Amazing, Dedicated and Awesome!

A few of us from Omaha Performing Arts went down to The Lied Center for Performing Arts on Wednesday night to see how the process was going.  Our DP:NE Teaching Artists were not there, but the Community Participants were all over that rehearsal space swinging, and running and rolling and tumbling and jumping and falling and flying–just another night in the World Of Diavolo!  There was a LOT of intense and very physical work being done in the Johnny Carson Theater space–the “Cage” and the “Bench” pieces that Jacques is working on with both our Nebraska artists and with members of his Diavolo company are extremely demanding and it was very apparent that everyone was giving it everything they had.  While the exhaustion that everyone is feeling is quite palpable to anyone who is in the space observing the pieces coming together, it is incredibly inspiring how much our dancers from Lincoln and Omaha are dedicating themselves to the work.  By Friday night, I think that Jacques will be extremely proud of what will be presented on the main stage at the Lied.  It’s going to be quite awesome.

Once again, I have to thank EVERYONE for being a part of this massive and sometimes overwhelming project.  NONE of this exciting experiment would be possible without the huge amounts of time, energy and talent that you are contributing.  Each and every one of you is VERY MUCH appreciated by all of us!

THANK YOU ALL!

Michael

Hang in there, literally!

Dearest Diavolo ‘company B’ Dancers,

Please don’t think what I am about to say is “easy for her to say, she is not out there throwing her body across a bench or swinging around an iron bar”

In a way, though, it is easy for me to say because I have done insane things like you are doing before… please note… I have come back for more and would be there with you if I could!

Why- you ask????

Because you are having an experience you will never forget.  You will have this in your memory – forever.  It is an once in a lifetime opportunity.

There really is more joy in it than pain.

Believe it or not, this work is sort of the ‘norm’ for intensive residencies and there are artistic directors/choreographers as fierce and charming as Jacques, if not more.  (mais pas plus charmant, ce n’est pas possible)

I urge you to soak it all in, revel in it, embrace it.

I met with a fabulous local professional performing artist on Tuesday morning.  She saw the show Saturday night and she had a million things to say about it but one thing that you need to know besides how wonderful you were is that- she was jealous.  She was jealous that we got to treat ourselves to work hard, to play hard, to get lost in art for 2 weeks.  Artists don’t often get an occasion to treat themselves.  She asked me what one thing I could say about the experience.  Wow- one thing?

The first thought I had was… attack!  Don’t waste a minute!  Attack everything as if it meant everything.  Not just in dance, but in all your life.  It is amazing how contagious this attitude is.  I have noticed that when I am in ‘samurai teacher’ mode, my students become ‘samurai students’.  It is exciting.  Not easy, more like exhausting.  I guess it goes back to conditioning, conditioning and more conditioning.

A second thought… Jacques is a very lucky man.  You are making his dreams come true.  Choreographers can’t pick up a paint brush or go to block of clay and create whenever they want, they need bodies, not just any bodies either.  This is not a nightmare for him.  It is a dream.  You are part of his joy.  How cool is that.  He loves you.  I can tell.

 

Light those fires in your bellies.  Put fruit snacks in those bellies.  Attack.

Make it yours, love Lauren

(the old Lauren, not the beautiful emma/lauren)

Un-Caged for More In Lincoln!

Here is Jorge’s impression of diving back into Week #2 of the process:

It was Monday, the first day in Lincoln, and there I was thinking that I was already prepared for what was to come after going through the week in Omaha. Can you say, WAKE UP CALL? I thought we were just going to add on the the piece we had but to my surprise the guys started working on the Cage. I feel as if my arms were pulled out of their sockets because we did so much upper body movement while pulling ourselves up to clear the various levels of the cage. Many of the CPs did an excellent job with their passes and some of us took extra time to get comfortable with this new structure. I am excited to see what else I might be able to do today.

Jorge Ambriz

Outstanding Evening at the Orpheum!

I don’t have to tell anyone who was there that the Saturday night Diavolo performance at Omaha’s Orpheum Theater was an spectacular, electric, exciting event. Diavolo company works like “Foreign Bodies” and “Trajectoire” were awesome to behold on the beautiful stage of Slosberg Hall, and the enthusiastic audience was full of thoroughly engaged fans of dance (not to mention fans of our dancers!) from all over eastern Nebraska. We had a great house, amazing live art on stage, and an excellent reception to the entire event. What could be more thrilling to people who are passionate about the arts in our community?

