Loni Landon/Gregory Dolbashian @ The Playground

Thursday March 24, 2011 – The Playground was founded by Loni Landon (above) and Gregory Dolbashian as a dance laboratory where choreographers and dancers can meet in an informal setting to explore movement ideas and share in a creative process, all at a price so reasonable that it’s almost impossible to resist. Over the past few weeks at Manhattan Movement and Arts Center some wonderful young dancers have reaped the benefits of working with choreographers like Bennyroyce Royon, Alexander Ekman and Emery LeCrone. I went once a week, always wishing that I was participating rather than observing.

It’s great to walk into a studio and see so many familiar faces; aside from Gregory and Loni, Cat Cogliandro, Christopher Adams, Giorgia Bovo, Marie Zvosec and Lynda Senisi (both of TAKE Dance) and Lauren Birnbaum were all taking the class.

Gregory started things off with a slow warm-up, commencing on the floor and then having the dancers rise to “awaken the space and fill it…”: what a nice image that evokes.

In small groups, a tactile passage got everyone on the same wave-length…

…then Loni and Gregory (above) started with phrase-making; it was a large class so it took a few run-thrus for everyone to get into it. IBroken down into smaller groups the movement began to illuminate the individual dancers.

Lauren Birnbaum and Giorgia Bovo trying out the phrase.

Gregory and Loni then split the group in two and commenced on an exercise called Adjective/Action. Half the dancers were assigned adjectives and the other half were assigned specified actions. Each dancer had time to work out a movement-sentence based on their word or activity and employing the stylistic tone of the phrase they’d just been taught.

Lauren Birnbaum working on the improvisation.

Then the dancers were called to the center of the floor in pairs – one ‘Adjective’ and one ‘Action’ per couple. They each ran their improv standing a few feet apart; then they were told to transform them into an intimate duet. The results were exciting to watch, with some real chemistry and energy flowing between the participants. Contemporary-style dancers are so good at improv and I found out from talking to some of them afterward that they really love doing it.

It’s been a great run for The Playground @ MMAC this month. I appreciate the access that Loni and Greg gave me and wish I could have gone more often. Here are a few more photos from today:

Cat and Lynda did a teriffic improv-duet. Sorry the photo is so fuzzy.