Continuing the conversation - HOMEbody in Reviews

Thank you, everyone who came to HOMEbody!

I had to close the box office on the morning of the show because we were already sold out. Thank you to the folks who reserved tickets in advance and thank you to the folks who came to the door!

Thank you to everyone for continuing the conversations of HOMEbody in your feedback and through the reviews.

I'm grateful for each of these reviews because they allow the conversation of HOMEbody to continue in the public view. So much of these stories don't get to have a public conversation... thank you!!

Thank you, Lewis Whittington and PhiladelphiaDance.org for recognizing that "the dance is the things that ultimately drives it all home."

Read more of Lew's addition to this conversation here. 

Melissa Strong from The Broad Street Review had a plethora of experiences within the performance that she details in her review.  Thanks, Melissa, for accepting the challenge of embodying your own home and experiencing your own story through "visually appealing and whole-hearted dancing... HOMEbody was thoughtfully conceived and skillfully performed".

"Home is when we breathe together," reflects ThINKingDANCE author Leslie Bush. "HOMEbody is a piece that abstracts and distills its central concept" Bush writes.

"There is a language in HOMEbody, even if I can't decipher it. I'm okay with this; I know I'm seeing someone's idea of home and that is enough." ~Leslie Bush

Photo by Juliana Wall Photography

Dance Artist Reflection - Home:Love

Home: Love
by Sarena Kabakoff

No sense of place.
No sense of home.
The words sound so harsh and hard as they fall through my mind
They point me to the realization that my homes have been so soft
My mother singing to me before bed each night
The smell of fresh-baked cookies in the over
My dad devouring novel after novel over the rim of his eyeglasses

And this softness,
These memories
Allow me to be soft
Give me the agency to feel safe
To feel helf
To move softly
To breathe
To settle

And that is the mother of self-security
That is the mother of success
It gives birth to belief in myself
To believe in the completeness of the beings around me
To show myself enough to be loved

And I am so grateful to be more into this soft place
Where I was held and taken care of.
Where I could be curious.
So now that I have grown
I can still cradle the memories
Of being loved more than I could ever know.

"My brother and I" by Jake Buczewski

Dance Artist Reflection - Naked in Our Home

Naked in Our Home
By Sarena Kabakoff

Home gives us a feigned sense of constancy
A totem of trust
It is the door that we open
After we are downtrodden from the day
When our muscles feel weak
And our eyelids long to surrender

It is a place we seek refuge
It is a place we look to reignite our flames
It is where we show the pieces of ourselves
That we hide from the outside
Everything is bared
Naked in our home

HOMEbody. Pic by Thomas Kay.

Giving thanks for HOME

Thank you to everyone who came out to last week's performance of HOMEbody!

Wow! What an audience! What a feeling of community!

A few folks reflected:

"beautiful & thought-provoking" ~MK

"This evening totally felt like a family reunion - in a really good way!" ~MS

"I realized how much I want to move my body more after watching you. I need to move more." ~KW

"Amazing talent" ~JY

"Now, several days after the performance, I couldn't sleep - my dog woke me up. But I remembered you said in your opening that our heartbeat is our own rhythm. I never thought I had rhythm, and I could never dance, but that really resonated with me. And as I was laying there, not sleeping, I focused on the rhythm of my heart. And... that helped." ~KW

"breathtaking" ~EC

"I feel understood, as if all that I've been trying to communicate it clear and validated." ~audience member who identified as "female, student, artist"

Original pic by Thomas Kay

This week, as we celebrate Thanksgiving, may you find (comfort in) HOME in your own ways!

HOMEbody artist bios

In alphabetical order:

Laura Baehr, DPT & PhD candidate (Dance artist):  Laura Baehr is a movement artist, therapist and researcher who melds her interdisciplinary training in order to facilitate and inspire strength, confidence and quality of life through movement. Baehr earned her Clinical Doctorate in Physical Therapy from Temple University in 2019. She obtained her undergraduate dual degree in Dance and Neuroscience from Muhlenberg College. Currently, she is a graduate doctoral fellow at Drexel University studying the implications of chronic pain in individuals living with neurological conditions. Her performance background includes concert dance, mask work, and dance theatre. Her more recent collaborations are with Jessica Warchal-King and Caroline O'Brien. In addition to performance, she has taught in the Dance Department at Eastern University, the 2016 American College Dance Association annual conference, and is a Dance for Parkinson's Disease and Pilates instructor.

