Over the year I have spent time trying to get more organized and able to approach my life and schedule in a more balanced way. I love doing all the dance projects I do, I realize that I love having a hand in co-ordinating, and actualizing them, even though I wish I didn’t have to. Or I think I wish I didn’t have to. There is joy and satisfaction in realizing projects that have been ideas for a long time. However, there is a lot of joy and a different kind of satisfaction in having the time to chill with the one you love, cook dinner, grow vegetables, go for walks. The joys of this kind of time are felt fully, for me, when balanced with meaningful work.

I’m working on two big projects right now, and a fundraiser to support them both.

Gettin’ Through The Night is an event in preparation and celebration of Stand Up Dance’s project for Scotiabank’s Nuit Blanche ‘dance like no one is watching’. It’s big and fun. I’m excited and nervous about it. We’ll be previewing some of the ‘dance like no one is watching’ material for Nuit Blanche, and I’ll be previewing a bit of my new solo. And we’llb e teachign the audience a little dance!

Then there’s Nuit Blanche. 32 dancers on four teams dancing in sets of 30 minutes in relay over the course of 12 hours across the city. So exciting and so many logistics. It’s going to be amazing though. October 3-4 everywhere in Toronto. The actual schedule and map for our project is on www.standupdance.com

And finally there is my solo. ‘based on actual unrelated events’. I’m really learning about space and focus and time. Actually I’m good on the space and focus part. I just am terrible about understanding time. What I mean by that is that while I am creating the solo I have no space for the co-ordination of the other projects. So that even if I’m only in the studio for two and a half hours, it takes up more like five hours of space in my day. Which means that converting my brain back to logistics and fundraising for Nuit Blanche is really problematic. And vice versa. It’s hard to be in organizing mode and switch into expansive creative zone in studio for a few hours…

Regardless.

The solo is going to be great. I’ve already seen the brochure put out by DanceWorks that it’s in. It always helps to see a design in print for your work. Nothing like something concrete!

I’m actually having a really good time working on the solo. It’s just a matter of being disciplined about my schedule.

It goes up at Hub 14, my studio in downtown Toronto October 20 – 25 & 27 – 30. It’s a ten show run with an opening dance created and performed by one of: Susie Burpee, Val Callum, Alicia Grant/Cara Spooner, Karen Kaeja, and Julia Sasso. The amazing Trevor Schwellnus is doing the design, of the space and the lights. Hub 14 is going to be transformed!

So that’s it for me right now. These are the things that are consuming me.

I am looking forward to more balance.

I’m on the mend: back on the bike, in the studio, dancing tentatively again, retraining the firing patterns in my body, finally correcting the alignment in my left foot.

I’m curious about this. Typically dancers injure their left body parts. The reason is that typically we learn exercises on the right, which means we go over them, practice them several times on the right before we actually do them ‘full out’. Then we switch sides and our poor left legs, particularly, just haven’t practiced moving so quickly and precisely as much, over years and years. But how does this relate to my knee injury. I jumped up into someone’s arms, on my good side, I might mention. It was choreography, but I went up leading with the right. So I am coming down on the left, and my foot hits a slippery patch and boom, here we are nine months later. Most of my friends who have waited nine months for something get a new life in tangible form at the end of it. I also think there is something to the fact that I was slightly higher up off the ground than usual in this lift. When I turned my head as I was coming down I realized this and did something. I don’t know what. But something happens in that moment. It’s like tensing up as you realize that you are about to be in a car accident. The body tenses to brace for impact. The problem is that it makes it worse. If we were able to stay fluid the impact would be less. However, if I were less tense, I’m not sure that I still wouldn’t have fallen to the floor. There were just too many forces at play: gravity, spiraling body, pushing off someone else, slippery floor.

So here we are nine months later, skipping and doing plies and redistributing weight on my feet in a more aligned way. And I’m getting ready for some amazing things.

The many months of rest have given space for reflection, even though in those moments of rest I wasn’t able to say to myself, ‘reflect’, it seems that some did occur. And I was able to put that to good use. I delivered a keynote address at a conference for graduating dance students and emerging dance artists. I posted the speech on my blog, it was condensed and published in Canada’s leading dance magazine, The Dance Current, and the full version will be printed in a new ‘zine for emerging dancers called Merge.I will also be teaching a Solo Making workshop for emerging artists in June at my Studio Hub 14 in Toronto.

