Imagine a country where a doctor can prescribe an art activity to a patient instead of medication.

Imagine a country that has a month-long annual festival over the entire country that celebrates creativity as we age.

Imagine a country that is creating a national policy on aging and has artists on the committee.

Imagine a country in which people gather at dawn by a body of water and sing.

Wait, I don’t have to imagine it, I was just there: Ireland.

Sarah, Meg, Daniel and I were in Dublin last week for the Bealtaine Festival Conference: Creating A New Old.  It was three days of sharing, learning and celebrating creativity as we age. Dance Exchange was asked to be a physical diary of the conference. On the last day we presented When Mind Moves Memory, choreographed by  and Keith Thompson and me and commissioned by the MetLife Healthy Living Initiative at Dance Exchange.  We concluded our presentation by creating a dance with the participants using their gestures, movements and stories as well as text culled from the many inspiring speakers and exciting conversations we had. That evening, we performed a repertory concert for conference participants and the general public. Here are a few photos from our time in Dublin:

Conference banner

The conference venue: Irish Museum of Modern Art

Meg on the River Liffey

A beautiful view of Dublin

Pre-show flowers from our Bealtaine hosts

The DX team enjoying our last evening in Dublin

Interested in being a part of our series next year? We’re turning the space over to you this time. It could be an installation or it could be a panel discussion. Or a craft night, or a fashion show, or a dimly-lit speakeasy. Dream it up and tell us about it. Must be open to the public and up and running for one night only. Events will take place on a Thursday evening. We’ll pick the three submissions that seem most compelling, that fill a void in the current landscape of happenings in DC, and that we can help facilitate by providing a space of 47 feet by 45 feet. All events will take place in the Rosen Performance Lab at the Dance Exchange. Submit your idea by May 31, 2012 to Ellen Chenoweth at ellen@danceexchange.org, including this information:

Caroline Barna

I’m Caroline Barna, Dance Exchange’s spring administrative intern. I am a recent graduate of James Madison University, where I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in Dance and Corporate Communications. Since graduating in May, I have moved back to the D.C. area to look for opportunities in dance and arts administration. This fall, I completed an internship at Dance Place in the Marketing Department and have been working part-time at Joe’s Movement Emporium. I am also a member of UpRooted Dance Company, led by Keira Hart-Mendoza.

I was drawn to the Dance Exchange after my interactions with the company at JMU. There, I had the opportunity to work with company members in workshops and residencies, and see a performance of Ferocious Beauty: Genome. I was impressed by the company’s work, process and enthusiasm!

At Dance Exchange, I am involved in a few different aspects of administration. I’m lucky to be working in all different areas of the office including marketing, communications, and development. Every day I get to do something new! So far I’ve been researching development opportunities, maintaining the website, preparing documents for the artists and staff, and updating our social media sites. On top of all that, I have been witness to a DX flash mob in DuPont Circle, taken some wonderful classes and was moved by the Lost, Left, Found and Borrowed performance at Round House Theater.

I am excited to be with a company that makes such interesting and relevant work. I’m looking forward to learning everything I can from the many people here at DX!

When you are singing, you aren’t thinking about how much your feet hurt. When you are eating, you aren’t thinking about it either. Or talking, or laughing at a marionette dance Paloma does right at the moment you need something to take your mind off of your feet. Matt Mahaney, a former Dance Exchange dancer and outdoor educator who led our hike, said early on in our 26 mile day, “The way your feet feel now—this is as bad as they’re going to feel—they won’t get worse”. Tender feet that called attention to themselves with every step became another thing to notice as we moved ever forward. They made themselves known like the encompassing green, the sunning turtles, the owl that turned his head sharply to stare us down, the waterfalls, the millipedes, the gnats, the mile markers.

2.

During Dance Exchange’s  2 ½ week residency in Syracuse, NY last February, we made a new piece with community members built from ideas and stories about distance. Distance between people, places, ideas, cultures, and histories all found their way into our work. During this residency, we met Zeke Leonard, a professor in the Department of Design at Syracuse University. Toward the end of the show, Zeke and I shared a short exchange: “There is distance between us”, I said. Zeke responded, “We decide how we measure it”.

In a section that was created in this residency, and was recently performed at the Kennedy Center (you can watch it here), Zeke tells the story of creating a banjo from instruments sourced from a 10-mile radius of his home in Syracuse. His “10-mile banjos”, created from pitch pine from a demolished building, a $2 cigar box, and old guitar parts tell the story of the places from which they came, and demonstrate the beauty of reuse.

