Rebekah Chappell, Choreographer and Performer
It is dark outside, and I am siting in the backyard of The James Geddy House in Colonial Williamsburg. I am eight years old and alone, waiting for the rest of the cast to arrive. A mixture of fear and freedom washes over me and in my waiting I feel alive. This place is both exotic and comforting, a strange juxtaposition of sensations. A few hours later I am in the midst of yet another performance of Christmastide at Home, a series of short plays scattered throughout the historic area. Audiences walk from place to place, stumbling across enactments of families celebrating the holidays. I am Nancy Geddy, a spirited child who will not follow the appropriate decorum expected of a young lady. I am suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to improvise my lines. I can not, will not say the exact thing again. So I play, remaining in the scene, but responding in a way that feels unrehearsed; I am no longer acting. This is my postmodern break, the beginnings of my very own NO manifesto. No to Broadway, National Tours, and repertory companies, no to long stints of the same performance. Since Christmastide at Home, I have never performed the same work more than a handful of times. To this day, I have the same impulse as the early post-modern choreographers of the sixties, let me perform the “one-night-stand” |
Autumn Eckman, Performer
Autumn Eckman, an Atlanta native, is a graduate of the Houston Ballet Academy. She has danced for companies including Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Luna Negra Dance Theater, State Street Ballet and Giordano Dance Chicago where she later served as Director of Giordano II, Resident Choreographer and Assistant Artistic Director. One of her favorite dance memories was the time she audition for Giordano Dance Chicago...
I was 19 years old at the time. It was in the middle of a freezing Chicago winter, St. Patrick’s Day. I arrived in Chicago a few days early with a backpack and a ticket for a booked room at a local hostel. I didn’t know a soul in the entire city. I remember walking all over Chicago (in snow for the first time) and thinking that I HAD to live there. I couldn’t really explain it. On the audition day, I really didn’t know what to expect. It was my first ever professional audition. I remember meeting Gus Giordano, who would later become one of my mentors, for the first time. After the audition, I had returned back home to Atlanta and was working in a bookstore. About two weeks later, the phone rang while I was at work. Nan Giordano was on the other end of the line, asking if I could be in Chicago by the following week. I literally hung up the phone, ran home and started packing. I booked a room back at that same hostel in Chicago, this time with a backpack and a suitcase. |
Dana Powers-Klooster, Performer
Amy Simonson, Performer
The first time I was on a stage in front of an audience, I was wearing a bath towel. My tiny seven-year-old body was short enough for the fluffy pink fabric to be worn as a dress, with sparkly silver elastic spaghetti straps to match the bows in my hair and on my tap shoes. I could hear the curtain opening as I hovered behind my wooden bath tub and waited for the song “Splish Splash” to start playing. My eagerness grew even more once it did, and I precisely started counting to eight, four times. That was when I got to jump up and reveal myself in a flashy pose, ready to dance to the rest of the song out on the vast stage. I remember the anticipation the moments before the performance started, and the ones after, when the only things visible were some bright lights and a darkness where I knew the audience sat watching me. And when all that I could think about was the moment I was in, and how to make it worthy of all the time that went into it. While the style of dance has changed many times throughout my performing life, I haven’t lost the joy of the process I discovered more than twenty years ago, of preparing a dance experience for the stage, and the magic that happens once an audience is there to witness it. |
Melanie Swihart, Performer
I can distinctly remember the excitement exuding from myself and everyone around me while waiting in the haze as the curtains slowly opened. The space felt condensed around me, but I was very much ready to spring into the light on my cue; I was the youngest in the group of dancers at the Morton Community Center's annual recital, Mor'Dancin, but I knew in that moment that age differences were of no importance. I was about to be seen on stage doing what made me the happiest I could be by my parents, family, friends, and community. Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' blasted through the speakers of Purdue University's Elliot Hall of Music and I was immediately consumed by the music, lights, stage, and audience. This experience and many others with the Mor'Dancin program deeply formed my passion and determination to perform with complete abandon. Current events have led many to believe joy is difficult to come by, but to share and believe in one's passion is joy, and it can evoke hope for something more - more peace, more love... MORE JOY. I share my passion of dance in hopes to spread joy, and I could not be more thankful for the open hearts that shaped my journey.
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