Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

By Macada Brandl
Executive Director
Dance New Jersey

Dance is alive and well in New Jersey.  We Jerseyans should be proud of our vibrant, exciting, and diverse dance community and its artistic achievements.  Anyone who has not had the opportunity to experience the work of the creative choreographers, dedicated dance educators, and passionate performers throughout the state will have the chance to witness their talents in events connected with Jersey Moves! Festival of Dance. Waltz to a workshop or prance to a performance!

Presented by New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, Jersey Moves! combines performances by eleven of the state’s prominent dance companies with workshops by four leading dance educators.  The performances include a wide variety of dance genres, from classical ballet to West African dance, modern to Spanish flamenco, tap to Indian Bharata Natyam.  For a taste from this smorgasbord of the New Jersey dance world, don’t miss the performances on Saturday, March 24 and Sunday, March 25.

Along with these highlighted performances, New Jersey Performing Arts has produced and continues to offer ancillary events occurring throughout the state. Last May, NJPAC audience members were excited to find themselves in the middle of the dance action, as a flash mob engulfed the lobby to announce the festival.

Workshops by celebrated dance educators are being taught throughout the state:

• Samuel Pott, artistic director of Nimbus Dance Works from Jersey City, led dance students through a modern Graham technique class at Stockton College on February 8.
• Keith Thompson, dancer with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and faculty member at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, offers a modern/jazz class to NJPAC arts education students on February 23.
• Joshua Bisset, artistic director of Shua Group from Jersey City, presents a workshop on the creative process on March 5, at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
• Mark Roxey, artistic director of the renowned Roxey Ballet (which performed as part of the inauguration festivities for President Obama) from Lambertville, will present a ballet class at Montclair State University in March (TBD).

These are but a few of the talented artists/educators motivating and inspiring students and performers right here in New Jersey. Our state is home to a growing network of talented dance artists. The Jersey Moves! festival embraces our state’s dance community and its artistic promise.

More on the performances next time!

Macada Brandl is the Executive Director of Dance New Jersey, the premier organization serving dance companies, dancers and choreographers in New Jersey. She is a regular contributor to the Dodge blog.

Image courtesy Roxey Ballet

Wendy Liscow, Program Officer

I had a glorious weekend. One of those weekends you aren’t even aware you need until you are in the middle of it and the tension melts away and your soul fills with joy. My typical weekend is as hectic and demanding as the work week, but this weekend I participated in the celebration of two leaders who each acted upon bodacious ideas with unrelenting courage that yielded highly creative outcomes. One visionary, Graham Lustig, launched his new dance company, and the other, Albert Appel, was honored for founding the Appel Farm Arts and Music Center in the middle of Salem County fifty years ago.

If you are familiar with nonprofit lifecycles, which we introduced during the recent kickoff of our Board Leadership Training series, you will recognize that one event celebrated the labor of love of a new start-up and the other celebrated a founder’s vision that has survived 50 years of growth and change to become a solid, mature organization. Although I am anxious to share both stories, I’m going to be disciplined and focus on the Graham Lustig experience and tell the tale of Albert Appel and his groundbreaking efforts in a future blog. (more…)

Laura Aden Packer, Program Director, Arts

Saint Vitus may be the acknowledged patron saint of dancers, but New Jersey dance companies and artists know that the true patron saint of dancers is Randy James.

Saint Randy, currently an assistant professor of dance at Rutgers University and the President of Dance/New Jersey (the statewide service organization for dance companies and dancers), is the founder and artistic director of Randy James Dance Works, an acclaimed company that he started in 1993. Through the years, his company grew to have a national and international touring schedule, while also maintaining a focus on educational and community-based residencies, master classes, lecture demonstrations and workshops here in New Jersey.

Randy put his company on hiatus after an impressive fourteen year run. The demands of running the company day to day coupled with the death of his best friend were exacting a toll and so he decided to devote his time – full-time – to Mason Gross School of the Arts, his alma mater, where he had been teaching for many years. During all this time, and still today, Randy also played an integral role in the development and growth of Dance/New Jersey.

So Randy knows firsthand the inherent challenges of running and sustaining a professional dance company in New Jersey. And he has, single-handedly, changed the fortunes and increased the exposure of a number of New Jersey dance companies while instilling a true appreciation of dance in a new generation of audiences.

Since Randy started teaching his Dance Appreciation class at Rutgers three years ago, it has grown from one section with 53 students to three sections with 1,100 students this spring. In the fall of 2010, Randy anticipates four sections with over 2,000 students enrolled. Amazing. He had to turn away hundreds of students this semester because of space issues, which Rutgers promises to solve for the fall semester. Macada Brandl, Dance/New Jersey’s Executive Director, told me, “Randy’s class is remarkable. I wish I could take it every semester.”

As part of Randy’s class, students are introduced to a range of professional dance companies, many from New Jersey, who perform and lead master classes and lecture/demonstrations. This year, Randy has engaged a number of Dodge grantees: Nimbus Dance Works, Nai-Ni Chen, Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company, American Repertory Ballet, Freespace Dance, Terra Firma, Cleo Mack and The Shua Group. This is an incredible win-win for everyone involved, and needless to say, dance companies in New Jersey are tremendously grateful to Randy for his loyalty to them and his determination to showcase the best of the best work being done by New Jersey dancers and choreographers. The dance companies are receiving excellent compensation from Rutgers. These engagements allow the companies to have more rehearsals, performances, and exposure.

The students at Rutgers are learning about dance in a meaningful way which can only lead to them being dance audience members in the future. (Randy told me, “I see many former students at dance performances all around the state, and they say they love dance now and will continue to seek out dance events in New Jersey.”) In fact, another component of Randy’s Dance Appreciation class involves students going to see performances in other venues. Because he can guarantee the sale of 1,000 seats (his students are required to attend these performances), he has had great success in negotiating with two major presenters, Raritan Valley College (in Branchburg) and The State Theatre (in New Brunswick). He is in conversation with other presenters now, and knowing Randy, it won’t be long before New Jersey dance companies are being featured in venues across the state.

In a creative and sustainable New Jersey, you would hope that the state’s leading university would be making this kind of a difference for an entire genre. Thanks to Saint Randy, it’s happening.

For more information on New Jersey’s dance community, including upcoming performances, check out the Dance/NJ website.

Photo of Randy James courtesy Randy James Dance Works

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