Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - Thie past weekend, dancer Jessica Sand (above, photographed by Kokyat) performed a solo in Lydia Johnson's newest work, an untitled piece set to music by Osvaldo Golijov. Today, Jessica was teaching this solo to a roomful of young dancers as part of a week-long Lydia Johnson Dance workshop at Peridance.
Jessica is a thoughtful and patient teacher; she, along with her LJD colleagues Kaitlin Accetta, Laura DiOrio and Lisa Iannacito McBride, demonstrated and coached the participating students in the phrasing on an individual basis. Lydia's silky fluidity of style suits Jessica so well; imparting this feeling goes beyond just the execution of the steps. The dancers were soon settling into the flow and responding to the spirituality of the Golijov score.
Above: Kaitlin Accetta of Lydia Johnson Dance.
The studio was so crowded that it quickly became necessary to break the dancers into three groups so they had sufficient room to dance full-out. There were a lot of very appealing movers in the studio, including three dancers I've had my eye on over the recent months:
Bethany Lange...
Lauren Jaeger...
...and Yuki Ishiguro.
Kaitlin, Jessica and Lisa observing the dancers; moving on from the solo passage, the students tried a partnered trio motif which produced considerable mirth as they worked on being in the right place and the right time to catch a swooning fellow dancer. As the clock ticked down to the final minutes of studio time, it seemed that the dancers really wanted to continue.
I'll never know how dancers manage to look like a million bucks (Kaitlin Accetta, above) before noon!
The workshop follows on Lydia's highly successful presentation of the Golijov work along with her 2006 piece FALLING OUT, set to music of Philip Glass. Mary Cargill writes about the February 26th matinee performance here.