Philadelphia's Indigenous Pitch Dance Collective has received a grant from philanthropist Betty Londergan for its work with children. Londergan is giving away $100 daily for 365 days. Londergan is a writer who is blogging on wordpress.com about "365 days of putting my money where my mouth is." Using funds she inherited from her father, she "settled on a random shotgun approach of giving to anything that rings my chimes – which hopefully will inspire other people to pry open their wallets and give as well." Visit Londergan's "whatgives365" blog, click on the calendar at today's date (3/16/10) and read about Indigenous Pitch, a collective of ethnically diverse dance companies that responded to the Katrina disaster in New Orleans with an annual summer dance & arts camp for kids; they also have camps in Philadelphia and, they hope, this year in Haiti. See their video on CANtv. [LINK]

The Liz Lerman Dance Exchange is in residence with the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisc.,working with more than 60 participants, aged 7 to 70. They're creating a performance piece, "Language from the Land." Company member Ben Wegman blogs that they've been doing classes, workshops and story sharing all over the community. "We've made whirlygigs and kites with community in the ARTery. ... We've visited local senior centers, danced with young men from the Hmong Association of Sheboygan, taught class with dance students from Etude High School. ... We've heard about Lake Michigan and the changing landscape, about the writings of John Muir, about women in their 80s skydiving for the first time, about children helping their elders rediscover nature, and about the loss of the crane population in Wisconsin." They're even learning to polka to live accordion music. [LINK]

This year's Liz Lerman Dance Exchange Summer Institute will culminate in site-specific performances in the parking garage of the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. Everyone in the two-week intensive will take part in the performances. The Institute offers an immersive experience, with focus on collaboration, adaptation of movement to one’s own range and capacity, and exploration of the choreographic and generative methodology of Dance Exchange, including Critical Response Process training, master sessions with Liz Lerman and “Moving Dialogue” panel discussions. The Institute is slated for July 5-17, 2010, at the Dance Exchange studios in Takoma Park, Md., and other D.C.-area locations; applications are due April 30. It will be followed by the annual International Teen Institute, July 25-31. The Dance Exchange is widely known for its performance collaborations with communities of all kinds. [LINK]

Rabbi David Bauer has joined Liz Lerman Dance Exchange as the first-ever Rabbinic Fellow in Residence. Rabbi Bauer will take classes with the dance company and plans to learn about creating rituals and telling stories in dance and movement within communities. His work with the Dance Exchange will examine ways to fuse movement and theater with Torah study and Jewish worship. Rabbi Bauer, who comes to the Dance Exchange from the Jewish Community of Amherst, Mass., has also been a director of theater and opera and an activist in the field of queer spirituality. Based on the Dance Exchange’s long experience teaching and creating in Jewish settings, this pilot program is intended to explore the value of direct exchange between a practicing rabbi and an inquiry-driven dance company. Bauer is writing a blog reflecting on his experiences. [LINK]

"Dancing with Child Soldiers" is a remarkable story from Foreign Policy in Focus by David Alan Harris, a choreographer who specializes in fostering recovery among survivors of egregious human-rights abuse. He writes about his dance-music therapy experience with Poimboi Veeyah Koindu, the self-styled Orphan Boys of Koindu, in a remote outpost where Sierra Leone abuts Guinea and Liberia. Sierra Leone remains notorious for boys and girls as young as six fighting as soldiers on all sides of an 11-year civil war, writes Harris. At war's end in 2002, more than 48,000 child soldiers were demobilized. In his movement therapy work promoting the child soldiers' reintegration into society, Harris turned to pivotal cultural rites as a sanctioned medium for the expression and release of difficult emotions associated with wartime experiences. Harris talks October 9, 2009, at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. D.C. [LINK]

Intermedia Arts is presenting its fourth installment of B-Girl Be: A Celebration of Women in Hip-Hop. B-Girl Be, September 17-20, 2009, is a multimedia festival encompassing the four elements of hip-hop: MCing, DJing, breakdancing and graffiti. Its mission is "to influence and inspire leadership to change the perceptions and roles of women in hip-hop for current and future generations." Events begin with a B-Girl Be Block Party and "The SHEro Show," with hip-hop dancers and choreographers described as "SHEroes not only on-stage, but also in their communities, where they inspire young artists of the next generation and plant seeds of positivity wherever they perform or teach their craft." Also upcoming: dance events like "Bad Mama Jama Jam" and "DeCipher This," a group exhibition called "Mama Said Knock U Out!" and hip-hop workshops. The full schedule is online. [LINK]

