Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to get connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health and happenings in our community on
one oh six point seven light FM.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Thanks for listening. Lincoln Center is a MECA four events,
especially during the summer in the City series from now
until August ninth. Our guest is David Dorfman. His namesake company,
David Dorfmann Dance has several free outdoor events this week
at Lincoln Center, including the ever popular Silent Disco. David Dorfmann,
thank you for being on the show.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Thank you so much, Nina, I am pleased to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
You can find out more about the events at Lincolncenter
dot org and Daviddorfmandance dot org. You have four events
coming up this week. Before we talk about the specifics,
how would you describe your approach and what you want
to offer at big public events such as these at
Lincoln Center?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Dances for everyone. I love accessibility. That's not a dirty
word to me. No one needs to have any experience
watching dance to come to one of our shows or
our workshops. It's for everyone, all ages, all abilities, all bodies,
and it's really about celebrating our bodies and pushing them
a little bit in a pleasant way to see what
(01:13):
they can do that can surprise us. How we can
perhaps safely touch another person the skin of another person
that we don't know, how we can make up some
text in a workshop, and how we can find joy
with each other in the present.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
When I think about what you've just said in the
schedule this week, you really do delve into a lot
of those things, which is fascinating. The first thing on
the schedule is Wednesday at Damrosch Park. Tell us about
the piece, True Songs.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
True Songs has been in progress for about three years now.
I don't know. I started thinking, you could make a
chrue purely synthetic act. Okay, we're going to make peace
for a weekend, a holiday, or whatever the occasion is.
Why can't we make it last a week, a month
and fool ourselves and make it last a year. So
(02:01):
I started thinking about truces as potential portals into some
real lasting piece and care and nonviolence and love. I
started writing a bunch of songs. I played music my
whole life immediately, albeit and I started writing some songs
in my basement, our basement where we live. And I
(02:22):
also employed our almost lifelong collaborators for twelve years now,
Lizzie Deliz and Sam Crawford, to make songs and make
beats and driving music and really really sensitive and vulnerable
titles like if I'm not Here, you Can't Hurt Me.
Another one is Escape, you Can't Escape. They're really beautiful songs.
(02:43):
I love lyrics and I love driving music. So that's
where it began, and it's a collaborative work with the company.
We have six folks on stage, and then my wife
and a Lisa Race and I we play the Elders
and we also appear, and so we have eight people
on stage plus two music playing live, and it's an
hour long celebration of what we love to do, how
(03:06):
we can get close, how we can trust each other,
and what we don't like to do. We kind of
make fun of the way that we can be unkind
to one another, and we get people laughing as well
and maybe even crying sometimes.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
That's something you don't often see right in theater, and
I know you work also with spoken word and things
like that. It kind of breaks another wall and dance,
which is so interesting to me.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yes, and there's where the accessibility comes in. I believe
that the combination of text and movement together and music
and visuals, which we always do, we really committed to
live music that can really bring in a different kind
of audience. And it can mix narrative, non literal, narrative,
abstract and literal together. So there is kind of a
(03:49):
story being told, but it's not a narrative story necessarily.
It's more of an experience. By the end of the evening,
I think I want people to feel deeply.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
So this is true song Wednesday, just twenty fifth at
seven point thirty. The next night is the Kinetic Diplomacy
at play That is Thursday, June twenty sixth at five pm.
What is that?
Speaker 3 (04:11):
It's a workshop where we see how our bodies represent
us in the world right we are who we are,
how we look, how we feel, and how we interact
with others. So I give some writing assignments, we all
move together, we learn each other's names right away. I
always say at the beginning, everything you do for the
(04:33):
next hour is absolutely brilliant, no judgments. And I made
up that term kinetic diplomacy years ago. We were in
Central Asia doing work with this program called Dance Motion
through the State department in Brooklyn Academy of Music, and
we got trained in DC and they said, just to
let you know, you're not diplomats, and I said, okay,
(04:55):
we're not trained as diplomats, but we're kinetic diplomats. That's
where that came from. And I think we learn about
how to be better citizens in the world through our bodies.
