WILD PLAY is a workshop for dancers and choreographers interested in deepening and expanding their dancemaking practice. This workshop includes theater and dance improvisation, Laban’s effort shape materials, and formal choreographic ideas, as well as Paula’s experience working with Bessie Schonberg, Robert Dunn and Eiko & Koma.
The workshop includes:
All the Pretty Horses is a performance art presentation that blends a troupe of Little Brook Farm’s horses, mostly rescued, with riders from the farm and professional dancers and dance students from Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works. The event features choreographed performances of dancers on the ground interacting with ridden horses, incorporating vaulting, modern dance and dressage including quadrille movements (four horses moving as one!).
All the Pretty Horses is the first-time rescued horses, who were previously designated as too old, too lame, too dangerous, too wild, demonstrate their partnership with humans. “It is the time and proper intervention with these formerly cast-off horses that enables them to perform with such beauty, grace and dignity,” says Lynn Cross executive director of Balanced Innovative teaching Strategies, Inc. (BITS), and owner of Little Brook Farm. Paula Josa-Jones and her dancers have been bringing together the elements of All the Pretty Horses over the past year — choreographing the horse’s, rider’s and dancer’s movements to a broad spectrum of music selections.
All the Pretty Horses is an ongoing project, part of Josa-Jones’ Horses Helping Horses program where performance and education are used to raise awareness about equine rescue and humane practices.
Dancers from Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works
Danielle DeVito, DeAnna Pellecchia, Ingrid Schatz
All the Pretty Horses Dancers
Shannon Campbell, Chandrika Carl-Jones, Sandy Gautier,
Erin McNulty. Amanda Michienzi, Katie Von Wald, Nicole DeWolfe
Vocalist – Ryder Cooley
The Youngest Dancers (Procession & Lullaby)
Giana Henderson, age 7, Emily Poulter, age 4, Laura Warner, age 8
Riders from Little Brook Farm
Summer Brennan – riding Amado and Sonata, Julia Henderson – leading Miranda and riding Charlie
Christina Hinkle – riding Portia, Elisabeth Spoto – vaulting on Devlan and riding Angel
The Horses
Procession & Lullaby– Miranda Jane, Reg. Pinto, age 29
Mustang Tango – Amado, Mustang, captured from High Rock Complex, CA, age 5
The Vault – Devlan, Reg. Hanoverian, age 14
Quadrille– Sonata, TB, age 8, Angel, TB, age 23, Portia, Reg. Oldenburg, age 18,
Forest Edge (Charlie) Reg. Morgan, age 16
On Saturday we went into the city with our dancer daughter to see Soledad Barrio and her company Noche Flamenco at the Joyce Theater. I do not remember ever being so electrified by a performance or a performer. The video barely hints at the power of this woman and her company.
I already feel myself to be Spanish (I am not) and a gypsy (I am not). I have two Spanish horses and a Spanish dog. I love the Spanish language. I love Spain – the people, the animals, the warmth, the cafe con leche, the culture. So seeing Soledad was like a divine intervention. She is a dance shaman, a woman who changes the molecular structure of the air around her, who tangles us in an irresistible web of rhythm and shape. I can’t wait to see her again!
I have to share Alistair MacCauley’s description in the New York Times, September 2011:
The many kinds of rhythmic footwork, all glorious, that occur during the solo — cascades, crescendos, accelerations and decelerations — are all part of one concentrated stream of consciousness. She is often still, but her stillness is always a preparation, a display of brimming intensity. Effects that have been electrifying in the past — sudden off-balance pivots on the spot where she then returns to a point of focus as if to a psychological fixation or freezes in powerfully back-bent positions — still occur brilliantly, but like passing moments amid a larger and consuming thought.
That thought continually moves on. While framing her face gorgeously with hands and arms like a wreath, she’s never saying “Look at me” but always “Where next?” Holding one arm flexed, she waits as if deciding; then she brings her raised hand softly over her face as if ruefully; and then pow! She’s off, her whole body driving her forth into the next adventure of her soul.
Amado and Summer Brennan with dancers DeAnna Pellecchia and Chandrika Carl-Jones in rehearsal for All the Pretty Horses at Little Brook Farm, Old Chatham, NY. Video by Jodi Kaplan.