"In Your Shoes" by Karen Peterson Corash with Narieka Rose Masla, Adam Eckstat, Sun Young Park, Marjorie Burnett (Photo by Pilar Andujar)
The transformative power of art, movement, and inclusivity is front and center in the Fifth Annual Forward Motion Dance Festival and Conference of Physically Integrated Dance hosted by Karen Peterson and Dancers. With two performances held at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium on Saturday, March 23 and a full day of conferences held at the Koubek Center on Sunday, March 24, the festival, titled "FM5" showcases some of the most dynamic voices in integrated dance through performance, dialogue and experience.
Karen Peterson, a pioneer of creativity, has been dancing and choreographing in Miami since the 1970s. Early on, working in outreach at the United Cerebral Palsy Center, her first experience in creating movement for adults with disabilities opened her parameters to possibilities that exist for movers with different abilities.
“I loved the notion that dance could be universal, shared with others and could be a powerful channel to bring differences together,” says Peterson.
The first Forward Motion Festival in 2017, was conceived with Peterson and her friend, Emmy Award-winning independent filmmaker, artist, and dance enthusiast, Robert Rosenberg, as a one-of-a-kind festival that brought together leading International and National dance artists that practice and present under the umbrella of physically integrated dance.
Today, with integrated dance more prominent and accepted, companies have sprung up the world over. As technology, movement parameters, and skills evolve, the performance possibilities are vast and the range of creativity is endless.
Forward Motion is hailed as one of the first festivals and conferences in the world to showcase integrated dance performances and choreography.
This year, FM5 is bringing in Polish international ballroom dance champions Pawel Karpinski and Magdalena Matusiak, who create Latin duo performances. Julie Crothers is an independent solo artist hailing from California, and Miami native, Atlanta based choreographer, Mark Travis Rivera is choreographing a new piece on the Karen Peterson and Dancers. It is two days of dance, exploration and inspiration for dancers and audiences alike.
To gather festival participants, Peterson, for the first time, put out a call for submissions. She was amazed at the responses she receeived.
"In Your Shoes" by Karen Peterson Corash with Adam Eckstat, Marjorie Burnett, Sun Young Park, Narieka Rose Masla (Photo by Pilar Andujar)
As final selections were made, Peterson realized that she had connected with each of the chosen artists at other times. Karpinski came to Miami as a part of a group performance for the Forward Motion 2 Festival. Since that time, he has established himself as an independent performer and choreographer. Peterson met Rivera as part of the Dance USA Deaf and Disability affinity group and has connected with him numerous times over the years.
Crothers was a name that she had often heard in her "world" of dance and Peterson felt she was the right fit for the festival.
“For this Festival, I really wanted to showcase more independent, younger, next generation choreographers as opposed to bringing back established companies,” says Peterson.
She rattles off names such as Axis Dance, Candoco, Dancing Wheels, and Full Radius - all well established integrated dance organizations who have participated in the Festival before.
“Don’t we always remember the first opportunities we received,” she says. “I wanted to give younger, newer choreographers a chance to be presented.”
At the Saturday, March 23 matinee, FM5 partners with the Sprit of Goodwill band, a group of inclusive musicians who will play live. The band approached Peterson to collaborate in an effort to raise visibility and expand their audience. There are 1200 employees at the Goodwill Industries in Opa-Locka and they hold auditions for the band every year.
Peterson says, “The band music is pop, jazz, rhythm and blues, all kinds of music is in their repertory. Julie (Crothers) and I have chosen four songs each that will be used for the performance.” Karpinski and Matusiak and Rivera will use their own music for both the matinee and evening performances.
”The ballroom work that is coming out of Europe is very powerful, very strong, very competitive,” Peterson says in reference to Karpinski and Matusiak, who are joining the festival for the first time as a performing couple.
In integrated dance, just as the correct pointe shoe is vital for ballet dancers, the chair is an intricate tool in dance choreography. It is specifically adapted and weighted to be able to do the movements necessary. The owner is sensitive to when the chair is correct — and when it is not.
Guest choreographer and speaker Mark Travis Rivera
Rehearsals are a true discovery process.
Rivera spent his childhood moving back and forth between New Jersey and Miami. He founded Marked Dance Project (2009-2019) and became the youngest person in the United States to lead an integrated dance company. He is a writer, a speaker, an advocate and is an award-winning entrepreneur and the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of The Professional Storyteller. Travis’s latest project was as a choreographer for Ballet Hispanico in New York.
Rivera remembers dancing with KPD in 2010 and says “It was my first time working with an integrated company in Miami.”
He says he was young at the time and new in the field.
“Coming back as a choreographer to work for FM5 is really special to me,” says Rivera.
The piece he is choreographing is about memories.
