So this is my favourite one so far, and we just filmed this not too long ago. Our inspiration was ballroom and some tutting and just plain beserkness.

It’s done to the classic competition song Mortal Kombat! Enjoy!

We did our LOLAline Spring photo shoot in Emery LeCrone’s rehearsal of a new ballet for Columbia Ballet Collaborative.  The dancers featured are Nicole Cerutti, Alexandra Ignatius, Victoria North, Erin Arbuckle and Jen Barrer-Gall.  Photos by Steven Schreiber.

Emery thinks through a phrase she is about to teach in a Jade Shrug Off.

It was so much fun to be in Streng Studio at Barnard, being a fly on the wall in their rehearsal process.

Emery explains how best to get into the next move.

Nicole, Alex and Jen go for it! (Nicole is in the new Lemon Sheer Power)

The phrase they were working on was contemporary but definitely utilized all of their beautiful classical technique.

And hyper-extended elbow moments which I personally love!

And yes, those ballerinas will be doing floor work.  Alex, takes the moment of relaxation to work the Lemon cap sleeve Sputnik 2.

Stephanie Wolf, LOLAstretch New Media Intern, and I look on.

The choreographer’s world.

I love how Steven catches Jen in this moment, giving turnout in a flurry of movement.  She is in the newly brought back to life Sport Slender. (which we have not made in a few years now.)

And I think this one is my favorite!  Classic beautiful rehearsal shot.  Thanks Steven!

Time to go in groups with your like-minded leotard friend.  Nicole and Erin in unison.

Emery and Victoria work through a solo Emery has made for her.

It was such a great way to spend a couple hours and I couldn’t be more thankful to Emery and the dancers for letting us in to their behind-the-scenes world. (and looking so great in my new line all the while)

Now if only they could just manufacture the sun for us New Yorkers with all of their beautiful radiance…..

Enjoy!

Candice

This one came from inspiration from the Fireflies song by Owl City.

We focused this time on organic internal techniques where it seems as you have ingested something and it takes hold of your body. The circle of life connects us all.

“Infection of the fireflies”

Enjoy!

My friend Daniel and I have been doing these videos for a while where we make fun of ourselves and pair it with some horrible choreography to some classic music

Just thought I’d post our “series” on here. Although there aren’t proper release dates to our series, we film these videos usually when we’re backstage, or in rehearsal…  We suddenly feel the urge to create something horrible and entertaining for us. Hope you like it! This is the 2nd installment! The first one was posted on here about a year ago! This one in particular we are saluting or love for “try hard contemporary choreography”. Enjoy!

More are coming!

I will take you, 140 characters at a time, through the lecture and performance as Clairemarie Osta and Mathieu Ganio, ?toile dancers from the internationally acclaimed Paris Opera Ballet, will interpret various stages of love through dance, with discussion on brain systems that evolved for reproduction: lust, romantic love, and attachment by renowned anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher, author of Why We Love and Why Him? Why Her?.

Interspersed between excerpts from Giselle, Emeralds and Caligula,  Dr. Helen Fisher explores the connections between the dances and lust, romantic love and attachment.  Today’s NY Times also references Dr. Fisher in an article about the business of finding love.

Happy Valentine’s Day! and hope to interact with you all on Monday night via twitter feeds!

xo

Candice

It’s super exciting to see projects like this in development. Imagine what this could do for the performing arts!

Some super cool ideas and developments are taking place. Très cool!

Photo by: Bennyroyce Royon, Dancer: Erik Wagner

Hello Wingers,

Just wanted to share with you something I have been working on for the past month. I am producing a show called “Chronos Project” which is a shared evening of choreographic works between me, Nilas Martins, Monique Meunier, and Brian Gibbs. There are THREE evening performances (7:30pm) in April (22, 23, 24) at the intimate Speyer Hall at University Settlement on the Lower East Side (184 Eldridge Street).

