TAYLOR GORDON Dancer, Student and Journalist New York, NY UYSA BIO | POSTS

Wow, I’m way behind on my blogging this month! I try to update often, and then somewhere between grad school classes, rehearsals, article deadlines, and technique classes I get lost in time! Since there’s a ton to write about since my last post, I’m going to try to keep it brief by summarizing some of the stuff that’s been going on over the past few weeks…and it’s been a lot! My goal for the next few weeks is to stay on top of my news and blog in a timely manner, haha.

*My last post was about a blogger get together hosted by movmnt magazine. Since then, I’ve already started working on my next articles for their summer issue coming out in June. I received my assignments (3 articles this time = yay!) last week, and I’m already scheduling interviews with different people from the dance world. It’s so cool that I get the chance to speak to such interesting people and share their stories…that’s one of the things I love about writing, especially writing about dance.

movmnt magazine spring 2008 cover, courtesy of David Benaym, movmnt magazine

blogger get-together at movmnt’s office

Speaking of writing about dance, did anyone hear about how the LA Times recently eliminated their Chief Dance Critic position, held by Lewis Segal? Given all my research on dance criticism last semester and my aspirations to continue to write about dance in the future, I’d say this is a huge let down. Apparently staff cuts at the newspaper made them drop the position…it’s too bad dance isn’t given all the publicity it’s worth!

*Rehearsals started the past few weeks for Rebecca Kelly Ballet, a contemporary ballet company I’m apprenticing with. More on this in another post to come, but their season is at the end of April and it’s going to be a great one! I’m just an understudy at the moment, but their whole rehearsal process, especially of their new work, is so interesting. It’s so great to have the opportunity to learn like this…

*I’m teaching! One of my teachers at school last semester runs a dance program at this NYC public high school, and she asked me to choreograph for their spring performance in May. It’s my first (feeble) attempt at choreography besides little solos for myself back when I was younger, but it’s fun so far. The group of kids is a mixed bag of high school juniors and seniors with various levels of dance training, so it’s been a challenge to adapt my ideas to suit them, but my piece is coming along. I’m using the theme song from the American Beauty soundtrack (love that music…I danced my first pas de deux that I ever performed onstage to it back many many summer intensives ago) and we’re about 2 minutes into the dance. I only get to work with them once a week (and half the allotted time is spent giving a warm up class), but we’re pulling it together.

*In spite of all the craziness of my schedule I found time last week to take a quick getaway “vacation” to see two of my best friends out in Salt Lake City. They’re at the University of Utah in the ballet program now, but even though they are far away from me I still consider them some of my closest friends (we were roommates at The Rock School…when you live, eat, sleep, go to school with fellow dancers you become like sisters!) It was refreshing to experience the mountains of the west for the first time and I came back to New York after only 3 days feeling renewed and inspired.

being inspired by the mountains in Salt Lake City

*My teacher that I work with most often (okay, obsessively often) recently started putting together these little student showcases that will happen every 3 months or so to give her adult students a chance to experience performing. It’s nothing major, and only held in a big studio with a fairly small audience, but we had our first one at the end of February. We performed an excerpt from Swan Lake, and I did the Gamzatti Variation from La Bayadere. It was fun…

This time around she got a “real” choreographer to come in to create a new solo on me that he’ll use for his demo reel as well. We had our first rehearsal yesterday and it’s definitely interesting…more details to come as we progress. Also, I’m officially her “webmaster” now, and we send out a bi-weekly newsletter with dance news and info about her classes/students, which is always amusing. Subscribe if you’re interested, or just check the archives.

Sorry to be so sporadic in this post, but that’s kind of how my life has been since I finished college in January! There’s more to catch up on but I’ll leave that for another post sometime soon…I have so many things going on and so many different schedules and dates running through my mind that it’s hard to keep it straight. I thrive off being busy, though, and I wouldn’t change a thing!