Twenty-five-year-old Amber Tarcha has become accustomed to explaining her unconventional living room decorations to her guests. But she says the two poles she uses for dancing have given her an incredible amount of confidence, and are well worth the explanations.

“There are always a few comments from people coming into my house for the first time, but it’s not a big deal,” Tarcha said. “It’s almost like we [woman] are a threat if we harness sexuality and athleticism together. That’s something men don’t have, and I think people have a hard time accepting that in their minds.”

Tarcha started teaching pole dancing from her Texas home in December 2008, after installing two poles in her living room. The native Texan describes her pole dancing classes as “elegant, graceful and sensual.” And her students agree, saying they gained a whole new perspective after taking Tarcha’s classes.

“There’s nothing like that [pole dancing]. It’s awesome. You go in there and you’re kind of fumbling around,” said Lorie Young, who was Tarcha’s student. “I was really surprised how quickly I picked it up.”
“I like to think after pole dancing you leave wanting to strut down the street, smile and wink at people because you feel so energized and confident … Something very powerful, and sometimes emotional, comes out when you can express yourself through … dance.”

Poles come in many different forms. There are spinning, stationary, stainless steel, chrome and titanium gold poles, to name a few. Regardless of the plethora of poles to choose from, there are mainly two types of pole dancing, said Tarcha.

Artistic pole, or Chinese pole dancing, differs from exotic dancing, said Tarcha. She likes to incorporate ballet, tango and other dance moves into her pole dancing routine and classes. Tarcha compares her routines more toward acrobatic and Chinese pole dancing. She is also a cloth performer with the Blue Lapis Light Company, which performs site-specific aerial work.

“The challenge I face is that there are a lot of other women who do pole dancing and choose to use it more sexually.” Tarcha continued, “I love that pole dancing is very empowering and brings out the sensuality of women.” Early this year Tarcha attended the Pole Competition in New York. She applied as a contestant, but was denied.

Just telling people she “pole dances” often elicits a certain image and puts her into a “sexually charged” category, said Tarcha. But she and her students said women should be free to embrace their sexuality however they deem appropriate—even if it involves a pole.

“For now it’s such a limited perspective of what pole dancing is. I learned how difficult of a sport it is. To do the positions Amber [Tarcha] does is really, really difficult.” Young added, “It’s really heightened my respect for anyone doing pole dancing.”

More challenging than breaking the stigma of pole dancing is Tarcha’s search for a dance studio large enough to hold the increasing amount of women interesting in pole dancing. The 25-year-old is writing a business plan and seeking to open her own dance studio.

“I would love to ultimately share and serve others in experiencing body awareness, empowerment … that pole dancing and the aerial arts has provided me,” Tarcha said.

“I also want to be an example and leader in having pole and aerial dancing taken more seriously as a professional sport and continue to expose it to others.”

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Kirstin Sarfde is the brains behind the newly-formed Los Angeles dance company, The Rock Show Dance Co (say that out loud; you’ll find that it rhymes). The company is the realization of a long-time dream of Kirstin’s, and this must be why she talks about what she is doing with such confidence, even nonchalance at times.

She has no bubbly excitement about her project, but instead a kind of deeper resolve. This is also just, in many ways, what makes up Kirstin. When you meet her, she will emphasize that her name is Kir-stin, NOT Kri-stin (and will have no hesitations about correcting you), and you can tell simply by the even tone of her voice that this chick knows exactly who she is.

When asked about the reason behind starting this company, she replied, “After working so many years in background and waitressing, I just figured why not? I’ve done the whole work for other people thing, but I want to get my own ideas out there. I’m more of a be my own boss kinda girl.”

And Kirstin’s ideas are definitely fresh. Eventually, she expects the Rock Show Dance Co to become a touring company, using popular music (think: Guns N’ Roses and Dave Matthews) as the theme of her shows. “I’m definitely a music lover.” For now, though? She is wrapping up the final touches of the company’s premiere show. “The music is all by local artists. They’re all friends of mine.” She sees her company as a way to promote the artist community— for them all to promote each other.

In talking about her show, she mentions, “We really just want to entertain you. This isn’t Alvin Ailey. It’s not a learning experience.” She feels some dance companies try too hard to go away from the norm, and they just end up being different for the sake of being different. “Even when I tell people [the dance style] is lyrical modern, they’re like—oh is that that weird stuff? Most people haven’t seen a lot of dance shows. I’m bringing it to the public.”

