OBT's Uprising was a knockout!

I just wanted to take a second to do a short plug for OBT's Uprising featuring the music of Horse Feathers and the OBT talents of Ansa, Olga, Steven, Leta, Lucas and choreographer/dancer Candace. The evening was absolutely spectacular.

What made this evening special was that it was all dancer run. Uprising is Candace's brainchild: she wanted to draw a different crowd to ballet, so she found a band and started an Uprising. I was delighted to see the personalities of all my friends on stage come alive with the comforting music of Horse Feathers to the fresh choreography from Candace. I laughed out loud at several places. A woman next to me leaned over and asked, "Do you know them? You are laughing like you know them."

Uprising brought a younger audience into Mississippi Studios and a new vision for dance. It felt very personal, to have the band and dancers so close. I often felt I was just at a friend's house with a beer in my hand and a band decided to play and dancers decided to dance.

And it was spectacular. I urge all of you to go out and get a ticket and see what these dancers (and musicians) have created in just the last 2-3 weeks. This IS an Uprising. And I am excited to see where it continues.

Congrats to the dancers and band again.

See you at Mississippi Studios.

www.mississippistudios.com

Gearing up for Victoria

Gavin Larsen and Adrian Fry in Who Cares?

Gavin Larsen, Brian Simcoe and myself are leaving early in the morning to catch a ferry in Port Angeles, WA headed for Victoria B.C. The three of us will be dancing varied Balanchine repertory in collaboration with Ballet Victoria for their next program entitled, "The Secret Garden and Other Works." Paul Destrooper, former OBT dancer, took over the company in Victoria upon his retirement from OBT in 2007. Gavin and I will open the program with Balanchine's Apollo, me beginning with a solo and then continuing on with the pas de deux. Brian will dance the "Liza" solo from Balanchine's Who Cares? And Gavin and I will close the first act of the bill with "The Man I Love" pas de deux, from Balanchine's Who Cares?

Gavin Larsen and Adrian Fry in Balanchine's Apollo.

Brian, Candace Bouchard and I went up to work with Paul in Victoria before he took over the company in March of 2007. In the week we spent there Paul created a version of Carmina Burana using the three of us and the dancers from the company. The week culminated in a small studio performance, and I remember it being a very fulfilling experience to be created on, grow with my peers and see the talent that he has drawn to the young company.

Adrian Fry in Apollo.

It's been great to be working on these ballets in our time off since we closed the Emerald Retrospective two weeks ago. I am looking forward to dancing these great ballets with great colleagues this weekend.

Brian Simcoe in Who Cares?

Uprising Sneak Preview!

All we can say is WOW! So excited to see this next week.

Oregon Ballet Theatre + Horse Feathers

November 3-5 @ Mississippi Studios.

Doors Open at 7pm / Show Starts at 8pm

Tickets are $15 / BUY NOW

Uprising, by Oregon Ballet Theatre

Just thought you readers would appreciate an update on Candace Bouchard & team's* progress with Uprising. *The "team" being Leta Biasucci, Ansa Deguchi, Steven Houser, Olga Krochik, Grace Shibley & Lucas Threefoot.

There's just 11 days before their November 3rd debut at Mississippi Studios, so if you haven't yet purchased tickets, click here to do that!

In addition to over an hour of dancing to learn and rehearse, the particularly crafty Grace Shibley & Steven Houser have teamed up (with Candace's direction) to design and make the costumes for the evening.

Each morning the 7 dancers are in the studio warming up and rehearsing. It's been fun to watch and a joy to listen to - Horse Feathers' music is soothing and delightful. Here's a sneak peak into the studio:

It's a pretty big undertaking and everyone here at OBT is very impressed and proud of the effort this group has (and continues to) put into this project. We'll keep you posted as more behind the scenes stuff unfolds or you can stay up to date by becoming Uprising's fan on Facebook here.

...and still frisky.

Yesterday marked Principal Dancer Artur Sultanov's 30th Birthday, which at OBT comes with the passing down of a certain shirt (see photo). Apparently this shirt has been passed down to company members on their 30th birthday for about 8 years now, and I thought it would be a really great tradition to share with you all. It reads "30 and still frisky." Which, clearly, Artur is. :-).


In other news, yesterday began our 5 week layoff between our fall program and The Nutcracker. Every year we dancers go through a series of layoffs between programs, and the length of these layoffs vary from season to season. This season my contract was reduced from 34 weeks to 25 weeks (I won't be dancing in the "Duets" program in the spring), meaning I'm working less than half the year. So stay tuned because I'll be sharing with all of you the ways in which I'll be getting creative to stay in shape and hopefully earn a little money. I have no current plans to search for retail work, but upcoming "projects" include: OBT Uprising with fellow Soloist Candace Bouchard (www.obt.org/uprising), a possible tour with a small group of OBT dancers, dog sitting, teaching, a trip to a warm beach (this is neither keeping me in shape or generating income, but hopefully will boost my morale and sanity), and time spent with friends. Who knows, I might even do something crazy like clean my apartment! Anyway, I thought it would be interesting for all of you to know not just what goes on when I'm rehearsing and performing with the company, but also what I'll be doing with the remaining 27 weeks of the year.

