Extensions Dance Company’s 2010 showcase, which took place Saturday at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, was not only a great concert, it was in many ways a unique experience, the kind of experience that can be difficult to place in a specific category. It was a Dance Concert in the traditional sense, a presentation of dance pieces that each featured excellent performance and inspired design, and that flowed convincingly from one to another. It was also very much a showcase; the program provided an in-depth presentation of the abilities and accomplishments of the Company dancers, both individually and in ensemble works. It was also a celebration of the fifth anniversary of Extensions Dance, a celebration of a remarkably successful season for the Company, and a celebration of the contributions of two Extensions performers, Miranda Borkan and Natalie Pearson, both of whom will attend the prestigious Alvin Ailey / Fordham University partnership program in New York.

‘ohana Dreamdance’s “Time Now Choreography Mixes” release features both of the tracks composed for choreographer Lizzie MacKenzie. The full original score is the Time Now MacKenzie Choreography Mix; it’s an arrangement of the two original tracks “Time Now” and “Some Time” that ‘ohana Dreamdance producers Dan Agosto and Johnny Nevin wrote for the Extensions Dance Company performance. Besides the Choreography mix and the two original tracks, the release includes a four minute Piano-only version, which is now available as a free download from All Over The Place Records distributor IODA (the Independent Online Digital Alliance).

IODA runs a service called Promonet. It provides access to sample tracks from many IODA distributed labels, and makes them available to bloggers and review sites, as well as to IODA distributed labels, like All Over The Place.

The download is coming from IODA Promonet, and the link is pasteable into a lot of different social media locations: by all means copy any of the links (but especially the free download link) as much as you wantl. (In Windows, right-click, on a Mac, Control-click the icon and Copy Link. Here it is:

'ohana Dreamdance
"Time Now" (mp3)
from "Time Now Choreography Mixes - EP"
(All Over The Place Records)

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Extensions Dance presents its 2010 Showcase this May 29 at 6:30 PM at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts. It marks the completion of an exceptionally successful year for the Company, including most recently an astonishing set of awards at the American Dance Association Chicago Regional.

Choreography is one of those arts that is especially difficult to master, because it requires so many different resources for its development. Dancers, music, costumes, lighting, and some place to stage the performance make a challenging list of components. Yet rarely is it creativity or competence in the development of these components that most challenges new choreographers (well, most choreographers). It’s the mastery of the process.

The title of this article is the second half of the title of one of the best descriptions of choreography I’ve ever read. Roslyn Sulcas wrote a year-end article in the New York Times summarizing the most memorable performances she had seen during the year. The article is called “Leading Bodies, Stirring Imaginations”, and it begins with a superb description of the art of choreography:

"CREATING a dance involves much more than inventing steps for dancers. It needs a judicious eye for visual and spatial effect, a sense of timing and an instinct for building attention, for varying the mood and creating an overall theatrical arc that draws an audience into the world of the dance. Thinking about my favorite dance watching moments of the year, I realized that they all involved a sense of wonder at the skill with which the choreographers had woven these elements into a whole, making every aspect of a dance feel not just necessary, but inevitable."

Despite the importance of music in almost all dance creation, the world of dance and the world of music are very different. They are different cultures, different economies, often different classes. In my experience, though, the most significant differences are actually the result of differences in perception.

For most of its professionals and for most of its audience, choreography is essentially a visual art, and dancers and choreographers are primarily visual in their perceptions. They react intensely to music, but often as texture more than as composition, the way a fashion designer perceives fabric. Although profoundly inspired by some music, they often perceive it almost as color, but rarely as artistic structure, much the same way that a painter perceives light.

The process of choreography is variable and complex, and several projects ‘ohana Dreamdance has done in the past year, along with the Tenth Anniversary of Thodos Dance Chicago’s New Dances, makes this a good time to talk about that process. Extensions Dance Company, who’s 2010 Showcase is on Saturday, May 29 at the Ruth Page Center For the Arts, will be performing Lizzie MacKenzie’s work “Time Now”, set to two ‘ohana Dreamdance tracks, “Time Now” and “Some Time”. We’ve just finished the choreography mix of our track “What Was Beyond” for Shayna Swanson’s brilliant aerial choreography and performance. Finally, Mollie Mock and Jeremy Blair’s enchanting work “Reflect”, set to our track “Hidden”, premiered at New Dances last year and has just completed it’s first year in the Thodos Dance Chicago repertoire.

But maybe I should explain how I got mixed up in all of this to begin with. I’m a record producer by trade, but like many mixer/producers, I’ve also spent a lot of time recording and mixing projects that I was not producing. Before the development of system-based recording, choreographers like Melissa Thodos had to find a recording studio to put together the music for their works, and that was my first exposure to the world of Dance.

Thodos Dance Chicago celebrates the tenth year of its New Dances series, probably the most successful of the many Dance Company-sponsored programs for the development of new choreography. It’s not uncommon for Dance companies to have a program that encourages their members and guest artists to choreograph in a special developmental program. The Thodos Dance New Dances approach is a much more far-reaching commitment than is the norm, though.

On Sunday, March 7, at 5 p.m.,Wheeling Orchesis will team with the Arlington Dance Ensemble for the 16th annual Dance for Life's Next Generation. This year's benefit, held in Wheeling High School's Sang Theater, will be emceed by Scott Corchin (WHS Orchesis alumni and on air personality at Kiss 103.5) and Lizzie MacKenzie (River North Dance Chicago).  All proceeds will be donated to the Dance for Life Fund and The Children's Place Association, organizations dedicated to the support of those living with HIV/AIDS. 

Diane Rawlinson is the founder and co-artistic director of its Dance For Life’s affiliated youth benefit concert (Dance For Life’s Next Generation) since 1995. This year’s benefit features alot of friends of All Over The Place Records -- aotpr artist D. Jeremy is an alumnus of Wheeling Orchesis, of which Diane is the director. Lizzie MacKenzie is co-hosting the event with Scott Corchin, who is featured in the D. Jeremy video for “Loser”, and plays on D. Jeremy’s track “Feel The Love”. Finally, the event features a performance by Extensions Dance Company, performing Lizzie MacKenzie’s new work “Time Now”, to an original ‘ohana Dreamdance score written by Dan Agosto and Johnny Nevin.

Producing Music can happen in many different ways, because music can be so many different things. If a band has a song that they’ve played live a hundred times, producing a record of that song is mostly a question of getting a good recording of a good performance by the band. Mixing and mastering are still important challenges, and the band may find new arrangement choices in the studio -- additional solos, background vocals, more complex instrumentation -- but the basic idea is to record the song that they already play.

Producing original music has evolved to include a lot of different approaches though, and much of what is recorded today is composed part by part in music production software, often with no reference to a live performance. Later, the artist may find ways to recreate the production in live shows, like when an act writes beats for a track and then has a drummer play them live later, but all of the decisions about what to leave in and what to leave out are made according to what makes the song -- and the production -- work the best.

Only recently has this approach really become practical with respect to classical instrumentation, and a lot of that is thanks to a truly amazing group of people in Vienna Austria called the Vienna Symphonic Library (www.vsl.co.at).