Community Dance Project

Background

Community Dance Project (CDP) is an improv dance presentation in which the audience provides ideas, feedback, prompts, and more to the dancers on stage. A moderator guides the performance by cueing and instructing the dancers, narrating the choreography creation process, and translating the input from the audience into movement instruction for the performers. There is no prior preparation for the evening, the dancers make up all of their movements on the spot, and then the audience helps shape the movement they’ve observed into a short piece of choreography. 

This idea came from an activity that was done with PGK Dance in San Diego, CA. This exercise was performed at elementary schools and library programs. Peter Kalivas, the director of the company, would moderate and engage with the audience. As it was usually performed for young students, movements would be simple (a jump, or a turn, etc.) and each movement would be connected to another and manipulated until we had a short phrase. Vōx Dance Collective used this framework to expand the performance into a full evening with more complex movement styles and forms. 

By cultivating a collaborative relationship between dance artists and audience members, CDP hopes to encourage artistic endeavors within the Omaha community. CDP provides an opportunity for dancers to perform, workshop, and collaborate with other artists while simultaneously introducing the community to dance creation techniques, vocabulary, history, and giving an inside look at the rehearsal process.