Next Stops: Virginia and North Carolina!

Hey friends,

It's been an exciting few months, and We've been keeping busy despite the insane winter weather.  The Telephone Dance Project has been all over the place in 2014! Last weekend we performed at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC; this Friday we're heading to Blacksburg, VA; and on Saturday we'll be coming back to my old stomping ground as featured performers at the Black Mountain College {RE}Happening.

The entire event looks like it's going to be awesome, with site-specific performance and visual art pieces installed all over the Camp Rockmont property.  The evening will hearken back to the postmodern "happenings" that used to occur when Rockmont was the site of Black Mountain College, the experimental art school that hosted some of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

The {RE}Happening will take place from 7:30 pm-midnight on Saturday, April 5th at Camp Rockmont.  The Telephone Dance Project will be performing at 8 and 9:30 in the gymnasium, and at 10:15 in the dining hall.  

The Asheville Citizen-Times just ran a great article about the event: http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20140323/LIVING/303230031/ReHappening-returns-5th-year-Black-Mountain

Here's the website with ticket information: http://rehappening.com/?page_id=2420

$30 gets you in to the evening's festivities from 7:30 on, includes two drink tickets and all the performance art you can handle.  

Many of you donated to the Telephone Dance Project's indiegogo campaign and we were overwhelmed by the generous response we received!  If you were thinking about donating but didn't get a chance, I'd like to encourage you to check out one of the patron level tickets: by adding $50 to your purchase, you have the opportunity to sponsor an artist of your choice (we hope you'll pick us!)  Bringing four dance artists on tour to five locations has been incredibly rewarding but not cheap, and every bit of your support is gratefully appreciated.  

Also, if this sounds interesting but you find that ticket prices are cost prohibitive, think about volunteering!  For more information and to sign up: rehappeningvolunteers@gmail.com

Please don't hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any questions about this weekend's festivities!  Feel free to pass this info along to any friends who might be interested!

Much love to you all-- hope to see you this weekend!

- Rachel

Performances in MA, NC, and PA are set!

The project that turns the classic game of "telephone" into a long-distance dance collaboration tool has performances happening across the East Coast, starting on January 18 in the Workbench Series in Northampton, MA.  

We’ll perform again the following night on January 19th in a Salon Performance at 7:30pm at Studio 310 in the Florence Arts and Industry Building in Northampton, MA in a shared evening of performance with Joy Davis, and Shaina Cantino. For more information email eliza.larson@gmail.com.

TDP has also been invited to perform on April 5th as part of {Re}HAPPENING, a fantastic improvisational evening of art and performance at the historic Black Mountain College in Black Mountain, NC.  We’re excited to share a night of installation and art making with over 80 artists from around the country.

Additional performances will take place on May 10th for the H-O-T Series in Philadelphia, PA, and TBD in Washington, DC.

See what we’re about HERE: https://vimeo.com/83334697

Meet the Dancers: Rachel Rugh

Rachel Rugh is a dancer, teacher, mover and shaker currently residing in the hip little hamlet of Blacksburg, VA.  She received a BA in dance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2008, and moved to the Pacific Northwest a year later.  During her four-year tenure in Seattle, she worked with several prominent Seattle dance artists including Pat Graney, Jurg Koch and Amy O’Neal.  In 2012, she was one of four emerging choreographers selected to create new work in the Bridge Project space residency at Seattle's Velocity Dance Center. Her choreographic work has also been presented at the Seattle International Dance Festival, Lo-Fi Arts Festival and Evoke Productions' Full Tilt (Seattle, WA).  Rachel teaches modern dance technique, composition and improvisation at several institutions throughout the New River Valley.  She is currently a guest instructor in contemporary dance at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA and Trillium Performance Collective in Lewisburg, WV.  Rachel began collaborating with Eliza Larson as a member of Larson's Greener Grass Dance Project in 2010.  Since relocating back to the East Coast in 2013, the two friends have rekindled their collaborative partnership as the performance duo, Mountain Empire.

As a dance artist, Rachel strives to make work that is honest, irreverent and intelligent.  She utilizes the bodies of dancers, trained and untrained, to create relatable emotional experiences in a performance setting.  Rachel’s pieces often take on a meditative quality: she has found live performance to be the ultimate mindfulness practice-- a shared experience in which the performers, and hopefully the audience, are focused on absolutely nothing else.  When our minds are clear and our focus is on the present moment, we radiate joy.