I want to be clear that none of this is coming from a place of anger, but that I think it's important to share what it really means to be a ballet dancer in today's economy. There was a recent Oregonian article about how the dance world is adjusting to the recession (http://blog.oregonlive.com/portlandarts/2009/10/the_dance_world_adjusts_to_the.html) and in it Andrea Snyder, the Excutive Director of Dance/USA, is quoted as saying "I don't think it is as dire as people project it; when you never have anything to begin with, you don't lose it." I couldn't really disagree with her more. We didn't have nothing, we had very little, and when you take anything away from very little, it is felt more severely than when something is removed from a larger amount. She did mention how creative we are and how that leads to resilience, which I completely agree with. We are very creative people by nature (go figure), but at the same time, creativity is not as valued as productivity in our culture.

All of that said, I feel very fortunate to have the job I have, and to dance for Christopher, OBT, and Portland. I really love this city, and I don't think I could find a better group of people, dancers and staff, to work with and I'm excited about all of the upcoming challenges and growth that will be taking place.

Hope you are all enjoying this AMAZING fall foliage!

Steven

Rose City Waltz

An unusual but delightful element of this retrospective program is the inclusion of the Rose City Waltz, which is a short ballet choreographed by Christopher for the School of Oregon Ballet Theatre's students. It's a beautiful showcase for them, using kids from some of the youngest levels right on up to the advanced students and apprentices. I keep thinking about what a fantastic experience this must be for them. They're all experienced performers, most having danced in Nutcracker, Swan Lake, etc. already, but this is different. They're the centerpiece, not supporting players, and this is designed to show off their real dancing technique and polish. The intermediate and advanced girls perform on pointe, which is probably the first time they've been onstage in pointe shoes. Here's a photo of them during the performance on Sunday. I was standing behind our Ashby, our stage manger, watching over her shoulder:



This is their opening pose, right before the curtain goes up:

Rose City Waltz has brought cheers from the audience each performance so far, which is no surprise, but what an incredible confidence- and character-building experience that must be for these young dancers!

I Started An Uprising

An entry by Soloist Candace Bouchard....

Out of the ashes, there comes new growth. The silver lining to last season's financial crisis is that it gives us an opportunity to openly reevaluate our methods and blaze new trails. For me, personally, it exposed some secret vault in my brain that I didn't even know existed.

I remember having a conversation with Brian Simcoe last spring about life after being a dancer. I told him I thought that if I couldn't be a dancer, I couldn't work in the dance world. I didn't have much love for teaching, I had no desire to choreograph, and I couldn't imagine what a difficult path it would be to become a ballet master or director, being constantly reminded of how much I miss pushing my limits and feeling the music overtake me. I'd always be an enthusiastic supporter and audience member, but whatever work I chose to do after dancing, it wouldn't be in ballet.

Except I've had an idea rolling around in a nebulous, unrecognizable form for a couple of years now that completely goes against what I told Brian. Too focused on becoming a better dancer (and bartender, and person in general...), I always pushed the idea away, knowing that since I had no interest in being involved in the dance world as anything other than a dancer, it would never come to fruition.

A couple of weeks later, though, I found myself telling our director, Christopher, about it. As my mouth formed the words, my brain shouted, "Stop! This will mean doing all the things you say you don't want to do!" Fortunately, that part of myself (heart, soul, spleen, or just the other half of my brain) that makes me an artist remained louder and just kept talking. I explained that I wanted to create works to perform in alternative venues around town where people outside our normal community feel more comfortable. Where the audience doesn't feel like they're being forced to sit down and over-intellectualize the ballet, but can instead wander around with a drink in their hand just getting what they feel from dance. If the level of intimacy between performers and artists changes so drastically for us between the Keller and the Newmark, how much deeper will it be at a music venue where half the audience could wander up and touch the edge of the stage?

As soon as the performance space in my mind changed, once I took out the proscenium and added audience members with beer, I discovered that I was full of good ideas for choreography. Portlanders love good art, and I want to give it to them any way I can.

And so, I started an Uprising. The first installments will be at Mississippi Studios November 3rd - 5th with the fantastic local band Horse Feathers. You can:

• Find out more about the performances here.
• Listen to Horse Feathers' music here.
• And buy tickets to see myself (for aforementioned reasons of not being able to stand the pain of watching other people dance if I can't participate), Leta Biasucci, Ansa Deguchi, Olga Krochik, Steven Houser and Lucas Threefoot perform onstage with Horse Feathers at Mississippi Studios. It will be like nothing you've ever seen before. That I can promise.