INCUBATOR Series: Striding Lion Interarts Workshop
Week 2 starts
by Karen Louis, Pioneers co-director
When we last left our Lions, Christian had found his jig, and quickly leapt (or chugged) his way into spreading his message.
Meet Dana Dardai, resident music therapist-turned-clown-turned-actor-turned-dancer-turned-awesome. Dana turns a lot with incredible ease and precision. She joined Striding Lion with our ‘07 production of “Gerrymander: the Good, the Bad and Tom Delay,” and continued with both the recording (’08) and staging (’09) of Birdsongs our original CD and stage production of the same name.
Jig
by Karen Louis, Pioneers co-director
During rehearsal last night, after the hour long dance warm-up, led by Annie, I noticed that one of our lions, Christian Rogala, company member and musician with Chicago band Fluid Minds, seemed a little down, or maybe even haunted by the images we’ve been poring over, or diaries reflecting hardship, fear and determination that was experienced by the time, place, disease and conflicts of the Westward Expansion. Striding Lion is not unfamiliar with this time period, having collaborated in ‘06 to develop City Beautiful our for-youth production based on the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. In fact, City Beautiful had been Christian’s very first Striding Lion show. However, the Chicago World’s Fair, with it’s own acknowledgement of hardship, had more of a celebratory tone throughout the research itself.
Look at how serious he seems!
Intros
by Karen Louis, Pioneers co-director
Striding Lion is proud and incredibly grateful to the DCA for offering us the INCUBATOR series for the month of September. To begin this blogging journey, allow me to introduce us:
Striding Lion is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to cultivating a collaborative community through interdisciplinary arts programming. We are committed to the empowerment of the independent artist, to the enrichment and entertainment of diverse audiences, and to the evolution and advancement of artistic expression.
This INCUBATOR series is a long-time dream of an opportunity to workshop, side by side, both our educational programming and our professional workshop models in (gasp!) the same space, back to back, head to head(as the tune to “Whip it” fills my mind- but that’s usual-I’m from Kent, Ohio...We’re big Devo fans).
CURRENT SHOWS