Jake Buczewski (Filmmaker): Jake Buczewski, a Reading native, is a visual artist, writer and filmmaker. He has a BA from Ithaca College in Communications with a concentration in screenwriting. At Ithaca, he wrote for ICTV. His films have been presented by KYL/D's InHale Performance Series in Philadelphia, the Lehigh Valley Dance Exchange and Jill Haley.

Erin Coffey (Dance artist): Erin Coffey is from the Lehigh Valley, PA. She is a sophomore Fine & Performing Arts major with a Dance Concentration in the Doctor of Physical Therapy Program at Widener University. Coffey has been training for 17 years with numerous dance schools and professional dance training programs including the Joffrey Ballet School, American Ballet Theater and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. She has performed with the New York City Ballet, DeSales University Dance Program, Artistic Edge Dance Company and at various intensives as well as with other artistic directors. Coffey was a company member with Repertory Dance Theater and studied under Trinette Singleton, Jennifer Haltzman-Tracy and Lynn Wiender. Her choreography has been presented by Widener Dance Company where she is a class teacher, choreographer, and Event Coordinator. Coffey is honored to be continuing her dancing and artistic expressions with JCWK Dance Lab and incorporating this work into research at Widener University.

Paul Fejko (Composer): Provocative, Challenging and Iconoclastic, Paul Fejko has always been quite fond of extremes. He can often be found treading on the boundaries of accepted limits and traditions. Art is exploration and provocation; improvisation is a wonderful vehicle for both. He is often chastised for mixing improvisation into repertoire ('taking too many liberties'), but it seems a one way comment; never has there been a charge leveled against the reverse - adding repertoire to improvisation. Fej finds the pipe organ to be his favorite solo instrument. It can muster more power and subtlety than an entire orchestra while having a responsiveness impossible from a large group of people. He is constantly challenging (often to the point of annoyance!) people to shed their preconceived notions of the organ as merely an instrument of religion, and to realize that in the first half of this century almost every movie house and many concert halls had organs. A good pipe organ is a virtuoso instrument of vast capabilities. Fej divides his time among many endeavors, most notably with theater and dance as a composer and conductor, but also as a concert organist and pianist.   To this one must add his work as a sound and lighting designer, photographer (the covers of three of his  ARKAY releases - Incantation, Tyme's Escape and OUTBURST!), audio systems designer, auto mechanic and sometime sculptor (witness the cover of ‘On Making the Flowers Dance’ - designed by Fejko with flowers by Gretchen Ernest. As of this time, he has recorded 13 CDs of large European and American organs, covering a wide range of existing repertoire and his own improvisations. He has been the long-time musician at historic Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church in Philadelphia, PA and is a musician with the Dance and Theatre departments at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA. In 2003 he founded and is now the Artistic Director of 'The Chester Performing Arts Project', a foundation dedicated to bringing world class performing arts to the formerly depressed industrial city of Chester, PA. His André Café Acoustique in Chester is becoming well known in the region. Fej is a product of The Curtis Institute of Music (class of '75) where he studied with Alexander McCurdy, Rudolf Serkin and Max Rudolf. His first taste of opera came at Curtis from Dino Yannapoulos - a long-time stage director at the Met in NY. In 1987, Dino commissioned an opera from Fejko - Matteo Falcone - for the Academy of  Vocal Arts in Philadelphia where Dino was Artistic Director at the time. A review of Matteo can be found on the Press/Reviews page at this site. After Curtis, he connected with renowned dance scholar and pedegogist Nadia Chilkovsky and became music director at her Philadelphia Dance Academy - a source of many well-known dancers from the 50's through the mid 70's. During this time, he spent summers at the famed Marlboro Music Festival. In 1980 he headed east to become a musician with Maurice Béjart's Ballet of the Twentieth Century in Brussels, Belgium. From there he headed south to become Music Director of The Ballet of Lyon in France. During much of the 80's his time was passed between these two positions, but not without many forays into Italy and Germany for work with other smaller theater and dance groups. There were also many various and sundry organ and piano concerts! Because of this he is now able to converse in five languages. Fej has won first prizes for improvisation in Lyon (1981) and San Anselmo, CA (1990). At their Atlanta convention in 1992, the American Guild of Organists awarded him a second prize.