In that workshop.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Our guest is David Dorfmann. His company, David Dorfmann Dance
has several free outdoor events this week at Lincoln Center.
You can find out more about the schedule at David
Dorfmandance dot org and Lincolncenter dot org. Events start on Wednesday.
They go through Friday. You are listening to Get Connected
on one O six point seven light FM, I Mina
del Rio. As I listen to you talk, I keep thinking,
(05:28):
I'm thinking, like, this guy has an imagination. Where have
you looked for ideas? Or you know, this company's thirty
seven years old, how have they come to you over
this time?
Speaker 3 (05:40):
You know our art we call it radical humanistic movement art,
dance theater. I think whatever is bugging me as a person,
I propose to the company and if they're into it,
we work on it collectively because we all make up
the text and the movement together. I conceive and direct,
and so imagination comes from the world, comes from newspapers,
(06:03):
comes from magazines, comes from age old stories and books
that I've read million years ago or just the other day.
I love movies, I love TV, I love media. I
love art. I have a little a bumper sticker right
in front of me. Everything I've learned, I've learned from art.
So it's really important and I feel there's an onus
on me to keep imagining things. And I get inspired
(06:24):
by other artists and just walking down the street, I
just that's a person. Where are they going, what is
their life? How are they going to be joyous today?
Or how are they going to be hurt? And then
I say, we can use that as our material, as
our fodder. So that's really fun about my job. You know,
like the pay rate isn't so high, but the freedom
(06:46):
is really really high, and I love that about my job.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
You can balance. If you can balance those, then you've
got a good career in there. So when I ask
this next question, it sort of relates to the seniors
Get down program. Sure, because you are also still a
dancer you're still a performer, you know. I assume thirty
seven years ago, perhaps you weren't thinking about age so much.
But how has your evolution of what you want to
explore evolved over time? And where did the age part
(07:12):
come into play?
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Great One of the first things I did when I
started to seriously dance was take community classes after work.
I was in retail, you know, and so I felt
that dances for everyone, and I thought, well, maybe I
wouldn't gain the skills to be a performer. I want
to know how to coach, to facilitate, to direct, to teach.
I teach at Connecticut College for twenty one years now.
(07:34):
I love teaching young people, however, not however, But in addition,
when I was very young in the early twenties, my
first real job was assisting a famous jazz dancer to
teach disco to senior citizens, you know. And I was
like twenty one or something like that. So I've always
remembered that, and now that I'm a senior citizen, I'm
(07:58):
still teaching disco. Disco was my life in my early twenties.
I mean, that's the way that I knew what dancing
and moving and community was and so now I love
being a senior and teaching seniors disco, talking, any kind
of dancing, and it's amazing. You think, oh, people are
going to be hesitant. No, older people love to move,
(08:21):
Oh my gosh. And so they have been some of
the most exhilarating workshops we've done. And my wife Lisa
Res and I we lead them, and the company helps
because we love having an intergenerational company. I mean we're
kind of like the parents, you know, the elders in
the company, and we show that dancing is not only
for fifteen to twenty five year olds, it's for everyone.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
There's something interesting about getting older too. I think getting
older is as you get older, you realize you're still
the same. I always make a joke and say the
same idiot, but you still have the same like silly
ideas in your head. You just have more experience, right,
And maybe the opportunity is what you want or someone
to bring you some new ideas.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Perhaps I love it. I learned so much from young
people at the college where I teach, and the company,
and yeah, I think you get more and more. The
thing you get less of is hair, at least for me,
and and sometimes a little it's a little bit harder
to bounce back from injuries when you when your body
(09:19):
gets older. But I swear I'll take that. You know,
it's the it's the it's the fee that you pay
for getting the experience and for a life well lived.
So I feel really lucky to be alive with all
all the craziness and the violence in the world. I
feel lucky to be alive and be able to share
art and positive thinking and embodiment with many people. So
(09:42):
that's that's such a luxury.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
So let's talk about the two events. On Friday, Seniors
Get Down that is five pm at the Garden at
dam Rush Park. It is free and our long workshop
using improvisation.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Right, Yeah, we're gonna do improvisation. We will teach a
little line dance maybe in there a couple of moves.
