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.

First rehearsal for Outcasts United collaborative work

A collaboration by Shellie Chambers and Michelle Hamff

by Shellie Chambers:

Today, Michelle and I began working with three community members - Ivan Correa, Vikas Hedge and Amia Loubser - on a new dance work that incorporates spoken word in four languages.

Let me give you a background on what we're up to....Sanspointe began a collaboration with Birmingham Museum of Art only a few weeks ago to present Kinetic Canvas: A Dance Installation at the Museum. In addition to that 40-minute performance, featuring five site-specific collaborative dance works on October 16th, Sanspointe was invited to create a work inspired by the UAB 2010 Discussion Book, Outcasts United, by Birmingham's own Warren St. John.

On August 24th Sanspointe will perform this work for UAB students, faculty and staff who have been invited to read Outcasts United and view the artwork, Mpanqui, Jimaqua (Brotherhood, Twins) by Cuban artist José Bedia. The artwork was selected by Museum staff to complement the book as it reflects many of the book’s themes.

When we were invited to make this work, I got really excited about it because I had recently read the book. I immediately thought of a dance that Michelle choreographed in college called "Babel," in which four dancers with four different native languages spoke and danced together. I called Michelle, and we decided to take that idea and make it anew. We put out a call to friends as we looked for three people whose native language wasn't English and who would be open to working on this performance piece with us.

Michelle and I met several times this past week to create the structure for our dance, using original text that Michelle wrote almost 10 years ago when she was in college. Today, at our first rehearsal, we met the dancers for the first time.

This new work will be performed for the public in Sanspointe's Kinetic Canvas: A Dance Installation at Birmingham Museum of Art on Saturday, October 16th at 1:00 and 3:00. The performance is free to attend.

More information about the book Outcasts United and the Fugees...

From the book website:

"Outcasts United is the story of a team of refugee boys, the remarkable woman who coaches them, and the town where they live, a once-sleepy southern hamlet that has been upended by the process of refugee resettlement. It's a story about the challenges posed by our quickly changing world, and one that reminds us of what is possible in this country when we put our values in action. Outcasts United is the story of what happened when these three disparate elements -- a town, a team and a coach -- came together in a kind of impromptu social experiment. It's a book about resilience in the face of extraordinary hardship, the power of one person to make a difference and the daunting challenge of creating community in a place where people seem to have so little in common."

Fugees Family website

Fugees on Today, reported by Tiki Barber

Where the Fugees come from

Today Show Interview with author Warren St. John