Adding to the amazing atmosphere was the unbridled energy coming from the work of our DP:NE Teaching Artists and Community Participants. You guys truly dedicated yourself to Diavolo’s very challenging practice this past week, and the “work-in-progress” that you presented on Saturday night was just breathtaking (quite literally, I know! ;] ). I’m sure you felt the powerful reaction of the audience in the theater as they experienced your dramatic and frenetic creation. A performance of a piece like that simply could not happen without the drive and determination that each of you brought to the rehearsals each night last week at the Holland Performing Arts Center. As Jacques Heim is fond of stating, real, meaningful ART does not happen without sacrifice, and your willingness to deeply commit and work through the difficult moments in the creative process really shined bright and shimmering on Saturday night.

I hope each of you could feel the admiration and appreciation during the performance, throughout the post-show Q&A on the edge of the stage, and celebrating at the special reception after the event. Our sponsors from the Nebraska Arts Council and Peter Kiewit Foundation can certainly see the real and tangible benefits of supporting the great work that our local artists are able to do in collaboration with a visiting artist like Diavolo. I’d venture to say that your excellent work on Saturday may even inspire more deep partnerships like the ones of this project in the future.

Of course, nothing as elaborate and complex as “The Diavolo Project: Nebraska” is possible without the tremendous coordinated efforts of many, many people. I’m so grateful to the teams of Diavolo, Omaha Performing Arts, and The Lied Center for Performing Arts in Lincoln, NE, for all of their contributions to the entire enterprise. From taking great care of our many artists and guests to making sure that our facilities were in tip-top working order, a LOT of people did a LOT of work in Omaha over the last couple of weeks. Thanks EVERYONE for your contributions to the success of this project!!

As I type, our local dancers and Diavolo are already in the thick of the creation process again down in Lincoln. From what I’m already hearing, Jacques and his team are certainly not “lightning up” on our Nebraska artists–sounds like the physical demands of this week’s rehearsals are as intense as ever! Can’t wait to see how the “Territory” piece continues to develop!…

See y’all soon to find out how it’s going!
–Michael

Time, the body and spirit

I want so badly to do all of the work being offered by the Diavolo experience. Having worked with a highly aggressive dance company already and having NEVER turned down a physical challenge I am confronted with cringes and winces.
I love the physical display of passion and attention to a persons environment. The interface between object, physics and the human body are breath taking and exquisite. The verb of demonstrating those principles is a once in a life time opportunity.
I am so glade that my time with Bill T. Jones was so fully lived, I am sad that my body does not have more to give now.
The work is so hard, exhausting. The reward has been so great. The project is so true and inspired. It is very difficult to be confronted with challenges that I have previously faced, over come and bowed to. My body is telling me “enough”. 

I wish I were one of the younger bodies in the room, either physically younger or experiential younger, I would be happy and inspired for ever.

Daniel

A Night to Remember – Omaha Performance

Last night on the Orpheum stage was amazing and memorable. The audience applauded some of what we did. For me, when I went up into the upside down crucifix there was applause. So exciting. Who’d have ever thought . . .

And what a team. Last night we were an amazing ensemble, really working together to make our piece as smooth and clean as possible. I can’t wait to see where it gets to in the next week.

Glad to have a day of rest, though. Tomorrow – we dance!

Omaha Rehearsals for April 4th Show

Well, the rehearsals for the community Work-In-Progress piece for this Saturday in Omaha have been intense to say the least.  Five plus hours a night with literally four or five minutes of break to gobble an energy bar and some water or gatorade.  It is amazing to feel in my body how working it this hard physically makes for some interesting changes.  I’m sleeping like a baby.  I’m calmer emotionally and stress-wise, and last night, leaving after 11 pm . . . dancing since 4:30 pm . . . I felt like someone had put electricity in my blood.  I could do anything!

Maybe it is a symptom of our modern society with our computers and desk jobs that I am just now discovering this incredible connection to my body, its potential, and how working it hard makes for a much nicer existence.  Hopefully, at a  less intense pace, I can keep up the physical exercise post these two weeks.

I also must report the moment for me where again my boundaries of what I thought I could do were pushed, the fear rose, and yet I pushed forward and found a broader horizon.  I had just been asked to to a forward roll off of the 4×8 metal platform we’re using.  People were holding it like a ramp.  Then Jacque said, “Okay Jason, you’re going to roll back up the ramp.  Lay flat on the platform as you roll with your head  toward the floor, grab on to either side of the platform, and your buddies are going to life the platform straight up.  You will hold an upside down crucifix pose for two seconds, then call ‘Go!’ and let your legs come down over your head to the floor.”

