The cover of the October issue of Dance Magazine features Victoria Jaiani of the Joffrey Ballet, who is the featured artist in an informative cover story written by Hedy Weis. Ballet is a world of its own, and Weiss manages to combine a cohesive biographical story about Jaiani (quite a story at that) with some very three-dimensional insight into life at the Joffrey. It's one of those articles that serves as an informative introductory guide to a subject you're aware of but don't know well, which is a fair description of the ballet and aotpr.com.

Weiss finds a lot of those remarkable details that take you into a world that somebody else lives every day. One of my favorites is when the Joffrey's Artistic Director Ashley Wheater (whose several appearances in the article paint a fascinating picture of the role of an Artistic Director) is describing some of what makes Jaiani so good. "... Her jump seemed to spring from nothing, like a deer". That's an intriguing observation, and clearly an important idea in ballet, where verticality often seems so primary, but from there Wheater moves on to a concept that was new to me. He continues with an idea that implies a very different way of seeing ballet performance: "She has such a fluid upper body --- something I think we've lost globally in ballet --- so she really stands out." Quite an insight into what an Artistic Director has to perceive, and into how movement in ballet defines its own evolving ideals. It's a very enjoyable read, despite everything you end up learning. Worth finding at the news stand, or take a look at the article at dancemagazine.com.

Claire Massey cowrote this track with Johnny Nevin, and with Claire getting ready to release a new EP called "Hearts and Minds", it's a good time to listen to how she crafts a melody and lyric. Made To Love is due for a full remix and release early next year, and "Hearts and Minds" includes a track called "Wouldn't It", that Nevin produced, and that will show up here soon, maybe with some of the backstory.

For more about Claire and "Hearts and Minds" her site is planetclaire.com, and you can find Made To Love at iTunes, Amazon and in the U.K. at 7Digital.

"Unraveling the Myth" isn't quite like anything else in the 'ohana Dreamdance catalogue, a classical guitar based track with a quietly brilliant vocal by Josie Falbo. For reasons we haven't really figured out yet, the track has recently seen a surge in popularity. Here it is:

'ohana Dreamdance
UNRAVELING THE MYTH

Unraveling the Myth is available at Amazon, iTunes, or check it out at one of the sites we like, eMusic.

Here's a new acoustic track by Sammy Tenuta, called "Somber the Fact". A few years ago, Sammy and Mario Licciardi were in a band called Wildwood, one of the best around. Just before all of the complications that catch up with bands caught up with Wildwood, they did get into the studio with producer Johnny Nevin to record a track called Live Life Right. It's a carefully-crafted, multi-colored jam that was one of the tracks from the Heart & Soul days that we went back and signed when we were starting the All Over The Place label.

Before Francisco Avina and Stephanie Martinez Bennitt were asked by Thodos Dance Chicago to be the guest choreographers for the Tenth Anniversary of the New Dances series, they had already begun the discussion and reflection that would lead to their new work, "Quieting the Clock". The work is inspired by a simple and profound question, or rather, by an endless series of interrelated questions. How does the passage of time effect who you are? As time progresses, what is the relationship between who you are now and who you once were --- and may never be again. As the passage of time changes what you are capable of, where do you find balance, and hopefully continuity, in a redefinition that is gradually forced into your life? Avina and Martinez Bennitt expand their exploration to embrace all of the ways in which identity is defined by the logistics of time, by the pressures of schedule and obligation, and more gradually, of age.

Wade Schaaf's new work "Dancer, Net" was inspired by the concept of French impressionist painter Claude Monet's Haystack series, which "is known for its thematic use of repetition to show differences in perception of light across various times of day, seasons and types of weather" (Wikipedia). Even the title of the work, "Dancer, Net" reflects the conventions of painting, where a work will often be identified by it's subject ("Wheatstacks (End Of Summer)") and the way it is made ("Oil on Canvas"). In "Dancer, Net" Schaaf creates three separate solos, each of which features the same soloist and the same net-like fabric bag. The three solos are performed separately, at different points during the concert program, thereby accentuating the impact of the changing perspective from which an audience will see them. Schaaf's most recent work was a successful large-ensemble piece ("Awakening"), and in turning his creative vision to the more raw, more immediately-apparent movements of a solo work, he is able to explore in detail the many facets of a single subject.

In "Temporary Proof", Brian Hare sets himself a challenging task: to portray the process of personal development, to shine some sort of light on the many different ways that someone becomes who they are. In casting his study for six dancers, he makes it possible to explore a multifaceted look at a single individual, an individual trying, as Hare expresses it, to "become a more accurate version" of who they are. Although the subject of many works in many forms of art, this is an examination well-suited to Choreography, where Hare uses the emotion that can be so evident in movement to evoke an immediate identification with struggles everyone is familiar with. "One of the most powerful elements in dance is what the human body is capable of," Hare observes, "It's not so much that I'm concerned with presenting the dancers as performers for an audience; it's more as if they are extremely athletic, moving ideas that, through their physicality, express the idea that we are all ever-changing and evolving versions of ourselves."

Balance is always an issue in movement, but in "2:00 AM, Delancy St." Jeremy Blair is concerned with a deeper balance: understanding the differences between what we want and what we really need. To set the background for his look at choices and desires, Blair uses the bleak landscpape of the city -- not the bright, money-to-burn, VIP city, but the nothing-you-don't-need part of the city, the city where people stay out all night, but only because they don't have anywhere else they can be. Balance is always an issue in art, and Blair carefully balances the edgy and the melancholy in his movements as in his soundtrack, implying deep, and sometimes dark questions about choices. When are you working, and when are you just selling your self? What would you do for love, and is it really still love if you would do that? When people are bound to one another, what forces can bind them? Balance is always an issue in life-choices, but what happens when choices already made throw everything that follows out of balance?

Jessica Miller Tomlinson was working with Melissa Thodos once when Thodos, while rehearsing a section in one of her works, said "Jess, give me your big technique." If that's a unique way to find the title (and inspiration) for a choreographic work, even more unique is the adventure that Jessica Miller Tomlinson is able to conjure from it. Imagine what can happen when Miller Tomlinson (whose recent independent production with Jacqueline Stewart JMT/JLS featured one inspiring display of artistic confidence after another) does a study dedicated to confidence in art. A remarkable subject for most choreographers to undertake, but Jessica Miller Tomlinson always seems to address subjects that only her uniquely inspired view of the world could imagine, and in "Big Technique" she imagines an inspired tour of the World of Artistic Confidence.

Even in the broad landscape of modern choreography, Heart Strings is unusually bold, bold in the deceptively easy way that Danielle Scanlon plays with the most everyday of ideas -- the clothes we choose. Scanlon finds in that common cloth an intricate tapestry, and she uses it like a lens through which she examines the most individual and private of emotions. Set to a three-section soundscape of gentle, sometimes melancholy instrumentals, Scanlon takes a patient and careful look at the far-more-than-material threads that tie us to our past, to what we once wished for, to what never happened or never happened again. In doing so, she also explores one of the most effective of choreographic techniques, the contrast between a common, everyday action, like trying on a piece of clothing, and the extraordinary grace of the dancers' movements. To see Dance on stage is always other-worldly, but when it is interwoven with the ordinary, its transcendence of the routines of daily experience is even more enchanting.