En Bach, New from Janusphere Artistic Director Darion Smith

Janusphere Artistic Director Darion Smith premieres new choreography this month. The piece, En Bach, was commissioned by Misako Ballet and premieres on Sunday, February 16th at the Jim Rouse Theater.

Choreographed by Darion Smith, the contemporary dance work explores the architecture of the body in close relationship to Bach harpsichord concertos. In three movements, dancers move the space around them with high energy movement motifs.

Now in rehearsals, the dancers and Smith are busy preparing for the upcoming performance.

In addition to En Bach, the February 16th dance concert, which begins at 2:00 pm, will feature the premiere of "The Moon Princess", a one-act ballet created by Misako Aoki, as well as classical selections from "Paquita", "La Bayadere", and "Le Corsaire" and guest artists "KIMONOdeSisters".

Dance Festival 2020

Join Janusphere Director Darion Smith and other companies and students dancers at the Howard Community College Dance Festival.

The Dance Festival runs from February 8 - 9. Come see a creative, energetic expression of dance from multiple perspectives.

Stay tuned for more details about the evolution of this winter’s dance festival, and get a behind the scenes look at the choreography and pre-production process.

Festivals like this are labors of love and celebrations of dance - what better way to get ready for the Valentine’s Season!

New Year in the Sphere 2020

Welcome to a new year - and a new decade - of dance!

Today, we’re looking back at a fall 2019 performance, and looking ahead to some of the upcoming events we are excited to share with you.

Photo by Hank Wang

Coucharoucha!

This brand new dance work premiered November 15, 2019, at the Smith Theater. The performance was part of the HCC Dance Showcase.

Coucharoucha is a dance theater work. It explores the relationships of inspired characters and gives dancers and audience members the opportunity to think about what inspires us as artists and individuals.   

Photo by Hank Wang

En Bach

On the horizon, we have a premiere coming up in February and more projects and performances this spring.

This February 16th, we will premiere En Bach at the Jim Rouse Theater. En Bach is a new dance work commissioned by Misako Ballet.

Choreographed by Darion Smith, the contemporary dance work explores the architecture of the body in close relationship to Bach harpsichord concertos. In three movements, dancers move the space around them with high energy movement motifs.

Looking forward to sharing more details and JDC news with you in the coming weeks and to celebrating this new decade of dance, creativity, and energy.

Darion Smith Receives the Mark Ryder Original Choreography Award

On Friday, September 13, 2019, Janusphere Artistic Director Darion Smith received the Mark Ryder Original Choreography Award.

Awarded by the Howard County Arts Council and the Community Council of Howard County, the Mark Ryder Original Choreography Award “recognizes individual creative expression” for choreographers creating a new work.. Additionally, according to the Howard County Arts Council, the award “broadens opportunities for artists and encourage[s] and sustain[s] their pursuit of artistic excellence.”

We congratulate Darion Smith on his receipt of the award. Stay tuned here on the blog for updates and sneak peeks as the work develops!

Every Word, Every Day: Dispatches from Creative Residency in Eugene, OR

Janusphere Artistic Director Darion Smith shares dispatches from his creative residency in Eugene, Oregon, where he is working with an interdisciplinary team of artists on the ongoing collaborative project Every Word Was Once an Animal.

New Discoveries

Every day has provided opportunities to reflect on the intersection of dance and other mediums, and the ways in which they coalesce. The residency has been fulfilling with new discoveries daily.

Our process includes visiting sites that include lava fields, forests, creek beds and dams. Here, we are experimenting with sound, video, dance, and Carla Bengtson's art work and overarching concept of the collaborative work we are doing.

Diverse Landscapes

It's been rewarding to work with dance in the various landscapes and through the lens of this project. We'll be taking what we have been discovering in the field and distilling it into the preview showing format at CFAR in Eugene, OR. For me, the next big step for me in this process is working with the dancers in the space at CFAR.

Updates

Our team of collaborators from across artistic disciplines will be developing this work into a 7 week exhibit spanning March - April 2020 at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.

The preview at CFAR will help to gain perspective and generate more questions about the project going forward. We look forward to sharing its developments as the project continues to evolve.

Every Word Was Once An Animal (team)

Visual Artist and Concept: Carla Bengtson

Composer: Juliet Palmer

Visual Artist: Jessie Vala

Dance Artist: Darion Smith

Heading West in August

This August, Janusphere Dance Company Artistic Director Darion Smith begins a creative residency in Eugene, OR, working on the ongoing collaboration Lizard Project/Every Word Was Once an Animal.

