Much of the dance competition circuit has been on hold for months as the U.S. (and the rest of the world) grappled with COVID-19 restrictions. Dancers everywhere are itching to return to the stage, so as each state begins to emerge from lockdown, Groove Dance Competition and Convention is ready to go. From July, make-up events and regional competitions will start to go ahead, with new procedures in place to ensure safety for all.
The extended 2020 season means Groove can continue to offer dancers its usual inspiring, high-energy competition experience, but in line with health and safety guidelines.
Safety precautions at the new events include recommendations for attendees to wear masks and participate in temperature checks, mandatory temperature checks for staff, socially distanced seating, rigorous sanitization procedures, and there will be no scoring deductions for costumes featuring safety elements like face shields or masks. And, as always, Groove’s slick live streams will be available to ensure spectators can watch from home if they prefer.
Dancers at a Groove Dance Competition event. Photo courtesy of Groove.
Throughout July, August and September, these regional competition events, which include free master classes, are now scheduled for cities around the U.S., starting with a Virtual Competition on July 31, open to anyone in the country. In October and November, one-day conventions will hit key cities, offering multiple master classes, scholarship opportunities and more.
In order to keep studios as informed as possible, Groove is sending out updated information at four weeks prior to each event – and again at two weeks prior if needed – outlining any event-specific guidelines mandated by the host state. This might mean rotating studios, dressing room-specific regulations and mandatory temperature checks. In keeping everyone as informed as possible, the Groove team hopes to ensure the events run just as smoothly as they usually do.
Registering your studio for an event is simple; head to www.grooveregistration.com/Register and fill out your details to create an account. A full list of upcoming events can be found here, and each individual event page includes further details such as the host hotel and links to book online. There’s also a full update on all COVID-19 policies available here.
There’s no doubt that dancers will be thrilled to return to doing what they love most, and the Groove team is excited to welcome everyone back.
“Dance came from the people and should always be delivered back to the people,” Alvin Ailey said. Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, a key part (but not all of) his legacy, works by this ethos. “Dance is for everybody,” asserts Cathryn Williams, director of Arts in Education and Community Programs at Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation. Amongst many other programs offering dance across the five boroughs of NYC, her department offers AileyDance for Active Seniors.
AileyDance for Active Seniors at Carnegie East House. Photo by Nicole Tintle.
Through the initiative, senior citizens across NYC have the opportunity to move for better physical health, boost their brain health, and have a creative and expressive outlet. Dance Informa spoke with Williams and Amos Macahanic Jr., an Ailey Arts in Education and Community Programs teaching artist, Ailey Extension Horton instructor and a former Ailey company member.
Williams explains how the idea for AileyDance for Active Seniors began six years ago as part of a five-year strategic plan for the Ailey organization, developed under the leadership of Ailey Executive Director Bennett Rink. She shares how offerings in the program include movement classes, culminating performances for participants, and opportunities to see live performances of Ailey, Ailey II and The Ailey School’s Professional Division students. Williams emphasizes how with cognitive decline and mental/emotional effects such as loneliness, having a creative outlet is crucial.
Movement can be particularly powerful because even with forgetting details such as dates, “you don’t forget how you feel” and that it can be “profound to express your own stories through movement,” she believes. Machanic emphasizes how senior citizens are often (unintentionally) forgotten in our culture. “It’s so important to give them a voice and a creative outlet,” he believes. He notes that the program’s offerings can give people access to what the company can provide when mobility issues might limit them from visiting the theater.
Willams shares how she gives teachers a framework for the classes but also encourages them to make the classes their own within that framework. In fact, she sees it as their responsibility to “breathe life into” the classes. The framework, which Williams hopes to build into a curriculum, most often consists of a beginning check-in when all participants can share a bit about how they’re doing. Following that is often a verbal prompt for movement, such as “I remember a time when….” Williams recounts a meaningful instance of that prompt leading a participant to share how when very young, her family came to the U.S. through fleeing oppression in Soviet Russia.
Amos Machanic. Photo Courtesy of Machanic.
