Category Archives: moving, breathing, feeling

Oct5

here we come!

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Saturday October 6 at 3:30 pm

Little Brook Farm, 548 County RT 13, Old Chatham, NY 12136

Tickets $30 at the gate

All proceeds to benefit Little Brook Farm

about All the Pretty Horses

All the Pretty Horses is a performance art presentation that blends a troupe of Little Brook Farm’s horses, mostly rescued, with riders from the farm and professional dancers and dance students from Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works. The event features choreographed performances of dancers on the ground interacting with ridden horses, incorporating vaulting, modern dance and dressage including quadrille movements (four horses moving as one!).

All the Pretty Horses is the first-time rescued horses, who were previously designated as too old, too lame, too dangerous, too wild, demonstrate their partnership with humans. “It is the time and proper intervention with these formerly cast-off horses that enables them to perform with such beauty, grace and dignity,” says Lynn Cross executive director of Balanced Innovative teaching Strategies, Inc. (BITS), and owner of Little Brook Farm. Paula Josa-Jones and her dancers have been bringing together the elements of All the Pretty Horses over the past year — choreographing the horse’s, rider’s and dancer’s movements to a broad spectrum of music selections.

All the Pretty Horses is an ongoing project, part of Josa-Jones’ Horses Helping Horses program where performance and education are used to raise awareness about equine rescue and humane practices.

The Cast

Dancers from Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works

Danielle DeVito, DeAnna Pellecchia, Ingrid Schatz

All the Pretty Horses Dancers

                     Shannon Campbell, Chandrika Carl-Jones, Sandy Gautier,

Erin McNulty. Amanda Michienzi, Katie Von Wald, Nicole DeWolfe

Vocalist – Ryder Cooley

The Youngest Dancers (Procession & Lullaby)

Giana Henderson, age 7, Emily Poulter, age 4, Laura Warner, age 8

Riders from Little Brook Farm

Summer Brennan – riding Amado and Sonata, Julia Henderson – leading Miranda and riding Charlie

Christina Hinkle – riding Portia, Elisabeth Spoto  – vaulting on Devlan and riding Angel

The Horses

Procession & Lullaby– Miranda Jane, Reg. Pinto, age 29

Mustang Tango – Amado, Mustang, captured from High Rock Complex, CA, age 5

The Vault – Devlan, Reg. Hanoverian, age 14

Quadrille– Sonata, TB, age 8, Angel, TB, age 23, Portia, Reg. Oldenburg, age 18,

Forest Edge (Charlie) Reg. Morgan, age 16

Oct4

wedding bliss

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I took a brief blog break because I went to my nephew’s wedding in Barbados.  It was an utterly beautiful time.  Over sixty friends and family had flown there to celebrate.  I was skeptical about a destination wedding, but the lovely unexpected thing is that we had several days before the wedding to hang out, get to know each other, and create a little community of support for the couple.  So rather than a group of relative strangers coming together, we were a Bajan-infused, sun-drenched, sea-blessed group of celebrants.

A lot of my work is quiet, solitary and relatively unscheduled.  I am not particularly a group activity kind of person. The exception is my performance life which involves hopefully large audiences and a lot of group collaboration.   But that is  my gig and I get to direct it, and for the most part call the shots.  So I had to stretch myself a bit to participate in a series of group events with people I did not know.

The best one was going to the busy Barbadian town of Oistins on a Friday night for a fish dinner.  It was loud, crowded, chaotic.  Not my scene, but I ended up in a wild dance with one of the locals to ear-splitting reggae music nontheless.  I don’t drink.  Haven’t had a drink for 33 years.  But I discovered that I can definitely still party.

But the real reason we were all gathered into this little temporary community was to celebrate love.  Andy and Julia chose this beautiful reading from Corelli’s Mandolin:

“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being “in love” which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.”
― Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

And oh, the happy couple!