It's a Dancevert World

We have danced, performed, traveled, gigged, collaborated... all these creative activities that performers and choreographers do for a living all over. For many years, Ohio has been our home base (for several reasons) and the center of our activities. We have had our yearly seasons at The Playhouse, Ohio Theater, Cleveland Public Theater... you name it ... we have stepped on all venues: outside parks in the July midday heat; in the snow, at schools, universities, churches, galleries, homes of people that love to have artists displaying their products... I could go on and on, but really, a book could be written of our whole life of creative and hard work here in Cleveland. We also traveled much throughout the world and the nation, but now...guess what? We are still traveling, though now even more frequently.

As we work in many schools during the year in Cleveland with educational program, we manage to take care of all our schedules, and travel to places were we are invited to present our work, mainly without censorship. This is the case with our most recent tour to gorgeous Quito, Ecuador, where we were invited to the 3rd biennial International Theater Festival to open and close the event. We performed at the Grand Sucre Theater right in the heart of Quito. The new president of Ecuador was to attend, but he regretted not to be present due to personal matters. However, we still got to meet him in a performance of the Ballet de Camera of Ecuador (a company that we worked with). We sat next to him... a great president, so far.

Our opening performance in Quito, the opening of the 8-day Festival, was sold out and we had great ovations... the public loved it, as we were approached by many theater and dance students and professionals during the week with great love and tenderness. People expressed their gratitude and delight to be present for our performances. The press expressed how magical, deep and beautiful the program was, and what a pleasure was to have the USA to open the festival and be represented by our work.

We had the great pleasure to teach many professional dancers of the Ballet de Camara de Ecuador and the Ballet Metropolitano, which are both under the direction of Maestro Ruben Guarderas, who danced with many great companies in Chile, with Heinz Poll, Mexico and Ecuador. We also coached many merging choreographers from these and other contemporary companies, and became quite familiar and personable with all the wonderful young artists.

As we returned home to continue with our educational programs (and continue preparing for our next tour) we are delighted to continue to work hard and juggling all of our creative activities. Presently, we're creating a premiere work for India, where we will be performing and teaching soon. We leave tomorrow (April 19) for Mombai... and will be traveling to work in the South region of Kerala as well. We look forward to sharing our experiences with all of you on our return. To be continued...

From Cool Cleveland reader Susana Weingarten dancevertATaol.com

Photo by Herb Ascherman
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