This time has also allowed me to incubate new ideas and clarify my vision for Stand Up Dance.

The amazing up-coming projects are:

Improv Series: Compose as we Play

A series of workshop/jams to develop an ensemble to perform Improvisation. Many dates, April & May. Sign up for one or all.

Solo Making Workshop for Emerging Artists

This marks the third summer I’ve offered this workshop in Toronto. I have also led this workshop in Peterborough, Ottawa, and Winnipeg. Many participants have developed the work initiated in Solo Making, and have performed their solos publicly. June 8 – 20, 2009

How To Save The World (as demonstrated) Through Movement

This new project uses biomimicry, form + function as inspired by nature, to address and examine current social, economic and environmental realities through movement. Two of the dichotomies that will serve as points of departure are: Work/Convenience & Culture/Consumerism.

This project begins in the summer of 2009 with community participants in Hamilton ON, and at Harvest Moon Farm in southern Manitoba. Stand Up Dance is seeking out other communities who would like to participate in a workshop to investigate these ideas through performance research. I believe that your experience of the ideas makes you an expert in them. I’ll share my creative tools to generate material with you if you share your responses and experiences with me.

If you have a group or are part of a specific community that would be interested in being a part of this cross Canada creation project please be in touch.  Examples of groups or communities that might have a distinct perspective: • University students in liberal and arts programs • New Canadians who bring in specific cultural understandings and have certain expectations of Canada. • Seniors group, people who have lived through other economic and environmental crises • Residents of distinct geographic communities, i.e. coal towns, or off the grid communities. • Remote communites. • Any other group who might be interested.

e-mail omeagan@gmail.com

based on actual unrelated events

The solo you’ve been waiting for! based on actual unrelated events takes three actual unrelated events and through physical explorations and manipulations relates them. In true stand-up dance form the performance mixes stand-up comedy and contemporary dance like you’ve never even imagined it. The work will be presented in October 2009 at Hub 14 in a ten-show run. That’s right. Ten shows. Plenty of time to see it, love it, tell your friends and neighbours and see it again. Plus each show will feature a fantastic opening act danced by some of Toronto’s most exciting artists. Check back for more or join my e-mail list to stay informed.

dance like no one is watching at scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2009

Teams of dancers performing throughout Toronto over the course of twelve hours. This is going to be fun. And in the spirit of dance competition, this project sees teams dance in relay fashion across the city to music heard only in their proximity. Become part of the action, sponsor a dance team!

For more information e-mail omeagan@gmail.com

Stand Up Dance Fundraiser

While dance is one of those forms that doesn’t require a whole lot of external equipment, it does require support. And now that the anorexic dancer is out of fashion and health, wellness, and longevity are in, dancers need sustenance. Sustenance requires money. And food.

How you can help:

Host a fundraising dinner party featuring Stand Up Dance dancers who’ll eat and dance for you and your friends.

Sponsor the fundraiser or any of Stand Up Dance’s activities and have your logo projected on the dancers while they perform the move you’ve bought.

Come on out to Stand Up Dance’s fundraiser in July 2009.

To get involved e-mail omeagan@gmail.com

This is the written version of the keynote address I delivered at On The Move Conference in Toronto in February 2009. While my ideas have been formed through my experiences as a contemporary dance artist, I believe they are applicable across dance disciplines.

Motivation: What is it about dance that you love?
Do you need to dance no matter what?
If yes, then you can look for every kind of dance gig available, from working on cruise ships, to burlesque troupes, dance teams for professional sports teams, auditioning for the dance competition shows, to musical theatre. There are commercial dance groups in Toronto and other cities that perform at corporate events, or delivery dance-o-grams, there are circus groups that include dance and related skills. DanceOntario has a website with lots of listings for Ontario, use your internet skills to find other dance opportunities outside of Ontario.

Will you only dance in work that inspires you?
Many dancers as they move from just graduated to emerging find a few choreographers that they really like working with and work only with them. When they aren’t working with those artists they do other things. Some are massage therapists, work in a library, teach something, work in the service industry, or are physiotherapists, firefighters, lawyers or pharmacists.

