One month till curtain up and we are all working hard.

Rachel was in Paris on Sunday but is hoping to fly back in time for Wednesday's rehearsal!

Here she is in "Domestic Goddess" reciting a short poem about cooking.

Jen our props maker got two of the 'shorter' Crows to have their body shapes drawn. Why? All will be revealed at the next Crows Show!

Finally got round to adding photos of our show from the Fringe Festival in February. We will be performing the show again at The Body Festival in Christchurch in September.

This year the birthday of fabulous Jo fell on a Wednesday (Crows' rehearsal day), and Sally baked a delicious cake. We raised our glasses after rehearsal to yet another triumphant year ahead.

Jo and Sally aren't old, but they are dancing in the direction of the much documented "young old".

Let me count the ways that Crows Feet dancing—and probably any regular dancing—keeps you young.

1. It strengthens your bones.
2. Improves your posture and therefore your figure.
3. Raises fitness and muscle tone.
4. Makes extra demands on your brain.
5. Improves your spatial sense and physical memory.
6. Charges you with adrenalin at performance time.
7. Raises expectations: the team depends on you.
8. Gives structure to your week, if you work and live alone.
9. Makes you wear outrageous costumes at least three times a year.
10. Provides a warm, supportive, fun social group.

Last week we had are own little award ceremony before class. As Jan was unable to come to the Fringe Awards Jenny presented her with the 'best dance show duck' (and the beers).

Jen made her own presentation to Jan of a beautiful cupcake, and Jan gave us each a chocolate rose!

Cupcakes is a theme of the year, already.

They featured prominently in our show, as Nigella sang their praises, I orated my totally original Ode to a Cupcake — and we tangoed around trays of delectable cupcakes ingeniously constructed from fabric and other  materials. Jennifer Holdaway, our wonderful artist in residence, had done it again!

These are truly works of art. And unlike the cupcakes being made that very afternoon in a continuing education course at Wellington High School, these cupcakes are eternal. Forever.

We loved dancing at . A proper stage, a proper floor, great lighting system! Helpful staff who went the second mile! Lovely seats, nearly all of them filled by appreciative people! If you think I'm just smarming here, read this: the Expressions staff actually made a cupcake for everyone in the audience.

And the shows went really well. One young woman commented with delight on the way our grey hair glowed in the lights. (Silver is the new platinum blonde.)

For all that, there's something truly marvellous about finishing the last show. Tucking into some real food, sipping champagne, toasting ourselves and Katrina and Elise and Kevin, without whom we'd have collapsed in a flipping shambles. And above all Jan, front right in this photo.

It has been a busy week preparing for our new show, which opens tonight! Last night we were at Expressions having our  technical rehearsal. Katrina has come up with some stunning lighting effects. It was also a chance for us to get used to the new stage and settle into the fab dressing rooms. 

The week was not without it's fun, on Wednesday we celebrated Rachel's birthday, click on 'read more' for extra photos, including Rachel looking gorgeous in her fishnets and gingham pinny!

For the new up and coming show 'How to be a domestic goddess' we have the option of wearing fishnet tights. Not being one to have ever owned a pair I mentioned it to some of my younger work colleagues, then decided a few days later to work a particular friday from home. I'm now accused of attending the Sevens doing 'interesting' things in fishnet tights!!! 

For our new show, we'll be dancing in black shoes. (Until now, I've only danced barefoot.) Some Crows are wearing character shoes, but jazz shoes will be acceptable.

That makes me happy. Maybe dancing in character shoes with their snappy little heels would be fun, but that would take some getting used to, and time is short. Instead I'm going to buy a pair of flat, soft, friendly little jazz shoes.

Today I looked in Paula Hunt's secondhand sale, and found only character shoes and ballet shoes. I hurried to Gubbs, but they're moving their store today. Maybe Tuesday?

Meantime Tania has kindly lent me a pair, around 25 years old and still hard at work. Thanks Tania.