Artists and scientists will explore “Moving Perspectives – approaches to understanding water through geology, environment, art and society” at the Urbana Free Library in Illinois, October 13, 2009. The panel discussion includes George Roadcap, Illinois Water Survey; Cecily Smith, Prairie Rivers Network; Brett Bloom, artist and activist; Brigit Kelly, poet; choreographer Jennifer Monson; and moderator Michael Scoville, an environmental philosopher. The talk is part of Monson's Mahomet Aquifer Project, a series of public dance performances, workshops and a mobile gallery, October 10-18, to inform and engage the communities in East Central Illinois dependent on the aquifer and draw the audience into their own understanding of their relationship to water. Monson intends the iLAND project to “draw connections between our scientific and political relationships to natural resources and the cultural frameworks that shape our perception and relationship to these resources.” [LINK]

BIG CAAKe and the League of Imaginary Scientists + E.K.K.O have been awarded the 2009 iLAB residencies by iLAND, the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance. BIG CAAKe, a collaborative team including an artist/engineer/educator, a choreographer/cook, an artist/designer, an architect and a mycologist, will conduct "StrataSpore," a project using mushrooms to develop dialogue about local New York City ecosystems and urban sustainability. The League of Imaginary Scientists and E.K.K.O., a collaborative team including an artist, a composer, an architect, an environmental researcher and a choreography collective, will develop "Waterways: fluid movements in a liquid city," a project that examines water through environmental and sociological study and "transforms that information into choreographic actions that engage New Yorkers." Get connected through the ongoing discussion on the iLAND Symposium blog. [LINK]

"PERSEVERANCE: waterbodies," on the outskirts of Oaxaca, Mexico, in June, is a six-day laboratory in the restoration of watersheds through environmental and dance practices Choreographer Jennifer Monson will facilitate a core group of up to 20 participants, camping and working together with members of Instituto Naturaleza y Sociedad de Oaxaca (INSO), and sharing methodologies and creative practices. Activities will include learning about the projects of INSO, assisting with community-based restoration projects, investigating the site through dance practices developed by Monson and proposed by the group and creating a public engagement and discussion based on the lab's experiences. The event, June 27-July 4, 2009, is part of a forum by Prisma, an artist self-education initiative funded by the European Union. [LINK]

The SEEDS Festival, June 14-28, 2009, in Plainfield, Mass., is an interdisciplinary summer festival dedicated to arts and ecology. SEEDS 2009 will focus on potentiality, say the presenters, Earthdance, a nonprofit that cultivates dance and the art of improvisation. "Potential for new growth is generated in places where diverse organisms meet. In this year of potential political change, we invite this phenomenon into our interdisciplinary investigations." The festival will feature "Ritual Dance: Intimate + Universal Spaces," a group experience with Diego Piñón; "Along the Watershed," a workshop with Simon Whitehead and Jennifer Monson; "Mycoscaping + Ecology of Transformation," a mushroom intensive with Rafter Sass; "The Sustainable Landscape," a permaculture workshop with R.U.S.T./Skott Kellogg; "Integrating Interior + Exterior Spaces," a dancing/building workshop with Daria Faïn and Robert Kocik; "Eco-Art for Everyday Life," a course with Beverly Naidus; and a full-day public community celebration. [LINK]

"Soul Deep: A New Artist for a Renewed Society" is the title of Urban Bush Women's 2009 Summer Leadership Institute, July 31-August 9, in New Orleans, La. The New York dance-theater organization says the title for the institute "references two important American writers: Langston Hughes ("my soul has grown deep like the rivers") and W.E.B. DuBois (A New Negro for a New Society). With a focus on issues of community health, our primary purpose will be to serve as a catalyst for the renewal, sustenance and growth of the artistic and cultural organizing communities of New Orleans." Institute students will participate in daily UBW dance technique classes, community dancing traditions (e.g. Second Line, capoeira, dances of the Orishas, hip hop), teach-ins around specific political and social-justice issues, undoing racism training and guided creative time. [LINK]

Five interesting community arts projects are underway across the U.S. thanks to the National Performance Network Community Fund. Funds were awarded to NPN Partners: Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kent., to strengthen relationships with the African-American population of Clinchco, Va., through sharing and performance of personal stories, working with storyteller Angelyn DeBord; Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago to support workshops by Nora Chipaumire with immigrant populations, examining personal histories; Multicultural Education and Counseling Through the Arts (MECA) in Houston to work with composer Elio Villafranca to adapt a three-part concerto for an orchestra of 36 musicians, creating a contemporary, multicultural musical experience; Pangea World Theater in Minneapolis to support Kristina Wong's work with the Hmong community and emerging immigrant artists; and Tigertail Productions in Miami to support AXIS Dance Company's work with local dancers with disabilities. [LINK]

