REPOST: A Step Is Just a Step

In her Dance World Takeover blog, Rebecca Brightly expounds on the art of dance, a must-read for all dancers and dance enthusiasts. 

Before I studied the art, a punch to me was just a punch, a kick was just a kick. After I’d studied the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch, a kick is just a kick. -Bruce Lee

Image Source: rebeccabrightly.com

Once upon a time, Bruce Lee was a dancer. He studied many forms of movement, rather than getting indoctrinated in only one “way.”

On our shelf sits my husband’s copy of Tao of Jeet Kune Do, the book this quote is from. As far as the internet can tell me, the quote (like the rest of the book) is strongly influenced by Buddhist philosophy.

This “punch is just a punch” quote has been on my mind lately. Here’s why.

Months ago, a commenter on this blog remarked to me (paraphrased): “I can tell you are not an advanced dancer because you use words like ‘steps’ and ‘moves,’ showing that you do not have an in-depth understanding of full body movement.”

The comment initially annoyed me. Go figure.

But after shrugging it off, I could only shake my head. I’m all too familiar with that brimming sense of superiority displayed by the commenter. I, too, once looked for weaknesses in others’ dancing (or words or ideas) so I could knock them down and feel better about myself. I still catch myself doing it.

But this isn’t a post about how humility is good and arrogance is bad. (Is that even true?) And I didn’t write this to tell off some commenter who will probably never read my response.

Instead, I want to use this space to explain what Bruce’s words mean to me in a dancing sense.

Phase 1

Before I made a serious study of dancing, I learned moves. They were simple; they fit together easily into patterns I could do with my classmates. They each had names, and they were always done the same way.

Image Source: rebeccabrightly.com

But I couldn’t do anything very challenging or creative with my dancing.

Phase 2

After I’d studied and struggled for some time, my patterns fell away. Steps and moves became movements that flowed into one another, with no clear distinction between them. My motion flowed from my center, from the ground, from my partner. The steps and their names were irrelevant, I just flowed.

I was one with my partner! I was inside the music.

The first time I read Bruce’s quote years ago, I knew instantly my dancing was right in the middle of it—in that “all is one” mind space, teaching complexity, getting deep into detail, and chasing bliss.

I could also see the wisdom of passing out of this second phase. I knew there was more.

Phase 3

Now that I understand partner dancing… What words should come after that? How exactly do I express my sense of simplicity?

Now that I understand partner dancing, steps are just steps. Moves are just moves.

The foundations of movement all relate to one another, but I can once again see them as separate concepts. The music is around me, and I am a distinct individual once more. The simplicity of understanding has returned; it’s exactly as I thought, only now I get how simple it really is.

Image Source: rebeccabrightly.com

 When I say “step” or “move,” those words are a deliberate choice. I’m familiar with the panoply of complex movement concepts dancers invent and promote. I promote certain complex ideas myself.

Bruce’s words express something I’ve been trying to understand about my process of learning: This cycle of understanding that goes from simple, to complex, and back to simple again.

What is the essence, the soul of the movement, the TL;DR?

How can I communicate so that the newest of newbies can grasp what I’m saying?

I simplify relentlessly.

Part of teaching is understanding where your students are in their learning. I don’t always get it right. Words that seem profound and deeply intuitive to me may seem simplistic to you. I may use the words I mean, but they are not always the words you need to hear.

That’s why I like the Tao of Jeet Kune Do. I don’t understand everything Bruce Lee writes. In fact, much of it I skim over and save for another day.

You’re welcome to do the same with this blog. Or you can wrestle with my words and leave impassioned, thoughtful comments.

You can also leave arrogant comments, which will annoy me. But I know where you come from. I know that feeling of resistance, and I can’t stop you from having it.

Besides, you may be right. Perhaps one day again, a step will no longer be a step, a move no longer a move. There is much more to learn.

Lou S. Habash loves jazz and is a jazz dance instructor. Know more about dancing by following her blog.

REPOST: Movers and Shapers

Who are the dance industry movers and shakers in NYC? Get to know them by reading this New York Times article.


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The energy that characterizes New York City finds artistic release in dance. Other cities around the world have important dance scenes, but for diversity and vitality this one has no match. Here ballet and modern mingle with tap and jazz. Here ethnic and experimental mixed media works find devoted audiences. Here it’s natural to find the formal colliding with the forward-looking. And during the main season, from September to June, it’s not unusual to find a dozen dance productions opening in a week.