Crowsfeet practises have now stepped up to 2 a week - 2 hours on a Wednesday night and 3 hours on a Saturday afternoon.  And suddenly the realisation sets in that the show is not that far away!!  Apart from 'How to be a Domestic Goddess', a smaller group of Crows are working on 'Leaving Home' remembering and finetuning the choreography.

Six dancers from Crows Feet were involved in a performance at Te Papa in December. The piece entitled "The Monstrous Red Dress" was the work of Lauren Skogstad, and formed part of her studies in Spatial Design for Massey University.

It was an amazing experience being part of this event. Lauren's creative thinking and design is exceptional and the impact of the train going over the edge of the building and hanging down was very powerful. The performance day was a creative delight, although because of the wild wind the final throwing of the red train over the side of the building was more complex and we had to improvise with what we could do with the grey dress/train.

As we came around the corner of Te Papa, holding for dear life onto Tania's grey and red trains, I felt moved to tears (apart form the wind creating it's own tears in my eyes!) as Tania looked up at Elizabeth. The power of the wind was in the powerfulness of the production. Because of the danger of Tania 'taking off' we had to change the ending and return her to the point at which the red dress started, thus emphasizing the interweaving of the sensual and flamboyant red, with the more sombre everyday grey - even the business/everyday woman has a sensual and flamboyant self!

I have just returned from India where, with fellow Crows Tania and Carolyn,  I attended 2 classes in the classical Indian dance form Kathak. Here we are in our dance costume, tightly wound round with a long scarf, what you cannot see are the beautiful bells tied to our calves that tinkled as we rhythmically stamped our feet. We only touched on the basics but that was still quite a challenge! We had a lovely teacher, ably assisted by her senior students who we were also lucky enough to see dance.

We had a lovely time with our photographer Penny Towns in Liz Melchior's kitchen taking publicity shots for our next show.

Tania bought some suitably garish looking cup cakes at the supermarket which gradually got demolished throughout the shoot.

Jan is now busy researching pearls of wisdom from the lips of the gorgeous Nigella Lawson for the script we will use during the show.

Time to think about the cossies now - need to find some sexy stockings!    

We're working on our next show, whose name is still a mystery to me. But these are my notes on a little section of the Pastry Dance. I was finding it hard to remember because A. we keep changing it and B. my granny brain makes me a little slower to catch on.

When we showed our piece to the other groups there was much unseemly mirth, as my revered Latin teacher used to say. I thought it was because I kept losing the beat, but Jen kindly advised me later that dancers usually keep their tongues inside their mouths.

I knew my husband stuck his tongue out when fiercely concentrating. I knew my kids did it and even my grand-daughter Elsie does it. But me? Never!

Jan looked like a particularly fit and gorgeous 40-year-old at a low-stress birthday party last Wednesday night - - agree? Liz offered her home for the event and Sarah did the catering. Verdict on both: fantastic. We counted the Crows in our 60s, and there are seven of us now.*

On her actual birthday, Jan went whitebaiting with another over-60s dancer, Jamie Bull. It's bliss out there on Otaki Beach, regardless of wind and cold. You just tune out of life's hassles and into the universe. And as a special birthday treat, Jan caught about 10 ounces of bait. This seemed like a miracle after the shocking season they've had so far, with whitebait dribbling into the nets in ones and twos.

*That statistic holds until I turn 70 next February...

 I went to a conference in Jamaica...watch this space for more detail!!!

I recently returned from a trip to the uk (June 09) and had the good fortune to see two excellent examples of older adults performing. This is now no longer becoming unusual but in the past 5 or 6 years seems to be a growing movement. The first example was a wonderful BBC programme in the Imagine series about a Sadlers Well's project and the second was  the Belgian Les Ballets C de la B showing how wonderful a dance company can be when its dancers are not uniform in size shape or age.

