To dance on a stage, most people would probably say that one must not only be well-trained, but able to do just that: dance.

The training part should be a given, of course, but the ability of who can dance and how to dance, is always much more complex, rewarding and surprising. That, and much more, is what dancers with disabilities can offer audiences who see them in events like South Florida’s own annual “danceable” project.

Produced and presented by Tigertail Productions and Florida Dance Association along with Inkub8, “danceable” enables people, whether with disabilities or not, to view dance as a powerful force and an essential, vital art form in our lives.

Witness that for yourself from Thursday through Saturday, when Miami-based choreographer, dancer, performance artist and director of the Inkub8 creative workspace (now in its third year) Heather Maloney, along with award-winning guest choreographer, filmmaker and UCLA professor Victoria Marks, embark on “danceAble 2013.”

Marks will lead off on Thursday with Action Conversation, an interactive workshop on the politics of citizenship, on differences, and on the “other,” and will present several short films on the two days following the workshop. Maloney will debut a work commissioned by Tigertail and Florida Dance Association, unquiet |body, on Friday and Saturday as well.

Both artists have known each for some time now, admired and followed each other’s careers, and have explored the ways in which disabilities can offer a completely unique and varied vision on life and on dance.

“From the perspective of a choreographer, my job is to work with the body, and every body has different capacities, regardless of the differences,” says Maloney, a 34-year-old Virginia native who came to Miami to study at the New World School of the Arts, then spent some time in New York City before returning to South Florida in 2006.

“We are also working with movement and the emotional content of that… It’s a process of discovering what possibilities exist,” considers Maloney, who in unquiet |body once again choreographed for John Beauregard, who dances in a wheelchair.

“This is my third project with him,” adds Maloney.

For Beauregard, who’s collaborated with danceAble from its beginnings, dance liberates him from his physical confines. “That [danceAble] was probably my first workshop,” says Beauregard, who will dance in Maloney’s piece with Joanne Barrett. “I’ve been paralyzed for like 29 years. I’ve always been with the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, and we’ve done some great things,” continues Beauregard. “But the dance…. The dance, overwhelmingly, is the biggest influence on my physical body. It’s magical to me. It’s taught me to listen to my body, and learn so much about it.”

Learning about different aspects of our bodies, of our aging, of our humanity, is something that also comes through in the three short films by choreographer Marks — Outside In, Men, and Veterans — that will be featured at danceAble. All three are works done with Margaret Williams, a U.K.-based film director and longtime collaborator of Marks.

“I like to challenge this idea of disability because, who’s to say what it is? Very often the concept of a disability is determined by our social landscape,” Marks tells artburstmiami from Los Angeles.

“Outside In is a project we did a long time ago, in 1993, with the Candoco Dance Company, which is an integrated dance company that includes dancers with and without disabilities,” says this 2005 Guggenheim winner and Fulbright scholar who led her Victoria Marks Performance Company in the 1980s, worked for three-and-half years as head of choreography at the London Contemporary Dance School, and in 1995 began teaching choreography at UCLA.

“The second film in that series is Men, and that one was done in the Canadian Rockies with a group of elderly men. And then the third one, Veterans, was a project working with a group of veterans who had put themselves in a combat-rehab program and were together for long time,” explains Marks.

Whether through the medium of film, as with these short films, or in the dance pieces she creates, Marks sees the power to deliver a transformative message to audiences. “This is really about how we comport ourselves, with one another. I’ve thought a lot about that, and I come to it through dancing,” Marks adds. “It would be great if I thought anything I made changed the way people thought and felt. I do feel like I work towards that. It is conscious in my mind, but I also feel that work really exists on a person to person level.”

“danceAble 2013” takes place at Inkub8, 2021 NW 1^st Pl., Miami. The workshop/discussion costs $10, on Thursday from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.; concerts cost $20 on Friday and Saturday at 8:30 p.m. Call 305-324-4377 or go to www.tigertail.org.

This article also appears online at Miami New Times.

The 14th annual danceAble performances return, presented by Tigertail Productions and the Florida Dance Association, this year featuring new work from Heather Maloney “unquiet/body” and a workshop and films from noted dance filmmaker Victoria Marks.