An intimate showing of the project will take place August 16th, and the work will be developed further over the next year, including more showings and interactive exhibits.

As we prepare for the creative residency in Eugene, we're sharing with you a roundup of some of our stories highlighting the project and its progress since its inception back in 2017.

It all started with a simple question...

Can I Make Art that is Felt as Much as it is Seen?

In dance making and in art, I am noticing that conventional approaches are good in small doses but too much keeps you stuck in one place. To be honest, I am sort of scared of changing perspectives... that's actually what makes it fun. It is meaningful (despite how scary it can feel) to use these skills and knowledge to go where I haven't been by following my intuition and then to use those same devices again to make intentional choices.

Source: by Biodiversity Heritage Library is licensed under CC BY 2.0

This creative approach keeps me (and my collaborators, and my artistic inspirations) from being crushed by externally driven expectations that are somehow less and less appealing to me...

Changes and growth throughout the project…

Lizard Finds a Home

A collaborative project between art, dance, science, and the humanities, Lizard is a multi-media installation and interactive dance performance that will be welcomed by museum goers of all ages and interests.

The project, which is the product of the ongoing creative explorations of Smith and Bengtson, promises to deliver an immersive experience on how lizards and humans communicate, the process of learning a physical language, and how we learn to see and understand movement in a new environment.

The next phase brings us to Eugene in August. We invite you to continue on this journey with us.

Updates from Summer Intensive at CDT

As the Columbus Dance Theatre Summer Intensive comes to a close, Darion Smith looks at some of the challenges and accomplishments that marked the experience for the students, and for him.

“It was a fun challenge teaching a piece that I created for six dancers to twenty one dancers,” says Smith. He explains how working with a prop that the dancers helped to create contributed to making the experience even more engaging for them.

For Smith, he got to have a fresh look at a work he created almost exactly one year ago.

“I could see new possibilities to explore in the future,” he says. Of the dancers who attended the Summer Intensive, Smith says, “they were very dedicated, passionate, hardworking.”

Students will perform Ript Dash on Friday, June 14 at the CDT theater in a culminating performance of the 2019 Summer Intensive Program.

Spring News from the Sphere

This time of year is packed for dance educators and dance students as they prepare and present their final showcases and collect thoughts and lessons learned over the course of the year.

Photo by Hank Wang

For Janusphere Artistic Director Darion Smith this spring has been full of creative energy and achievement. He guided his Howard Community College dance students through another successful semester. His newest choreography for student dancers premiered. And we was featured in a video created by the College’s Dance Department.

Additionally, spring brings new announcements about artistic collaborations and residencies coming up in the next few months.

This includes an upcoming weeklong residency at the CDT and a creative residency that is part of the Lizard Project collaboration between Smith and Carla Bengtson.

Stay tuned for more updates, events and conversations here on the blog and on Facebook and Instagram.

Get Out and See Some Dance This Weekend

A message from Artistic Director Darion Smith and some video previews of Leaving Now for Later.

Check out the videos on our Facebook Playlist, and come see the premiere this Friday!

It's exciting to see these students take the stage and breathe life into each of the choreography works in the HCC Program that premieres this Friday at HCC’s Smith Theatre, located in the Horowitz Visual and Performing Arts Center.

I'm fortunate to have worked on "Leaving Now for Later" with an inspiring cast who take risks, push their physical boundaries, and are constantly developing their artistic voices. Dance as a performing art contains the ability to create captivating metaphors that give a fresh look at life and our world, that's why I love it so much. Get out and see some dance this weekend!

https://www.facebook.com/events/351683345435674/

Update: Dance Education and New Work from Darion Smith

Last week on the blog we talked about a new work from Darion Smith that explores movement and meaning with an all female cast of dancers.

Smith and the dancers are in rehearsals now, and we’re going behind the scenes to take a look at how the piece is evolving. The rehearsal process is short and intense. This speaks to some of the creativity and ingenuity that is an intrinsic part of working in dance education. Smith says, “we had such a short rehearsal time which forced me to focus on revising the choreography and dancer qualities.”

Throughout the process, in addition to bringing choreographic elements to life, dancers are learning the mechanics of putting together a piece for the stage, and how to work together to communicate the aim and the story of the piece.

