ARTIST REPRESENTATION

Pentacle's Roster, Gallery, and Metropolitan Intersections artists at APAP/NYC.

HELP DESK & BACK OFFICE

NEA grant made to support Help Desk/Back office. Updates on San Francisco, Chicago, Miami-Dade, Houston, and New York.

MOVEMENT MEDIA

New NYSCA support; recent screenings; more great programs on the way.

EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING

Behind the Scenes continues in Frank Sinatra School of the Arts; Cultivating Leadership in Dance concludes its first semester.

Pentacle Artists at Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP)/New York City

Pentacle provides artist representation and booking services through its Roster, Metropolitan Intersections and Gallery. The Booking Department has just completed their annual mad dash to the Arts Presenters (APAP) conference: contacting presenters; scheduling meetings; spearheading and executing a cooperative mailing of dance presenters, agents and venues showcases to the conference registrants; and planning and coordinating our own artists' showcases (three this year). We couldn't be more pleased with this year's results. Sorry, if you couldn't make it to our showcases, but here's a brief recap.

Performing at the Ailey Citigroup Theatre on Friday evening, January 6th, were Pentacle Roster artists Heidi Latsky Dance, Lionel Popkin, casebolt and smith, Bridgman/Packer Dance, Lucky Plush Productions, and CONTRA-TIEMPO. From Los Angeles through the Midwest to New York City, with cultural influences from India and Africa to name but two, these artists showcased work ranging from traditional modern dance to the latest urban trends and everything in between. Audience response was ecstatic and booking interest was at an all-time high!

For a complete list of Pentacle's Roster Artists, visit www.pentacle.org/roster.

The Pentacle Metropolitan Intersections Showcase, began at 11:30 a.m., Saturday morning at Dance New Amsterdam. This diverse group of younger dance troupes, together, exemplify the cultural and aesthetic contrasts to be found in America's most vibrant cities. Presenting work to a totally enrapt audience were Camille A. Brown and Dancers, Decadancetheater, Sheetal Gandhi, Soul Steps, inDANCE, and, Illstyle and Peace Productions.

For a complete list of Metropolitan Intersections Artists, visit www.pentacle.org/metro.

Pentacle offered its Gallery Showcase on Sunday evening at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School. Our Gallery is an eclectic group of diverse, vibrant and talented dance makers who hail from cities coast-to- coast with stops in between. From solo performance to culturally specific, dance-theatre to multi-disciplinary and traditional modern dance, these artists are representative of the next generation in contemporary dance. Captivating the Sunday evening audience were Pasión y Arte Flamenco, Collective Body | Dancelab, KDNY, Barkin/Selissen, Jamal Jackson Dance Company, Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh, Danse4Nia Repertory Ensemble, ClancyWorks Dance, Vox Dance Theater, Push Dance Company, Cornfield Dance, Claire Porter/PORTABLES, Katie Workum Dance Theater, and Peter Kyle Dance.

For a complete list of Gallery Artists, visit www.pentacle.org/gallery.

In addition to Pentacle's showcases our artists were busy presenting work elsewhere at APAP. Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion appeared twice at the Joyce Theater. Lucky Plush Productions performed at City Center Studios and offered an open rehearsal of new work at the Joyce Soho. Reggie Wilson/ Fist & Heel Performance showcased work at New York Live Arts and staged a group conversation, "Why a Dramaturg?" at the Abrons Arts Center Underground Theater. ClancyWorks Dance Company and Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh made additional presentations at the Ailey Citigroup Theatre.

Moving on from the APAP showcases, Pentacle is pleased to note that Los Angeles-based choreographer David Roussčve has joined our Roster. His new work-in-creation explores the idea of intimacy in an age of technology. Welcome, David!

And Pentacle has five artists eligible for NDP tour support in 2012-2013: Kyle Abraham, Camille A. Brown, Sheetal Gandhi, Illstyle and Peace Productions and Lucky Plush Productions. And Reggie Wilson will be eligible in 2013-2014 for those who are planning ahead.

We are very pleased to announce that Pentacle will receive continued support in 2012-13 for its infrastructure programs, Help Desk and Back Office from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additionally, Pentacle received its first grant from the Mayer and Morris Kaplan Family Foundation in support of its pilot cycle of Help Desk Chicago to begin in FY13 as well. We are pleased that many individuals continue to support these activities on an ongoing basis.

