Busy Busy
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.