We’ll be bringing you more, soon, as things continue to develop. Smith’s latest dance work will premiere April 5, 2019, at Howard Community College's Smith Theatre.

Creating Meaning in New Ways: Preview of New Work by Darion Smith

Choreographer Darion Smith is bringing a new work to life, featuring a five member, all-female cast. The dance work explores the tempo and intensity of select movements and tasks that involve large-scale props. It plays against - and with - the inevitability of gravity. To do this, Smith has designed gestural patterns that reflect some personal input from the dancers.

The randomness and disconnectedness of each section of the piece is apparent and purposeful. Smith has choreographed it this way in order to explore new dimensions as a choreographer. He says, “I'm trying to find new ways to create meaning and metaphor using methods I'm unfamiliar with, as well as those that are completely improvised.”

This new dance work is unique because it is being developed during a very short creative residency with the dancers. They meet once a week, complete run-throughs, and receive feedback.

For Smith, who is always excited to try something new, or to try something he has done before with a new twist, the excitement of this work comes with setting dancers on the path to develop their craft in new and more sophisticated ways.

“I'm excited to see how the dancers develop themselves inside of the work and what they will take away from the process,” says Smith. He is hopeful that this newest piece for emerging dancers provides new perspectives to everyone who is working on it.

Stay tuned for the next installment of the blog, when Darion Smith talks about the connections between dance education and choreography, and we share more details about the upcoming April 5, 2019, premiere at Howard Community College's Smith Theatre.

Let it Go Behind the Scenes with Darion Smith and Sarah Gomez

As promised, we have more behind the scenes updates from the rehearsals for Darion Smith’s Let it Go.

In the new piece, Sarah Gomez joins choreographer Darion Smith in the work, created for two dancers.

Let it Go premieres Friday, November 16, at the Horowitz Performing Arts Center at Howard Community College.

Show Times and Ticket Information

The HCC Dance Showcase, which includes dance works created by both faculty and students, will run two performances: Friday, November 16th (3:00 p.m.); and Saturday, November 17th (7:00 p.m.). Showcase performances will be held in the Howard Community College Smith Theatre, housed in the Horowitz Visual and Performing Arts Center.

The address is 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia, MD, 21044. 

Premiere at Horowitz Performing Arts Center

Darion Smith’s new work, Let it Go, premieres November 16 and 17 at the Horowitz Performing Arts Center at Howard Community College in Maryland.

Let It Go, the first work that Smith has choreographed and premiered at Howard Community College, is part of a larger show, the HCC Dance Showcase. This fall’s Showcase features dance works created by faculty, alongside student works in the same program. 

Let It Go is a work for two dancers. Sarah Gomez and Darion Smith will present Let it Go at the premiere. Gomez and Smith will explore an obstacle course built from physical props and set pieces, examine aspects of the human condition, and tangle and untangle personal stories.     

Stay tuned for more about the choreography process and how the idea of Let it Go took shape. Behind the scenes rehearsal photos and video previews coming soon!

Game Change: When Practical Challenges Influence Art Making

On the blog today, we’re spotlighting Artistic Director Darion Smith’s recent new choreography, Game Change. In so doing, we are also looking at how practical challenges, like choreographing for students as opposed to professional company dancers, influences how a choreographer makes art, and how that art takes shape.

Game Change, choreographed by Darion Smith, was selected to represent the University of Oregon at the ACDA North West Regional Conference 2018 in Boulder, CO, in March.

University of Oregon dance students in Darion Smith’s Game Change at ACDA Conference. Photo by Pam Cressall

As Smith explains it, Game Change is “a representation of nuance in my creative process.” That creative process was specifically influenced by his time as both a graduate student and an instructor in the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance. Now teaching in the Howard Community College Department of Dance, Smith reflects on his time at University of Oregon, and the impact that academic exploration and teaching dance students has had on the creative process and the work it produced.

He says, “from the moment I arrived at the University of Oregon, I realized that I had a new space to be creative in and a new set of constraints. In some regards there were no constraints to what I wanted to make,” at the same time, because he was working with students, as opposed to members of the professional Janusphere Dance Company, there were other factors to consider, from learning outcomes, to range, to readiness.