Do you want to make your own dances?
Gather your peers together and work on something. At first it may be hard to pay dancers, so create a collective where those who want to choreograph can, and those who want to dance can. Share the responsibilities and make it a win/win situation for everyone.

Do you like teaching?
This might be your main expression of dance, or it might compliment the rest of your dance life. Many dance artists teach different forms of dance at studios to children and teens, and many also teach related practices like pilates, yoga, gyrotonic, conditioning through imagery, creative movement, or fitness classes.

Do you love dancing, hate teaching, like writing, selling, baking, or bartending?
Some people find that teaching drains their creative energy and would rather spend their non dancing time not dancing. Arts administration is a very big field and there is always work out there. The benefit of this is that you’ll learn a lot that will benefit your own career.  Others make a part of their living in other creative fields like web design, or making clothes or bags and selling them at arts and craft stores and markets. Same with baking. Bartending and other service area jobs such as catering are good, but may get tiring after a while. As time goes on you may find that you’ve worked a lot of part time jobs and decide that a complimentary career is better. Or that you love working at the local café.

Figure these things out. Once you’ve figured them out, you’ll know how to make choices in your working life.

A note on logistics: If you are a dancer, it is important that you continue to train, you need to stay in shape and practice dancing. That means you need to be in class. Open professional morning classes are the most common way to do that, and keep you connected to your community.  You will want to figure out a way that you don’t have to work every morning. And depending on how much sleep you need it might not be the best choice to work at a bar that closes at 2 a.m. if you are trying to make class the next morning. There are evening classes too, but since the majority of dancers take morning class, it’s a better way to keep connected to your community.

Expertise
According to Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. By the time you’ve graduated from your dance training program, you are probably an expert in dancing. However, you are not necessarily an expert at performing or creating. You need to practice these skills. Take workshops, and form a collective where you can take turns practicing.

There are a number of professional development workshops offered in your own city throughout the year. A plug for my own organization: Hub 14 offers a series of classes and workshops to compliment, augment and diversify a dancers training. www.hub14.org. Service organizations will have lists, so will publications like the Dance Current. There are a number of workshops across Canada, in the United States, in Europe and everywhere else too. If you aren’t sure what you need, ask another dance artist whose work you admire where they would recommend. There are professional development grants available that you can apply for to go abroad and train.

You might have to ‘play to play’ for a while. This also goes for whatever else you are working on building (a regular following in a class you are teaching independently for instance). Workshops are good grounds for practicing these skills, as are self-initiated projects and opportunities to dance for free in other independent projects.  Many established dance artists still occasionally participate in certain dance projects for free. It depends on what it is. You can set and change your own boundaries on this as you proceed.

Make dance upon graduating. Most dance programs in Canada train dancers, choreography is another skill that requires a lot of practice too. In the same way that you might put your very first drawing on the fridge, but wouldn’t necessarily charge money for, you will show your first dances to friends and colleagues but not the broader public.  My suggestion is to make your dance and invite one or two trusted, more experienced artists to come in and give you feedback. Don’t make a whole piece and invite someone in to give you feedback on your last rehearsal before it goes before an audience. Have your outside eye come in several times over the course of your process so that you have time to work with the suggestions and insights and incorporate them into the piece.

You can team up and produce a show yourself, or you can apply to put your piece in a festival or mixed program. Producing is a whole other skill set that is valuable and challenging. I would advise forming that collective and some of the members produce the show, some choreograph, some dance. One of my favourite examples of this is the Young Lungs Collective in Winnipeg. They are sometimes as many as twelve strong and they produce one or two shows a year. Two or three of them produce the show and do not perform or choreograph for that one. Then next show three others produce and so on.  Another benefit of a collective is that even if one or two members are away or too busy for a specific project, there are still enough members to proceed.

Money
Don’t go broke. Nothing is worse than having to pass up the amazing artistic experience you’ve been working towards because you can’t afford it. Create a fund reserved for professional development. Create another one for when you need a vacation or when you are injured. 10% of everything you make in each. Do it.

There are lots of money workshops available through the dance service organizations. Take some of them. I recently took a big three day workshop on wealth and money management. One of the most obvious things they pointed out was that we are not taught about money management in school unless we take a degree geared to it. I remember in high school learning how to write a cheque in family studies class, and having to do a budget for groceries. This isn’t really useful because a grocery budget is contingent on the actual price of groceries. It is not a transferable concept related to the rest of your income. A better thing to find out is how much you should be spending on rent – I think it’s supposed to be no more than one third of your income.

