Shoebox is in DANCE & DANCE TEACHER Magazine!

We're in the august issue of dance and dance teacher magazine, in their "secrets of a successful studio" insert.
it's online here:
dancemagazine.com/
scroll down to "secrets of a successful studio" PDF
and the article is called "Giving Back: When Doing Good is Good for Business" about our dance-a-thon in January!

there's a paragraph about us, and the article photo is one omar took of the dance-a-thon! me and sheila are right up front!

yay!

a letter i wrote to damage control....

hey gorgeouses,

i'm musing tonight about the future. it's the first of the month - housekeeping time. particularly resonant for dom and tessa, who just moved into new houses. it's august - approaching fall, the end of summer. it's a new moon, a time to cultivate, to plan new beginnings.

so i'm thinking about us, and all of the tiny lights we bring to the world - and how bright they are when we're together. how grateful i am for what we share with eachother.

and i'm wondering - where are you at in your dance right now? where are you at with dance in your lives?
what do you want from dance? what do you want from dancing with each other? what is your vision of our little company this time next year?

here are mine:
i'm feeling simultaneously both more enriched by my personal practice than ever, and really missing class. i've been out of regular classes and school for a while now - and i'm really starting to make my own discoveries, rather than just taking my teachers ideas into my body - and that feels great. but it means there's no where to rest - i have to continually dig into myself for information and inspiration, rather than just submitting to someone elses ideas and saying "tell me what to think! tell me how to feel! tell me how this works!"
and when i ask myself those questions and i find new answers, it's amazingly rewarding. but sometimes i just want someone else to give me the answers!

dance is my whole life right now, it's my business, it's my passion, it's what occupies about 95% of my brain. it's pretty rad.

i want every dance i do to be the most rewarding dance i've ever done. i want to leave no stone unturned. i want to demand everything of myself, and offer it up to dance. i want every choreography to be the most rewarding one i've ever created. i want to highlight each of your strengths, i want to push us all to be the best dancers we can possibly be. i want to leave myself breathless, and offer that breathlessness to the world. i want to experience that level of completeness within the group - i want to leave the stage and know that we've just brought a house down, because we've left everything on the stage. and to know we can do it again.

by this time next year - we will have toured europe. we will be better paid. we'll be wrapping up an evening length show - our first home season, with a phat dvd to show for it.

okay - your turn. tell me about yourselves. tell me about the future.

love you,
c-dizzle

DCDT Promo Video!

i made this last week, i'm pretty happy with it!

Check it out!
www.youtube.com/watch

music by my baby bro =)

Cera & Charlotte play Cabaret Dress Up! Veil, Solo, & Drum Solo Duet! (video post)

www.youtube.com/watch

We're NEKKID! And JINGLY!
and BELLYDANCING!?!

Crazy.

independence day, 2008.

we seek ourselves in fantasy -
our femininty rawness sensuality
our ancientness divinity in Otherness
because Ours was stolen from us,
each wave coopted corrupted and torn, sexuality turned playland revolution ransacked
playing field turned landmines and we
turn our backs, we look
Elsewhere.
but that is not the truth of those women, either - Tribal love sisters dancing in the moonlight
those women beaten silent and sewn shut, our sons and brothers rape them because
there are no sockhops in bagdad
and we do their dances and beat their drums and sing
their songs in pants we call harem
as though we knew the meaning of the word.
as though we know meaning.

we will compromise and justify ourselves right out of existance.
we have everything in the world.
we have every thing in the world and
nothing of our own.
we have everything in the world
to hide from.

this sisterhood is fantasy, this Otherness
illusion.
we prefer them blind because we've robbed them thus.
we prefer them silent because could they speak, they may just tell us
"no"
and our leaders rape their land because ours does not yeild,
wet and black
when they spread it open.
we have everything in the world
and nothing to be proud of.

we rest easy on someone elses revolution.
we ride high
on someone elses hog.

my people, we sit because we stand for nothing
we gorge ourselves because we're not
but air and emptiness
on the inside.
not a fight left in us that means anything.
we have everything in the world
to fight for.

we have every thing in the world.

Cera on PBS! Trailer...

In Fall 2008 you can see me on PBS on the national special "Nourish: Food & Community".
I haven't seen it yet, so hopefully I dont come across like a complete tard.
Either way, it's something I believe in and am proud to be a part of.
Watch the trailer here!

www.goworldlink.org/programs...iler.html

notes on choreography...

At The Beginning...