Her advice to other people who want to do something similar: “Just do it,”…after a pause, she eventually bursts out, “especially if it’s something you really want to do. And you’ll find that it’s a lot easier than you think it is.” Kirstin has had her share of obstacles in putting on this first show, her biggest one being finding and paying for rehearsal space. But she has found, that like anything, you learn along the way. “The second time around for all this is going to be so much easier!”

But quite candidly, nothing seems to have been too much of an obstacle for this self-starter. When asked if being a woman has been an issue during her process, she replied with laughter, “God, maybe it was easier! Everyone’s just been really helpful.”

After conquering this first show, her next move is to open a studio where she will hold dance classes, and can also act as her rehearsal space for upcoming shows.

Performances will be held at The Complex, 6472 Santa Monica Blvd, from June 4th to June 14th Thursday through Sunday at 7pm. Sunday performances begin at 3pm.

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If you think that burlesque is glorified stripping with fancy lingerie, then Dakota Ferreiro has more than a few things to teach you. For one, burlesque isn’t about oversexed moves. Rather, like all art, it’s about connection – particularly between audience and performer, music and dancer, mind and body.

Ferreiro, or Miss Dakota when on stage, is one of the nation’s premier burlesque artists, working with names like Enrique Iglesias, the Gypsy Kings, Prince, George Michael, and Maroon 5. Most known for her four years headlining at the Forty Deuce nightclub in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, Miss Dakota wants to bring the underground world of cabaret to the mainstream.

“When times are rough, people need an escape, and burlesque is perfect for that,” Ferreiro touts. “It started in the 1860s where comedy and musicality was used in performance to make fun of the stuffy Victorian class. And in America during the Roaring Twenties, burlesque was the underground entertainment where working class men could come and forget their troubles. With all the silliness that comes with the costumes, characters, and play on music, burlesque provides an escape from reality.”

A classically trained dancer, Ferreiro accredits her stint at Forty Deuce for opening her eyes to the cabaret world – a world that has taught her much about herself. “In burlesque, you’re up on stage alone so I learned how to be vulnerable,” Ferreiro declares. “That inner barrier is hard to break, but once you do, it changes you. You start connecting with the music and the audience, and you feel strong and empowered. Burlesque taught me how to be fearless.”

Yet burlesque doesn’t just affect the performer. Some of Dakota’s biggest fans are women who shower her with praise about her talent, physique, and confidence.

“A woman came up to me once and told me, ‘You make me want to be a better woman.’ Women understand confidence right away. And when they see you fully exposed and confident on stage, they want to be in that moment with you because they feed off of your energy.”

And that was the beginning of Ferreiro’s Burlesque Body workouts. “Burlesque helps people become better versions of themselves through dance, music, and laughter,” Ferreiro explains. “My classes are about having fun, owning your womanhood, and being in the moment. Sexy moves are sexy moves, but if you don’t have the confidence behind them, you just look stupid. Confidence is sexy, and that’s what I try to teach my students.”

Ferreiro exudes the lesson she teaches, and her “I am who I am” attitude makes her a bellist we can stand behind. From a young girl living in the Bronx to an acclaimed dancer living in the wild terrains of L.A., Ferreiro succeeds due to her no-nonsense personality. She advises, “Give yourself the chance to go for something bigger than you think you can achieve. And then give yourself enough time to fail at it or not like it and move on. It comes back to being fearless – to putting yourself out there and letting people know what’s on your mind.”

To find out more about Dakota, visit her website.

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You don’t have to be a fan of modern dance to understand the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT). According to Judith Jamison, the Artistic Director, you just have to be human.

“The first thing you do when you’re born is what?” asks Jamison. “You open your mouth first and wave those little chords in the air to make sure people know you’re alive. And you’re breathing, those lungs are moving. Everything is moving. It’s within us to move.”

AAADT celebrated movement and connection with its 50th anniversary last year, where Jamison also announced she will be retiring in 2011. The world eagerly awaits her announcement of a predecessor. “I’m looking for someone with great intelligence and great nerve – someone who understands the tradition of the company, but makes choices as an individual. That’s what I did. I couldn’t imitate Alvin (Ailey). All I could do was follow the road map.”