If you figure out that you have to save 20% of your income (as outlined above), and you know how much your rent is, and you have a rough idea of how much the rest of your expenses are, you’ll know if you are making enough or if you need to figure out another shift, class, or gig every week or month.  Remember to budget for dance class too. Join the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists for training reimbursement and ticket discounts.

I am defiantly not an expert on money. There are lots of people who are. Go and talk to one or two and figure out a system that you can follow and start saving.

Support & Balance
A dance life can be challenging, and exhilarating when you can see forward motion and are engaged in satisfying work. It is vital to have a support network. Families don’t always understand because what we do doesn’t look like traditional success. Make sure you have people around you who value what you do and can point out all the good in what you are doing.  Some of these people need to be other dancers because you will want to talk about the improvement in your plié at some point. Those dance service organizations are good for that too.

For all the dedicated to dance stuff you will be doing, do some other stuff too. If you are in a relationship you probably do some stuff that your partner is into that isn’t dance related, and you hang out, and snuggle.  If you aren’t, make sure you hang out and snuggle with friends!

Dance dance dance! It has to be related to the rest of the world, so interact with it. Find inspiration in other art forms, get to know the world of contemporary art. Geek out on all that you are into. One thing feeds another.

Get Started
When I first graduated, I teamed up with another dancer who worked at a hip and beautiful bar in Ottawa to create Momentum: a series for emerging choreographers performing their own solos in intimate environments. There were five or six of us and over the course of two years we produced monthly performances at the bar.  We attached ourselves to bigger festivals happening in the city and gained some attention from presenters. We took turns producing and eventually toured in Ontario, all without funding. This was a great way to get experience performing and creating and to learn about producing.

Get started right away. Do something towards your career right now and every day or every week. Keep training.  Go see shows and meet people.  Ask questions.  People love answering.  Make sure you love it.

Some information about me:

MEAGAN O’SHEA
“Off the wall, impossible to categorize, fun” Montreal Gazette

Nationally acclaimed performer Meagan O’Shea’s is known for her solo work, interactive installations, and collaborative creations.  The first graduate from The School of Dance’s (Ottawa) Professional Training Program in 1996, she now lives in Toronto where she divides her time between research, play, creating, performing, training and teaching.  Her own work includes movement, improvisation, choreography, clown, comedy, theatre, storytelling, interviews, and tactile association to create innovative performance experiences for audiences in Canada, the United States, Europe and the U.K.

O’Shea recently founded Stand Up Dance, a company to support her work that she defines as humourous performance work that examines important ideas from a lateral perspective, and engages an audience in an untraditional way.

She is currently working on a new solo based on actual unrelated events that seeks to explore and discover the relationship between: Home/less/ness in the body; the evolution and translation of different languages and how that relates to movement or How Many German Words I Know; the superfluous and erroneous nature of the prolific global corn crop and what’s happening to the honeybees?

Other solo work includes: Coffee for One (2007), an undisciplined performance created through a series of tasks in order to discover the meaning of life; something blue (2006), which examines the physical manifestation of emotional trauma through the lens of ended marriage, and questions the lack of ritual for love lost, accompanied by an interactive wedding dress; As I unravel small maps of my spirit (2005); Night Stills (2003). She is also incubating a new group project How to Save the World (as demonstrated) through Movement through a series of residencies.  Meagan created dance like no one is watching – contemporary dance meets mobile clubbing, a street dance project with online component featured at Toronto’s 2008 SummerWorks Festival.

Her group work has been commissioned by IDAC, Loose Confederacy of Newfoundland, Dusk Dances, Dance Ontario, Whetstone Productions, YMI Dancing, and restorative justice organization CCJC. She has been guest artist in residence at fabrik Potsdam in Germany, Earthdance in Massachusetts, Le Groupe Dance Lab in Ottawa, Sunshine Coast Dance Society in Sechelt BC, The Banff Centre, Dance Base in Edinburgh Scotland, and The Theatre Centre in Toronto.