Company of Elders 

"An inspirational group of amateur performers all over the age of 60, the Company of Elders are the jewel in the crown of Sadler’s Wells’ Connect department and an off shoot of the theatre’s arts appreciation club. Fulfilling the theatre’s commitment to the local community and to making dance as accessible as possible, Connect’s work includes all abilities and ages spanning 0 to 90, challenging perceptions of who can and should dance." (Dance UK - the national voice for dance)

They recently were the feature of a BBC documentary hosted by Alan Yentob which aroused much public interest. It showed the Company working creatively on a contemporary dance piece with Choreographer Chris Tudor.

"Challenging pre-conceptions about the physical and creative abilities of the over 60s, the film follows the company in their quest to choreograph, learn, practice and perform a brand new work."

See the Dance UK link:

http://www.danceuk.org/metadot/index.pl?id=26161&isa=DBRow&op=show&dbview_id=22558

Les Ballets C de la B

Les Ballets C de la B, an internationally renowned and popular contemporary dance company  performed their wonderful new work "Ashes" by choreographer Koen Augustijnen, at Southbank in London, as part of a current European festival tour.

Excerpts can be seen on U Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyQrK_Q2HOo

A leading contemporary dance company they also excite because their company contains dancers of all shapes sizes cultures and ages, with dancers clearly in their 40's and maybe 50's, perfoming not only with strength and stamina but also the depth and richness that comes from maturity.

Tania Kopytko

Way back in April Rachel wrote about our fun with kitchen percussion led by Andreas lepper. Since then we have expanded this theme to the elasticity of enormous dough-like lengths of material and rolling pins, sticky oven gloves and trays, and cupcakes galore. Even managed to stir in a bit of tango. Some interesting prop making for me in this mix. I do love the 'how' and the 'what if'.

The Crows are certainly a multi talented lot and we were ready for some lightness and humour. Although if you popped your head into practise sessions there is always a lot of laughter, what with nana balancing, the twists and turns of tango and the ever present challenges our age brings, when our minds go blank even though we totally new the steps just last week. The high tea coming up will of course be real cupcakes, not the felt and material variety.

The latest issue of DANZ Quarterly (Winter 2009) has an article by Ann Hunt on Crows Feet, marking our 10th anniversary. The article gives a brief history of the group from its first performance in 1999, for the launch of Osteoporosis NZ, through to our latest show, Choros, for the 2009 Fringe Festival. Jan, quoted throughout, talks about the impetus behind the group and why she thinks it is important to give older dancers the chance to perform, " I think there is a huge affirmation that comes from being able to move well physically ... dancing out there in public is saying this is who I am, this is what I look like, this is how I can move, and it's ok."

DANZ Quarterly: more information: www.danz.org.nz/danzq.php

Vivek Kinra has been teaching Crows Feet some of the basics of Bharata Natyam. We did our best but soon discovered why this beautiful dance form takes so many years of intensive study to master.

Sitting deeply into 1st and 2nd plie positions was a bit of a challenge - even more so when we were required to bend our stiff finger joints into extraordinary shapes.

But what an excellent way to develop an appreciation of a different dance style. We will have new insights when we go to see Vivek's forthcoming show 'Anand - Joy in Motion' which celebrates 20 years of his performance work in New Zealand. 

We were privileged at the end of Vivek's workshop to be given a short preview performance of his new show.  

 Couldn't pass up the opportunity for some traditional Scottish dancing when a friend invited me to a 'hoolie' to celebrate Scottish Homecoming Year. Really just an excuse for a great party! I hadn't done any scottish dancing since the Gay Gordons at primary school, but with a caller telling us what to do it wasn't too hard to pick up. There is nothing quite like a room full of people dancing full tilt to make you feel good and banish those winter blues!

Recently I joined a group of friends and had a merry dance thru' some lovely kiwi farm countryside including coastal beaches and some high ridges with brilliant views and fortunately good weather. We were walking the Cape Campbell Walk. It re-enforced how important it is to take time out and enjoy our own backyard and meet some great 'can do' New Zealanders.