Machanic describes using a “word wall,” allowing participants to each throw out a word or words as prompts for movement — such as “what do you think of with the word ‘dance’?” He works with Teaching Artist Heather Bryce, whom Williams says has used poems as movement prompts. Williams also describes “accumulation dance” as a technique that the classes employ, adding participants’ movements on top of one another to make movement phrases.
If participants are independently mobile, tableaus are also possible, she says. Teaching participants about aspects such as levels in space and movement dynamics also adds an educational component that keeps their brains stimulated, key for helping to fight off memory decline, she adds. Williams says that teachers also sometimes show videos of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater dancing iconic Ailey pieces such as Revelations and then teach the participants adapted versions of certain sections.
As other ways to keep the classes flowing and beneficial for participants, Machanic explains the importance of “keeping feelers out” for what students would enjoy and what would nurture them. For instance, if a participant says “ragtime” on their “word wall”, he and Bryce might discuss and say, “Let’s bring in ragtime for the warm-up”. He also underscored the importance of being flexible with the format, because classes can go in unexpected directions. To be most effective, the teaching artists need to make adaptations. Machanic also mentioned certain classes are for senior citizens and their caregivers, and some are for caregivers alone. These classes offer meaningful self-care for people who give so much, and need to refresh and refill to keep giving.
Cathryn Williams, Photo by Charles Chessler.
Then it comes to culminating performances, which Williams said importantly “validate [participants’] experience” and allow them to share with their family and friends. Machanic added that the performances also create community in assisted living homes, allowing different floors of residents to connect and to share. For him, it’s incredibly meaningful to see this community connect. It’s also special for him to see the growth in his students — physically, mentally, spiritually — from the first class to the performance. He also noted an important atmosphere of “no pressure” sharing, that’s it okay if someone misses a movement. “The goal is to see a light turn on in them — we know that’s the way in,” he affirmed.
What this kind of movement classes offer that fitness classes for seniors can’t seems to be a valid question. Williams believes that apart from the culminating performances and opportunities to see performance (live and via video), they offer the important elements of aesthetic engagement, imagination, emotion, and of narrative and personal story — while still offering the same important physical benefits (increased flexibility, strength, balance, and mobility).
Machanic underscored how these classes also remind all involved how “everyone has something to say,” and gives them a spiritually safe space to do so. In this line of thinking, a senior citizen reaching an arm can be as meaningful as a huge leap from a young, lithe dancer. All of that said, Williams was clear that the approach here stands apart from Dance/Movement Therapy, a formalized clinical field that works with and through set clinical goals as well as theoretical and empirical frameworks.
Heather Bryce leading AileyDance for Active Seniors. Photo by Nicole Tintle.
Several times, Machanic noted the joy and appreciation of participants. He believes that he’s seen them “come alive” and “transform before [his] eyes.” He also described seeing them “lift each other up”, which can be incredibly touching — such as a resident who was a former dancer helping older, less mobile residents. Machanic also described dancers attesting to practicing outside of classes, demonstrating the classes reaching far beyond the time they are held in participants’ lives. Williams recounted striking instances of the classes’ physical benefits such as a participant recovering from an operation far faster than her doctor would have thought.
In a longer-range vision, Williams would love to bring the classes to senior citizens in cities where the company tours, through residencies. Wherever it all goes, AileyDance for Active Seniors, under the umbrella of Arts In Education and Community Programs, is a key component of bringing dance back to the people — as Ailey believed, after all, it came from them. It lives in all of us, however young or old.
While the word “privilege” itself has been the topic of many discussions recently, the principle is not novel. I would like to share a hard lesson I learned a few weeks ago with my Dance Informa community. I have run a group on Facebook for over 12 years now — a group dedicated to advocating for and showcasing the field of dance/movement therapy. (Dance Therapy Advocates; I encourage you to check it out.) Since it is just a group and not a formal organization, I have never actively issued any public statements or taken a stand on any social causes or issues. As I thought about it more, I assumed that if I didn’t stand for any particular cause, that I stood for every cause; essentially, neutrality meant equality for all. After being called out in this group for not publicly using my platform to voice injustice, it got me thinking about my association with power and privilege. And in true movement therapy fashion, naturally I wanted to explore how this showed up in my body.
