Oh. my. gosh. Saturday was the coolest day I've had in a long time! I headed up to Washington, D.C. for the day with about 30 other JMU dance majors to see Saturday evening's performance during the VelocityDC Dance Festival. This festival brought together some of the big DC-based companies and fit them together into one weekend of dance. The performance that we saw featured Gesel Mason, EDGEWORKS Dance Theatre, Edwin Aparicio flamenco, CityDance Ensemble, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Ron K. Brown & Evidence, and The Washington Ballet.

When I was researching this festival over the summer and more recently as additional information was announced, I came across "Bodies in Urban Spaces" - probably the coolest site-specific dance project I've ever seen. In "Bodies", a group of DC dancers, choreographed by Austrian choreographer Willi Dorner, ran, crawled, and squeezed their way through the streets of DC fitting their bodies into the nooks and crannies of the city that usually go unnoticed. Dressed in brightly colored running gear, these dancers ran to each location (the audience is expected to keep up!) and would split up in different groupings to squeeze under railings, wedge themselves between walls and lightposts, and wrap and stack themselves around parking meters. Keeping their zip-up jacket hoods on to conceal their faces as much as possible, the body sculptures they created seemed to defy gravity and magically appear. After just 2 or 3 minutes of existing, they would dissolve and run to the next location.

This has been set in London, Paris, and Philly in the past and is what I think an amazing way to explore the different avenues of dance and artmaking. I took some pictures of some of their shapes and will try and post them soon. I have my eyes set on moving to DC next fall and if this project is going to be happening again, guess who's heading to the open call!!

This alone was worth the 2 1/2 hour commute and $15 ticket price but there was so much more to see! After a quick bite we headed to Sidney Harman Hall for the performance. What a great theatre! (Although being right across the street from the Verizon Center during the first Caps game was a bit interesting ;) Before I went into the theatre and was mingling around the lobby, I met some people that are great DC dance connections and that knew some of our JMU dance faculty. The whole time I was talking to some of them I was screaming in my head, "please hire meeeeee!!!" haha. Working for Dance Metro/DC, The Washington Ballet, CityDance or something similar would be a dreeeeam oh my gosh.

My favorite piece from the concert was CityDance Ensemble's performance of Paul Taylor's "Last Look". I think the host for the evening said this is the only time this piece has been performed by a company other than Paul Taylor. Very cool. The piece took my breath away and I never wanted it to end. There were tall mirrors set up all across the stage and whenever the dancers would pound into the floor (which was often) the mirrors would shake and make the reflected image blurry. One of my favorite moments in the piece was near the end when everyone was lying still on the ground and one of the male dancers was interacting with one of the mirrors. As he danced across the stage his reflected image was passed from mirror to mirror and my eyes were LOVING it.

This festival was the coolest idea ever and I can't wait to go again next year (and maybe even participate?) :)

= K =