Film screening and workshop with Gabri Christa, presented by Tigertail Productions. The New York-based choreographer’s workshop will address dance in film, following by her own films.

Davey Williams is rubbing a kitchen whisk across the strings of his black headless electric guitar as Jill Burton speaks in tongues into a microphone sandwiched in between two plastic cups.  Parts of the crowd appear giddy and delighted, while others lean back in their chairs, arms crossed over their chest.  I am afraid to move.  This is Beautiful Shells.

We are sitting in Inkub8, located in a part of our dearest arts district still on the precipice of gentrification.  Streetlights don’t work.  There are no businesses open.  Featureless figures push shopping carts or slowly ride bicycles down the middle of the street with no destination.

Inkub8’s gated lot is full by the time I arrive.  I park my Jeep on the street, say a quick prayer, and head inside to find an intimate happening.  Three rows of white plastic folding chairs make a semi-circle around two stools and one Fender amp.

We sit down in the back row as Williams and Burton begin.  Williams often plays visually, drawing shapes with his fingertips on the axis points that his strings and frets combine to create.  Burton’s voice darts back and forth somehow both predicting and reacting to William’s guitar.  At times, her voice sounds like a gerbil stuck inside one of those high speed VHS tape rewinders they used to have at Blockbuster Video.  At other times, she breaks out into a soulful bellow that fills my chest with a buzz and a yearning.

People typically go to concerts to hear songs they’ve already heard while standing next to other people who have also heard those songs.  We know the tune; we know the words; maybe we sing along.  The experience is communal and comforting.  This is different.  Here, the audience members are listening to something no one has heard, and while the experience is communal, the reactions vary.  What evokes joy in one evokes sadness in another.  Some applaud.  Others nod in appreciation.  Still others remain motionless.  I look around the room in vain, trying to figure out what I should be doing.

Burton puts down her microphone and walks to the back of the room as Williams looks on, his arms crossed over his guitar, momentarily a part of the audience.  Somehow, Burton’s voice fills the room more completely without a microphone.  She walks behind every member of the audience as she sings, giving each of us our own sound massage.  Moments later, her voice jumps to an impossibly high register and I cannot help but close my eyes and imagine the alien opera diva from the movie The Fifth Element.

After each song, there a few seconds of silence, as the audience waits for a cue that it is time to applaud.  “Apparently we’ve played all our hit singles tonight,” Williams says.  “And the B-sides,” Burton adds.  The crowd laughs uneasily, or maybe it’s just me.

After the intermission, Williams and Burton dive back into the deep end.  Williams’s guitar sounds like an electric organ and spirals downward over and over while Burton bleeps and blips like a video game screen flashing that you are out of lives.

My girlfriend whispers that this has been a Kafka-esque experience.  A moment later, a cockroach scurries from the back of the room towards the performers.  There is a brief pause as the crowd tries in vain to shoo the roach out of the room.  Someone in the crowd yells out: “his name is Gregor!” and the audience breaks out in laughter.  Few audiences would get that joke.  Fewer would laugh.

Gregor loosens the crowd up.  Better yet, Gregor loosens me up.  I settle in and stop worrying whether my reaction is the same as the person next to me.  I realize that we can share the experience of the moment without sharing the reaction to the moment.  Williams and Burton have no plan; and if there is no plan, there can be no intended response.  If there is no right answer, there can be no wrong answer.  If you think there is something to get, you don’t get it.

Davey Williams strums a single blues chord.  It is jarring to hear a familiar sound coming from his guitar.  I am relieved when he turns on three electric toothbrushes and takes turns rubbing them against the strings of his guitar, like Jimmy Page with an obsessive compulsive dental disorder.  Williams puts the toothbrushes on the floor and carefully places his guitar on top of the pile, giving gravity and batteries a chance to make some noise.  With a smirk, he pulls out a bicycle horn and honks it at the pile of noise, and some in the crowd let out a laugh.  Others sit still, listening to the sound after the noise.  I applaud.

Beautiful Shells is auditory umami; a musical truffle.  It’s not sweet, salty, sour, or bitter; it’s not good or bad; but you miss the taste when it is gone.  At least I do.  Blip.  Bleep.  Bloop.

