Everyone could use a mascot. Democrats have the donkey, Republicans have an elephant, Fort Wayne basketballers have the, um, Mad Ants, and so on. Even the world of ballet has an unofficial mascot — a swan. Swans are elegant, graceful, and disciplined in their movements. Just look at Swan Lake, Leta the Swan, and so many other ballet stories that revolve around this big beautiful bird.

What kind of a mascot can modern dancers use, then? As opposed to ballet, modern dance allows a fluid movement of the body, with a loose spine and often employs scarves and fabric to act as an extension of the dancer’s limbs. What better than a betta fish? They have long beautiful fins that flow like brighty-colored scarves, and they swim through the water by undulating their bodies.

To this end (and to brighten up the office a bit), I recently went out and bought
a fish for the office. Meet Isadora, named after Isadora Duncan, the mother of modern dance.

Interestingly, only male betta fish are brightly colored like this — females are small and brown and have short fins. So our Izzy is a boy.

I don’t know how intelligent fish can get, but Izzy seems pretty smart. Sometimes he watches me work, and can track a pencil tip as I write with it, and if there are bright lights coming from my computer screen, he’ll swim over to this side of the bowl and watch it.

Stop by the office sometime and say hi to Izzy — he’s a friendly fish!

—Andy

Hello friends, sorry it’s been so long. I came down with a fever and a flu-like bug last week, and it lasted all weekend. How inconvenient is that?

We wrapped up our workshop series yesterday, and I have pictures! Anne Robey from Catalyst Fitness led students in an introduction to Pilates:

Our next big event: BLACK GRACE! This is the biggest event of the year, and has certainly taken the most prep work. Keep a look out in the next Whatzup Magazine and the News-Sentinel, along with other local publications.

-Andy

 I just completed my third supporting grant application since January.  And perhaps I was feeling especially confident as I stamped and sealed the first and second, because it just occurred to me during this last process that if these grants don’t come through, I will not be able to afford to produce the work I’ve already begun to make.  I will get by somehow, as I always do, but my budget for costumes would no doubt take the first hit. As a young artist new to the scene, this wouldn’t have affected me.  However, available funds are now scarcer and the applicant pool is more competitive. And if those reports from the NEA and The Chronicle are correct, you can relate. And so I’ve buckled down.  I’m determined to find those hard-to-find sources available to those of us who don’t dwell in major cities.  During my quest for information and piece of mind, I’ve come across some sources that I believe would be helpful for artistic directors, emerging choreographers, and independent artists alike.  I have taken a day off work, am sitting in a local Internet café, and am drinking refill after refill in an effort to sort through the list of sites.  I’ve included just a few here.  I hope this is helpful to some of you.  And keep your fingers crossed: my dancers need new kneepads.Best of luck! Beth

• http://www.womenarts.org/swan/fundraising/fundraising.htm This SWAN site also offers helpful fundraising hints, complete with sample letter template!
• www.foundationcenter.org     This site is enormous, and it will take some time to sort through, but it’s worth it.
• www.artslynx.org     This site also offers employment links. 

The word yoga means “union.” It is the joining of the physical, emotional, thinking, intuitive, and heart-centered parts of ourselves. In our society we tend to focus on Asana, which is the physical practice of yoga. According to Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras, this is just one of the 8 limbs on the path to yoga. Many of the other limbs deal with mental and spiritual well being.

Asana can be beneficial for everyone. It may be practiced to increase strength and flexibility, or to be a therapeutic way to heal and de-stress. No matter what your reason is for starting a yoga practice, the playful energy and lightness that students experience become the reason that they keep coming to their mats.

—Danielle

We here at the Fort Wayne Dance Collective try to be innovative. We were one of the first (and still one of the only) modern dance studios in the Fort Wayne area. We hold choreographer’s workshops. We pioneered the Indiana Dance Festival. We bring guest artists in from all over the world to showcase their unique talents.

But we realized there is one place we haven’t yet made our distinct mark - the internet. Sure, we have emailing lists and websites and whatnot, but we were missing something. FWDC is known for its voice, and its simple humanity. For that, we needed a weblog.

So, this email is to let you know we have one. It is brand-new, less than a week old, and we realized that to keep it fresh and exciting, and to keep people coming back to it, we need content. Lots of content. More than we, busy staffers of FWDC, can provide.

This is where you come in. FWDC is issuing an open call for guest bloggers — dancers, friends of dancers or of the arts scene, who can sign in and post stories about dance events in Indiana, local arts events, online links to related resources, and what-have-you. To get a feeling for a good, quality blog, check out Boing Boing, or Neatorama. We don’t want to be as generalized as they are, but you can get an idea.

If this piques your interest, hit reply to this email or drop a line to FWDC’s Managing Director Andy Welfle at andy@fwdc.org (or call at 260-424-6574). Even if you aren’t interested, but know someone who is, let us know.

Also, we need a name. A good, clever name for the blog. Right now, it is known as the Fort Wayne Dance Collective blog, but that doesn’t really roll off the tongue, does it? We are collecting names, and the winner will get our eternal gratitude and a mention on the blog.

Thanks for listening, and I look forward to hearing your ideas!

—Andy

For those of you that love good food, attending the pre-Black Grace performance dinner is a must. If you ever had the opportunity to eat at Queenie’s (she also baked for the Firefly for a period of time,) then you’ll know why you must join us for the feast.The following is the menu.  SPRING DINNER
Caesar Salad (without anchovies)
Penne Pasta with Spring Vegetables (asparagus, mushrooms, baby peas and sun dried tomatoes) tossed with olive oil, garlic, fresh herbs, white wine vegetable broth. Served with parmesan cheese.
Pulled roasted chicken served on the side
Great bread and butter
Tiramisu and fruit trifle I’m hungry!Erin 

Hi, this is Liz Monnier the Artistic Director and someday I’ll write something really cool here.  Keep watching…

Hello! I’m Andy Welfle, the managing director at the Fort Wayne Dance Collective.

We’ve been going through some changes here at FWDC. Last year we got new computers. We’ve recently re-vamped our website. We now have the ability to send out email newsletters (Which you can subscribe to by filling out the form on the left, by the way), and we have a Flickr account to share our photos.

This blog is the next step. More and more, businesses find themselves with a larger online identity, and a weblog is the perfect way to maintain that identity and give the public insight into what function they have in society.

I look forward to sharing my thoughts and hopefully, I can bring you news, entertainment, guest posts, and otherwise keep you coming back for more.

Check back here often, or add us to your RSS aggregate, which you can do on the sidebar to the left.

See you soon!

-Andy

(P.S. I want you to know my blogging creds are good — I am a product reviewer for PencilThings.info, an online authority on pencils and other scribomechanical paraphernalia.)