regarding oppression and inequality throughout the 20th century. They expressed these feelings a lot of times through underground hip hop where they had the complete freedom and speech and expression…..

So this stream of consciousness ends here but these thoughts continue to flow my head. I’m trying to figure out now how to develop certain movement phrases that emphasis a lot of the key words in my psychological portrait: “background noise”, “tension”, “risk”, “paths and journeys”, struggle and break away”….etc.

Photo: Keith Mosher