The project will serve the creative needs of the Lower East Side community (Manhattan) by providing a high caliber contemporary dance performances, offer a job & performance opportunity to a group of talented and wonderful freelance dance artists, and support the creative needs of four emerging choreographers to cultivate their artistic voices.

I will post more information as time comes along. But please do keep in touch on Twitter, Facebook, my YouTube page! You can search me on all of these networks by typing “Bennyroyce Royon.” Also, please go to my website: www.bennyroyce.com.

Watch this one minute teaser video: Chronos Project Teaser Video

Enjoy!

Damian Woetzel, former NYCB star and recent appointee to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, brought up and answered the above question by maintaining that dance can be democratic in enjoyment and appreciation; it being an obvious fact that there is a technical gulf that often puts professional dance, and all highly technical art forms, on an unattainable pedestal, and therefore can restrict participation in the most literal sense.    Michael Sandel, his co-conspirator onstage and the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard, had a different answer.  He allowed that we need not be queasy about whether dance as an art form is inherently democratic because it has (or hopefully has) resonance.  And resonance, can be a two way street for performers and audience members; much like his question and answer discussion on justice which he led earlier in the evening about disparity of wealth and compensation strived to be.  Much like the relationship between teacher and student in the classroom.  (Now we have come full circle to our title.)

Why is the idea of resonance important to me?  Why does it matter if dance or art is democratic in and of itself or just fosters democracy?  How does that relate to issues of justice and equality, whether in matters of money compensation or status in our world?

There are so many answers, or maybe just more questions, but I took away this circular reasoning: in order to maintain the ideals of equality and freedoms of speech and therefore, art, that our democracy is seeking to provide and as citizens we claim to want, we have to make sure we maintain the very institution that provides it.  And in order to try to maintain any sort of democracy, utopian or our current grasping-at-straws version, the participation of the whole community is really necessary.  And artists of all disciplines, dancing and teaching artists included, can have an impact by creating a shared experience via their art for a community of people to participate in, either literally or by enjoyment and appreciation.  Participating begets participating.  I can channel this idea even more easily by thinking of the inverse:  that tyrannies are allowed to exist when people lack community and shared experiences, resulting in feelings of fear and isolation that further perpetuate that negative cycle.  Even seeing or experiencing art that is depressing or upsetting, is somehow still a beacon of light; if only to remind you that you are not alone, that you are surrounded by community and someone out there understands moments of darkness too.

Sandel also brought up the idea that our sense of justice in regards to compensation is just a reflection of our values as a community (what we are willing to pay for and how much) and so if we truly wanted to fight for equality in our society, it would theoretically just be a matter of righting who and what we value.  Just!  I know it sounds overly simplistic.  But it was a really inspiring moment for me because I realized that the righting of values and therefore our reflection of those values in our society, begins in the classroom, in museums, in studios, in concert halls and opera houses.  Ultimately, it is just about coming together to have a shared experience of other and each other.

As our nation, and in particular New York City, struggles with the ever widening gap between rich and poor, I found this lecture to be timely and profound.  Ultimately art and teaching and the art of teaching is about learning and experience and hopefully, reciprocation between teacher and student, artist and audience.  And the resonance that extends beyond that participation and/or perception is what brings us to the shared experience and sense of community; two of the greatest examples of the evening being the opening of the lecture with the audience joining together to do the opening phrase of Serenade and the closing of the lecture with the finale of Dances At a Gathering.  I got chills, even as I was guest tweeting it love for the Guggenheim and for my own twitter feed.

Now more than ever, I want to go to bed at night thinking my community is not a corporation, but rather a collection of individuals (who are also not corporations!) coming together every now and then to participate in the intellectual and creative life that a healthy democracy and our treasured freedoms require.

{Pictured:  Tiler Peck, NYCB dancer, Damian Woetzel and Michael Sandel.  Photos by Erin Baiano.  Courtesy of Guggenheim, Museum Works and Process.)