Sanspointe presents Fuzión Dance Artists to Kick off Alabama Dance Festival

Join us to kick off the 2011 Alabama Dance Festival on Thursday, January 27th at 5pm at the Alabama Ballet Center for Dance for a reception and a performance by Florida-based Fuzión Dance Artists. 5:00-6:00 pm - Alabama Dance Festival Opening Reception and showing of the documentary film "Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance” by Charles Atlas. Hosted by the Alabama Dance Council. 6:00-6:45 pm - Kinda Cage-y performance and lecture demonstration by Fuzión Dance Artists. The performance is open to the public. Sanspointe requests a donation of $5 be at the door. Polyartist-composer Francis Schwartz and dance artists Rachael Inman and Leymis Wilmott collaborated to create Kinda Cage-y as an homage to the late composer and thinker John Cage (1912-1992). Kinda Cage-y is based on similar principles of improvisation and chance that were employed by Cage and Cunningham. The work has now been shown world wide and is part of the John Cage Trust. During the performance itself, Schwartz will incorporate audience participation to shape the development of the work as a live “one-of-a-kind.” A Q&A with the audience will follow to give opportunities for the audience to reflect on what has just been “created.” Following the performance and Q&A, stick around to observe the master class taught by Robert Swinston, Director of Choreography of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. The performance of Kinda Cage-y offers a fascinating prelude to Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s performance at the 2011 Alabama Dance Festival. The Alabama Dance Festival and the Alabama Ballet are presenting Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) on January 28 at 8:00 p.m. at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Center’s Concert Hall. MCDC tickets are available at www.ticketmaster.com or at the BJCC Central Ticket office. The film and the lecture/performance by Fuzión Dance Artists are presented by Sanspointe Dance Company with support from South Arts and 2010 Alabama State Council on the Arts Fellowship recipient Rachael Inman.

Kinetic Canvas features five new dance works

On Saturday, October 16th, Sanspointe will transform the lobby at Birmingham Museum of Art with modern dance, live music, art and spoken word.

Sanspointe will present five new dances, featuring:
Lynn Andrews
Margaret Armstrong
Shellie Chambers
Ivan Correa
Helen Gassenheimer
Michell Hamff
Vikas Hegde
Taryn Lavery
Amia Loubser
Rhea Speights
Justin Wallace
Anna Walker

Dances Fall 2010

Sanspointe will present Dances Fall in Tuscaloosa at Morgan Auditorium on Tuesday evening, October 26th.

We've been invited to perform for the fourth time at The University of Alabama...where several of us graduated from within the past 10 years. We're looking forward to being back again.

Opening the program on the 26th is the premier of new work by Chicago-based guest artist Margi Cole, titled "Roost." Margi set the work on five company members during a week in June.

Also on the program are recent works from the company's "Primary Subject," including Taryn Lavery's "Measuring the Marigolds," Shellie Chambers' "Mind Over Me," and the collaborative work by Rhea Speights and Justin Wallace "I made something for you."

Closing out the program is a new work by Lynn Bowman. The quartet will also be seen in the company's "Kinetic Canvas: A Dance Installation" at Birmingham Museum of Art on Saturday, October 16th.

Thank Sarah Barry for inviting us back to UA, and thanks Miranda for your design!

I come from...

Michelle and Shellie's collaboration, continued...

At the end of our first rehearsal, we gave the dancers a homework assignment - from Liz Lerman's "toolbox." We asked them to fill a sheet of paper, responding to the prompt "I come from...".

We had our second rehearsal on Monday, and these were some of the statements that they made, some of which we have used in our dance.

I come from plenty.
I come from safety and shelter.
I come from a family of five, a happy home, the south.
I come from farming and sewing.

I come from palm trees, the ocean, a family, a tradition, sadness.
I come from Africa, drums, pain; Spaniards with no boundaries, people like you and me.
I come from tasty food, local prejudice, bombs, violence, lack of respect of value for human life.
I come from an idea of God, the love of a mother and her sacrifice.

I come from a country where everybody stands for themselves.
I come from a place where you are not sure what tomorrow holds.
I come from a place I no longer want to be.
I come from a place my favorite memories are lost.
I come from South-Africa, now I'm safe.

I come from a love of art.
I come from being a believer in seeing the good in people.
I come from hope that the world we live in will keep moving towards peace.
I come from the sum of all my experiences and relationships.

a wonderful change could happen...

Michelle and Shellie's collaboration, continued...

by Michelle Hamff

Excerpt from Outcasts United, by Warren St. John:

"When I think about Clarkston, I sometimes visualize the town as a lifeboat being lowered from a vast, multilevel passenger ship. No one aboard chose this particular vessel. Rather, they were assigned to it - the refugees by resettlement officials they never met, the townspeople by a faraway bureaucratic apparatus that decided, almost haphazardly, to put a sampling of people from all over the world in the modest little boat locals thought they had claimed for themselves. In an instant, the boat was set upon a roiling sea, its passengers left to fend for themselves. Everyone on the boat wanted the same thing: safety. But to get there, they would first have to figure out how to communicate with each other, how to organize themselves, how to allocate their resources, and which direction they should row. I imagine their heads bobbing in and out of view between the troughs and crests of the wind-whipped sea as they begin their journey. And I wonder: What will they do? What would I do in that same situation? And: Will they make it?"

Thoughts after Rehearsal 1:

I am amazed; hard to put into words how relevant and important this particular piece of work is to me personally...I grew up with parents who valued teaching through travel; teaching diversity, tolerance, acceptance and understanding and celebrating people's differences while always striving to find commonality among people. I have been extremely blessed to have been to the Holy Land, parts of Russia, Egypt, China, and the Caribbean. My eyes were opened each new place I traveled and a love of culture and passion for learning and respecting differences was put in my heart many years ago in college. I put a work together called, "Babel," in which I got foreign language speakers from the language department to speak and perform. This presented many challenges as we had to really speak slow to understand each other and we would most of the time use our bodies through dancing to communicate...we formed friendships and would eat meals together outside of rehearsal and performance. I wanted to make a statement that different people can come together and make something beautiful in the world. And that is what we did.

Fast forward to Shellie calling me and explaining the opportunity to make a piece inspired by the book and art installation and that UAB students were reading the book and would be discussing it...I got so excited b/c the layers were beginning to be laid....the artistic nuggets were there: Babel from years ago, the amazing stories of the people that make up the book, the artistic vision for the art installation, the students whose lives hopefully will change from reading the book and create more questions and understanding (as it did for me personally the more I read the book), working with a wonderful friend and choreographer, Shellie Chambers, and knowing that this work at its heart is about people coming together to create a piece of art and make a statement of understanding that all people have stories and come from a place....we all have struggles - let's find the common ground; reach out and find a way to the heart of human connection which make life meaningful - to find a way to understanding and respect.

I think for me too, reading the book is eye-opening and is instilling in me a chance to let others in on this important story to be told about refugees whose one thing in common is soccer. What would happen if we all found common ground with people we didn't understand and maybe harbored ill-feelings towards? I bet a wonderful change would happen.