Meagan also works as a choreographer, director, teacher, performance coach, and outside eye.  She is co-founder and director of HUB 14, a collectively run dance and performance studio which is offering a series of classes and workshops called Public Works: trainings for performer with bodies. Upcoming workshops: The Falling Body with Dana Gingras, March 21 & 22, Choreography: Contemporary Problem, Strategies and Delights with Keith Hennessy, May 8 – 10.   www.hub14.org

www.standupdance.com

Tonight I plan to bend and stretch my knees to celebrate this happy occasion.

Actually, that’s not true.

I do plan to celebrate by walking and ellipticalling for the third time in my recovery. Super exciting to be on the elliptical machine instead of the stationary bicycle. The bike is nice, don’t get me wrong, but you don’t build up the same kind of sweat.  And the bikes are always available. It’s mostly people who don’t really want to work hard on the bikes, or those of us recovering from knee surgery. I’ve noticed a lot of other people read magazines on the bikes.

I can’t. I listen to music and watch the televisions, even though at the great distance from the bikes I can’t read the teletype. It’s hard to make up good stories about the meat that’s being cut up on the always on cooking shows. I’m vegetarian. Yesterday Forrest Gump was on the History channel and a lot of us at the gym did extra cardio. (The ellipticals and treadmills are close to the screens.)

Right, so I’m doing my elliptical thing and sweating and reading/watching Forrest Gump and then I do my leg press and extension and hear this very funny clicking sound in my recovering knee. I should say that while it is my left knee that was busted and repaired and is the one I mean when I say recovering, sometimes my right knee is recovering as well. It does a lot of extra hauling right now and sometimes makes this crunching sound. It’s because it’s swollen from doing the extra work. So then I try to rest it and work the other one faster. Basically, the sooner I build enough muscle in the left leg the sooner the right doesn’t have the extra work to do. It is challenging to rest one and work the one with lesser strength. It makes for not climbing stairs and for slow movement.

Two weeks ago that I took a Groove class. My studio, HUB 14, is running a series of classes and workshops this season, and Claudia Fancello from Montreal was teaching Groove class. It was a great workout, we were still dancing and it’s a crazy fun way to start the day. We’d warm up doing step taps and gradually steed them up until we were going as fast as the music.  I have moved only slowly and very slowly since July. Suddenly is hard enough, but suddenly we were meant to be moving fast!

Back to the clicking. It’s hard to know if it’s the good ligaments settling into their spots kind of clicking or the kind that is pulling the ligaments out of the bone with their bolts. I didn’t have the feeling that it was the bolts coming out of my bones. I feel like I’d feel that more somehow, but like maybe it was the lower leg moving forwards and backwards within the joint. My understanding is that the new ligament protects this. If you don’t know what I mean, I’ll explain. Say you are pushing a futon and its frame away from you. You stand with the front of your feet under the edge of the futon and you just lean your shins into it. It moves. If you don’t have your ACL as I found out this summer when I was feeling strong between injury and surgery and you attempt this, you’ll feel your lower leg, shins, stay against the futon while from your knee up, your leg moves forward in space. A decidedly wrong feeling.

Anyhow, that is the danger of the leg extension: you gotta be sure you’re strong enough to move it and to not be moved by it.

hmm, that’s funny. I think the blog is about sending out to the unknown, but then i post on facebook so my nearest and dearest, and rarely and barely get to read it. Okay. Let’s pick something good to say.

My favourite story about puking on someone while having sex with him. That’s so old. Luckily I haven’t done that in years. 11 to be precise. 23 started out badly. Thanks god for 34.

The thing that gave me the idea for this, aside from various friends who encouraged it as part of my recovery process, was reading Julia & Julia: a year of cooking dangerously. I am a veretarian, so i had to read over some of the entries very quickly so as not to absorb the viscerality of extracting marrow juice from the leg bone of a cow.

When I was in Scotland also 11 and 10 and 9 years ago we drove around quite a bit, exploring the countryside, and almost always stopped the car to hop out and visit with the hairycoos as they were called whenever we saw them. Shaggy and redheaded, they kind of remind me of the guy I puked on…scruffy, red-headed, big eyes, low voice.

Right, so I decided that if Julie could start her blog about cooking, I could start mine about bending my knee and weight bearing, and my gradual return to dance.