In my job, archival material often comes across my desk. The other day I handled a lovely new addition to our collections that I was totally unaware of.

New Zealand theatre & motion picture was a magazine published from 1920 to 1930; but from my point of view the most interesting fact was that it incorporated the New Zealand dancing journal in 1929. I looked up the original title and discovered that only one issue was published on September 16th 1929. There are two known copies, one is held by the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington and the other is held by the Auckland War Memorial Museum Library.

The original magazine supposedly covers ballroom dancing, which I have yet to confirm, but in NZ theatre & motion picture the advertisements of many of the dance schools cover a variety of dance/recreational styles beyond what we would consider today’s norm.

The Lane-Brown School in Wellington offered: dancing, fencing, physical training and remedial gymnastics, fancy dancing for juveniles, character, operatic, rhythmic ballroom and step dancing.

And it was not just the major cities advertising – the Broadway School of Dancing in Palmerston North taught operatic dance, grecian dance, Character, Eccentric (the weird, grotesque or out of the ordinary – e.g., Snake Hips dance, the Shimmy, Legomania etc.) and Ballroom. In the Manawatu Action songs were a speciality.

I came across a beautiful photo of Miss Bettina Edwards (a doyen of the Auckland ballet scene), when she was a young dance instructor with Miss Cecil Hall’s School of Stage and Ballroom Dancing.

And finally a delightful article by Iris Montgomery titled: a Few Don’ts for students of Operatic (Ballet) Dancing – “Do not imagine you can become a dancer in six months. Terpsichore is a jealous goddess, and those who seek fame among her votaries must sacrifice at her altar years of patient study and hours of physical labour”*. I would think current dance students would heartily agree.

*N.Z. Theatre & Motion Picture & N.Z. Dancing Journal. Vol. X no.3 ; 1st March, 1930.

Crows Feet Dance Collective never rests! As soon as we finish one show we are on to the next.

Our lighting designer Katrina said after the last show 'time to do something light hearted and amusing' and I agreed.

For someone who never cooks (I am not allowed in the kitchen - mostly), it is strange that I should have a thing about Nigella Lawson. I find her fascinating, even enchanting!

So our new work is going to be called  LA REVIEW DE CUISINE or HOW TO BE A DOMESTIC GODDESS (to steal the title from one of Nigella's books).

I have found a lovely score by the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu and this time the choreography is a collective effort by all the Crows.

We are going to have a percussion section in the middle of it. Our lovely drum man Andreas Lepper is going to turn us into a percussion orchestra using cooking implements from the kitchen. Andreas did not come to see our last show. 

He said he was 'sulking' because we hadn't used him. (Believe that if you wish!)

We have done the pastry  dance and are now grappling with cup cakes. Nigella - eat your heart out!

At the after-match bun-fight (actually champagne and delicious goodies) Jan had a special request. Could I ask Elsie (5) to draw a picture of her granny dancing? I popped the question and Elsie had plenty of her own in return. Who was Jan? (She's our leader and choreographer, the one with the golden stick.) Why did she want a picture? (That stumped me.) Why did she ask Elsie? (She has seen other drawings by Elsie on my fridge.) When would I give Jan the picture? Would Jan come to our house to collect it? What would she do with the picture? etc. etc. When the interrogation was over, Elsie obligingly drew this picture, complete with hair standing on end, scary eyes, puffy trousers and red gloves, or as near red as the crayons allowed. She explained that she couldn't make the legs bend.

...it was fantastic - incredibly powerful stuff and they all get such a lot of satisfaction or whatever you call it when you do something well... women are really the mainstay of the country I feel and this group really shows the power women possess. Not possessive power but inward I feel anyway I thought how much more real this small group was than anything you see on the stage in a theatre or on telly. Just a small hall and we were on the same level not far from them ...the group seem to get better and better. 

Extract from an email from Margaret Clark. Blogged by Gill Clark.

