HWS News
5 August 2024 HWS Hosts NYS DanceForce
Contemporary dance artists from New York State offered a dance concert in Deming Dance Theatre on Wednesday, July 31 at 7:30 p.m.
Dance and Movement Studies Professor Cynthia Williams hosted the NYS DanceForce for its annual summer meeting at Hobart and William Smith on July 30-Aug. 1. DanceForce is a consortium of dance activist members who are committed to increasing the amount and quality of dance activity across New York State. A free dance concert was held in conjunction with the meeting.
DanceForce members create exciting and innovative projects in their communities, including creative development residencies, performances, workshops and community engagement projects. A member for more than two decades, Williams has used her partnership with DanceForce to bring extraordinary dance artists to HWS and the Geneva community, including Kyle Abraham/A.I.M., Camille A Brown, Jane Comfort, Alice Sheppard/Kinetic Light, Kate Weare, Edisa Weeks, and most recently, Passion Fruit Dance in the fall of 2023.
As the DanceForce website explains, DanceForce is truly a statewide network. The 19 DanceForce members live and work in communities including Manhattan, Queens, Long Island, the Hudson Valley, the Capital Region, the Mohawk Valley, Oswego, Ithaca, Geneva, Brockport, Buffalo and Chautauqua County. Members often extend their projects beyond their home communities, resulting in coverage of many counties in New York State.
Each summer, DanceForce members gather for a three-day meeting to discuss past and future projects, visit a member’s community, and share in artist showcases, panel discussions, seminars, and exchange information relevant to the field. The last time DanceForce met in Geneva, the Gearan Center for the Performing Arts had not yet been built, and prior to the event, Williams said, she was “excited to showcase our beautiful new spaces!”
The summer meeting also featured presentations by several of the New York State Choreographers Initiative (NYSCI) 2024 awardees. A joint venture of DanceForce and the New York State Council on the Arts, NYSCI was designed to help choreographers develop their skills by providing them with resources to advance their creative practice. The awardees each receive a $2,500 stipend, access to a mentor, and support for 20 hours of creative time with dancers and other collaborators of their choice. Each project is essentially a mini-residency, designed to fit the specific needs of each artist. Originally targeted at the Western New York region, the Choreographers Initiative expanded in 2022 to include the 55 upstate counties of New York State, and now serves choreographers who reside in the regions of Western NY, Central NY, Capital District/North Country and Hudson Valley/Long Island.
Barkha Patel
As part of this summer’s meeting, a special Summer Dance 2024: Contemporary Dance Artists from New York State in Performance dance concert was held in Deming Dance Theatre on Wednesday, July 31 at 7:30 p.m. Four artists were invited to perform excerpts from their repertory: Leslie Cuyjet, Julie Ludwick/Fly By Night Dance Theater, Kaley Pruitt Dance, and Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance. The dance concert featured these artists’ works in solos, duets, and/or trios, providing a glimpse into diverse and expressive contemporary choreography from a variety of thematic inspirations: experiences of the performer through the lens of a black body (Cuyjet), how joy may take flight in the aftermath of sorrow (Ludwick), the human experience and storytelling (Pruitt), and eco-somatics and the human entanglement with nature (Sperling).
For further information or questions, please contact Cynthia Williams, williams@hws.edu
The photo above features, Leslie Cuyjet (left, photo credit: Maria Barnanova); Kaley Pruitt, (second left, photo credit: Zach Lyman); Jody Sperling Arbor (third, photo credit: Richard J. Velasco); Julie Ludwick (photo, far right: Fred Hatt).