How I Started Dancing

When I was five, I wanted to take dance classes because I wanted to be a ballerina I guess. I went to one, maybe two classes and hated it because you had to do what everyone else was doing.  After two classes I withdrew and proceeded to make up dances in the living room for the next six years. Happily.
Then, all of a sudden in grade seven, all these girls in my class at school showed up with pointe shoes hanging out of their bags. I went home and demanded that I take dance classes. I thought it was preposterous that I wasn’t; it was on par with child neglect as far as I was concerned that I hadn’t been taking dance all along. My mother calmly explained to me that I had taken dance class when I was five and had hated it. I have a vague memory of trying to turn flips on the ballet barres while everyone else was sitting in a circle in the middle of the studio. So I didn’t like being told what to do then. Now is different. I’m eleven after all, and I’ve been making up dances in the living room. I am ready to be a ballerina. Time is wasting, if I am going to be a ballerina we had better get started.

So, off we go to a neighbourhood studio. The kind that is in the converted main floor and basement of a house in the Glebe. My teacher looks like she should be the hostess at a retirement community in Florida. Her hair is long, dyed a vibrant strawberry blond – or tangerine – and always in an updo, that is not so much of a ballet bun but a beehive. She wears big bright fake flowers in her hair.  She is plump in a very pleasant way and wears a shiny long sleeved body suit and a ballet skirt. I think she eats a lot of bonbons.

Anyhow, she is my ballet teacher, and I am ecstatic. I am taking ballet, except that since I have never taken ballet I have to be in a beginner class and all the other beginners are seven and eight years old and I am eleven. An eleven who is wearing a training bra with a bunch of children that do not come up to my armpits. Luckily after the first class it is deemed that I have natural ability so I am moved into an intermediate class with girls my own age. I am ecstatic again. And then, even better, the girls in my class are going to go on pointe. And so am I.

2. I love dancing.

3. I keep meaning to start a blog about my knee injury but haven’t yet.

4. I love to swim. I am part dolphin. I used to teach aquafitness. Now
I sometimes take a class and I get the biggest grin going on.

5. basil, coriander, and lavendar make the upper back part of my head
tingle when I smell them. Also my ears are very sensative. and
cleaning them with q-tips way inside like you aren’t supposed to is
one of my favourite feelings.

6. how are random things not like confessionals? is it too much to
talk about ear-gasms on this list? I also like magnolia trees and
cherry blossoms.

7. i went through a phase where i hated pink. from grade 10 to about
three years ago. now most of what i wear and accessorize with is pink.
All shades. At first it was hot pink, but now it has spread to pretty
much all the shades. And turquoise. It’s kind of like I’m in grade 9
again.

8. I had six toes on each foot when I was born. They were removed when
I was nine months old. It’s funny now that I know some people who are
nine months old. It’s hard to imagine doing any kind of elective
surgery on such lovely little ones. I think more toes would make their
already extremely cute toes that much cuter.

9. Now that I’m in love, it’s hard to imagine how into Michael Franti
I was three years ago. I think that there must have been something
(like love) missing in my life that made my near teenage girl level
obsession with him necessary. Thank you Aviva for sticking that out
with me.

10. I really like texture, and touching things. And smelling things.

11. I just bought Outliers. I am super excited to read it.

12. I wish I would get out to more live performance and art of all
kinds. Since my knee surgery, and sometimes even before, my energy
level kind of dwindles in the winter to make it hard to get to all the
things I’m interested in.

13. I wish I was a better singer. I lost my voice today after yelling
during a bouffon exercise.

14. My spelling capabilities seem to decrease in direct relationship
to how much typing I do.

15. twenty five things seems like a lot. what does that say about me?
I feel tired. maybe the toast wasn’t enough. maybe I need to hang
upside down.

16. i love blank notebooks. each is filled with possibility, just like
new years day. or is it eve. eve is filled with anticipation. day is
my birthday. kind of too busy to figure out how i will be better from
there on in. i do think about it but not in the meditate on a
mountaintop kind of way.

17. chocolate desserts are my favourite. it’s kind of funny about how
people often say “are my whatever?” instead of “am i whatever?”. is
that right?

18. I think this is the beginning of my blog.

19. I’ve had a cold for three weeks now. I am so sick of snot coming
out of my nose.

20. I love shoes. I can’t wear most interesting shoes, especially the
ones with heels because I have special needs feet.

21. 21 to 25 are going to be part of my blog…read on.