Because Pentacle tailors each Help Desk and Back Office program to suit the particular needs of the community it serves, no two programs are exactly the same. While labor intensive, the results ultimately support this strategy, since the needs of the dance community truly are served in the most successful and useful way. Pentacle plans to network the programs in each city together at points during the program cycles to foster greater discussion on the "management question" and to spark innovation in infrastructure support and growth in the performing arts community.

Los Angeles. Companies and independent artists participating in the third cycle of Help Desk/ L.A. have been exploring as a group all aspects of "getting work." The group is focusing on earned income, and the various possibilities surrounding monetizing their work and what needs to be done to take full advantage of all earned income opportunities. The cohort has been greatly energized by this process and participants all are very active.

As a pilot project of Help Desk/L.A., Back Office is working with four Help Desk/L.A. participants to realize the planning undertaken with their mentors during the past program cycles and providing them with much needed management to move their organizations forward. The first part of the program cycle focused on creating structures that met the participants' needs and organizational styles. During the second half of the program cycle, Back Office staff will work with each participant to achieve longer term infrastructure goals.

San Francisco. Two San Francisco companies have been participating in Help Desk/L.A. this year. Each company works with a Bay Area based mentor, and the participants have been attending as many meetings in L.A. as possible. In November, Help Desk Program Director, Felicia Rosenfeld, traveled to San Francisco to meet with the Bay Area cohort as a group. It is hoped that Help Desk/Bay Area will expand to include more companies during 2012-2013.

Chicago. Pentacle will launch a pilot combined program of Help Desk/Chicago and Back Office/Chicago in July 2012 in partnership with Links Hall (http://linkshall.org/). Pentacle plans to work with a total of 10 organizations and independent choreographers.

City Update. After receiving positive feedback from the New York dance community, Pentacle began work to bring Back Office to New York. Pentacle also remains in on-going discussions with the dance communities in the Miami Dade and Houston regional areas about bringing its infrastructure support programming to these urban centers.

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Our fall season of Kinetic Cinema wrapped up on December 3rd with a fascinating program by Yaa Samar Dance Theatre. The presentation focused on the unique working process they used to create their most recent production, Bound. The December 3rd Kinetic Cinema program brought together two company members, in person, and Samar Haddad King, projected live via Skype from her home in Ramallah. Together they presented and discussed a curated selection of videos related to Bound, including footage from the creation process and source films from which they drew their inspiration.

In November we partnered with Moviehouse at 3rd Ward in Bushwick for a Kinetic Cinema program curated by Aynsley Vandenbroucke, a choreographer, dance blogger, and co-founder of Mount Tremper Arts. Aynsley chose to use her Kinetic Cinema program as a way to research her next dance piece, exploring the relationship between personal partnership and artistic practice. Through documentaries and interviews of primarily New York-based artists, she looked at questions of freedom and commitment, presence and absence, public and private, mobility and stability.

Sandwiched between these two screening programs, we offered a hands-on DIY filmmaking workshop with dance artist and filmmaker Zena Bibler, in partnership with Green Space Studios in Long Island City. Participants learned strategies for filming and editing themselves in visually interesting and dynamic ways through camera positioning, perspective, rhythm and movement composition.

We are proud to announce that Kinetic Cinema has received its first grant from the New York State Council on the Arts in support of our screening series! Thank you NYSCA, Governor Cuomo, and New York State Legislature.

The best way to keep up to date on the latest screendance reviews and opportunities, view the hottest web dances and keep tabs on dance media trends worldwide, is to subscribe to our blog, Move the Frame. 

Move the Frame serves as a locus for dialogue about the screendance art form and a clearing-house of information about all things dance and media related. (www.movetheframe.com)

Coming soon: Kinetic Cinema's full winter/spring season. To start off, we will be partnering with the Dance Films Association for a screening in early February of notable films submitted to the Dance on Camera Festival (Jan 27-31st at Lincoln Center). Check back here. Better still, sign up for our email announcements here.

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Pentacle's Educational Programming mines unparalleled expertise and connections in the dance community to provide middle school, high school and college students with opportunities to explore many different careers in dance. Behind the Scenes provides students with the hands-on project of producing, marketing, and presenting dance concerts under the guidance of performance arts professionals. With Behind the Scenes, we are pleased to be partnering for the ninth year with twelfth graders at Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens. This 30- week-long course (two-to-three class periods weekly) will culminate in the Senior Dance Concert. Cultivating Leadership in Dance is an intensive, structured internship program that pairs young prospective administrators with small-to-mid-size professional dance companies. We recently completed the first semester of the program, which included eight companies paired with interns from numerous New York City-area colleges and universities.

More information on Pentacle's educational programming, plus updates and postings can be found at www.pentacle.org/education

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