That map laid out AAADT’s mission to bring African American culture to the world. Ailey always believed that dance came from the people, and should be delivered back to the people. She began dancing at the age of 10, training in classical ballet, though her passionate style and muscular figure contradicted the ballerina’s wiry ideal. In 1965, Jamison joined AAADT as a dancer and found international stardom with the company for the next fifteen years; she took over the company in 1989.

Among the most notable of Jamison’s roles is Cry (1971), a 15-minute tour-de-force solo. Dedicated to women everywhere, Cry brilliantly conveys every emotion, role, and contradiction associated with womanhood. In her autobiography Dancing Spirit, Jamison writes, “Exactly where the woman is going through the ballet’s three sections was never explained to me by Alvin. In my interpretation, she represented those women before her who came from the hardships of slavery, through the pain of losing loved ones, through overcoming extraordinary depressions and tribulations. Coming out of a world of pain and trouble, she has found her way – and triumphed.”

Under Jamison’s leadership, AAADT expanded dramatically with developments like the Women’s Choreography Initiative, performances at two Olympic Games, and a historic run in South Africa that ended the cultural boycott of the old apartheid government. Jamison also established a B.F.A. program with Fordham University. As an advocate for arts education, Jamison is committed to advancing programs that bring dance into the community and introduce children to the arts. She is a firm proponent of the power of dance to reach across cultural divides and connect the otherwise-separated.

“[AAADT is] here to celebrate the idea of what the human body can do and how far it can reach into your soul and make you feel differently about yourself. Make you feel good. Make you feel, period,” Jamison proclaims. “Alvin was always about our being recognized – as beautiful, important, distinct, absolutely talented, brilliant people. And, in doing that, it opened a world to who we are as human beings. Everything we do is about giving back to this world. And if we can do it through talent, through movement, through dance, then we are all the more blessed for it.”

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Yeah, yeah, there was a game. Yeah, yeah, it was set as Kobe vs. LeBron. Yeah, yeah, there was even the talk in L.A. of Shaq and Kobe bursting into the chorus of “Reunited.” But when the weekend ended, no one cared about the game or the score or Kobe or Lebron; it was all about Shaq. And what made it that much more shocking was it had nothing to do with basketball, nothing to do with Kobe, nothing to do with the plight or fate of the Phoenix Suns. Forget the song, it was all about the dance for ShaqaWockeeZ.

JabbaWockeeZ, the male dance crew that won the first season of America’s Best Dance Crew, flanked Shaq in his unusual introduction to Sunday night’s All-Star game of East versus West. (By the way, if you were wondering, the West won 146-119 and none other than Shaq and Kobe were named co-MVPs.) If JabbaWockeeZ was looking to make a trade, they might want to acquire Shaq in a permanent dance team role as Shaq came out a dancin’ machine, white mask and all, to claim the show.

Surrounded by the rest of the JabbaWockeeZ squad, Shaq jabbed and wockied with the best of them – despite appearing twice the size of any other individual. He came out in full warm-up attire but managed to turn his pants into a cape, however momentary, before skipping down the stairs onto the court once the music died out. Supposedly there was some sort of game to follow.

Of course, only those most familiar with Shaqnanigans could recover from the dance show to put on the game show…which meant Kobe, Shaq, and Phil. The players on the East squad would be doomed to relive the era of the Laker three-peat. And so it went. But no one seems to care. It’s all about the ShaqaWockeeZ.

Should you be interested in the actual basketball of All-Star Weekend, the rest of the weekend’s dancing was good but didn’t compare to the unprecedented Shaq attack. Highlights from the weekend included…
•    The Miami Heat’s Daequan Cook won the Three Point Shootout in OT.
•    5’9” Nate Robinson leaped over Superman Dwight Howard to take the Slam Dunk Contest (wearing all green and now being called “Krypto-Nate”).
•    Bulls guard Derrick Rose became the first rookie to win the Skills Challenge.
•    Shaq and Kobe, former Lakers teammates, shared MVP honors.
•    Kobe Bryant led the tallies with 27 points; LeBron James led the East with 20 points.
•    The West outscored the East in every quarter but the second (where there was only a two point discrepancy, the smallest of any quarter).