“It will start with the day we left Miami; suitcases, clothes everywhere, two women and a disabled man, packing up their stuff and going” he says. The piece resolves with the queer, disabled man coming back to where he left.
“It’s about comings and goings, trying to remember a life that you had, but you can’t remember because time has gotten away.”
Rivera grew up in Wynwood, but at that time, it wasn’t the arts district it is now. In preparation for his choreography, he wants to go back to Wynwood and explore, take notes and write.
Guest solo artist and instructor Julie Crothers
“We left because my mother was in an abusive relationship, and there were only a handful of people who knew we were leaving. I’m going to be interviewing relatives, my godmother who knew and make voice overs with the music.”
As a choreographer, Rivera doesn’t enter the studio with preconceived movement, but he always has a story, a theme and a concept. For this piece, he has music in mind which will eventually be incorporated with the interview voice overs.
Even in the successes he has had, Rivera still has the elusive doubt about his abilities.
“I had to work really hard to overcome the bullying and negativity that was thrown at me growing up,” he says. “ I may not be the most talented writer, speaker, choreographer or story teller. But the one thing about me is that I’m going to work really hard and not give up.”
Rivera wants to be a bridge between the disability and non-disability dance field. He has worked in both arenas.
“I want to be integrated in the sense that there is true equity in the field,” Rivera says, “If we embrace the power of story telling, we can create a more inclusive world.”
Crothers, a San Francisco based performance artist, had her first professional job with Axis Dance Company in Oakland, Calif. She now directs her energies toward teaching, which she loves, her own choreography and working with other companies as an independent artist.
Her most noted accomplishments, however, are her full length solo works. She is driven by stories and autobiographical topics.
She says, “I think one of the biggest successes of life is finding your own voice and your own strengths. The work I make serves the purpose in my personal life to process things I have experienced.”
And she has experienced a lot.
For the matinee performance, Crothers has chosen four songs from the Goodwill band and will be doing a structured improvisation.
“I hope to share the joy I feel in being in my body, moving in my body with this upbeat lovely music,” she says.
Karen Peterson Corash, artistic director of KPD. (Photo by Karime Arabia)
For the evening show, Crothers will dance an excerpt from a longer piece called “Secondhand.”
In this piece, Crothers is reinvestigating her relationship to her prosthetic arm, which she says she no longer wears.
“I was very reliant on that arm,” she admits. “In ‘Second Hand,” I start off wearing the arm, but then it goes from being an appendage that is a part of me to this entirely separate object that is more abstract.”
Crothers wore a prosthetic arm for her most of her life. It was in college at an improv class at Bates Dance Festival that her instructor prompted her to try a different approach.
“How would it be without your arm?” the instructor asked.
“No one had ever asked that or pushed me like that. It opened up this curiosity. It was very scary at first to be dancing and made me think how I related to my partial arm,” says Crothers. “I was keeping my body very close”.
Over the next two years, she built slowly on a daily routine of when and when not to wear her arm.
“When I would go without it, I felt so much more freedom and expression. I was able to live my full body so much more.”
In hindsight, Crothers is grateful for the experience and access to the prosthetic.
“I think I was held back from fully embodying what is unique about me and what I have to say with this body,” she says.
“I hope with my performance that maybe people will step back and look at their own experiences and think maybe a little different or a little bigger. I hope people who see me might be encouraged to re-examine their notions or judgements in life outside of the show.”
On Day 2,Sunday, March 24, workshops are open to everyone, all abilities and all ages. Each one encompasses the universal ideas of exploration, movement and discovery whether one is a standing dancer or a chair dancer.
At noon, Karpinski and Matusiak will offer a workshop that is ballroom based and touches upon samba, chacha, rhumba, paso doble and the jive.
Crother’s class is based on improvisation. She is very focused on connecting all dancers and blurring the lines between ability and disability. Her feeling is that it is a workshop for all.
She says that this is not a workshop to teach people how to choreograph.
“I want to open people’s eyes up to see and recognize preferences they have, and to feel into their agency; that they can make choices about things they like and don’t like. Even in a small phrase, there is so much to see and speak through. It has a lot to say.”
Rivera will follow with a discussion titled “Physically Integrated Dance Through my Lens.” He is adamant that "We are all doing the same thing. It all goes together.”
“Audiences will find these performances uplifting and engaging,” Peterson concludes. “I see how dance allows people to express and communicate. There is a reason that this dance form continues to evolve. People with disabilities have been given permission to learn and develop skills and to create. And to enjoy the benefits of dance. This movement is not going to go away.”
The Forward Motion Festival of Physically Integrated Dance will be presented Saturday, March 23 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium, 2901 West Flagler Street, Miami. Tickets are available at www.bit.ly/FM5.
The conference will be held on Sunday, March 24 at the Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami. For schedule information, access needs and tickets, visit karenpetersondancers.org or call 305-298-5878.
