Past Events - Back Pocket Dancers Awarded Two Grants to Premiere New Program

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Location & Dates:
West Medford Community Center on Friday, June 3rd at 7pm
Monday, November 21, 2011 for the Somerville Council

Back Pocket Dancers is a seven-member inter-generational dance company (ages 14 thru 87) formed for the purpose of creating and presenting powerful dance/theater programs for elders. Directed by choreographer Joan Green, Back Pocket has a new show titled Dance Me a Story, Sing Me a Song – that combines dance, music, narration, costumes and a puppet to tell engaging and inspiring tales from Haiti, the Amazon rainforest, the US and the Russian Jewish tradition. This spring, the Company was awarded two grants; one from the Somerville Arts Council to perform the new show on Monday, November 21, 2011 for the Somerville Council on Aging and the second from the Medford Arts Council to perform for an inter-generational audience at the West Medford Community Center on Friday, June 3rd at 7pm. The members of Back Pocket are very excited to premiere their new show for these two audiences.The show is designed to be flexible, so that it can be performed in common rooms, cafeterias, and other non-stage spaces in elder or community venues.
 
The company consists of seven dancers: Joan Green, Andy Taylor-Blenis, Eleanor Duckworth, Donna Newman Bluestein, Jim Banta, Dorothy Elizabeth Tucker and Claire Dickson. Claire, our newest and youngest member, is also an accomplished jazz vocalist, with a passion for the standards of the 30’s and 40’s. She will be singing some of these songs between the dances. We think it will be very moving for seniors to see one so young (age 14) and capable carrying on the musical traditions of that era.
 
The Company is currently booking performances of “Dance Me a Story, Sing Me a Song” for the 2011-2012 season. They are also available for dance workshops, and residencies of varying lengths, and to work with elder residents to create a performance based on their own personal stories and experiences, bringing their talents in dance, theater and singing into a creative experience they will never forget. Interested parties should contact Joan Green: joangreen@gmail.com
 
Back Pocket Dancers began as an offshoot of Back Porch Dance Company, a Cambridge MA-based company of women who toured throughout New England. Back Pocket performed their first program, an exploration of improvisation, to approximately 50 audiences from 1999 thru 2003, most in Elderly Housing complexes, through the Tenants Assistance Program of Mass Housing. A hiatus followed until a year ago when the group reconvened, and began creating their new program. Back Porch Dance was known for creating evening-length works of dance-theater on themes of special relevance to women, often including oral history. The company’s co-directors, Joan Green and Victoria Solomon, were pioneers in inter-generational dance in New England. Their work was supported by the Mass Cultural Council, the Boston Foundation, the LEF Foundation and many others.

Joan Green
www.greenbrownart.com