Photo by Ted Ciesielski for a short film set to the music of Joseph Schwantner
Bell 8’s projects stem from a fascination with waves, sound, physical, emotional, sexual, all dances on a micro-macro level. A basic question drives this project…”Can we create a wave of positive energy?”
Stephon Alexander, author of The Physics of Jazz, says, “If our cosmic origins are seated in sound patterns, is it too far-fetched to think that music viscerally enables us to tap into those origins?” One can learn about the Egyptian roots of sound healing by seeing Ani William’s Sound Alchemy Documentary. Sound therapist Joanna McEwen includes in her Ted talk a sound file of 2 cells, one healthy, one stressed created by Dr. James Gimzewski – titled the “Song of a living cell.” She alludes to how vibrations and different emotional intentions can affect water as seen in Dr. Masaru Emoto’s Water Experiments.
Dennis Hlynsky, a professor at RISD Rhode Island School of Design, traces the ephemeral paths of birds. Donna Eden, the author of Energy Medicine, offers insights on how to see energy and manage its dance within us. Bernie Krause and his Great Animal Orchestra Trained as a musician demonstrates that each species has its own acoustic niche and ecosystem.
Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about learning the grammar of animacy in her marvelous book “Braiding Sweetgrass,”
As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers.
Intrigued by Michelle Nijhuis’ “Beloved Beasts,” we are grateful for the work of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and inspired by pianist Hunter Noack performing on his 9′ Steinway in the wild. inalandscape.org
Photo by Nan Melville
Deirdre grew up in the woods of Connecticut and sailing on Long Island Sound and Maine. The producer of LA CHANA, an award-winning documentary directed/produced by Lucija Stojevic, she produced the Dance on Camera Festival (1994-2012) co-sponsored by Film at Lincoln Center, and developed 110 touring partners for Dance Films Association. She taught a required film class for American Ballet Theatre summer intensives for four years. She choreographed an event on Prospect Park Lake, Portals, A Floating Cinema, and an interactive production of Ferdinand – Dancing with Bulls performed in NYC and Santa Fe.
She worked on Broadway with The Theatre Guild, and off-off Broadway as a choreographer, performed in multiple venues with her partner, composer/guitarist Paul Jared Newman. She worked with Maria Benitez Institute of Spanish Arts, teaching flamenco in the summer intensives 1992-1998. She currently writes for The Dance Enthusiast and teaches piano through TakeLessons. One of the pivotal moments in her life was studying dance and drumming in Ghana, through World Learning’s semester program. The ripple of joy and connection dancing among the Ghanaians sustains her.
