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Enjoying the sun, guarding the stages. This all comes down tomorrow, don't miss it tonight. LEVYdance Spring Season at Home, 8:30, Heron Street.

Your face here. #levydance

#levydance

Teaching, teaching, teaching, teaching...

from yu My recent life is filled with teaching. One of the most exciting opportunity was our company class held last week as a part of Bay Area Dance Week. On May 1st, LEVYdance had an open company class for public in which four of us as company artists worked together to teach Bay Area dancers! It was interesting to teach a class with a group of us, but this opportunity made clear what we value as LEVYdance artists we are excited to share with the community. We enjoy bringing the deepest sensitivity "Spider Sense" inside and outside of our bodies. We enjoy staying extremely intuitive and playful like free spirited children. We love using gravity and taking risks to see if we can fly for a moment. We love moving together and connect with each other like there is no word needed to understand somebody. Teaching teaches me how much I love what we do. We are planning to start teaching our weekly company classes this year, so I'm simply excited to share our experiences with the community Taking about teaching, I love to share another excitement of mine with you;) I finally got certified for GYROTONIC® after almost two years of training! I now officially became a trainer of GYROTONIC® and teaching private sessions and group classes at San Francisco GYROTONIC®. I am so grateful that teaching movement and dancing is my life now. YES!! Teaching and performing are somehow very similar to me. They both reveal every aspect of you like a mirror. It has been showing me not only my passion but also insecurity and weakness. I really don't believe teaching or performing is about being perfect. It is about discovering myself and sharing my true experience with other people. I hope this personal gift from me to somebody can shine lights on his/her unknown self to be discovered. That's my goal!!:)

Patience vs. Presence

an insight, from Paul, about the intersection of process in and out of the studio.

The other day, I was walking home from yoga when I spotted the words, “here is good,” sprayed on the sidewalk. I’ve become very fascinated with sidewalk art since moving to the city, especially with short messages such as, “here is good.” After seeing these words, I thought about having patience in life because at that moment I was consumed with thoughts about the summer. “Have patience,” I told myself, “the future will arrive eventually.”

I shared a picture of the sidewalk art with the caption, “patience,” online and shortly after saw a comment from a friend that read, “presence.” At first, I thought the comment was clever given the alliteration but then got to thinking about being present versus being patient.

In this situation, I was telling myself to be patient and restrict the thoughts I had about the future versus being present and allowing 'what is’ to radiate and exist more fully. Patience is important for establishing self-control but presence is much more freeing. Allowing, seeing, feeling, and experiencing what exists now.

As the company moves into our final month of rehearsals before our big outdoor home season next month, we are establishing presence so that the experiences we have are expressed to their fullest and are a true representation of what we feel now.

It’s amazing how the work we do in the studio finds itself in all the different areas of our lives outside of dance. The next time I go to tell myself to be patient, I’m instead going to remind myself to be present.

Dive in

My first posting! I don't know what to write... My name is Yu. I'm from Japan. I like cheese cake. I am married to a Vietnamese American, but I don't speak Vietnamese. We have a dog named Hana, and she is cuddling on my lap right now as I write this. She says hi.

This is a little difficult when there is so much open space that I can write anything here. Nobody told me to write an amazing posting which everybody will be moved and inspired by, but somehow there is a feeling that I need to meet with certain expectations.

This is the exact feeling I get during creative process in studio. Sharing my heart in any way feels accompanied by risks. The risk for being not good enough in the eyes of others. No matter how open-minded and accepting people are in the studio, the feeling still rises. My ego wants to play its favorite game called "Please validate me otherwise I will dissapear!!" Then, I ask myself "What is more important? To be fully myself or to be looked 'good' by others?"

The answer is quite clear.

I say "I want to be powerful as who I am."

Sidra Bell, our guest choreographer, said during the rehearsals last week. "What are you waiting for? This is not the time to hold back. This is the time to dive in and make a fool out of yourself." Fully live in the moment. Push the limits. No pretending. No hiding.

Some raw and beautiful discoveries of our human essences has happened in the studio this week. In the next two weeks which are our intense rehearsal weeks, we will be digging even deeper with our discoveries and finding even more layers within. Can't wait!

Hana and me!

-Yu

Theater Residency with Sidra Bell

Over the course of this past week, we had the privilege of engaging in a theater residency with Sidra Bell at ODC Theater. The residency provided us with access to the theater, Monday through Friday, from 10am to 7pm most days. Other than Sidra and the company, we had two technicians, our lighting designer, and our production manager with us in the theater. In short, this residency gave Sidra the opportunity to play with and explore lighting in the early stages of developing a work. Rather than creating lighting solely based on a complete work, Sidra was able to allow the lighting to affect her creativity, and in turn, affect the direction of the work. For me, this residency felt like a fusion of technical production and movement invention. It was rewarding to witness Sidra in a space of such unknown opportunity.

Opportunities slowly revealed themselves over the days in the theater as we deepened our levels of exploration. We had to sift through the known and the comfortable in order to find moments of new discovery. Lately, I remind myself that it isn't "wrong" to create familiar movement or make conventional choices, so long as this is the starting point. As an artist, I must delve deeper but not forget what makes me... me. The other dancers, Sidra, and I began to do just that and move the work in progress in a new (and exciting) direction. Right now, I know I feel confused, overwhelmed, and quite frankly, a little unsatisfied (with myself), but I'm actually quite content with these (seemingly negative) emotions. I feel that this current state I'm living in is only going to lead me to experience new realms of creativity, which is really what AMP is about, not only for Sidra, but also for us company artists.

As we return to a more comfortable and familiar place in the studio, I am curious to mentally make note of the effects the theater residency had on the work.

-Paul

creating environment (Taken with Instagram)

Girl car! On our way to carmel for say: create. (Taken with Instagram)

Teaching through process: first week with Sidra Bell

Working with a new choreographer is like learning a new language. There's lots of listening, attempts to be coherent, trying to find where its relevance resonates in you, and then making choices on how to best articulate a given idea.

We've been very task oriented, cataloging movement, creating duets and trios based on Sidra's movement principles, and following our own curiosities through improvisation. So far, nothing is locked in, everything is open, fair game... allowing Sidra's phrase work and the dancer generated material to become new each time we move through them. Sidra has reminded us throughout the week that the phrases she gives us are more of a proposal of something rather than a set idea or confined to her initial physicality. It's up to us to fulfill and respond to the proposal however we choose.

Finding ways to distract yourself within the material is encouraged, especially without any sort of emotional attachment to what the outcome might be. This makes room for more possibilities, new choice-making, and potential in the body.

Even though its only been five days, Sidra has very quickly found us all out. She is pushing all of us to challenge ourselves and develop a taste for continuous growth as movers. There is always more to add to your palette and more to explore physically. The next couple of months are going to be so much fun.

-Sarah Woods

LEVYdance will be performing at SAY: Create this Monday in Carmel. We will be sharing Physics and an excerpt from Nu Nu.

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