University of Oregon dance student in Darion Smith’s Game Change at ACDA Conference. Photo by Pam Cressall

Talking about Game Change, Smith walks us through some of his process, starting with the early stages of turning “an idea that floats in the mind” into movement. If, as he explains, that idea “merits enough interest,” he tries to work it out in some physical form, often starting in his own kitchen or living room, exploring the idea ans seeing where it takes him.

From the Living Room to the Classroom

When it is time to take the next steps toward creating the work, by bringing the choreography to dancers, a choreographer needs to transfer those movement ideas in specific ways. “A lot of how I worked in the past was by showing movement phrases to dancers and them picking it up,” says Smith. Once the phrase was learned, he would move onto other aspects of putting the choreography together.

Smith says that, while he was able to use this mode of making dances to some degree with students, he did recognize that, “working with professional dancers, I was able to choose the dancers for specific qualities, making this mode of translating choreography very effective.” In the classroom studio setting, he saw that “working with a diversity of levels and experience at university taught me that this mode does not translate as clearly as it did in a professional setting.” Choreographing for students required more. That lead to an enriched creative process and it pushed Smith, as a choreographer and an educator, to “see and explore other qualities in the dancers I was working with" and to explore new methods of generating a dance that has structure and unique qualities.”

Improvisational Techniques and Adding Voice

Part of this exploration included incorporating improvisational tasks and the use of the voice. “I was happy to use my work to get to know the dancers as artists and individuals, by inviting them to incorporate more of themselves into the work.”

University of Oregon dance student in Darion Smith’s Game Change at ACDA Conference. Photo by Pam Cressall

As a result, he created three distinct worlds in Game Change, the through line of which was the dancers.

The ACDA Conference was the perfect environment to present Game Change, because its choreography and execution are unique to the dance education experience, and the role that dance education plays in the creative process for both choreographers and students of dance.

Dispatches from Bellingham Repertory Dance

I am returning now from Bellingham Repertory Dance, in Bellingham, Washington, where I taught a five day master class in preparation for the company's upcoming fall show. 

It's been exciting and more than a little challenging to create work in such a short period of time, and to do it to the music of Richard Wagner's Der Walkürenritt ("The Ride of the Valkyries") from his acclaimed Nineteenth Century opera Die Walküre (The Valkyrie).

The dancers have been great about throwing themselves into the work. This kind of openness and commitment from artists makes it so much easier to explore the dimensions of a complex work. Not knowing the dancers, with the exception of Hannah Andersen my former graduate colleague at University of Oregon, made coming into the process at Bellingham Repertory Dance difficult  to predict, and required a flexible approach.

Circumstances like this force me, as a choreographer and dance educator, to rely more on my intuition during the day in the studio, followed by intense meditation and analysis each night as part of the post-rehearsal process. It means bringing that energy back into the studio the next day, fostering collaboration, relying on and learning from each other, and maintaining a level of commitment and focus that creates great performances.

The dancers will continue to rehearse weekly leading up to the work before it debuts in their fall season where, no doubt, their hard work and dedication will be a reward to them and to their audience. 

In addition to using the work of Wagner during my time with Bellingham Repertory Dance, I was fortunate to collaborate with musician/composer Christian Cherry for other sections of the work. Cherry's music adds more dimension and emotional context to the work, and it was a pleasure to explore.

I look forward to discovering how this work matures leading up to the premiere. 

Dispatches from PLU Residency

In addition to creating new work with students at his recent PLU residency, Janusphere Dance Company Artistic Director Darion Smith, says he found it "rewarding to teach beginner/intermediate level ballet and contemporary technique for the week."

Smith shares that the PLU dance students were attentively engaged during his classes and during rehearsals. Throughout the week, Smith says, "I witnessed improvement in the way PLU students performed in both the studio during classes and in rehearsal." 

Towards the end of the residency, rehearsals for the new work moved to the stage. In 2015 the PLU theater was brought up to date to include new state-of-the-art equipment. The new theater, Smith says, "makes the premiere of Pivotal Play at PLU, April 20 - 21, even more exciting."

Stay tuned for more details and ticket information for the upcoming April 20 - 21 performances!

Lizard Finds a Home: Collaborative Project Update

Carla Bengtson and Darion Smith will present their collaboration, an interactive installation featuring dance and inspired by Carla's work with lizards, in Spring 2018. 

Bengtson and Smith's project has received the green light from the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene, Oregon, to begin a residence there soon.

A collaborative project between art, dance, science, and the humanities, Lizard is a multi-media installation and interactive dance performance that will be welcomed by museum goers of all ages and interests.

