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Dance Alive and Well in New Mexico
Shift Dance has done it! Created an interesting, solid, successful dance festival. They’ve been smart enough to start small, include the local dance community and bring in artists from out of state who added diversity, polish and another perspective.
The opening night performances by Shift Dance founders and Albuquerque dance artists (choreographers Donna Jewell, Kelsey Paschich, Jacqueline Garcia and Lisa Nevada) represented contemporary dance with professionalism and imagination; the second night Allie Hankins offered up an absolutely delightful, sometimes sharp, sometimes very funny, dance-theater solo and tonight, the third night, it’s Jaxon Movement Arts with a beautiful contemporary ballet, looking all shiny and sophisticated.
I’ve enjoyed it tremendously…and I’m saying this as someone who has not attended an entire dance performance for exactly three years! So I guess I’ve proven addiction can be overcome…but why…?
Here are a few rather bad photos from the GOOD Jaxon Movement rehearsal just now.
Dance Festivals…Alive and Well in Albuquerque
TWO OF SHIFT DANCE FOUNDERS, kELSEY PASCHICH AND JACQUELINE GARCIA. LISA NEVADA THE THIRD SHIFT CREATOR WASN’T AVAILABLE FOR THIS PARTICULAR PHOTO OP.
Well Done Shift Dance. What a treat your Shift Dance Festival offered for the dance aficionados among us. We Albuquerqueans are privy to so little contemporary dance in our corner of the wild west making this event …well…an EVENT. The Festival opened last night (Thursday) and runs through Saturday night at the North Fourth Art Center and it is a professional presentation of the first order. The whole production, at least what we’ve seen so far, is polished; the PR is obviously good, attested to by a full house last night; the programs looked slick; and, best of all, the four dances were strong in themselves and complimented each other perfectly. The mood of the evening’s work ranged from somber to sexy and the dancers showed off the considerable talent available on the local scene.
I am not a dance critic and besides would never be able to critique these dance friends impartially. We all have our favorite pieces of art of whatever genre but the important thing about the Festival is that it’s a chance to see enough dance to even have favorites. I’m looking forward to the rest of the week. Good Luck Shift Dance.
The Curtain Goes Up and Dancers Appear
You may have noticed that I’ve paid slight attention to dance since 2013 when Global DanceFest was put to bed. After focusing on contemporary dance much of the time for 25 years or so I was so through—not however because I no longer loved my dancer friends or the art itself. I just couldn’t prostrate myself to one more grantor or worry about one more half full house or have one more person tell me how much they appreciated the brilliant dance I was bringing to Albuquerque when they’d only been to one performance in the past year! There. Promise. That was my One Long Whining sentence. (Trump is going to make more people ashamed of whining—as the disreputable master of the act—than all of our mothers ever managed to do with their stern admonishments against the nasty practice.)
Enough about me—except for the part about how I’m regaining some interest in and pleasure from Dance. This is about dance—or about how the next few posts will be about dance. The Shift Dance Festival is about to happen—the curtain is going up tonight at the North Fourth Art Center. I’ll write more about the artists and the work later but for now it feels good just to say I’m excited about the next three nights of dance.
Shift Dance is a company of young dancers who have banded together to bring some excitement back to the Albuquerque dance scene—which right now does not exist at the local level and certainly we are invisible at the national and international level. So Shift wants to fix this sad situation. Great Good Luck to Them.
Here are a few photos from a couple of nights ago when Allie Hankins from Portland was rehearsing; I watched for awhile and am happy to report that she is a most fascinating performer…I say fascinating especially because she made me curious, wanting to know what was coming just around the next moves, the next words, the next shift… And that’s all I ask of artists really…just please make me curious. Allie is performing Friday night, so be sure and come to that if you’re here in New Mexico, and definitely come tonight and Saturday night as well…IT’S ALL GOOD.
TODAY 