SONG TWO: Title: January Music: SILVA Choreography: Holly Nastasi, BRING IT, 2016. After that dream-sequence, we set off on a cheerful journey together. January is like an embroidery stitch sampler. It is made up of simple patterns of back and forth steps, right and left. Each pattern is exactly two bars long. It's all very orderly, relaxed, and symmetrical until, at the end, the music suddenly opens up and sets the flock free for a taste of nia free dance. We use the room and explore different ways of experiencing the music. We follow the beat with our feet or float over it with our arms. This meditation on freedom takes us all the way to the end of the dance.
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SONG ONE: Title: Here We Go Music: Deep Dive Corp. ft Hush Forever, 2014 Choreography: Kelli Rae Oien, PULSE, 2015 This dance starts with a slow-motion step in. It's about the moment before daybreak. You're feeling your way in the dark, one slow step at a time. Then there is a controlled, graceful sequence of alternating tai-chi cat-stands, elbow strikes and blocks, all in exquisitely slow motion. Then a long slow yawn -- the transition -- and suddenly the dream gives way to a hushed commotion, back and forth, bursts of quiet flight. We're like juncos setting off from the underbrush and shadows.
Here we go...
I have just compiled a nia routine for the first time, bringing together some of my favorite dances from other people's nia routines. I offer my thanks to the choreographers and musicians whose work I'm celebrating and carrying forward through our weekly sessions at the False Creek Community Centre in Vancouver. The new routine came out of the darkest moment of the year in this northern part of the world. It will be our focus as we navigate the long emergence from the winter solstice to the spring equinox. This is a winter like no other. Covid is hanging on like a bad dream. Two massively costly and destructive wars are underway, and gang misrule is growing in other parts of the world. The world economy is imploding, with disrupted supply chains that never met most people's needs in the first place. Climate change is starting to be perceptible, even to doubters. New weather phenomena appearing constantly. Fires and floods, droughts and hurricanes, rec...