The avant-garde describes the foremost part of an army advancing into battle. Davey Williams and Jill Burton are leading a charge of the musical avant-garde into South Florida this weekend and they are flying the flag of pure American improvisation.

Davey Williams is one of the foremost guitarists in the American avant-garde scene and resides in Birmingham, Ala. Williams first toured with blues singer and guitarist Johnny Shines, who himself had traveled with the legendary soul-seller Robert Johnson. Williams cut his teeth in the Jukehouse scene, playing gigs in rough and tumble bars, barns, and speakeasies throughout the South.

While playing with a Memphis rhythm & blues revue, Williams became interested in surrealism as a philosophy. He connected with the surrealist theory that automatism represents a higher form of behavior expressing the creative artistic force of the unconscious. Automatism fed Williams’ approach to improvisational music by showing that music could be assembled outside of the conscious controls or desires of any one given person.

We see examples of automatism in the visual art of Jackson Pollack and Willem de Kooning. This weekend, we can hear it from Williams’ guitar and the voice of Jill Burton.

Burton is a renowned vocalist who just finished a tour of California.  Like many a military brat, Burton continued a nomadic lifestyle, first meeting Williams in San Francisco in the late 1970s, immersing herself in the 1980s improvisational and experimental scene in New York City, and even teaching music and voice for dancers at the New World School of the Arts here in Miami.

Years spent studying energy has propelled Burton’s improvisational technique. As she explains, free improvisation requires her to tap into an altered brain state. There is a change in her energy, in her frequencies and vibrations. “It is very much about being present in the moment for me,” she says. As local jazz expert Steve Malagodi (who collaborated in helping bring them here to town) describes it, “at a performance, [Burton] is able to really focus the energy, the kind of vibrations that are going around in the room and give a powerful, focused expression of what she is feeling in the room. It is very environmental. It is very shamanistic.”

“Beautiful Shells” is the first Miami collaboration between these performers, presented by the isaw + subtropics organization.

Friday night’s performance is at 9:00 p.m., at Inkub8, 2021 NW 1^st Pl., Miami; www.inkub8.org. Saturday night’s performance, also at 9:00 p.m., will take place at Audiotheque, 924 Lincoln Road, Studio 201, Miami Beach; tickets are $8 online, $10 at the door; subtropics.org.

This preview appears in the Aug. 17 Miami Sun Post.

Vocalist and movement artist Burton and jazz and avant-garde guitarist Williams team up for “Beautiful Shells,” presented by the sound art local organization, isaw+subtropics.

Miami native and Inkub8 Artist in Residence, a multi-media performance exploring mud and the relationship to the body.

Here’s some info on the Lazaro Godoy workshop from our friends at Inkub8.

What: Join Lazaro Godoy for an invigorating workshop combining creative movement and     improvisation with the influence of Orishas dance to explore the exciting genre of physically integrated dance. The focus is to deepen our capacity for movement invention both in our own unique bodies and in relationship to the movements in the Orishas dance. It’s important to explore with them all that their bodies are capable of achieving, without making them feel under stress. Instead, the class should give a sense of well-being and self-acceptance.
As part of the workshop, Lazaro is as well very interested on sharing some ideas and explorations from his newest creation.

When: Thursday August 4th. 1-3pm
Where: Inkub8 (2021 NW 1st. Place, Miami, FL, 33127) www.inkub8.org
Fee: $10 suggested donation
*Meet the artist and mingle with the dance community: Potluck beginning of the season celebration right after the workshop, join us by bringing a favorite dish or drink.

