24-25 Season Launch

September is off to a great start! Dance Uprising performed at Detroit Dance City Festival for the first time, presenting our piece “Rebuild and Recover” on the Rivera Court Stage. The next day, we taught a workshop at Delta Dance Connection in Lansing. And on Monday 9/9 we had our first rehearsals for the new season!

Detroit Dance City Festival (DDCF) was run very smoothly. I appreciated how well Kyra and the team guided dancers to our green room area, communicated with us leading up to the event, and helped answer questions while we were there. The stage manager was on top of things, and the venue was absolutely beautiful. Check out the awesome picture John Sobzack captured! This workers’ mural is an amazing backdrop for “Rebuild and Recover,” a piece that celebrates working together as a community to rebuild after any type of destruction.

Saturday’s Nontraditional Partnering workshop was our third workshop of this type. We went to a dance studio, where we met a studio’s performance company (dancers between 8 and 14 or so in age). We shared our fundamentals of weight share and group lifts. This particular style of partnering comes from my training at Purdue University, contact improvisation, and especially from Sally Wallace (of Purdue) and Bill Wade (of Inlet Dance Theatre). The lineage of this form can be traced to Allison Chase and Pilobolus. Any person can be lifted or can lift another, and we practice moving smoothly between different lift shapes.

One more update for today: We started our 24-25 season this week! On Monday, we started working on restaging “Practically Presidential” (originally performed in 2019 and 2020, restaged in 2023). We also had our first rehearsal for a brand new work for this season! I’m extremely grateful for the artistry and hard work of these dancers! Can’t wait to see the magic we create together this season! :)

Photo by John Sobzack at Detroit Dance City Festival. September 6, 2024.