An Image is Missing

I came across this article in the New York Times on Wednesday that I thought was amazing.  It was called, “For Young Latino Readers, an Image is Missing,” by Motoko Rich.  www.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/education/young-latino-students-dont-see-themselves-in-books.html?pagewanted=all

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

There are several parallels between the tenets of this article and those of my research.  Rich points out that Latino students make up nearly 25% of the nation’s public school enrollment.  He continues that the books that are available for elementary school children, when they are learning to read are predominantly populated by white characters.  Mariana Souto-Manning, an associate professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College argues that since Latino students don’t see themselves represented in the books they read in school it sends the message that their lifestyles and values do not belong in school.  The absence of Latino characters that go beyond representation for cultural celebrations creates “young readers work to build stamina and deepen their understanding of story elements like character motivation.”  Students need to see themselves reflected in their educational materials.

I feel the same idea exists for college students.  I have done a lot of research about this in relation to dance in higher education and dance history textbooks.  As a Latina dance artist, I am curious why we don’t read about other dance artists besides José Limón in dance history textbooks.  Is it to say that the Latino contribution does not belong in dance history discourse?  I am also curious that with a rapidly growing Latino population, why are there so few Latino/a dance educators on faculty in dance departments around the country?  Much of my research shows that both universities and students will benefit, if Latino/a students are supported at the university level, through faculty support and dance history discourse.

New Start

So I have taken a small time out of blogging to be a graduate student.  I am proud to say I now have my MFA from The Ohio State University.  It has been a pretty eventful 6 months.  I graduated in June, got married in July and moved back to Jersey City in August.  Mary Vogt at Harmony Pilates and Christie Freeman at Project Pilates have opened their doors for me to teach again.  And I started teaching at Equinox at Rockefeller Center.  I am going to try and play catch up for the past few months and post some of the exciting things I have been working on and revise the virtual vision board… as most of that stuff came to fruition!  Happy December!

MAREE

Saturday, November 14^th was a busy day.  Despite the fact that we had tech rehearsal from 3- 5pm at BoMA, call at 8:30pm and of course, shoulder injuries, big papers due on Tuesday that no one really started – we found time for Maree Remalia.  Maree is in my Dance Theater class.  She is a brilliant performer and I adore her choreographic approach.  That Saturday, Abby Zbikowski, Fiona Lundie, Eric Nordstrom, Rashana Smith and myself rolled into the studio ready to do whatever Maree asked.  She bribed us with Twizlers.  Our assignment here was to experiment with raising your arms and/or other arm gestures, looking in different directions and just saying whatever is on your mind.

What’s a QFI?

When I realized how long I would be off from school in December, I decided that I was going to be bored and I should find a way to be efficient with my time.  Several things resonated rather deeply during my first few weeks of school.  (1) A lot of my fellow students have seen a lot more historic dances than I have.  The New York Public Library has a huge wing dedicated to the documentation of dance – which is about an hour away from my mom’s house, where I will be staying in December.  (2) I am loving dancing everyday.  I think I should continue dancing everyday while I am home.  Again, my mom lives a little over an hour away from my favorite teachers and studios.

So I applied for a Quarterly Fund Initiative grant that is supported by the University to help students fund: travel to conferences, project support, membership dues to professional organizations, or summer festival tuition.  I was awarded the this grant!  So for the month of December I will be taking lots of class and going to see all kinds of shows all over the city.  Merry Christmas!  Except knee socks, what else could I possibly ask Santa for?

Dance for the Camera

Lindsay LaPointe is a 3rd year grad student in the dance department.  She is also the person that was kind enough to let me stay at her house during my audition in January.  Lindsay’s final project is creating a dance for the camera entitled, “OVERSIZED”.  This is a unique and creative way of choreographing.  Tools that would not work for stage performance work for the camera and vice versa.  You can cut and paste, edit and change music without driving your dancers crazy.  There are 4 segments to this film:  Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall.  Each is filmed at location where an oversized sculpture is available for dancing on and around.  I was asked to dance in “BASKET”.  Here we are dancing around an oversized basket of apples.  We spent the day at an outdoor mall dodging shoppers and tourists and dancing around this big basket.  Lucky for me the piped in mall music was all football tunes.  For the first and possibly the last time, I danced to the theme for Monday Night Football.  Welcome to Ohio.

60×60 Dance Collective

On October 3, 2009 I presented two pieces at the 60×60 Collaboration at Wall Street Night Club in Columbus, OH.  This performance is a collaboration of 60 choreographic works from 60 different composers.  Each pieces is 60 seconds long.  The music is assigned to the choreographers.  We do not get to choose.

These were my assignments:

http://audio.60×365.com/60x60_2009/29.mp3 – track 29
http://audio.60×365.com/60x60_2009/59.mp3 – track 59

Three wonderful, creative, talented and PATIENT women lent their time to be in one of my dances.  Thank you to Amanda Byars, Fiona Lundie and Abby Zbikowski.  Instead of doing homework, sleeping or eating (three things which have become of monumental importance to me) they chose to make a dance with me in half an hour.

Tables and bar stools circled the dance floor/performance space.  Some choreographers chose to have their dancers dance on tables, behind the main performance space and up high on a tiny performance space over the bar.  Below, please see the final products.

Finding Your Way Around

So you have a lot of courage for taking another step deeper into the mind of Alexis del Sol. Your blog tour starts here…  My writing skills are under tremendous scrutiny while writing papers for my classes.  So English teachers and NBC producers leave your red pen at the door.  I am using this blog as an opportunity to let my hair down and be a little free with my grammar.

Here we go.  We’re walking.. we’re walking… we are stopped at “About”.  Here you will find out why I have decided to start this blog – aside from the fact it was an assignment for school.  Next we are finding our way to the next link,  “The Hypothesis”.  This page is the personal statement from my application.  Already, I am gritting my teeth while reading it, as there is so much I would like to change.  But I would like to keep it here to reference back and forth and follow my own journey.  I invite you to do the same.  Finally we come to “The Results“.  This is where you will buckle your seat belt and start the adventure.  All of my blog entries will be posted here.  If you click on the entry itself you can open it into a bigger version.

Thank you so much for your interest and willingness to join me in my experiment.  Your interest and comments are an enormous source of support.