Shortly after taking a break on a sunny patch of grass along the Potomac, 14 miles in to our 26 mile day, the group began referring to 10-mile stretches as “banjos”. Instead of having 12 miles left to go, we just had to cover just a little bit more than a banjo.

3.

I love no mirrors. I love no mirrors! I never want to see myself again. I see five other faces and I’m happy to see them. They see me, and so do the trees, so that is enough. We’re all smelly and disheveled. It’s a little bit like rehearsal, except that in rehearsal, the disheveledness becomes style. Out here, our appearances are a result and a function of the way we are living. And likewise with our bodies—the physical choices we made were of necessity to keep walking and stay warm and eat and drink and sleep. It was without calculation, or artifice, and it felt like dancing.

4.

The tears that I cried in an aerial dance studio in Knoxville, MD at the end of my 60 mile walk between DC and Harper’s Ferry with a team from Dance Exchange probably had their roots in fatigue, first, and the emotions that came up when I thought about leaving the walk, second. But they were triggered by watching Matt Mahaney dance a movement phrase he created from his experience on the Walk. During our time on the C & O Canal towpath,  Matt knew what to do about blisters, he carried our packs for miles to give our legs a break, he showed us how to light the camp stove, set up and take down our tents, and pack our packs. He woke us up with hot water bottles to keep us warm for a few more minutes in our sleeping bags. And at the end of the first big stretch, the evening before four of us would head back home, and he and Cassie would continue forward on a much longer journey, he made a beautiful sequence of movement in which he caught a bit of those 60+ miles in his tired body.

Visit www.500miles500stories.com to read stories, see images, hear audio contributions and watch video from Cassie’s 500 mile journey.

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Raja Kelly

Class description: Currently exploring the desire for new sensations from our skin, blood, breath, and bones. The technique is to challenge our imagination. Classes are preparations for performance and an ongoing investigation into dance as a living practice. We will think and move rigorously. This class uses the principles of improvisation and set exercises to warm and stretch the body and the mind to uncover a hypersensitive being.

Ilana Silverstein

Ilana Silverstein is a dancer, choreographer, improviser and all-around mover and shaker in the DC arts community. In addition to putting out her own thought-provoking work and dancing for others, Ilana supports the growth of other artists in the region through facilitating Fieldwork for Mixed Disciplines. I met her a few years ago at the Dinner Party showings at the Warehouse and I’m always impressed with her ability to bring artists of all disciplines together. I’m thrilled she is teaching in our series this April! Class is April 6, 13, 20 and May 11 from 9:30-11:15am and costs $12. See you there!

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Class description: This class is for advanced movers with experience in Modern Dance.  We will activate the body through a series of floor phrases and moving through space.  The style of moving is based on our individual understanding of our skeletal structure, kinesthetic awareness and connection with breath.  We will cultivate strength, flexibility, endurance, sensitivity to gravity, momentum and presence.  Leave your inhibitions at the door and come dance like nobody’s watching.

Dancer, choreographer, and educator Ilana Silverstein approaches movement with mindfulness and commits to the creative process.  Her work challenges the contrasts between the elegant, the grotesque, the organic and the digital.  She is an associate artist of force/collision and has performed with Dance Box Theater, Daniel Burkholder/The Playground, Lotta Lundgren, Christine Stone Martin and other independent artists in the D.C. area. Ilana’s work has been presented by the Philly Fringe Festival, Gaia in Washington DC, and was selected for the 2011 Source Festival Artistic Blind Dates.  She teaches Moving Meditation at Joy of Motion Dance Center and workshops in Contact Improvisation, Partner Stretch, and an artist feedback structure called Fieldwork. Ilana holds a B.A. in Dance and Environmental studies from Denison University.  For more information: www.ilanaspace.com

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Nicole Martinell

Nicole A. Martinell has a MFA in Dance from Texas Woman’s University (TWU), a BS in Kinesiology with a minor in Dance from Pennsylvania State University, and an elementary certificate in Labanotation.  Her research on ballet pedagogy was published in the Journal of Dance Education (2009).  Martinell trained at such places as Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, and Allegheny Ballet Company.  She danced for DanceRINK, ClancyWorks Dance Company, and The Moving Company.  She is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Baltimore-based company, Deep Vision Dance Company. Her work has been performed by The Moving Company, TWU, Towson University, Patapsco High School and Center for the Arts, Denton Dance Conservatory, PSU, and Kennedy Dance Center and featured at such places as Green Space, NY, Montgomery College Theatre, MD, Creative Alliance, MD, Triskelion Theater, NY, Dan’s Silverleaf, TX, and the American College Dance Festival Gala Concert, VA.  Martinell is on faculty at Towson University and looks toward becoming a Certified Movement Analyst in September 2012.