Sarena Kabakoff (Dance artist): Sarena Kabakoff is a native of Reading, PA and started her dance training at Berks Ballet Theater. Throughout high school, she performed multiple times a year in BBT performances and dance festivals across the state. She went on to attend college at Temple University where she had the pleasure of performing with Megan Mizanty, Laura Katz, and Janis Brenner and Company. She also interned with Dance Therapist Teresa Benzwie to teach special needs children academics through movement. She graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2013, receiving the Benzwie Dance in Education grant for her extensive work with children. After college she went on to dance with Philadelphia based companies: Jenkintown Dance Company, PIMA group, and FRED Dance Company. She also taught dance at the Conservatory of Music and Dance, Jenkintown Dance Arts, Beth Jacobsen School of Dance, and Imhotep Charter School. Her passion for dance also carried her to do outreach programs, using dance/yoga as a vehicle for healing at Safe Harbor (a program for grieving children), and in the greater Cancer Support Community. In fall of 2017 she attended an Expressive Dance Therapy program entitled, “Tamalpa” in Northern California. Since then she has been touring her yoga/dance therapy workshop called “Unpacking the Body,” in and around the Philadelphia area, as well as dancing for the band, “The Retinas,” in their most recent music video. In addition, she started her own yoga studio entitled, “Sarenity Yoga,” and has been dancing with Netco Dance Company for the 2018-2019 season. Sarena is passionate about movement’s capability to heal, to show us the stories we’ve been hiding from, and to move us forward into our own inner light.


Kyleigh Kover (Dance artist): Kyleigh Kover is from Moorestown, NJ. She is a sophomore at Widener University studying Fine Arts in the Doctor of Physical Therapy program. Kyleigh started her dance education at the age of two as a ballerina, tap dancer, and eventually jazz dancer at The Dance Workshop in Maple Shade, NJ. She also studied at Danec Xperience in Mt. Laurel, NJ, where she added genres of hip hop, acrobatics, musical theater, modern, and point. Kyleigh joined the Dance Xperience Company and performed in numerous dance competitions, community service events, and at Disney World. She has received several dance awards for her performances and original choreography. Additionally, Kyleigh attended Rutgers Mason Gross Summer Senior Dance Conservatory. Studying with Jessica Warchal-King has given Kyleigh a new outlook on dance and she has enjoyed educating others on how dance is a high impact practice. Currently, Kyleigh is an assistant teacher at Dance Xperience, musical theater teacher/ choreography chair of the Widener Dance Company, and Co-Captain of the Widener Dance Team.

Colin Lang (Lighting/ Technical Director): Colin Lang is a Philadelphia-based designer. Lang has designed a number of shows throughout Berks County and the Lehigh Valley as well as a variety of shows in many professional, community, and educational facilities. He is a proud member of IATSE, the stage technicians union. Lang also does a variety of other designing, programming, and tinkering. Thanks to his family and girlfriend for all their support. 

Nathan Thomas, PhD (all things Theatre at Alvernia): Dr. Thomas has been the director of the Alvernia Theatre program since 2003. A professional actor and director, Thomas has directed about 80 projects large and small over the last 16 years. Those projects ranged from the Classics to American and world premiers. Thomas studied with Arkady Katz, People's Artist of the Soviet Union, at the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow, Russia. He has written a monthly column for "Scene4.com," an on-line arts journal for 20 years, serves as Literary Advisor to the award-winning Chesapeake Shakespeare Company (CSC). Thomas has played Tevye, Shylock, Prospero, and Lear. 

And me, Jessica C. Warchal-King. 

Pic by Thomas Kay

ICYMI - In the HOMEtown news

In case you missed it...

HOMEbody's been in the news this week.

In the announcement from the Berks Arts Council about the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts PA Partners in the Arts Grants... Click here to read more

And in a feature by Susan Pena in the Reading Eagle... Click here to read more. 

Thanks so much, Berks County, for the support!!

I look forward to sharing HOMEbody with you next week!

Excepts of HOMEbody performed in Bethlehem. Pic by Juliana Wall

Thank you for your service. Welcome home!

To all of those who have served our country...
To all of those who continue to serve...
To all of those who have served those who have served...

For all of the ways you have fought for our freedoms...
For all of the ways you continue to fight...
For the conversations you've challenged us to have...
For the conversations you've allowed us to have...
For the work that you ask us to do...

Thank you.

Welcome home.

This pic is moment from "Shed" which will be performed with HOMEbody at Alvernia University on Nov. 21st. Photo by Mike Hurwitz. 

For more info and tickets click here.

Looking at the language - HOMEbody

I've been very specific in thinking about the wording of this work.