In that spirit, we present 10 professionals who, working offstage or on, embody this range — from tap to ballet, flamenco to postmodern. Each, in a different way, makes New York’s dance scene singular.

Sara Mearns, a stage animal of rare vibrancy, is changing our idea of how a ballerina looks and projects. Judy Hussie-Taylor, executive director at the Danspace Project at St. Mark’s, is reshaping the course of modern dance. Alexei Ratmansky, formerly artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, choreographs around the globe, but it’s here that his most adventurous pieces have had their premieres. An important part of New York culture is the way it keeps drawing — and inspiring — dance artists from abroad.

Everyone on this list has become integral to this city’s dance life — and between now and year’s end, the work of each one can be seen in New York. Perhaps only a few, like the Alvin Ailey dancer Matthew Rushing, have reached full maturity. The others — even Ms. Mearns and Mr. Ratmansky — are still evolving. It’s exciting to think that yet finer work lies ahead.

Alexei Ratmansky, 45
Choreographer

Alexei Ratmansky is a classical-ballet man, but seldom in the grandest manner. His dances occur on the cusp between pure dance and characterization; his stage worlds abound in intimate human incidents. Since this Russian moved to the West in 2008, his career has become the most prolific and rapidly globe-trotting in choreography today. Modest in manner, he’s a torrent of creative ideas.

In February, he had world premieres only a week apart — with the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden in London and San Francisco Ballet at its home theater. (The California company dances his “From Foreign Lands” here at the David H. Koch Theater on Oct. 17, 18 and 20.) In May, at the Metropolitan Opera House, he presented the two new parts of his “Shostakovich Trilogy”with American Ballet Theater (where he is artist in residence, and which revives one of these Shostakovich creations, “Piano Concerto No. 1,” at the Koch on Nov. 7 and 9).

Last week, the Australian Ballet presented in Melbourne his new version of Prokofiev’s three-act “Cinderella.” On Oct. 30, Ballet Theater dances his latest work, “The Tempest,” treating Shakespeare’s play in terms of Sibelius’s incidental music.

The prospect of any Ratmansky premiere tantalizes simply because nobody knows even what kind of piece it will be. Most of his creations have weak patches; you wish he’d stay still, just to rework them. Yet his dance sequences often contain the finest poetry in ballet today, while his storytelling can show the form’s finest imagination and most exuberant character acting. ALASTAIR MACAULAY

Sara Mearns, 27
Ballet dancer

In an era when the lurid melodrama of the film “Black Swan” has made “Swan Lake” more popular than ever, it’s heartening to see Sara Mearns give ardent new significance to the drama of its look-alike heroines, Odette and Odile. Born in Columbia, S.C., and a principal of New York City Ballet since 2008, she’s the world’s foremost interpreter of the double role this century. (She starred in “Swan Lake” twice last week at the David H. Koch Theater as part of City Ballet’s current season.) 

Yet that’s not her greatest vehicle. She’s at her finest in the ballets of George Balanchine, to which she brings the most powerfully Romantic classicism since his dancers Suzanne Farrell and Maria Calegari, neither of whom she resembles. (She hasn’t yet conquered all her roles, though. So far, the serene lunar grandeur of the extraordinary adagio second movement of Balanchine’s “Symphony in C” eludes her.)

The choreographers Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon are among those who have created leading roles for her. And this Wednesday and Thursday, in the opening Fall for Dance program at City Center, she performs the world premiere of a new pas de deux by Justin Peck.

A celebrity beyond her home company, she blogs for The Huffington Post; in June she starred with the New York Philharmonic in “A Dancer’s Dream.”

She’s compellingly made up of contradictions: child and woman, vulnerable and audacious, naïve and voluptuous. Her eyes are small, but their focus is rivetingly theatrical. Her shoulders are high, even tense, but her spine — one of the wonders of the dance world — is powerfully supple. Her figure is curvaceous, and there’s a thread of steel running through those legs.

Some ballerinas play with their music, but the expansive Ms. Mearns claims hers as if embodying it: it’s her domain. ALASTAIR MACAULAY

Maile Okamura, 39
Dancer and costume designer

When Mark Morris’s life-enhancing staging of the Handel-Milton oratorio “L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato” returns to the David H. Koch Theater from Nov. 21 to 23, the role of the Penseroso bird, the nightingale that is drawn to the wandering moon, will be danced by the quietly spontaneous Maile Okamura.