Class description: Martinell’s high energy master classes emphasize building self-awareness, discovering movement concepts, taking risks, and testing the body’s capabilities.  Gradually building in intensity, classes move from floor work, mentally and physically preparing the body, to complex center work, investigating spirals, momentum, initiations, and directional shifts.  Anatomical knowledge and somatic principles are central to class.  Get ready to move!

Mark Twery

Mark Twery of the National Forest Service has worked closely with Cassie to develop Moving Field Guides, a chance for people to get to know their natural environment through observation, movement and scientific information. In this “Faces of the Forest Service” profile on the Forest Service’s website, Mark talks about how the arts and his work go hand in hand:

It really is true that artists and scientists follow the same steps of observation, analysis, interpretation, and communication. It feels like I’m going full circle in my career by connecting visual and performing arts with forestry, ecology and the environment. The scientist’s job isn’t done until other people know about the work they’ve done. It is the same with dancers and painters. There are tremendous parallels.

We’re looking forward to seeing Mark this spring when he joins us on the Walk to co-lead some Moving Field Guides. Read his complete profile here.

Cassie taking a walk

The past couple of weeks at Dance Exchange, it’s felt like a sprint to the finish line as we complete the planning process for the How To Lose a Mountain 500-mile walk. The plans are falling into place and the news is being spread far and wide about why Cassie is doing the walk and how folks can join the project. But the real marathon is just about to begin. With less than one month before the long-distance physical journey begins, I checked in with Cassie Meador to see how she’s feeling as the walk gets closer.

What are you most excited about as the walk becomes more real?
The fact that we’re getting to share the news with more people is an exciting part of it. I’ve been thinking about this walk for over 3 years now. I had the impulse to walk out my door and just do the walk, so to wait 3 years is a long time. I think probably the most exciting thing is feeling the support of everyone in the organization behind the project. To be in rehearsal this morning for the events at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center and the Kennedy Center and then to step out and see staff members and interns meeting about finalizing the end of the route, it all feels like its truly coming into being. I had a friend that emailed me the other day and he had been talking about the walk with some of his family. His enthusiasm about the project reminded me of the excitement around all of this. When we’re wading through the logistical weight of the walk, its good to remember the excitement around it all, too.

What are you scared or nervous about?
Two things—I think the walk is definitely a test of endurance. I am worried about my own physical limits. There’s a forward momentum to the whole thing; there’s no turning back, it’s only going forward. We do have stops along the way, but I’m thinking about what it will take my body to get through that, to stop and start again so many times. In a lot of ways that’s the thing I’m both scared and excited about—to see what it will mean to live with only the resources I can carry on my own body for these two months and to see how that informs not only the choices I make when I return home but what it’ll be like to be making and using my body as an artist as I come up against my own physical limits.

The other thing I’m scared about is I feel like I’m putting myself in more public view than I am used to on this walk. I would’ve walked out my door to just do it but it’s a different thing to do it in an institution. We’re doing this in a way where we’re trying to make the process so visible. That can be scary but ultimately I think it’s essential if we want to reach people through the kinds of questions that this project is asking.

Oh, and I’m worried about being cold and wet!

What is the most important thing that you’ll be carrying with you out there?
There’s not a lot that we’re carrying. We’re actually trying to carry very little. But if I think about what’s most important, it’s probably the fuel in terms of food and water. There’s no other experience that I’ve had other than hiking and long distance walking where you have such a close relationship between what your body is using and what it needs to be fueled to continue. You feel the sort of instant surge of replenishment or energy when you have a bit of water or have a bit of food and that feels really important.

The other thing will be my pencil and notebook. As the walk approaches there’s a kind of an increasing hunger to be on my feet and be outside but there’s an equal hunger to be writing and trying to capture the experience.