The project, which is the product of the ongoing creative explorations of Smith and Bengtson, promises to deliver an immersive experience on how lizards and humans communicate, the process of learning a physical language, and how we learn to see and understand movement in a new environment.

Stay tuned for more details!

Two Premieres, One Night, in Oregon

Janusphere Dance Company is excited to share news of an upcoming evening at University of Oregon's Dougherty Dance Theatre, March 16, featuring Darion Smith.  Press release about the event follows, including ticket purchasing information.

On March 16, at 8:00pm the UO Winter Dance Loft will host an evening of compelling new choreography from Janusphere Dance Company director and MFA candidate, Darion Smith. The performance will premiere two dance works by Smith, The Big Red Button and Game Change. 

In The Big Red Button, Smith uses personal experiences from the group to build a collage of sociopolitical dance sketches, and in Game Change, Smith and dancers create three distinct worlds and explore the voice. Game Change has been selected to represent the University of Oregon at the upcoming 2018 American College Dance Association regional conference in Boulder, CO. 

At 7:30pm in Gerlinger Annex 352, Smith will give a 20 minute presentation on his creative process titled, a dancing mind. In order to explain the way he works out choreography, Smith has constructed a physical representation of his process. Smith’s research involved an analysis of his process during the creation of a dance piece while simultaneously integrating novel methods from master choreographers.   

A recent Smith project, "Rosetta"; Photo by Pam Cressall

The performance will be presented at the Dougherty Dance Theatre. DDT is located on the 3rd floor of UO’s Gerlinger Annex.

Purchase Tickets: $8 General Admission, $5 Students and Seniors 

Darion Smith grew up in Santa Barbara, California where he began his dance training with Kay Fulton. Smith studied at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany and at the Bolshoi Academy in Moscow, Russia. Smith has performed with Dance Theatre of Harlem, Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Buglisi Dance Theatre, New York Theatre Ballet. Smith is the artistic director and cofounder of Janusphere Dance Company. Smith’s Choreography has been presented in prominent venues and festivals throughout the U.S. and internationally in Madrid, Spain and Mexico City, Mexico. Smith is in his final year at UO’s graduate dance program where he is also a graduate teaching fellow.  

In Upcoming Residency, Darion Smith Aims to Teach Dancers to Experience Own Voices

We spoke with Darion Smith about his upcoming artist residency at Pacific Lutheran University.

Smith says that the spring residency at the campus in Tacoma, Washington, will enable him to teach and to create new work with dancers from PLU. As Smith puts it, "[m]y aim is to make it a powerful experience for the students at PLU by integrating their creative abilities into my studio classes and during rehearsals for the new work I am creating."

Photo: Pacific Lutheran University

Many of these creative opportunities will come through improvisation and compositional tasks.  To that end, Smith plans to offer PLU student dancers "new ways to experience dance and develop their own voices."

It is the quest to find an artist's voice and to use dance as a mode of storytelling that propels Smith's choreography.  "One of the main reasons why I fell in love with dance is its ability to tell a story," says Smith, who believes that as a choreographer and a dancer he is "a story teller too."  This is why he looks forward to guiding the students in class and rehearsals, by helping them to discover more about themselves as creative individuals.     

Stay tuned to  the Janusphere Dance Company Blog for more on the work Smith plans to develop with Pacific Lutheran University students this spring, and where and when it will debut.

Involuntary Movements

By Darion Smith

My new choreography, Involuntary Movements was inspired by Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between The World And Me, my own experiences as an African American (biracial), and African American History. 

I was able to create a landscape (set) with props, text, soundscape, and music that incorporated and carried the inspired content of the work and allowed me to live inside of the work as I was performing it.

For me, the experience was transformative in the generative rehearsal phase of the process and then later, that experience was magnified even further when I shared Involuntary Movements in front of an audience. I had dug deep into my own feelings about race, being biracial, African American and half British (white) brought me into a lot of self conflict, if you have read Ta Nehisi Coates' book, you will understand my position even more.

Once again I found myself in the heavy presence of identity, only this time it was less ambiguous and tread the tense line of the social constructs of race in the United States in 2017.  

Involuntary Movements explores the physical and emotional reactions to racism and injustice towards the African American population through my own experiences. 

The new dance premiered at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.  

All photos of Involuntary Movements are by Megan Morse of the University of Oregon Journalism School.