From our adult class: 'Dance Show-Related Issues, and How to Fix Them'

Introducing guest blogger, Monday night adult dance class participant, and beautiful visually-impaired dancer in and out of her wheelchair, Faith Girvan!


For this week's blog post we're linking you to Faith's recent blog post on the awesome 'Living Blind Blog'. Faith described her personal process of dancing with a visual impairment, and how support and communication are key in preparing for a performance.


Come see Faith and the Monday, and Wednesday, night adult dance classes perform alongside the company on May 8th and 9th at the Great Canadian Theatre Company.
Buy tickets here!!

Photo credit: Chrystia Chudczak. Faith is the dancer on the right.

The Creation Process: Renata's Choreography

Our rehearsals at Routhier and at Arts Court are going really well, and in our rehearsals we work with lots of improvisation, exploration, and right now, circles and spirals. We use the floor for when we do rolling, and we also work on giving our weight to the other person. We really work on sensation. 

One exercise that we do is stop and go: It’s basically where one person moves and then we all move; when one person stops we all stop. And in this exercise we’re becoming aware and we’re sensing the other people in the room with our peripheral vision.

Another thing that we also work on is duets. In Renata’s piece, there is a duet with Rob and I where we roll, we spin, and we work a lot with physicality. Rob is really strong, so we do a lot of leaning and giving weight.

The beginnings of this duet are rooted in Greek mythology and we are working with a water theme. Rob is the God Poseidon and I’m Goddess Amphitrite—one of Poseidon’s many wives, so I have to dance seductively and it is something that I’m trying to get used to. It’s a challenge for me because this is out of my comfort zone but I know I can do it.

Painting Spaces - a collaboration with H'Art of Ottawa

Before Attitude, Propeller Dance visited H'Art of Ottawa to have a painting made that would be part of the Monday Night Class' piece - Painting Spaces.

Here is a slideshow of our visit:



(photos by Ian Hunter)


And here is a slideshow that shows the piece as it was created:

A Gold Star Experience: Maxine Heppner, Guest Teacher

Liz Winklaar, Phil Charbonneau, (Renata Soutter in mirror with camera), Moni Hoffman, Alan Shain. Maxine Heppner in middle, Robert Chartier front

On February 16 and 17 of 2012, Propeller had the pleasure to have Maxine Heppner a choreographer, contemporary performer and artist as a guest instructor for a two day workshop, we worked on the awareness of inner and outer impulses, the duration and length with a single movement and we also worked on translating inner movement into visible dance. She also had us close our eyes and visualize a gold star and we had to describe how it moved, and just by listening to other people describe what they saw made it more real, more powerful and inspiring.

At one point in the day we got into some creation experiments. Maxine put us into duets, I got to be with Alan Shain which was really fun. We worked with objects in the space and changing our shape. We also identified the elements of dance such as time, shape, space and effort. We also discovered that time includes pulse and rhythm and that it helps to understand music even when you are moving without sound. Movement has it’s own music and rhythm.

We also did an exercise with internal movements and external movements. First we danced internally from the inside where the impulse for movement comes from somewhere within, like a thought or emotion. Then we danced externally which is from the outside. The impulse comes from our bodies moving and the space around us. From this exercise I found out that I am more internal with my movements. This two-day workshop was really fun. I learned a lot from other people and from myself as well. I got to meet Maxine Heppner for the first time and she is an amazing teacher.