What kind of food will you be eating out there? What foods will you miss most?
We are in the middle of dehydrating 30 pounds of yams. I love sweet potatoes; my fear is by the end of this trip I may not! There’s a great chili recipe that has cocoa in it that my friend Sarah from college gave me, so we’re making lots of batches of that. And another recipe from a good friend and dancer, Thomas Dwyer, for chipotle black beans. We’re cooking all of my favorite recipes that people have given me that can be easily dehydrated. The food I’ll miss the most is the food that comes out of my garden at this time of year. I’ll be gone during a lot of the planting season so I won’t be able to plant my garden. I’ll miss those things the most, but I’m looking forward to when I get back. I have lovely housemates who will be keeping up the garden. So who knows, maybe I’ll return to fresh tomatoes!

What’s the longest hike you’ve taken in the past?
The most extended time that I’ve lived outdoors was for two weeks in Guyana. Though we were walking a lot, we were always returning to the same camp spot. The longest I’ve hiked at once was 42 miles with Meg Kelly (DX Production Manager). We hiked the state of Maryland.

Do you think your body is up for another 455 miles?
I sure hope so!

What has inspired you to take on such a physically demanding journey? Do you think your training as a dancer will help?
This project is talking about power, and not only the power that we use in our homes but also what we can do with the power of our own bodies. It felt really important as I’m examining where the resources I use come from, specifically where the power that feeds my home comes from, that I actually take this journey using the resource of my own body. As a dancer I know what it takes to get to a certain physical place to have to perform. This is a different kind of beast, a different kind of training. The kind of determination that goes into the training, the stepping back when you do encounter unexpected injury or fatigue, the way you are listening to your body and adjusting to your surroundings–these are skills I have built over my 10 years of dancing and touring with Dance Exchange. I’m hoping some of that carries over into these new elements, though I know it’ll be a completely new challenge.

Cassie having a walking meeting

How have you been training over the weeks and months leading up to walk?
If you’re going to be walking 500 miles in the time frame that we are doing it, it means getting used to being on your feet all day. A lot of the training has been walking and building a base level of fitness. I had to work on that base level after a year and a half of not being very physically active through our organization’s transition. I’ve been running too, which has been interesting and a challenge with my schedule. The company has been traveling so I went from being in Syracuse during the cold winter months, and I just got back from the desert in Arizona; running has been a nice way to ground myself in a place as I’ve been doing this travelling. I get to cover distance and get to know a place in a way that I don’t always have opportunity to. I’ve also been doing a lot of walking meetings and walking interviews, so it hasn’t only been my training but also getting other people involved with me.

What will you think about when you’re having a tough day on the trail? What will get you through?
There is such an incredible team of people that I’m doing this walk with and also an incredible team that is making this walk possible even if they’re not able to be out there with me. All of those people will keep me going, knowing the effort people have put in to make this happen and the people who will be out there with me. It’s much like a rehearsal process: you’re always going to have days that are more difficult than others, it’s the other members of the team that help get you through it.

I can be really goal-oriented when I am on the trail. There’s the enjoyment of being out there, but there’s the goal of getting to the next town, to the next public engagement, to the next place where we’ll be collecting another series of stories. I think the deadlines will help.

Another thing motivating me is that I feel like I have to arrive at this site where these mountains once were. I think the image of that final place and arriving there is something that I’ll be thinking about to keep me going.

Josie, Molly, Nora and Talia at the Intersections Festival

Hi! I’m Molly Barth, President of the Teen Exchange. On Sunday, March 4^th, we had the chance to perform at Intersections: a New America Arts Festival. We met two other groups of young artists to share and critique our works-in-progress. The other groups, Voices of Now and Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League’s (SMYAL) Youth Arts Ensemble shared their theater pieces with us.

Before the performances, we engaged in ice-breaking activities and each group discussed their creative processes. It was cool to learn how groups with such different end-products used similar collaborative strategies. After our performances, we got to see three professional dance groups perform in Life in Motion: A Trio of Perspectives. Alight Dance Theater, DancEthos, and Glade Dance Collective  presented pieces on veterans, children with developmental disorders, and the history of H Street. Afterwards, we young artists met the professionals and discussed dance, theater, and creativity over hot pizza.

Epidemic and Visceral Chrysalis, the two pieces we danced, are up on Teen Exchange’s Youtube page.  Let us know what you think, and come see us perform live at Dance Exchange at Youth Arts Night on May 24. For more information on Teen Exchange, please contact Wayles Haynes, Youth Programs Coordinator at wayles@danceexchange.org.