"Tipping Point," in New Orleans, La., March 18-23, 2009, is the fifth annual State of the Nation multidisciplinary arts festival, addressing social, political, and economic issues facing the Gulf South. A partnership between Alternate ROOTS, ArtSpot Productions, Mondo Bizarro, M.U.G.A.B.E.E., Junebug Productions, New Noise, 7th Ward Community Center and the NOLA Human Rights Film Festival, this year’s festival will explore "the intersection of art and activism." Performance, music, film, workshops, visual art installations and site-specific events are scheduled for the 7th Ward Community Center, The Studio at Colton and various site-specific locations throughout New Orleans. See Bruce France's video promo for the festival on the Mondo Bizarro Web site. [LINK]

Sarah Muehlbauer, first-year MFA student at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, has won $20,000 and a show at the Smithsonian, thanks to VSA art. According to the new VSA arts e-newsletter, A3: Arts, Access, Action, Muehlbauer, 24, won the grand prize in "Green Light," a juried competition for emerging artists with disabilities by VSA arts and Volkswagen Group of America. The 15 winning entries are on view at the Smithsonian Institution's S. Dillon Ripley Center in Washington, D.C., through January 4, 2009. Muehlbauer was honored for "Rustle," a video that depicts her performance in a dress made of wax paper, expressing her changed outlook since being diagnosed with severe Crohn's disease in 2003. To compose the video's soundtrack, she chose the Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie, who has been profoundly deaf since childhood. See "Rustle" in the exhibition. [LINK]

danceABLE, Florida's upcoming mixed-ability dance festival, will feature Germany's DIN A 13 Dance Company and a film and workshops by Gerda König. DIN A 13, founded by König in 1995, will be in residence in Miami from December 27 through December 31, as part of the annual danceAble program presented by Tigertail Productions and Florida Dance Association, at WinterFest 2008 in Miami. König and company dancer Marc Stuhlmann will perform "Body Distance Between the Minds" on December 27. A documentary film, "Making the Difference: Dance and Taboo in Sâo Paulo," screening December 28, follows König's work in Brazil with dancers with and without disabilities and looks at the hidden taboos of Brazilian society through the eyes of the dancers. König's workshops, December 29-31, are geared to dancers with and without disabilities, novices and professionals, working together to explore movement in a mixed-ability environment. [LINK]

The latest addition to the CAN Bookstore is "Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion" by Naomi Jackson and Toni Shapiro-Phim. The international anthology, out next month from Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Md., is available for pre-order. The articles examine the regulation and exploitation of dancers and dance activity by government and authoritative groups, including abusive treatment within the dance profession; choreography involving human rights as a central theme; engagement of dance as a means of healing victims of human-rights abuses; and social/political movements in which dance plays a role in fighting oppression. Issues range from slavery and the Holocaust to the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, First Amendment cases and the AIDS epidemic. CAN Director Linda Burnham authored an essay on Liz Lerman Dance Exchange. [LINK]

Three artists will stage a public event in New York's Dead Horse Bay, August 16, 2008, during the convergence of sunset, moonrise and high tide. The event is part of an iLAND collaborative residency by choreographer Sarah White, architect Angel Ayón and visual artist Gerald Marks. The project explores the dynamic of man’s interactions with the natural environment over time and as it applies to this area of coastline, once home to horse-processing and fish-oil plants. Nature has reclaimed much of the bay, now part of the Gateway National Recreation Area. "Through these public events [August 16, September 14, October 12]," say the artists,"we would like to call attention to a multidimensional experience of this particular coastal landscape … spatially, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually." iLAND (interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art Nature and Dance) is directed by choreographer Jennifer Monson. [LINK]

AXIS Dance Company will host its third Physically Integrated Dance Summer Intensive, August 3-10, 2008, at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, Oakland, Calif. AXIS and Eric Kupers of the California State University East Bay Dance Department will teach physically integrated contact improvisation, technique, choreography and performance, as well as site-specific dance. The intensive will culminate with an informal performance by workshop attendees and faculty. People ages 18 and up, of all dance levels and experience, with and without physical disabilities are invited to attend. Application deadline is June 15. [LINK]

Liz Lerman Dance Exchange will lead "Building Performers," a two-week summer camp at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., July 14-25, 2008. To quote from the Museum's intriguing p.r.: "Create a performance based on the Museum’s historic and storied past! Discover what’s hiding in the columns of the Great Hall, unveil the myths behind the Museum’s friezes, and bring the outrageous characters found in and around the Museum to life. Under the guidance of members of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, tell a story using movement, improvisation, and creative drama. The session culminates with the campers’ original performance for family and friends in the Great Hall." Created by an act of Congress in 1980, the National Building Museum is a cultural institution dedicated to exploring and celebrating architecture, design, engineering, construction and urban planning. [LINK]

