SPECIAL EDITION #41 FOR THIS TIME OF COVID-19 PHYSICAL DISTANCING*

OCTOBER IS BDA DANCER HEALTH MONTH 

and BDA has scheduled an entire month of online presentations and workshops to keep you healthy and strong during pandemic shutdowns and beyond!

Boston’s most experienced dance medicine clinicians will be on hand to share their expertise and answer your questions.

Check out all the details and register here  You can attend one or attend them all for the same low price. Great for professionals, recreational dancers, and dance teachers, youth through adult.

Do you need accommodations in order to access any of these sessions? If so, please contact dcash@bostondancealliance.org as soon as possible and we will do our best to arrange them.

Please note: The first session, with Heather Southwick, will be held Wednesday October 7, rather than Friday October 9 as announced yesterday

 

The new Movement Toward Change podcast is a free resource currently available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and on the movementtowardchange.org. website. Health and wellness is a special focus this season, as it covers cross training, injury prevention, gyrotonics ®, massage therapy, and success coach/wellness mentoring for dancers. There are 5 episodes out thus far, with more coming soon.

 

Massachusetts Reopening Reaches Another Milestone…

On Monday October 5, much of the state of Massachusetts moves — carefully and deliberately — to another phase in the pandemic reopening process. Covid-19 is still among us, and while current rules relax some restrictions for communities where infection has been low for at least three weeks, not all communities can safely move into Phase 3, Step 2.

Each municipality has the responsibility of determining whether they are going to move into a new phase. Importantly, the City of Boston is holding off for now as it has been designated as RED — meaning  more than 8 cases per 100,000 residents in the past 14 days. Dancers note: 52% of Boston cases are in people under age 29, and this is not only college students. Free testing is available — find out how at www.boston.gov/covid19

Nonetheless there is some good news for our sector. Indoor performance spaces can be used for programming without in-person audiences. This means you can rehearse and tape or livestream classes and performances from these spaces, as long as the performers remain 6 feet apart and there are no more than 25 people in the space.

Cambridge now requires face coverings to be work in all public places, businesses, and common areas of residential buildings with two or more dwelling units.

Check with your municipality for information about changes in your community. This will be especially important for dance studios and performance venues as well as affecting rules about how many people can gather at outdoor performances.

Claudia Lavista of Delfos Danza Contemporanea in Mexico created this new experimental  dance work for camera, with moderated question session with the artists and perfomers after every screening October 1-3.

A special screening of Mr. Gaga is streaming for 48 hours, October 2-4.

Dance Freedom holds a special online Biodanza program led by Carolina Churba, who founded Biodanza in South Africa, on October 3 at 10 a.m.  Biodanza is said to release stress through combining music, movement and the expression of emotion. Check it out from home!

The 2020 ABLE Assembly: Arts Better the Lives of Everyone Conference is an exceptional professional development event in the field of arts education for people with disabilities. It has been reimagined to take place online October 3,4, 10 and 11. 

    

Harvard Dance Center presents On and Beyond the Stage: Practicing Disability Access, Aesthetic and Tech with Kinetic Light on October 7 at   6 p.m. on Zoom. Centering intersectional disability access, culture aesthetics, and design, the new disability arts movement offers a provocation to those who would view through inclusionary lenses. When the work is made for disabled audiences by disabled artists who are rooted in various intersectional disability cultures, the conversation changes. Speakers are Alice Sheppard, Jerron Herman, and Laurel Lawson. Free, but registration is required.  ASL interpretation, closed captioning, and audio description provided.

 

Our friends at Jacob’s Pillow have announced their Virtual fall season with three online virtual premieres and insider peeks at works being developed during COVID-19-compliant Pillow Lab residencies. RSVP and while you’re at it, explore the Pillow’s Dance Interactive. 

Kids going back to in-school education? This principal has all the right moves.