First performance last night was heaps of fun. We hurled ourselves into it (speaking for myself) and our audience was brilliant.

First feedback by email:

"My goodness gracious me!!!  What energy, what style, what fabulous costumes, what great music, and what MEMORIES!  Congratulations on a masterly performance. [...] Enjoy the rest of the season! "

A big thank you to the audience that feeds our energy -- and to my hardworking feet!

Rehearsing the  Maenad section of Choros. A leisurely caravan crosses the stage before we fling ourselves into the full bacchanalia!!

Only a few of the Crows are in the new dance Leaving Home. Here's a glimpse - rehearsing in petticoats and boots, but no camisoles or skirts or capes yet because they are still being fitted.

These are three photos from previous Crowsfeet Shows.  The photo of the 2 dancers in red is from the dance Quintet.  The 2 dancers in white is from A Motor in my Soul (Isadora Duncan) and the third one is from Going for Baroque.

I am not a professional dancer, but I have been doing ballet from age 8 to 16 (when I got other interests, like boys and partying), back to jazz ballet in my early twenties. But I don't like 'pretty' movements, I really like the choreography we're doing right now. 

I've also been studying/working as a mime for about a year, also in my early twenties (and that's a long time ago). There definetely is a relationship between contemporary dance and mime, but I like contemporary dance even better. You don't have to tell the whole story, but you work more with images and feelings, there is more soul quality to it. I love it! But getting the whole show ready to perform in less than two weeks, is hard work.

Magrita

We love rehearsing in Vivek Kinra's studios. Here the Crows listen to Jan's directions. Eeek! It's getting urgent: only two weeks before the first performance of Choros! Can we do it? Yes we can.

Vivek Kinra's Mudra Dance Company are the guest artists performing with the Crows in our Fringe Festival show this year. Glorious Indian classical dance. I can't wait to see them

It's the end of the holidays, tomorrow it's back to school and work. I work in the same school my children are attending. I work with one boy who has learning difficulties; a rewarding but sometimes tiresome job.

Over the holidays I've been doing yoga almost every morning. I probably won't be able to keep that up. I've also been practicing the difficult parts of CHOROS, but the children thought I looked more like the Easter Bunny than a Greek goddess! Let's blame it on the lack of costume. The children also kept singing this silly Dutch children's song, which I keep humming myself when doing it; and I can tell you, it doesn't sound like the original music at all! But at least I'm working on it.

Great to see Jenny & Daphne back at class last week after their 5 day rafting trip of the Clarence River. I reckon Jan should create a couple of lifts in the dance to make use of your upper body strength!! Who dropped their hearing aid at the last class?

First full company rehearsal tonight after a 5 week break for Christmas - everyone feeling a bit creaky!
Jan (our beloved Director) had instructed us all to 'keep fit' over the holidays. Having spent the best part of a month doing very little exercise I panicked last week and searched around for something suitably energetic to get me moving again. A lifestyle supplement in the Dom. had extolled the virtues of 'hot yoga', so with some trepidation I went along to a class. After the initial panic of feeling unable to breathe, I found my muscles relaxing and stretching. A start, but not enough! So, I visited my Pilates instructor for a 1-to-1 on the aptly named 'reformer' (looks like a bed but is more akin to the medieval rack).
However, any fear of overstretched or sore muscles was allayed by Tania, who brought her balls (tennis balls that is) to class tonight, and instructed us in the art of deep pressure massage. Thanks Tania.
I'm off for a hot bath now!

My granddaughter Elsie has been a dancer from the word Go. (Aren't they all?) She has often kindly instructed me. Performance has always been part of the deal. When smaller, she'd arrange complete shows, including choreography, ticket writing, seating the audience of dolls, performance and of course applause. Now she is 5 years old, she is more inclined to run these performances for a large group of (invisible) school mates.

It's inspiring watching children use their bodies, isn't it? Elsie uses her whole body to explain and demonstrate the point she is making. What a gift. How inhibited most adults are by comparison.