Always, before I begin a project, I am restless. What will it be? What will it look like? Who will be in it? Will it be well received? I feel like a hostess waiting for the first guests to arrive at a party. I shift around the studio anxiously, I listen to the same songs over and over, I sweep the studio floor and then sweep it again.

Choreographies come to me in different ways. Sometimes – the best times -- they arrive as what can only be called “visions”. Complete with costumes, movement, makeup, lights, plots, storylines hit me in a flash and I busy myself with note taking, I rush to listen to music, to get it all down before I’ve forgotten any detail. Then it is simply the matter of re-constructing the vision in flesh, space, and time.
Other times, choreographies labor to be born. The music isn’t right, the concept is vague, the movements wont fit together, the whole thing seems like five different puzzles tossed into the same box. I scan the horizon like a hazy lighthouse, anxious to hone in on something in the distance, soemething to bring into focus, to guide into harbor.
Frequently these are commissioned projects, or projects with a slew of constraints – I have a show date and a certain number of dancers, and something must be produced, but I have no idea what, there is no inspiration attached to the deadline. Production on a timeline is difficult, it has little to do with your natural creative process. It requires you to create no matter how you’re feeling or what else is going on in your life. It demands that you come up with something – anything – even if that “anything” is not the project you may currently be more passionate about. Sometimes you must put your own art on the backburner in order to create a project for a deadline. It is never fun to shift your focus to do work that “must” be done, rather than work you “want” to do. (Working on a timeline is something I address more in depth later.)
Sometimes it takes only one piece falling into place for all the others to lock in around it – the right piece of music is found, the right dancers become available, the right venue presents itself. Sometimes it only takes one element working itself out for you to see the big picture clearly.
Sometimes projects don’t come together at all, and must be abandoned midway. This is very difficult – am I giving up because I am frightened? Lazy? Overwhelmed? Or is the project itself the problem? These are difficult questions.
Even those choreographies that arrive as visions are not always easy to come together. There can be conflicts – the right dancers are not available, the concept is too big for the budget, the right music cannot be found or the right composer is not available. Or, simply, sadly, my skills are not yet up to the task.
During these times, I must be brutally honest with myself. I must force myself to set the project down, not to rush it. Choreography is artwork, and like all artwork, it will be born when it is good and ready, creator-be-damned. I have learned through awkward experience that work should never be forced to be completed when it is not ready. Artwork, like confessions or apologies, should never be forced, lest they come out hollow, or sad and wasted; A shadow of what they would be if they came of their own volition. I have ruined many a project by my determination to complete it despite the signs that it was not ready to come together. The end result was putting something on stage that I was not proud of, that is a let down to the vision. This is a horrible experience, and one that can be spared by careful introspection during the choreographic process, a willingness to ask myself (and others) questions, and be receptive to the answers. It also requires a willingness to sit my dancers down a few weeks into rehearsing a piece and say “we’re starting over with something new – no matter how strange or screwed up that may seem, it will be better than forcing work that is not ready. We will come back to this another time.”
But that is later.
Today is the start of a new project, and I am restless.
I have swept the studio 3 times, done all the dishes, made and remade the bed, started a load of laundry, and finally sat down to write these words - anything to keep myself from confronting the blank canvass ahead of me. This is the scariest moment, the plunge we all take time and time again: To make a first mark on the page, the first sweep of color on the canvass, to take the first breath, and then step, gingerly or with abandon, into space, hoping that our foot hits solid ground.

Vote Cera, DCDT, & Shoebox for SF's BEST OF THE BAY!

Hey all, it's time for the SF Guardian's Best of the Bay!
You can nominate your favorite Dance Company, Dance Studio, and Personal Trainer!

Please take the time to nominate Damage Control Dance Theater as your favorite Dance Company (page 2)
Shoebox Studio as your favorite dance studio (page 4)
and Cera, Shoebox Studio as your favorite personal trainer (page 4)!

www.sfbg.com/bob/2008/

A lot of you have asked in recent weeks what you can do to help the studio - THIS HELPS. the winner of BOB gets HUGE publicity for free, and it would REALLY help the studio! So please, vote yourself, repost this, tell your friends!
Every vote counts =D

i accidentally made an ipod commercial. (video post)

i swear i wasn't planning this when i danced it....

www.youtube.com/watch

new costume item (video post)

inspired a round of "let's pretend to be a bellydancer"

youtube.com/watch

sometimes, it's all about the costuming.