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Bold yet subtle, strong yet vulnerable, the dancers of Urban Bush Women (UBW) make you feel the ecstasies and agonies of life with just one movement. Based in New York, this extraordinary group of women mixes dance, theater, and music to give voices to the unheard. By forcing audiences to ask what it is to be a woman, African American – and first and foremost – human, in contemporary society, Urban Bush Women is a force to be reckoned with.

With members of all sizes, shapes, and personalities, UBW redefines the female dancer. For this company, it’s artist first, body type second – a refreshing outlook in an art form that sometimes values long legs and a thin frame over technique and talent. In line with this revolutionary view, UBW’s dances present women-centric perspectives that are always political but never divisive, thanks to the troupe’s indomitable leader, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar.

Motivated by the network of vivacious women in her life, Zollar created UBW in 1984 to reflect that cohesiveness. “Growing up, the women around me were all strong and held each other accountable in really powerful ways about our actions,” recounts Zollar. “We’d fight of course, but ultimately, there was a bond of love that was greater than competition or dissent.”

UBW’s diversity and strength personifies Zollar’s vision. The company’s uniqueness comes from its dancers – all dancing together yet none dancing alike. Zollar affirms, “We can be individuals but still have an obligation to the group. And the group does not have to drown out your individuality.” One of UBW’s most famous dances, Girlfriends (1986) is an ode to this very camaraderie between women upon which the company is built.

However, UBW isn’t only concerned with the female experience. The troupe seeks to catalyze social change with dances that ultimately reveal aspects of the human experience. Zollar attests, “All stories are human stories. We’re born, we live, we work, we mourn, maybe we fall in love, and eventually we die. That’s the arc of any one person’s life, and that’s what interests people. Specificity only comes from how a person lived, how a person worked, how a person found solace.”

It is this desire to connect people that compels Zollar to continue working so to expose our common humanity. For instance, Hairstories (2001) comically focuses on black women’s hair, but its larger theme explores the ridiculous beauty standards that affect every person’s self-esteem. Batty Moves (1995) extols the female buttocks, but more significantly challenges notions of physical ideals and appropriate movement. And Walking with Pearl (2005) not only honors civil rights activist and dance pioneer Pearl Primus but celebrates the resilience of the human spirit.

Evident by its repertoire, UBW fulfills its tagline of being sassy, strong, and relevant. Zollar says the words, “Condense the complexity of what we do. We’re sassy because we’re candid. The phrase ‘don’t sass back at your master’ was often said to slave women, and suggests that ‘sassing back’ is speaking truth to power. We’re strong and bold, qualities of which we always need more. And we’re relevant to the issues that we live in. We use the past as inspiration, but it’s not about living in the past. It’s about understanding and using the past to move into the future.”

To find out more about Urban Bush Women, visit their website.

Clips from a performance at the Joyce Theater in May of 2007

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On any given Saturday night, my friends and I hit the town looking to get down, get funky, or just get out of the house. While it’s reasonable to check our coats and bags, does dancing to club anthems necessitate that we also check our self-respect?

As a booty-shakin’ bellist, I often question the implications of dancing to songs whose lyrics portray women in ways with which I disagree. I wonder if the accomplishments of my day and my sense of self-worth are negated by the simple act of shaking my hips. Am I a hypocrite, or am I just a young woman having a good time?

Thankfully, I’m not alone in this conflict. After speaking with many women, I found that most manage this conundrum by differentiating between two groups of music –one collection with which we identify, and another that we enjoy on a completely visceral level. It is the former category from which we draw meaning and inspiration. And since the latter bears no weight on how we define ourselves, we can easily disassociate from the lyrics.

For example, a girl can find herself dancing to a song whose lyrics contradict those in Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” which she finds empowering and relevant. But enjoying the beat and catchy lyrics of a club anthem neither undermines her self-values nor compromises how she expects to be treated.

However, like any overly simple solution to a complex problem, this disassociation mechanism isn’t without faults. It may be that our six degrees of separation unwittingly communicates an acceptance of the message perpetuated by demeaning lyrics. Therefore, it’s necessary to view the role of the mechanism in stride; while it may allow us to let loose on a Saturday night and maintain our individual sense of self, it does not address the overarching societal issue regarding the portrayal of women in pop culture.

But before you throw away your dancing shoes, remember that allowing yourself to have fun can also be a form of empowerment. While you may in no way endorse certain lyrics, you are in every way a smart, savvy, successful girl, and sometimes, girls just wanna have fun.

photo by roger r.

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