Born and raised in California to a Japanese family, she’s performed a number of solo parts for the Morris company; in Mr. Morris’s “Romeo and Juliet,” she was one of two Juliets. She has a second career designing costumes: witness John Heginbotham’s “Dark Theater” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Fishman Space from Oct. 29 to Nov. 2. ALASTAIR MACAULAY

Reggie Wilson, 45
Choreographer

As a contemporary choreographer who formed his Fist & Heel Performance Group in 1989, Reggie Wilson is something of a cultural anthropologist. His dances, which rely heavily on songs and rhythms — you often see Mr. Wilson singing and clapping on the sidelines — sprout from one concept, but by the time he’s finished, they are a garden of references, memories and ideas. When is he ever really finished?

Mr. Wilson, who was born in Milwaukee, is an artist compelled by the idea of looking back to move forward, and as such, his sprawling movement pieces fold history into the present, or show how what seems new never truly is.

This approach to his movement — firmly accented yet unforced — and to his work, which he often describes as “post-African/Neo-HooDoo Modern dances,” is tempered by a deep devotion to structure. It provides a frame for his fiendishly busy mind.

For “Moses(es),” Mr. Wilson’s latest work, performed by nine at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Harvey Theater Dec. 4 to 7, he takes inspiration from Zora Neale Hurston’s “Moses, Man of the Mountain,” as well as trips to Israel, Egypt and Turkey. In the book, Hurston explores the Moses story as an African-American folk tale. Mr. Wilson takes it further: How do ideas and customs migrate? Where do the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Harriet Tubman fit in? And, in keeping with Moses, what makes leaders and why do we follow them?

“Since this Moses thing cracked open for me,” Mr. Wilson said, “there seems to be something infinite but specific going on.”

It’s true that Mr. Wilson always takes a path of most resistance, but his multilayered productions are a pleasure of sensations, creating as much an aural landscape as a visual one in which dancers have the uncanny ability to slip in and out of traditions while maintaining their contemporary rigor. It’s a trip to see the world through Mr. Wilson’s eyes. For a night at least, Moses will be everywhere. GIA KOURLAS

Matthew Rushing, 38
Modern dancer

In 2010 Matthew Rushing, who began performing with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1992, became Ailey’s rehearsal director and considered retiring from the stage. Judith Jamison, then at the end of her long tenure as the company’s artistic director, told him not to. Thank goodness he listened.

Mr. Rushing, who was born in Los Angeles, is still the greatest male dancer in a troupe that suffers no lack of candidates. In strength and stretch, he has shown little diminishment, and the quality that most distinguished him early on has only deepened with age. Critics rightly call it “integrity,” a service to each work. It reads as humility, yet it’s an independent moral force that Ailey-style dances can’t do without.

Since his near retirement, Mr. Rushing has remained irreplaceable, not only in repertory works, where you might expect his experience to give him an edge, but also in new pieces. He was the pillar of Rennie Harris’s 2010 “Home,” a hip-hop sermon on survival, and this year his supple spiritualty set the tone for Ronald K. Brown’s “Four Corners.” During the company’s encampment at City Center this December, Mr. Rushing will be dancing those works and will also have a prominent role in Aszure Barton’s new “Lift.” On Dec. 17, a special performance will celebrate his time with the company, the longest of any current dancer. It’s a bit late for a 20th-anniversary party, but let’s hope that a 25th will be in the cards. BRIAN SEIBERT

Michelle Dorrance, 34
Tap dancer and choreographer

The field of tap dance has seldom wanted for astonishing soloists. It is tap choreographers worthy of the title who have been rare. This is why the recent emergence of Michelle Dorrance as a dancemaker is so important.

She is, to begin with, another astonishing soloist. The daughter of a ballet teacher and a soccer coach in Chapel Hill, N.C., she is ridiculously fleet of foot. From her loose ankles, she can throw down a profusion of taps like bagfuls of marbles, yet she does so with precision, in the service of a compelling musicality.

At the same time, she projects her personality, a direct, uningratiating blend of tomboy and girlish, hip and dorky. Her body, a gangling collection of limbs, is a site of potential awkwardness that she isn’t afraid to exploit in knock-kneed comedy or to convert into emotional openness.