Homebody:

1. A person who likes to stay at home, especially one who is perceived as unadventurous (from lexico.com)

2.  A person who enjoys the warmth and simple pleasures of life (from urbandictionary.com)

3. One whose life centers on home (from merriam-webster.com)

4. A person who likes spending time at home rather than going out with friends or traveling to different places (from dictionary.cambridge.org)

and...

What does it mean to be at HOME in my BODY?

As a female and as a dancer, I've had expectations and stereotypes placed on my body for many, many years. Sometimes, these expectations are contradictory. Sometimes, they're unpleasant. Often, they're confusing and unrealistic.

As an educator, I've often heard women say things about their bodies that I've told myself. But I vehemently disagree with the negative self-talk. Would I say to someone else what I say to myself? Of course not! But why then, do I dishonor my own body with negative self-talk?

This process has also been a journey of exploring the layers of self-talk that women tell ourselves and how that impacts our ways of being in the world over time. I often still here my 18-year-old self make a judgement about my current self that I need to reframe. Through this work, I've been trying to find ways to model positive reflection and the honoring of all of the bodies of our bodies - our emotional bodies, our physical bodies, our mental bodies, our spiritual bodies - and find comfort in the learning and the growth that comes from being human.

So, I think it is radical to attempt to be at home in my body.

I think it is radical to declare that home can be adventurous and exciting.

I think it is radical to invest in our places of origin, especially if they're small and unassuming.

There is so much to unearth in the BODY that is HOME.

Moment during HOMEbody. Pic by Mike Hurwitz. 

A HOME by any other name...

HOME has so many layers and so many perspectives. 

In addition to digging through my own, and those of my communities, I've been researching how other people have published and researched HOME. 

Here's some of what I've found: 

(yes, I'm linking, but no, I don't get any profits if you click. I'm putting these out there so you, dear readers, can increase your perspectives and depth of knowledge. I've made a direct link when I could and otherwise, you're welcome to explore and/ or find other options for engagement.) 

NPR asked for poems about home

Clare Cut shared her story of finding home in her body through yoga:

Archeology reveals that our bones tell our stories

Home is waiting for you (us). (A poem by David Whyte)

Suggested reading:

Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown

The Ranch That Was Us by Becky Crouch Patterson

Suggested listening:

The Homecomers

Notes from HOME - by Michael Lancaster

Earlier in the year when I posted some our of research questions for HOMEbody, some brave folks answered the call in their own ways.

Michael Lancaster shared this. His many roles in life I cannot try to list, but some include author, dreamer, seeker, friend, husband, father, Vietnam Veteran, warrior, musician, artist, protecter, teacher.

"It's evening. Still sunny. I can see the expanse of the Chesapeake, gentle against the evening sku. The Bay can rage because it is relatively shallow for such a large body of water. Average 40' depth. Occasional deep spots. One just NE of our lookout. Drops to over 100'. From up here you can also see how brown the grass is becoming. Sweet birds still here in numbers, though some gone altogether. Weather settling in over Cape Charles, the other side of the Bay and more properly called the Eastern Shore, referring to the eastern shore of the Bay rather than a more generic notion of the East Coast of the US. But who's a stickler for details. Down here on our part of the Bay, the DELMARVA peninsula is not very wide. 20ish miles from eastern shore of the Bay to East Coast of the US. 100 miles or so to the Gulf Stream and sport fishing magic. Learn what you can about where you live, it's geography and why it matters. Will reward your time. Learn its nature. Place is more important than a hangout, though that is part of whom you are too. Be at peace with your place."

Photo by Michael Lancaster

Notes from HOME - by Jenner Shaffer

Earlier in the year when I posted some our of research questions for HOMEbody, some brave folks answered the call in their own ways.

Jenner Shaffer, an artist, illustrator, writer, heirloom farm manager, among other titles, shared this with me (and his Facebook community) from his own sense of home in Michigan:

"Back road roam. Shed the vernal velvet for shining tines of autumn. A younger buck crops purple prairie clover. Along fence rows plump wild fruit wait for the taste of front. Shaggy bales in the pastures like along bison. The Valley of Monsters, Osage for the land of the Pomme & Sac flowing north. Land of backward, broken, upside-down things, puzzle pieces, Bootheel stomps & meteoric meltdown, storm tracks. Nothing stands long.
The lines of an Airstream a cozy bubble, arcing, flattened, belly-round, posing elements of a question mark. Where does this road go? Native, after a time, Spanish, French, American bushwhackers. Where is home? The commerce of eons, advance & retreat of seas & armies, dead hotspots of island arcs, plastic apologies for today's politic worms, roads that run into the reservoir. Aux-arcs, to the top, over the rainbow, word of a new lake winds that spiral in my ear. Here is now, & what do the persimmons say? Woolly bears are dark, cross the gravel in a hurry, someplace to be. Further on a box turtle is always at home.
Hedgeapples weigh on bowing branches, lost to every purpose but their own, the honey locust still on guard, gripping fossils in the hollows, browsers turned to stone. Asters white, asters purple, much endures in yellow as the barbed-wire winds. Milkweek pods crack open, a tuft of fluff for a wind to tease free.
The road was a loop, found my way back. Tomatoes sweet on a withered vine, volunteer. Save a few for dinner, toss the rest in the chicken run.

https://www.americanforests.org/magazine/article/trees-that-miss-the-mammoths/?fbclid=IwAR3mtdFqncDyUUwzuraf-p9MvenF8LeNHMny1MdnWFwaLtDk7UjbSuklCcU
https://www.almanac.com/content/predicting-weather-using-persimmon-seed?fbclid=IwAR0Hfcdgdxs691KzLGH4sucsW1PTTQ8vfum-TwmX1T71IRGtPArmq9hjm8s
https://www.weather.gov/arx/woollybear?fbclid=IwAR2lDP-xzWuhGYGMWZZHPQPiNVsXN2edEusSuyd20oI_0uuC19hQNEw5Qe4     "

All pics by Jenner Shaffer.

Daring to HOME

I Dare You

What is the greatest dare?
The dare to wish everyone and everything around you well
To notice the goodness, the beauty, to notice that which evokes inspiration
To care to build other up
To allow all the goodness you see
To send itself back to yourself
Until it circulates inside of you
A gravitational pull of goodness, 
     Of beauty
That continues to create harmony
Everywhere you turn your gaze
By noticing beauty
You build beauty

How can we believe in each other?
How can we dare to believe in ourselves? 

~Sarena Kabakoff

HOMEbody. Pic by Thomas Kay

Thank you, PCA! Grant announcement!

Thank you, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and Berks Arts Council!

I was awarded a Project Stream Grant for HOMEbody!

HOMEbody was supported in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

Come see the performance at Alvernia University on November 21st! Click here for tickets and more info. 

Moving home

Reflections from the dance artists...

"What does it feel like in my body home, when my physical home is changing?
It feels like every cell is a little fist
Tense with anticipation
Like my eyes can only look forward,
And my thoughts and visions are cast out into the ocean of the future
Imagining all the ways my life could be
In my new home

It feels like strength that will not settle
As if in the moment that my body longs to release
There is something in my bodymind that says, no, not yet

You're not home yet

I feel it all through me
My heart, my kidneys, behind my eyes
Like waiting on the edge of an airplane before stepping off to sky-dive

I wonder endlessly about all the unknowns
And my mind keeps trying to plan

My body is learning the language of a home I have yet to meet."

~Sarena Kabakoff

Photo of Sarena performing in HOMEbody. Pic by Thomas Kay

When HOME isn't HOME-Y

"It's hard not to just fall into the cliche..."

"When I think of home... actually, I try not to..."

"I'm not sure that when you ask about HOME, you mean what I think of... my idea of HOME isn't comfortable. Actually, it's really traumatic."

"HOME could be a lot of things... what are you actually asking for?"

"Well, my definition of HOME probably isn't what you think."

Pic from HOMEbody. Photo by Thomas Kay.

........

In the research of HOMEbody, I honor all of these experiences and reflections of HOME.

I don't have any expectations except that everyone has a personal experience and their own definitions of HOME.

When I hear these statements, my reaction is to want to give the narrator a giant hug, hold them close, and say "I am here to witness and hear your experience of HOME, whatever that is." But I recognize that my embodied, very physical reaction is not always appropriate, especially when HOME has been physically traumatizing.

But, as we continue this process, I do want to say:

HOME is not always HOME-Y. The conflict between our expectations and our reality is sometimes very real.

HOME is not always comfortable or safe.

HOME can present illusions just as it can present grounded comfort.

HOME means different things to different people; all of those experiences are valid.

HOME is not necessarily permanent.

HOME can be a prism that reflects and refracts many different lights.

....

What does HOME mean to you?

Rising Tide is next week... Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE          

Contact: Sarah Carlson 

Founder/Artistic Director, DanceLink

610-653-4182

scdancelink@gmail.com

Lehigh Valley performance premiere

“Rising Tide” testifies to the power, experience and perspectives of women.

