May 2006
In early May, DANCING EARTH performers Rulan, Alejandro, Quetzal and Happy were special guests at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, presenting a dance performance for an audience of 800 Native Youth. Elder Philomena Lakota said , "You captured their hearts!".Enthusiastic students joined in the workshops in capoeira and Indigenous contemporary dance, as well as a hip-hop class taught by Happy Frejo as part of Culture Shock Camp's program.The same weekend, Thosh Collins and street dancers from Arizona performed and taught workshops for Native youth in North Carolina at a conference for the prevention of tobacco use. Spreading good energy across the continet with the healing power of dance!This month, rehearsals start for Santa Fe Dance Festival, which will be at the Lensic Theater held in santa Fe June 9-11, and the Dance Barn on June 17-18. The opening weekend, the choreography of Rulan Tangen will be alongside nationally recognised companies LINES ballet of San Francisco, and Gus Giordano's Jass Company of Chicago, as she was commissioned to make a new work for modern dance company MOVING PEOPLE.With 4 outstanding male dancers of MPDT, she is creating a quartet inspired by imagery of Mayan stone art as experienced during her winter adventures in Mexico.Also on June 11, as part of the SFDF, DANCING EARTH will be presenting a new women's trio, with the luminous Jessica Allen, Cina Littlebird , and Rulan, embodying the dancing deer women spirit that is so prominent in native oral histories, as well as in writings and painting of contemporary native artists and writers. In research for THE NEW WORLD, Rulan came across an account of a women's deer dance written in the early1600s.On June 18, THUNDERSTOMP will be performed for a program especially for youth.
Rulan will also be creating a duet this month to be shown as a work in progress at a conference for dance historians at the Banff Centre in Canada in June.
Spring brings renewal and inspiration, as the trees begin to bloom, new dances are falling from the skies!