Though justly celebrated as a happy dance, tap has always encompassed darker emotions. What Ms. Dorrance is discovering are ways to make those emotions visible to people who can’t necessarily hear them in rhythm and tone, expanding tap without distorting its essence. Like many beginning choreographers, she is still working out how to use bodies other than her own. Yet the debut of “SOUNDspace,” her first evening-length work, at Danspace Project in January, revealed a promising grasp of large-scale composition. An excerpt from that piece at Fall for Dance at City Center on Oct. 2 and 3 should help introduce her to the larger audience she deserves. BRIAN SEIBERT

Judy Hussie-Taylor, 50
Arts administrator

As a producer of dance, Judy Hussie-Taylor has a mantra in her dealings with artists: “I always say the answer is yes until it has to be no.”

It must be what she tells herself. As the Danspace Project’s executive director, she has turned a dance site with limited flexibility — St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery, which affords artists few options to manipulate the space — into a setting where the imagination can soar. In 2010, two years after taking over Danspace Project, Ms. Hussie-Taylor introducedPlatforms, in which performances and related events based on a single theme were organized into a series of programs, usually masterminded by a single choreographer. So far, there have been seven; the next, scheduled for May, will focus on the work of the choreographer DD Dorvillier.

This fall, Ms. Hussie-Taylor is intrigued by collisions of dance forms by artists like Katy Pyle (Oct. 24 through 26) and Cori Olinghouse (Dec. 12 through 14), who go deeply into a history and then disrupt it. But above all, Ms. Hussie-Taylor, who was born in Philadelphia and lives in Brooklyn, likes friction: as she put it in an interview, “I always like stepping into territory where I don’t belong.”

Under her calm watch, tension is not cause for alarm, but something that opens up the possibility for new ideas. She stands aside to let an artist breathe and then asks the big question: what makes an idea relevant today? It leads to more questions than answers, and in dance that’s just the way it should be. GIA KOURLAS

Soledad Barrio, 48
Flamenco dancer

The inestimable power of Soledad Barrio is rooted in contradictions. Onstage, she’s more animal than woman, but even so, her force-of-nature explosiveness neither unfurls in flashy bursts nor operates on the surface. In those moments when she twists her sinewy back and raises her arms high above her head to frame a face with veiled eyes — just before her heels pound the floor, seemingly in an effort to rip through to the earth below — Ms. Barrio lands in a place every dancer dreams of inhabiting. She lives in the moment.

Born in Madrid, where she started her dance training at the late age of 18, Ms. Barrio is a founding member of the troupe Noche Flamenca, which is directed by her husband, Martín Santangelo. (They have two daughters, Gabriela and Stella.) From Dec. 3 through 15, Ms. Barrio showcases her extraordinary abilities at the Joyce Theater in a program that merges music, song and dance. For it, she’ll dance a new alegríasduet, choreographed by Mr. Santangelo, opposite Juan Ogalla; her solo will be a siguiriya, one of flamenco’s oldest forms — a slow, desolate dance in which Ms. Barrio, enveloped by the music, becomes majestically ravaged. It’s like watching the ocean as one wave crashes into the next.

Yet alongside her profound athleticism, Ms. Barrio has an allure that is based in something eerily intangible. The word “soledad” translates to “loneliness,” and that heartache permeates all of her performances: what she seems to be saying, with both her feet and her eyes, is that you can’t escape your destiny. GIA KOURLAS

James Whiteside, 29
Ballet dancer

What newcomer to New York has ever invaded a repertory more surely than James Whiteside? Lean, energetic, tall and confident, he joined American Ballet Theater as a soloist in autumn 2012. A year later, at the Oct. 30 gala that opens the company’s two-week fall season at the David H. Koch Theater, he performs the male lead of George Balanchine’s “Theme and Variations,” one of the most taxing bravura roles in all of ballet. Mr. Whiteside, who was born and began his training in Fairfield, Conn., danced the role splendidly in 2010 with the Boston Ballet, where he was a principal.

It’s hard to imagine that he won’t be promoted to a principal here soon. In Ballet Theater’s 2013 season at the Metropolitan Opera House, he danced the heroes of four of its seven full-length ballets: Basilio in “Don Quixote,” Romeo in “Romeo and Juliet,” Prince Siegfried in “Swan Lake” and Prince Désiré in “The Sleeping Beauty.” Not only that, but as the troubled artist-hero of Alexei Ratmansky’s new “Chamber Symphony,” he was cast second to the celebrated David Hallberg but gave the more imposing performance.