"Willing and Able: Re-Figuring Dance, Performance, and Disability" is the theme of the 10th annual Dance Under Construction conference hosted by U.C. Berkeley, April 25-26, 2008. The inter-campus graduate student conference incorporates perspectives on dance from the visual arts, geography, architecture and medical studies, examining "how particular framings of the body define ability in dance and movement." The keynote address is by Petra Kuppers, a CAN writer and author of a new book from Routledge, "Community Performance: An Introduction." The schedule, available on the Web, is jam-packed with dozens of workshops, performances, videos, papers and other presentations. The conference is supported by several U.C. Berkeley units: Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Arts Research Center; Disability Studies; and Townsend Center for the Humanities. [LINK]

Kairos Dance Theatre’s The Dancing Heart: Vital Elders Moving in Community Memory Loss Program was recently recognized by two national organizations. In Washington, D.C. on November 5, 2007, the Minneapolis intergenerational dance company's program for elders won the 2007 Award for Excellence in Program Innovation , from The Archstone Foundation and the Gerontological Health Section of the American Public Health Association. And MetLife Foundation and the American Society on Aging will award a 2008 MindAlert Award to The Dancing Heart at their joint conference with the National Council on Aging, “Aging in America,” in D.C. in March 2008. The Dancing Heart is a 90-minute chair-based program that offers structured dance and storytelling experiences. Its purpose is to delay the progression of dementia and improve participant’s physical, emotional and social health. Kairos has also developed a training curriculum for the program. [LINK]

Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's Peter DiMuro is hosting a dance-making Web log about alternative families as part of his project Funny Uncles, which explores "the reality of contemporary families" through movement, theater, video and spoken word. It questions the persistent image of family as a traditional, nuclear unit, "while the number of blended families, adoption, single parents by choice and gay parenting are all on the rise." The Funny Uncles blog is an LLDE experiment to collaborate with audiences before, during and after performances. It contains video of rehearsals and encourages users to add movement phrases and theatrical direction to the piece. The project also includes a Halloween Debut Blog-a-Thon and Cabaret, Family Dancing Workshops, a three-city performance tour of “Gumdrops and The Funny Uncle” and a community dialogue, "Hot Chocolate Chat: Making Art with Communities." [LINK]

Coming up in Puebla, Mexico: "a festival, a conference, a workshop, a community builder, an exchange project and a creative vision." The second annual Performática: Foro Internacional de Danza Contemporánea y Artes de Movemiento was designed by co-directors, Mayra Morales and Ray Eliot Schwartz of Fundación Universidad de las Américas, to encourage exchange across national and cultural boundaries through the arts and "re-connect to the essential common humanness that is at the base of all societies." Workshops, roundtable discussions and performances will convene with the goal of facilitating international and intercultural exchange of practices, knowledge, theory and contemporary discourse. In the first Performática, March 2007, over 300 students participated free of charge and thousands of audience members had free access to over 100 international artists represented on stages and other sites in Cholula and Puebla. [LINK]

Liz Lerman Dance Exchange has launched "Offsite & Insight," its first online video performance, showcasing elder company members, Martha Wittman, Thomas Dwyer and Shula Strassfeld, with music by Penguin Cafe Orchestra, choreography by Cassie Meador. LLDE was invited to perform in the 13th Annual DC Improvisation Festival, September 27-30, 2007, but the company was out of town, so Meador turned to the Web. Online she says, "Offsite & Insight has allowed us to ... find new ways of building our local presence in the midst of a heavy touring schedule and to hopefully make the festival accessible to those who may not have the opportunity or ability make it. ... As choreographer you learn to adapt what you bring to a place and how to build from the unexpected encounters a particular place or group people have to offer." [LINK]

Dancers and hospice specialists will perform together in Minneapolis during "Dance in the Dark, The First Annual Linda Francis Cartee Memorial Event," October 25, 2007. "Dance in the Dark" is the first of a planned series of annual events named after the late Linda Francis Cartee, a participant, service provider and board member of Pathways Home Health, Hospice & Private Duty. Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater will perform a new work commissioned by Pathways, "Undercovers," which explores "the fine line between beginnings and endings through a montage of movement, music and fragments of dreams" with members of SPDT and participants from Pathways. SPDT has a number of community programs, including Caring for the Caregiver; The Family Matters Project; WASH: Working with Artists, Sharing the Healing; Beauty in Difference; and Meaning in Movement, for stroke survivors. [LINK]