Keith Glassman

In spite of its quiet demeanor, the fall has been tremendously productive, both administratively and fiscally! The company has been awarded two small 2-year grants from the LA County Arts Commission and the LA Department of Cultural Affairs that will help us create new work both this year and next!!

In addition, we were just funded to present Dancing Marx in Newport Beach sometime before September 2012. These dances will draw from our site-specific experience of Timeless: Marxist Dances at the Beach, yet be reconfigured for this different location.

At the moment, however, Rachel Lopez, Louie Cornejo and I are in the studio creating the work that will be part of the next installment of Coffeehouse Dances. These free performances will premiere this spring in cafes throughout LA (details TBA). We are exploring a selected history of events that have taken place in java joints across the country and across the globe, with accompaniment that ranges from French accordion tunes to Moroccan explosions and beatnik poetry and bongos. As always, stay tuned!!

We're putting the final touches on Dancing With Ghosts, which we'll premiere on the opening night of the Bootleg Dance Festival. We're sharing the program with two outstanding choreographers and we'll present this new work alongside an updated Repeat After Me! Lots of great dancing and Cajun and Conjunto accordion music, to boot!

Immediately following that, Keith becomes the artist in residence at the Santa Monica Community Beach House! For ten weeks, he and the dancers will explore movement and other possibilities at this historic and breathtaking site—the previous home of screen actress Marion Davies built by publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst in the 1920s. This culminates in a performance in May with additional opportunities for the public to share this unique experience--open rehearsals, gatherings and online activities--to be announced.

We’re beginning rehearsals for our spring 2011 season, with new dancers and a performance as part of the Bootleg Theater Dance Festival in March. We’re working from home movie footage to recall movement from a not too distant past and create a companion piece to Repeat After Me that will be accompanied by a live accordion band. More later!

NYC’s Dance Theater Workshop, a center for new dance around the world, contacted us to ask for a photo and some quotes from Keith about his participation in the Fresh Tracks showcase program in 1994. DTW is planning a 45-year celebration of this biannual performance series this December with a catalog including images and input from all the past and present artists involved. Keith premiered Slip Knot there . . . and we’re still highlighting the piece in our Coffeehouse Dances!

In August, the photo (above) of Ken Takermoto in Blackbirds Flying Home taken by Rollence Patugan in 2009 was selected to be included on the homepage of the California Cultural Data Project website. The site, a fiscal accounting resource for all California not-for-profit arts organizations, kept the photo on the page for several months.

Four Headed Dance III was a resounding success in April, with sold out houses, a live webcast and good work all around! Click here to watch the premiere of our twenty-minute sextet, Repeat After Me.

The company has been awarded its third two-year grant from the Los Angeles County Arts Commission! The support is for bringing a half hour program of dances to LA coffeehouses--much like our 2007 season at the Synergy Café and Lounge in Culver City. Dancers Sara Fenton and Louie Cornejo will present their Lester Horton Award-winning duet Slip Knot along with solos White Guy Swell Dance (for Duke) and Test.

Keith’s been selected to join a group of twelve local artists and organizations to participate in Help Desk/LA. Created by the New York service organization Pentacle, this project aligns a non-artistic mentor to each participant as she/he navigates the waters of organizational stability. Keith’s been matched with Los Angeles Stage Alliance Executive Director Terence McFarland to address audience development and other infrastructural needs. Bound to be a forward-moving experience for all!

Highways Performance Space will co-present the third installment of Four Headed Dance with us in the spring. Envelope-pushing choreographers Ilaan Egeland Mazzini, Carmela Hermann, Arianne MacBean and Keith are creating new pieces that will premiere April 2-3. More details to come!

The two June performances of Far From Home at Highways went BEAUTIFULLY! Pat Payne’s installation caressed viewers as they walked to/from the theater to the 18th Street Arts Center and ALL of the Saturday night show is now viewable 24/7 online! Future live performances are in the planning stages, so stay tuned!!

Last month, the company was awarded its third consecutive grant from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs to perform in local senior centers. We took Big Small Dances—solos and duets—to the Boyle Heights and El Sereno Senior Citizen Centers on May 14 to welcoming audiences there. The viewers were very responsive and we helped the El Sereno Center celebrate Mothers’ Day, with mother and daughter Margarita and Gloria Tinajero dancing a version of Mariachi, with Sara Fenton performing White Guy Swell Dance for Duke, Louie Cornejo performing Test and the two of them reprising their award-winning Slip Knot. The centers invited us to come back next year, so we’ll see how the things go!

In March, Keith was awarded a chunky Artists’ Resource for Completion Grant from the Durfee Foundaion to support our upcoming season at Highways in June. The evening length Far From Home isthe culmination of four years of work and is NOT TO BE MISSED!

Commissioned by the Newport Beach Arts Commission, Keith has been working with seven members of the center there to create a new work, Dancing with Ghosts. The piece includes photos from the performers’ ancestry (going back to the early 1900s), oral histories, music and movement. Also on the program will be the award winning Slip Knot and White Guy Swell Dance (for Duke). The latter dance is a solo from the evening length Mavericks, which toured coastal California 2001-3. However, for this and some future performances, the solo is performed by an awesome woman (Sara Fenton)!

Completing the program is the duet Keith’s been working on during the summer with veteran performers Alan Grant and Christina Gray. This work explores Alan’s current range of movement, almost a year after he unexpectantly suffered a stroke. The true performer that he is, the limitations did not slow down Alan’s desire and love of performing. The working title for the piece is Left and music is culled from the in-progress drafts of Sergio Cervetti’s 2005 score for Audacious. A truly riveting dance!

Choreographer Keith Glassman was honored with a prestigious 2007 Lester Horton Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement for Revival, Reconstruction, Restaging of Slip Knot at the annual award ceremony in Echo Park April 27, 2008. Nominated by a jury of local experts and voted on by the membership of The Dance Resource Center of Greater Los Angeles, the 1994 work was recently performed in Culver City and Santa Monica with additional performances scheduled for 2008-9. Having premiered at Dance Theater Workshop's Fresh Tracks series before Keith relocated to Los Angeles, this new version is beautifully performed by dancers Sara Fenton and Louie Cornejo. Don't miss it!