Allentown, Pa. (Sept 10, 2019) — The IceHouse Tonight presents “Rising Tide: a dance showcase featuring feminist perspectives”, which brings together five regional companies to the Bethlehem Ice House on Friday, October 4 at 8pm and  Saturday, October 5^that 3pm & 8pm. Continuum Dance Theater, DanceEthos, DanceLink, JCWK Dance Lab and Olive Prince Dance present works that testify to the power, experience and perspectives of women.   Tickets are $20/$15 student/senior.   Tickets available at: https://www.artful.ly/store/events/18836

“Riffing on the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats, we titled the program “Rising Tide” to suggest that by focusing on women, all are enriched,” states Sarah Carlson who is producing the event. The program features five regional dance companies, all directed by women. 

Continuum Dance Theater, led by Founder and Artistic Director Sarah Parker, brings a new world premier work to the Ice House for Rising Tide.  Inspired by the Japanese art of Kintsukuroi (the mending of broken pottery using lacquer resin laced with gold), POWER|FULL examines the ways in which women’s struggles become part of their whole story and a source of their power rather than a cause of their imperfection, weakness or deterioration. Like Kinstukuroi's philosophy of bringing beauty to the process of repair, the cast of POWER/FULL creates a narrative of empowerment...a story held together with golden seams.

In "Absence," danceETHOS explores the social pressures assigned to female identity and community and the subsequent assumption that when a woman chooses not to adhere to those expectations that there is something lacking in her world. Choreographed by Artistic Director Alexandra Pobiedzinski, the piece ebbs and flows between control and release, dependence and rejection, to offer an abstract glimpse into the strength, vulnerability and intimacy that females experience as they navigate the complex realm of womanhood.

DanceLink  premieres a new work “UpLift” which chronicles the journey of four women as they navigate the perils of oppression. Choreographed by Founder/Artistic Director, Sarah Carlson, the dance looks at the complexity of identity in community. At once acknowledging struggle and celebrating strength, the piece weaves a moving tapestry of communal connection  in the midst of trial.

JCWK Dance Lab, an intergenerational, all-female contemporary company, presents excerpts of HOMEbody - a piece reflecting feminine experiences of home: home as structure, home as physical body, home as geographical place from which we leave and return, and home as states of rejection and acceptance. Composer and Muhlenberg College musician Paul Fejko created original music for HOMEbody. 

Based in Philadelphia, Olive Prince Dance presents “She persisted”, an excerpt of a full evening length work based on the concept of the “invincible” body as a fairy tale of our own making.  Floating, temporary, rising from the muddy ground is contrasted with images of an echoing of emptiness, falling hard to a stand still and discovering the symmetry in our experiences.  The body becomes a conduit for both the vulnerability and indestructibility necessary to prevail.

A Q&A will be held after the Saturday matinee performance to allow the artists to share more about their creative process. Group rates are available for groups of 10 or more. Rising Tide has received support from the Pennsylvania Partners for the Arts administered by the Lehigh Valley Arts Council.

About the Artists:

Sarah Carlson(producing director) is the Founder & Artistic Director of DanceLink which seeks to bridge people, ideas & and understanding through the power of movement. Sarah danced professionally for 10 years in NYC with companies including Alexandra Beller/Dances, Brian Brooks Moving Company, Clare Byrne Dance, Paul Mosley Dance and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet.  As an independent choreographer, her own work has been presented throughout the US at venues such as the Joyce Soho in NYC, On the Boards in Seattle, and The Yard on Martha’s Vineyard as well as in Benin, Africa. Sarah is a co-director of the Lehigh Valley Dance Exchange & the editor of the Lehigh Valley Dance in Review. Sarah has been on the dance faculty at Muhlenberg College, DeSales University, Cedar Crest College, Lehigh University, and the University of Southern Mississippi. Sarah received a BA in French and European Studies from Connecticut College and an MFA in Dance from the University of Washington. 

About the series:

The IceHouse Tonight, a response to a growing night-life scene in downtown Bethlehem, targets the potential college-age and the "restaurant row" audiences in the center city. The performance series is designed to mirror the charm, independence and sense of contemporary urban life represented by the current trends in downtown Bethlehem. The IceHouse Tonight will produce a performance schedule that nurtures the production of new artistic works and the development of new regional arts organizations. Additionally, The IceHouse Tonight will provide a stage for collaborative and

 innovative programming from well-established regional arts organizations.