But I don't want to scare anyone with oh I
don't know how to remember moves or I don't I'm
not a dancer. No, we just improv so everyone improvises
to their own degree. I do this thing sometimes, one
thing called rearranging space, and it's just like literally trying
(10:15):
to rearrange the space around you as a metaphor for
like rearranging your life, rearranging your day. So physical metaphor
is really important and it's very accessible. If you say that,
you know on a radio show, for example, someone might
say what is that? But I guarantee you've come to
the workshop, I'll show you and you'll be doing it
in two seconds. So I just love the community that
(10:35):
can create, and particularly when you get older, community is
even more important.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
So later in the evening is the Silent Disco. The
Silent Disco a very popular series at Lincoln Center. David
puts his finger up. What is a silent Disco for
people who haven't done it.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Everyone's wearing these wonderful headphones and our Lizzie Delize, one
of our composer performers, will be the DJ, be assisted
by Sam Crawford, and they will be playing wonderful, wonderful music.
We're gonna hit Tina Turner because Tina Turner's featured after
our Silent discoes. So we'll into a little bit foreshadow.
We'll hit down a summer. I had the opportunity the
(11:16):
company to do a massive project with Sliding the Family
Stone Music. We did it at dam Rash Park years
ago with the Family Stone, which was not Sly but
three of the original members in a full band, So
Sly's been very important. He just passed away. And we'll
play a lot of Slie and then maybe some original
stuff from Lizzie and Sam, and everyone will have headphones
(11:39):
so there's not music going into the atmosphere, but everyone
is just grooving. And then I'll have a mic, Lizzie
will have a mic, and we will do a line
dancer too, so we'll be communing and maybe doing like
a clap, but there won't be music playing. And I
love the idea of like a Unison clap if you
can think of like three hundred people doing a Unison cloud.
(12:00):
So it's going to be very, very exciting. And the
idea that it's silent and magical and internal but in
community is something that you know you can only do
on Lincoln Center. You know, it's a gathering of people
in a wonderfully celebratory, unusual circumstance. Also, it's going to
be fantastic the.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Silent disco for spectators all also fascinating to watch, and
you can still have a conversation, which is something everybody
always talks about. You can't talk at a club, so
there's that yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Right, yeah, and there's chairs around so you don't need
to be dancing the whole time. You can just kind
of hang up.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
So all of these events are free, and I'll go
back and just recap when everything's happening. So Wednesday is
True Songs that seven thirty pm dam Rush Park. Thursday
is Kinetic Diplomacy at Play that is five pm at
the Garden at dam Rush Park. You've got two events
on Friday, Seniors get down at five pm dem Rush
Park and the Silent Disco which is on the dance
(12:54):
floor also Lincoln Center of course at seven pm. Again
they're all free. But do people just logistics? Do people
need to reserve space in advance? How would they do that?
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I think you can just show up. I think for
the show. There's something that might be happening tomorrow, which
would be Monday, where you can look at the Lincoln
Center somewhere for the city site where you can maybe
get a little bit of an advance admission. I'm not
even sure, but I think you just show up and
just to say the seniors is it is at the
Damospark where it's the garden at Damarsh Park, so it's
(13:25):
not the performance. So the big band shows where we
are on Wednesday, the connect Diplomacy and seniors get down
is the garden and then I believe that the dance
floor around the disco ball is the Silent Disco, and.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
I do believe there is more information about tomorrow Monday.
To get yourself sort of organized and get going at
Lincolncenter dot org. It sounds like it's going to be
a great week for you. It has been a delight
to speak with you, and I hope it's a great week.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Thank you, Nina. I know it will be and I
really appreciate this time. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Find out more at Daviddorfmandance dot org as well. Nice
to meet you and thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Yeah, we will have fun. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
This has been get connected with Nina del Rio on
one oh six point seven light Fm. The views and
opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views
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