“Okay,” I said as the fear crept up my belly like a fire.  All those crazy thoughts, “How the #$@! did I get here?  What I am doing?  Lord, help!”

“Two seconds, Jason,” Jaques said.  ”One – one thousand.  Two – one thousand.  That’s what I want.”

I smiled back.  ”I know what you want, but I’m a 36 year old man with limitations.  We’ll see what you get.”  

But I did it.  I even held it longer than the two other younger dancers on either side of me.  Not that it was in any way a competition, but suddenly there was this shift inside.  ”You’re not as out of shape as you imagine yourself to be.  You do belong here, even though you’re not a ‘dancer.’  You can do this!”  Wow.  Wow.  And thank you Diavolo for the amazing philosophy behind this work!

Exciting Residency Planned – International Thespians

I am excited to report that Diavolo style movement will be taught at the International Thespian Festival on the UNL campus this June. I submitted workshop proposals to the festival and they were accepted for inclusion in the festival line up.

The International Thespian Society is an international society, made up of chapters from high schools around the world. These chapters are made up of dedicated high school theatre students who have shown some excellence in the area of performance or technical theatre.

As one of the resident “actors” the Teaching Artist pool, I’m thrilled to have the chance to show high school students and teachers how to help themselves (or their students) connect with their body and each other on stage through Diavolo techniques.

Here’s the festival website.

http://www.edta.org/educational_events/festival/default.aspx

More Dancers Speak!

I asked our Community Participants to send me some thoughts to post about the experience of working with Diavolo.  Here’s what Jorge Ambriz shared:

Day 1

I realized that nothing I did at the gym during the last 5 weeks felt that it prepared me enough to what was to come. Our bodies were pushed to the limit and we quickly had to learn to trust everyone in the cast. Jacques was not kidding when he had told us that we were going to repeat things over and over and over times 100 times.

Day 2

Ouch!! Was the common word at the beginning of rehearsal. Bruises began to appear and they served as constant reminders of how not to do certain moves incorrectly. I discovered that I can do some things that I never thought I could do. I am surprising myself more and more with each rehearsal.

Day 3

I am amazed to see how much talent Omaha and Lincoln have. All of the CPs bring so much to the cast that you can’t help but to be in awe when you are watching all of them perform their phrases.

Thanks for offering your perspectives, Jorge!  Please feel free to look through those choreography notebooks Jacques has you keeping and send your comments my way, everybody–would love to know how each of you is taking all of this in!  You guys look AWESOME out there!

–Michael

Jumping, Rolling & Flying All Over Omaha!

While Diavolo and our Nebraska artists have been working in Jacques’ intense and creative choreography process every night in the Scott Recital Hall, the dancers of the Diavolo Co. have been bringing their art to the community.  Our guests have been conducting workshops and classes all over the city, including several evening sessions a few blocks away on our Orpheum Theater stage.  These programs have given a wide range of Omaha students, artists, and others the chance to get a sample of what our Teaching Artists and Community Participants are getting immersed in each night at the Holland Performing Arts Center.

Students in the dance program at South High School Arts Magnet spent Monday and Tuesday with Diavolo, learning about the physical work that goes into the choreography and playing with elements used frequently in pieces.  Throughout the week, UNO students (both those in the modern dance class and others who are training to be high school physical education teachers) experienced some of the intensity of movement that goes into the rehearsal process.  Wednesday morning the beginning dancers of the Beveridge Middle School Arts Magnet program got to try some of what their teacher (DP:NE Teaching Artist Lauren Bartels) was doing in Los Angeles a couple of months ago.  Plus we’ve had some very special sessions exploring the trust concepts in Diavolo’s work with a group of participants who are recovering from trauma in their lives and also some youth who are in a detention facility.  Beyond dance, Diavolo has also worked with a group of actors from a variety of experimental theater companies around the Omaha metro, all intertested in exploring the physicality of the work.

It has been a busy, busy week!  Everyone who has participated in these outreach sessions has expressed a lot of enthusiasm about the experience.  I hope that we’ll see many of them at the student and public performances this weekend–I’m eager to see their reaction to how all of the things they attempted in the workshops and classes come together to make such dynamic dance works on the stage.

More soon!

Michael