Lazaro Godoy was born in Pinar del Rio, Cuba, in 1977. At the age of 11, he began to breakdance on the streets of Cuba with a small group of teenagers. At the age of 12, he began formal dance.
In 1991, Godoy was accepted to the School of Art in Pinar del Rio. After two years he was invited to train in Havana at the most prestigious school for dance in Cuba, The National Arts School. In 1994 with the support and fortitude of his mother, Godoy immigrated to Miami, Florida where he attended The New World School of Arts in Miami and graduated in 1996. In that same year, Godoy was selected amongst 1,200 applicants at the NFAA Arts Competition and received the first prize for his solo choreography. Soon after Godoy won a scholarship to the Juilliard School in New York, where he graduated in 2000. During this time, he was coached and trained by the Argentinian maestro, Hector Zaraspe.
After graduation, Godoy moved to the Netherlands and joined Introdans where he performed works by Hans van Manen, Nils Christie, Jiri Kylian, David Parsons, Jorma Uotinen, Ed Wubbe and Conny Jansen. In 2001 he joined the Stadt Theater of Bern, Switzerland, directed by Felix Dumeril. Since 2004 Godoy has been working with Stijn Celis, artistic director and choreographer of Bern Ballet. He worked with choreographers such as Amanda Miller, Jacopo Godany, Jo Stromgren, Jiri Kylian, Philippe Saire, Foofwa d’Immobilité and Stijn Cellis. He also choreographed two works at the Bern ballet company. After leaving the Stadt Theater, Godoy joined forces with Stijn Celis to assist in the cheoreography of his work, Beauty More Than Me, which premiered in April 2007. In that same year, Godoy was selected for the Swiss International Coaching Project for Choreographers, which was directed by Susanne Linke. During this period, Godoy began to spread his wings and move into the realm of painting. In this time he danced during the days and worked on his painting throughout the night.
Godoy is currently working as an independent choreographer, dancer and teacher, based in Tel Aviv, Israel. His solo choreography has been presented in festivals in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Israel and Russia. He is also now working on new artistic expressions which combine his dance and paintings.

Eight dance projects are among the 56 finalists in this year’s Knight Arts Challenge. We’re proud that we’ve been covering 7 out of the 8 groups among the finalists at Artburst. The only group we haven’t covered doesn’t exist yet — but a company led by the regal Peter London sure sounds good to us.

Plus there are 5 more projects that definitely could include dance, 3 proposed by presenters we cover and love.

We have to confess, of course, that we too are funded by the Knight Foundation, so we’re bound to get a little gushy.

And we’re especially proud to see on the list another Artburst funder, Miami-Dade County of Cultural Affairs as well as our partner the Arts & Business Council of Miami.

Still, we hope you’ll agree that all the ideas below are winners and join us in wishing them the best when the winners are announced in November.

2011 Knight Arts Challenge Miami Finalists

Camposition: To promote unity in South Florida through a series of dance-theater productions that suggest artistic solutions to the discord that threatens communities

ERE. Bistoury: To foster improvisational performance through a weeklong, multidisciplinary festival offering free public performances

Inkub8: To cultivate local performing artists by creating a residency program that offers time, space and a modest stipend in exchange for artists teaching classes and exhibiting works

Karen Peterson and Dancers: To provide dance instruction to the 3,000 children with disabilities in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, who will perform their work at a gala performance

Miami City Ballet: To broaden programming and support the future of ballet by establishing a fund for the creation of new works

Peter London Global Dance Theater: To stem the flow of talented local dancers who pursue careers elsewhere by launching the Peter London Global Dance Theater in Miami

Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre: To bring attention to Miami’s distinctive cultural voice by having the innovative Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre employ a full-time ensemble to create a repertoire

Tigertail Productions: To promote innovative thinking in the local dance community through a series of artist-curated and site-specific performances that team visiting and local choreographers

DANCE-ISH
FUNDarte: To expand the visibility of Miami artists by creating a virtual office and interactive blog that will build partnerships among local art presenters

Miami Dade College Cultura del Lobo Performance Series: To provide professional development training for Miami’s performers by creating a series of intensive summer master classes

Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs: To “bring home” prominent and influential Miami artists now living elsewhere through a series of performances at the new South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center

Miami Light Project: To introduce the community to the new Light Box at Goldman Warehouse through a campaign featuring monthly podcasts, open mic and dance jams, artist-community potluck lunches and a direct-mail campaign

Teatro Avante: To promote Miami as the center for Latino performing arts by creating a bilingual website featuring the rich and diverse work Latino artists produce in the United States

ALSO: Arts & Business Council of Miami: To broaden the number and diversity of board candidates accessible to arts organizations by developing a website where professionals can explore their interests, review opportunities and pursue board placement