January 12, 2008 at 5:33 am · Filed under dance, friends, dougfox, david hallberg, danny tidwell, blogging, cedar lake, TAYLOR, kristin sloan
Okay, so I’m a little behind the blogging times (even though it’s only been 48 hours since this event…) but I just HAD to write about the blogger meetup hosted by Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet on Wednesday. We saw a dress rehearsal performance followed by a quick q&a with Artistic Director Benois-Swan Puffer. You may have seen Kristin’s (real time!) photos of it. What a great night, and what a great show!
My actual review of the performance can be seen here on ExploreDance.com. They have such a nice facility there in Chelsea, and some truly great dancers. Each of the three pieces we saw at the dress rehearsal performance were different but equally exciting.
Perhaps MORE exciting for me, though, was meeting fellow bloggers. Of course I had already met Kristin in an interview for my article in movmnt (coming out in early February!), but this was the first time meeting some of the other online dance writers whom I mentioned in my thesis research and who I read so often!
Before the performance there was snacks and mingling for all of us, and I was quickly introduced to Doug, Tonya, Ariel, Philip, and Evan (with whom I sat for the show). David also showed up (to Tonya’s delight…hehe) and there was a spotting of Danny Tidwell, too. All the bloggers took a group picture, which we’re hoping will pop up here on The Winger soon!
It was so wonderful to meet everyone and discuss blogging, dance, the performance, etc. We bloggers are certainly a motley crew, haha. Check out other people’s coverage of the event: Tonya, Doug, Ariel, Evan, Philip, and Kristin.
While I was so excited after the evening, I didn’t get to write about it until now because the last two days have been insane: I started my internship at The New Yorker as well as a temporary apprenticeship with the Rebecca Kelly Ballet. Talk about busy! Both my “first days” have gone well…
I’ve gotten a lot of questions about my experiences at The New Yorker and more, so I wanted to announce that I also write another blog, Off Center, which chronicles more of my daily life of ballet classes, internships (ie: New Yorker), writing assignments, and more. I’ve had it for a few months now but have kept it pretty quiet - but I think now that so much more is going on I want to invite more people to read it! So check it out if you’re interested!:-)
Anyways…BIG THANKS to Cedar Lake for inviting the dance bloggers! It was such a fabulous night!
More updates on dancing with Rebecca Kelly Ballet and more to come soon…meanwhile, check out Off Center. Countdown: 2 weeks til I graduate from Marymount Manhattan College 
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April 1, 2007 at 3:27 pm · Filed under choreographers, students, abt, VERONICA, teacher, stretching, flamenco, nyc dance alliance, danny tidwell, savannah music festival
Posted by Veronica Moretti Niebuhr
HI!
I know it’s been a while, but things have been a little hectic. We are hard at work at the STUDIO. We were asked by the city to dance at Savannah Mall for the National Day of Dance for Cardiovascular Health. This was certainly not what we are used to!! We danced in the center court of the mall in a 16×16 ceramic tiled space with 14 dancers. the girls were pros and we definitely made an impression. We did a contemporary ballet to a heavy metal version of Beethoven.
In mid March we went to Atlanta for a New York City Dance Alliance convention at the Georgia World Congress Center. It was nice to see that Joe Lanteri hasn’t changed a bit. My girls were not in their element here! There were upwards of 200 dancers in the classes and it was, well “competitive”. Lots of booty shorts and what we call “the vowels” (facial expressions that look like you are saying them.)
The classes were a lot of fun. Very contemporary.
They even got to take hip hop with Travis and Ivan of ‘so you think you can dance‘ fame. (So did I!) They had ballet with Danny Tidwell, Jazz with Joe and a Contemporary class with Lauren Adams. The teachers were very talented, and there were some incredible young dancers as well. I have a video of Lauren Adams who is doing work with Baryshnikov and 17 year old Dusty Buttons, who is with ABT’s Studio company. They are very versatile dancers. The interesting choreography they performed shows how much you can do with all that technique! All in all it was a very fun weekend. My student Kieran Rose was awarded their Ballet Scholarship and another student, Skye Cornwell was awarded a Triple Threat award for their work in class.
We had the pleasure of hosting a flamenco workshop with Noche Flamenca, a Flamenco Company from Madrid, last week. They were part of the Savannah Music Festival. For some reason they had to change the time of their class-but they did not actually tell anyone. There was a group of people from Jacksonville who arrived only to find out they would only have about 30 minutes of class. It was a mess. Of course when they began-there were no students, soooooooo I enlisted the help of the Moms of my 4 year olds who were there. They were awesome! Unfortunately, Noche Flamenca would not allow photographs.
So now we are back to work at the STUDIO…..STRETCHING. My girls almost never stretch on their own so I’ve developed a portion of class time devoted to making them stretch. In addition we do crunches and arm strengthening. We have also begun work on our Spring Show that is at the Lucas Theatre on June 3rd.
I am experiencing a little burn-out, but I know I will get inspired again. I have been teaching so much that I have really aggravated my hip. My students don’t seem to notice that I can hardly walk! I have a hard time teaching when I don’t feel that I can “show” what I want from them. It is incredibly frustrating. And, I am a dancer-I need to feel it to do it. Hopefully all of this will bring something fresh to my choreography, I’ll keep you posted.
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