While he’s been paired successfully with a number of Ballet Theater’s principal women, he’s forged a particularly impressive partnership with the redoubtable redhead Gillian Murphy. It looks like a meeting of minds, and it’s part of this ballerina’s awakening. They performed “Swan Lake” and “The Sleeping Beauty” together this spring; they’ll dance “Theme and Variations” together at the October gala. ALASTAIR MACAULAY

Reid Bartelme, 32
Costume designer

When fashion designers create costumes for dance, the results often aren’t pretty — haute couture tends to get in a body’s way. But while the Manhattan-born Reid Bartelmeholds a degree in design from the Fashion Institute of Technology, he was a dancer first. The stylistic range he covered during his initial career — from BalletMet Columbus to Shen Wei, Lar Lubovitch and performance art — is only expanding in his second.

Since 2009, his smart yet unobtrusive costume designs have popped up everywhere from downtown spaces to New York City Ballet. At Fall for Dance at City Center on Wednesday and Thursday, he and his frequent partner Harriet Jung will unveil their fourth collaboration with the similarly rocketing choreographer Justin Peck, a minimalist outfit for the maximalist ballerina Sara Mearns. BRIAN SEIBERT

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Lou S. Habash teaches kids and kids-at-heart on how to appreciate the art of dancing. More about her can be read in this blog site.

REPOST: Jazz 101

This About.com article shares the basic things that you need to know in jazz dance.

Image Source: dance.about.com

Jazz has become one of the most popular dance styles in recent years, mainly due to its popularity on television shows, movies, music videos and commercials. People enjoy watching jazz dancers, as the dancing is fun and energetic.

Jazz dancing is a form of dance that showcases a dancer's individual style and originality. Every jazz dancer interprets and executes moves and steps in their own way. This type of dancing is energetic and fun, consisting of unique moves, fancy footwork, big leaps and quick turns. To excel in jazz, dancers need a strong background in ballet, as it encourages grace and balance.

Jazz Clothes:

When dressing for a jazz dance class, think about wearing clothing that allows you to move. Jazz classes are casual and relaxed, so feel free to select your own clothing. A dancer's body lines need to be visible, however, so baggy clothes are generally discouraged. Tights and leotards are fine, but most jazz dancers prefer to wear jazz or dance pants. Jazz pants are usually boot-cut or flared styles, as tight bottoms would restrict ankle movement. Tops usually worn for jazz include form-fitting tank tops, t-shirts or leotards. Check with your teacher before buying jazz shoes, as many classes have

Jazz Class Structure:

If you are attending your first jazz dance class, get ready to really move. A good jazz class explodes with energy. With music styles ranging from hip-hop to show tunes, the beat alone will get you moving. Most jazz teachers begin with a thorough warm-up, then lead the class in a series of stretching exercises and isolation movements. Isolations involve moving one part of the body while the rest of the body remains still. Jazz dancers also practice the art of suspension. Suspension involves moving through positions instead of stopping and balancing in them. Most jazz teachers will end the class with a short cool down to help prevent muscle soreness.

Jazz Steps:

You will be taught a variety of jazz steps by your teacher. However, you will want to try to make each step your own. In a jazz class, dancers are encouraged to add their own personality to make each step unique and fun. Jazz steps include basic turns including chaines, piques, pirouettes, jazz turns, and some ballet turns, to name a few. Leaps include grande jetes, turning jumps, and tour jetes. Signature to jazz dancing is the "jazz walk." Jazz walks can be performed in many different styles. Another popular jazz move is the "contraction." A contraction is accomplished by contracting the torso, with the back curved outward and the pelvis pulled forward. Learning jazz dance technique takes a lot of practice.

Jazz Dancers:

Many famous dancers have helped shape what we know as jazz dance today. Considered the father of jazz dance technique, Jack Cole developed techniques that are used today in musicals, films, television commercials and videos. His style emphasized isolations, rapid directional changes, angled placement and long knee slides. Winning eight Tony awards, Bob Fosse was a musical theater choreographer and director, and a film director. Characteristic of his dance style are inward knees, rounded shoulders and full-body isolations. Considered a founder of jazz dance, Gus Giordano was a master teacher and gifted choreographer. His dance style has influenced modern jazz dancing. Many jazz teachers employ his methods in their own classes.

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