A week worth dancing about: dancers celebrate coast to coast - National Dance Week

Dance Magazine, April, 2002 by Janet Weeks

IT'S THAT TIME AGAIN. ACROSS THE COUNTRY SWING, ballet, and belly dancers as well as tappers, steppers, and kickers are celebrating the week that honors what they love. National Dance Week 2002 runs from April 26 through May 5 and features everything from spiritual rituals to nightclub performances. The week is designed to celebrate the art form and bring it to a wider audience. Details of how to do that are left to local and state NDW delegates. This year some have organized free performances in unlikely places, like train stations and work-week lunch spots. Others have invited the public into studios for free classes and open rehearsals. A sampling of NDW delegates from across the country told us what they have planned. For more information on what's going on in your area, visit the NDW Web site, www.nationaldanceweek.org.

The San Francisco/Bay Area dance community hosts one of the largest and most coordinated celebrations. This year, organizers plan to replace community-wide events with a larger number of grassroots offerings. The goal is to get dancers and nondancers alike to support their neighborhood dance studios, so the central focus will be on open studio events. As in years past, a guide listing times and places for all happenings will be published. At press time, there were plans to coordinate a kickoff with the San Francisco Ballet. Anna Halprin will again lead the Planetary Dance gathering on the final day. The main event--the Earth Run--starts at 11:00 A.M. and is a community dance of prayer and dedication for those in need and for our distressed planet.

In Oceanside, California, Morwenna Assaf, dance director for Art/Dance Academy Complex, has asked Manhattan-based Middle Eastern dancer and teacher Nourhan Sharif to teach master classes on April 27 and 28. There will also be workshops on how to stage dance led by lighting, staging, and sound experts. "Since ethnic dancers tend to perform in restaurants and cafes, they often don't know how to set their works in a theater," says Assaf.

New York City-based ethnic dancer and instructor Cassandra Meroe Wimbs is organizing a symposium entitled "Traditional Dances of the African Diaspora" to celebrate the week. The event, scheduled for April 28-May 1, will focus on "dances passed through the generations--ones that used to be learned in the family or community," says Wimbs. Featured dances include the Nubian cane dance, Egyptian chandelier dance, Palladium-style salsa, and dances performed to African American soul music. Most events are to be at City College New York. But Wimbs also hopes to present a sacred dance performance on Sunday, April 28, at the United Nations headquarters to honor both NDW and International Dance Day, April 29.

For the past few years, a kickline at Lincoln Center has signaled the start of the week in Manhattan but at press time no sponsor had come forward to organize that event for 2002.

In Ithaca, New York, Barbara Thuesen, dance educator and co-founder of the Music in Motion[R] Dance Presentation Services, is holding a second annual NDW show-and-tell on April 5. This year, Chinese, Indian, African, and Filipino dancers as well as those who study ballet, modern, and jazz will attend. "Last year, we focused on a common denominator--pantomime," says Thuesen. Ballet dancers showed classical gestures that meant "beautiful woman" or "strong man." Then a Chinese dancer performed gestures that also signified gender. Participants learned and compared the ballet and ethnic dance moves. The event brings together a wide variety of age groups, too. "Our expert in folk and contra dancing is 75," says Thuesen.

In Wheeling, West Virginia, the Oglebay Institute, a fine-arts center, will host West Virginia University's Dance and Drill Team. The group will be critiquing high school dance drill groups and a showcase performance will follow. "We're trying to get more than dance studios involved," says Cheryl Workman, who teaches at Oglebay. During the week, dance classes at the Institute will be free.

About an hour and a half away in Clarksburg, West Virginia, Anna Pishner, of Anna's Expressions of Dance studio, is also offering free classes and a performance featuring dancers from Mexico, Thailand, and Pishner's Allegro Dance Company, an Italian folk dance group. There will be a kickline on the first day--West Virginia's governor, Bob Wise, a clogger, plans to take part.

Atlanta, Georgia, swing dancer Cathy McDaniel has worked with public schools, nightclubs, dance associations, churches, and studios to bring dance to diverse locations during the week. Four metropolitan Atlanta malls will host performances and two nightclubs will offer Western dance demonstrations. McDaniel is also arranging public school events. "We're trying to cover it all," she says. "We hope anyone who is into dance can go somewhere that week to try out different styles for free."

In St. Louis, Missouri, studios, universities, and dance companies are gathering for a gala to be held April 27 outside St. Louis's Union Station. All types of dancers--ballet to ethnic--will take part. The open-air event, now in its fourth year, attracts large audiences who watch from a lawn or from the upper terraces of two station restaurants. "The event gets lots of local support," says Linda Green of the St. Louis Academy of Dance.