To watch some footage of tango in the community and then also some vibrancy at Notting Hill Carnival, please view this video!! London Segment 1

Phew. I feel like a raging storm has passed and left only a peaceful calm in its place. Today I finally felt like I could sit down and type from a mind at peace. Sometimes so much happens that one’s mind and body don’t have time to catch up. They’ve caught up.

Here I am, new country, new culture, new home, and feeling like a new woman. When you try your best to make your dreams come true, I mean your absolute physical and emotional best…chances are, the y will…And mine have. To have noemarchdance spread its wings in this capacity fills me with pride and with devotion. I feel like I belong here and that my art belongs here….I need London, but also I am feeling that it needs me (and noemarchdance). This is the best kind of relationship: a symbiotic independence…I feel this with London and I feel this with Jess. We need each other and we need our new homes. After speaking and actually seeing each other through the brilliance of technology, I feel more inspired than ever to release any past expectations and just be here, and also there with her…. in the spirit of creating an exciting future…Cheers

Stonehenge

As all the dizzying effects of a show have started to recede, and life begins to settle back to a somewhat stable baseline, I am beginning to really feel the effects of letting a part of myself go. Performances are always bittersweet when the process has been so rewarding. All aspects of this piece have been utterly gratifying. Thank you for all the support!

There was a rediscovery of self-respect, moment of gratitude, and deep healing that happened on the tongue of a glacier last December. That’s what it all boiled down to in this performance experience, “in place of blood”. From the moment of contact with the ice something started to gestate and also, undeniably, began to affect others as well. Through the lens of this personal experience in Iceland, all my other relationships became magnified and luckily, reflected upon in such a way as to bring only light and warmth. Through this committed collaboration with performers, artists, and friends, I think we have all gained a strong resolution and unspoken contract to go forth with blind faith into the path of our passions wherever they may lie. I am so proud of the dedication that went into each facet of the production. To have completed such an important piece prior to journeying to a new country, culture, and life chapter, well, it certainly grants me strength from sheer joy and yearning for more…..

Thank you to Kate, Beth, Jordan, Heather, Caitlyn, Marissa, Janel, and as always, my consistent motivation, Jess. Let the corresponDANCE continue!

Close your eyes and you can hide from all the things that make you cry.

Dream in peace when you fall asleep and I promise you I’ll be by your side.

Don’t be late or make her wait and she’ll keep you safe in that secret place you like to go that noone knows.

When you’re alone you’re not alone.

You can climb through the fire and ice and when you reach the top…

Here is some of the original music by Jordan Blatchley featured in the upcoming premier of in place of blood (there was ice).

In Place of Blood (Celebration Section)

In Place of Blood Song 1

Click here to watch our third sneak peek!

I am.

A breath for courage.

A movement maker.

A spatial designer.

A young, ambitious, and fierce woman needing to impact.

I need.

Stillness.

Emptiness.

Abundance.

Absence to communicate the wantings of the unseen, unspoken, and unheard.

I want.

Magic, Danger, Sexiness.

Repetition, Rhythm, Patterns.

To strike; To make my point; To exchange conviction.

Our updated website corresponds to the fresh start that noemarchdance is experiencing as a result of Jessica and I both embarking on new chapters of our individual creative paths. I am looking to the future of our long distance collaborations with an excited belly; in fact, it is sommersaulting as I write my first blog! Before even considering the exciting work we will do together while apart, there is much to accomplish this summer. And, I am thrilled to have the chance to be together before we both charge forward with our separate, but of course united career aspirations. In addition to the professional implications of the summer as a timeframe for creating work, I see these next few months as an opportunity for personal reconnections and juicy outbursts. The boundary of time adds a certain fire of necessity and motivation like no other artistic inspiration. Deadlines cannot always be considered stifling or limiting, but as a way to seize the most of collaborative potentials in the very present. It is with this unique burning desire to be with friends and to create work before departure that I write about this summer’s new project which is partially funded by an artist fellowship I received by the Connecticut Culture and Tourism Funding Body.

This past December I traveled to Iceland. To say the experience was extremely healing and inspiring is a total understatement, but this is of course the very reason for my need to devote a project to communicate the importance of my time there. It is said that in our lives there are certain moments of insight-not just an aha! moment, but a moving, breathing, shaking testament to our existence. My boyfriend, Jordan and I decided to hike on a glacier in Iceland. We took a bus several hours away through landscapes that look more supernatural than anything one can conceive of. Exiting the bus, with the massive glacier appearing in the background, I felt like I was Neil Armstrong taking one giant step for well, me. With those initial hiking steps, I escaped into a new dimension, a strange, outerspace-like place, a more informed self. The idea of treading up a large ice mountain in the middle of virtually no where, but at the same time, everywhere-everything-everyone, is thrilling and well, hard to comprehend (which made it all the more exciting).

I could have stayed and walked on that glacier, that living creature, for days and days and days. Even flying over Iceland brings me back to a certain moment of self-realization and beauty that this glacier granted to me. On a flight to London, when we flew over Iceland, I felt a calling to return- an urge that I needed to address artistically. Again, awe-inspiring and shockingly stunning are descriptive understatements. In honor of what the glacier granted me, I wrote a short story which will act as the inspiration for the dance/theater/storytelling work ” in place of blood (there was ice)”. The piece is ultimately, an expression of gratitude- yes, for that experience, but also for other moments of joy, pain, and change that I-that we all endure when on a quest to be ourselves on a chaotic planet. There will be a celebratory and yet solemn tone in which I hope to convey the truth about deep, unspoken bonds between seen, unseen, heard, unheard, living, non-living. With a particular mysticism and fairy tale quality, I approach the development of this piece with the interface of realism and magic; practicality and spirituality; and ultimately, a state of feeling small. With a notion of record keeping, storytelling, and deep histories linking us all to something greater.

Logistically, I have asked several people from Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey to collaborate in the development of this expression of gratitude. Traveling back and forth, with Jessica, I hope to bring each performer and contributor together in the month of August to connect the puzzle pieces and to share our stories at Connecticut College. The showing of the work will likely be the beginning of a larger work to be developed while I am in London. And if no one shows up at our showing, we’ll have had the pleasure of performing and being with each other. It is a no pressure situation- a kind of status that usually produces the most rich material. I am looking forward with my feet planted firmly in a choreographic soil of ideas which have been cultivated over the past month of brainstorming.

Signing off.