July 31st: Community Engagement Artists and Creatives Grant, December 31st: New England Presenter Travel Fund, December 31st: Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet Scholarship, December 31st: 24 Seven Dance Convention, December 31st: National Theater Project Presenter Travel Grant, December 31st: Breck Creek Artist-in-Residence Program
×
"The Devil Ties My Tongue" by Amy Seiwert performed for the SKETCH Series, 2013. Photo by David DeSilva. Courtesy of Amy Seiwert's Imagery
By Anna Bennett
“It’s 1940, and you just took a boy home.”
In reality, it’s 2018, an early afternoon in a Tulsa Ballet studio. Choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler is probing for the meaning behind a moment of movement that’s not quite working.
“Who should make the move? Who has the power?” Blankenbuehler asks Daniel Van De Laar and Maine Kawashima, the Tulsa ballet dancers cast in this duet.
The dancers look at each other, unsure of the right answer. But Blankenbuehler doesn’t have the answer either — it’s something they’ll all have to figure out together, from the top, once more.
Everyone resets to the beginning of the phrase, does it again, shifting the emphasis, pausing a little longer on this moment or that. The second cast for the duet, Minori Sakita and Jonathan Ramirez, shadows the action.
For Blankenbuehler, creation is a conversation, one that takes place over hours and days in the studio with the dancers, and continues even after he has left. At that point, his assistant, Cindy Salgado, stays to continue working and polishing the piece while he jets off to his next commitment (in this instance, off to London to choreograph the upcoming film adaptation of the classic musical “Cats”). But the Tony award-winning choreographer, whose credits include “In The Heights,” “Bandstand” and a little show called “Hamilton,” has never choreographed for a ballet company before.
Read the full article in TulsaPeople.
New York Times: Why Music Festivals Need More Beyoncés
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!