Throughout this online confrontation, I recognized defensiveness, shame, guilt and anger. I began to notice how my defensiveness was embodied, how it physically manifested itself. I noticed how being exposed made my posture shrink and how my need to explain myself or correct a mistake, unintentional as it may have been, left me feeling as if I was on the edge of my seat and jittery like I had ingested five cups of coffee. The shame, guilt and anger often associated with white fragility each had their own distinct embodiment. I wondered if I began to recognize these movement qualities when faced with such serious and difficult subjects like racism, could I harness this awareness and create a space for learning, growth and even change? If I can pause and notice what is coming up, I can then own my emotions and my inherent privilege.
In a webinar I recently attended, Carmen Marshall said, “Intention does not override impact.” To me, that suggests that no matter how good your intentions are, your words and actions still have consequences, and the impact of those “good intentions” finds its way to the receiver’s body. I began to wonder how that impact was housed in the body. How had my words, or lack thereof, influenced someone else’s movement? The trouble with today’s communication is that I may not get to see that person’s body because most of these interactions are online. Since I cannot see the person’s reaction, I must try to empathize through self-awareness, putting myself in that person’s shoes and noticing how my body reacts and how my movement changes.
I’ve realized that it’s not just about recognizing your power and privilege but about using it. I’ve come to understand that having privilege may not be in my control. It may be something we are born into, but that doesn’t mean we are exempt from the responsibility that comes with it. In the words of Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Whether we realize it or not, it is up to each individual to self-reflect on the association with power. Just because we are not abusing our power and privilege doesn’t mean we are doing our part to recognize and dismantle it.
I began to think of this in terms of where I choose to move. Not only do I have the privilege to move and dance in this world, but I am seen by my peers, mentors and colleagues. This is not guaranteed to everyone — whether it is because of the color of your skin, religious affiliation, physical difference or gender identity, to name a few examples. Even how we move in this world, where we move, and who we move with without fear of harm or death, is a privilege.
With regard to privilege, I have been given permission to “sit in the discomfort” more times than I can count. The thing is that just mentally “sitting” in discomfort is not enough. It is vital that we allow ourselves to feel uncomfortable in our body. So how can we do that? Here are four steps to acknowledging the body’s response to power and privilege.
#1. Notice your posture.
Does it change when your power it challenged? What is your posture when you feel powerful or when you feel powerless?
#2. Recognize movement patterns around privilege.
Do you lean in (advancing) as if to fight or lean back (retreating) to run away? Notice how you engage in factors like space and time. Become aware of your relationship to movement when the subject of privilege is brought up. Do you shrink or “show up” in your body?
#3. Pause before taking action.
Allow your body and mind time to pause before jumping into action. Whether it is defensiveness or camaraderie, a breath to evaluate and notice your gut response can make all the difference in how you take action and how the action is received.
#4. Challenge and diversify your movement.
In order to increase empathy and understanding, find ways to build your “movement vocabulary”. The more we diversify our movements, the more able we are to sit in others’ points of view regardless of how different they are from our own.
Finally, if you find yourself being silent, notice what is under the silence. Fear of making a mistake? Looking foolish? Shame? These are all valid emotions, but unless we are willing to have these important conversations, those feelings will just continue to fester. We must be willing to sit in the discomfort and have difficult conversations in order to allow for growth and change. I thank all the individuals who challenged my role in power and privilege. I hear you and I move with you and I will not stay silent anymore.
By Erica Hornthal, LCPC, BC-DMT, Dance/Movement Therapist.
Erica Hornthal is a licensed professional clinical counselor and board certified dance/movement therapist based in Chicago, IL. She received her MA in Dance/Movement Therapy and Counseling from Columbia College Chicago and her BS in Psychology from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. Erica is the founder and CEO of Chicago Dance Therapy, the premier dance therapy and counseling practice in Chicago, IL. As a body-centered psychotherapist, Erica assists clients of all ages and abilities in harnessing the power of the mind-body connection to create greater awareness and understanding of emotional and mental health. For more, visit www.ericahornthal.com.
