Thursday, August 3rd - 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Performance by the Chicago based experimental dance company dropshift directed by Andrea Cerniglia. This evening performance of movement contains excerpts from their works, bloom and dwell.
dropshift Dance Company

Saturday, August 5th from 10:00 AM to 11:30 am
Workshop, breath and improvisation - Andrea Cerniglia, director of dropshift dance company of Chicago will lead the workshop Breath and Improvisation. A 90 min workshop based in Laban practice. Join Andrea for a movement practice rooted in the total patterns of body connectivity followed by improvisation and exercises that move us through Laban’s shaping qualities of the body. Open to all levels. Bring a notebook!
Workshop Registration

Monday, August 7th from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Perfromance: This collection of uplifting solos, from pure dance to comedic spoken word, is created and performed by New York and Paris based artists, Tomomi Imai, Elizabeth Keen, Tracy (Tess) Pattison and Claire Porter. Dancing Words Talking

Tuesday, August 8th from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM,
Workshop Moving with Words - Elizabeth Keen currently teaching at The Alvin Ailey-Fordham BFA program and the Martha Graham Intensives, leads the workshop Moving With Words. Artist explore ways to enhance a piece of spoken word with movement and physical gesture. Bring lines from a favorite play or a monolog or a poem – and a willingness to experiment!
Workshop Registration

Workshop Registration

To sign up and receive more information about the upcoming workshops and performances for Connecting: Thoughts, Words, Movement held AUG 3 - 8, 2023, at the Lamoine Grange Hall, please click the registration link below. If you'd like more information, email Cheryl Claiborne: DanceResidencyLamoine@gmail.com or call 207-667-6775.

Workshop Registration

	Andrea Cerniglia (chu-NEEL-ya) (she/her): began dancing at an early age while growing up in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. Dance has always been a large part of her life and her training ultimately led to a BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Much of Cerniglia’s exposure to modern dance came during her collegiate years; she quickly fell in love with the form for its endless freedom and ability to give the audience such a powerful and visceral experience. ... Currently a contemporary artist based in Chicago, IL, Andrea is a performer, choreographer, mother of 2, and seasoned educator. She is the founder and artistic director of dropshift dance, dedicated to a plentiful studio practice and pushing the boundaries of movement and expressivity in performance. Andrea’s collaborative relationships outside of movement, include the realms of dance film, visual art and installation piece, and musical composition. Her work engages viewers in a visual, aural, and human experience offering immersive and interactive practices. Andrea holds her Graduate Laban Certificate in Movement Analysis from Columbia College Chicago, and utilizes many layers of Rudolf Laban’s framework and Irmgard Bartenieff’s Fundamentals within her pedagogy and creative practices. Her work has been shown internationally in Vancouver, BC as well as locally at Defibrillator Gallery, Links Hall, The Hairpin Arts Center, I AM Logan Square Gallery, The Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival, Hamlin Park and Holstein Park, Chicago, IL. She has performed at such Chicago venues as the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Dance Center of Columbia College, Harold Washington Library Theater, the Athenaeum Theater, and the Ruth Page Center for the Performing Arts. Andrea has also performed across many cities in Tuscany, Italy, throughout the United States, and in New York City at the Ailey Citigroup Theater, Dance Space, the Cunningham Studio Theater, Mulberry Street Theater, and Triskelion Arts.
	Elizabeth Keen (elizkeendance@gmail.com) currently teaches at The Alvin Ailey-Fordham BFA program and the Martha Graham Intensives. She served on the faculty at Julliard for 22 years and taught for extended periods at Sarah Lawrence College, Princeton, and Marymount Manhattan. Her career began with dancing in the companies of Helen Tamiris/Daniel Nagrin and Paul Taylor. She directed her own Elizabeth Keen Dance Company, from 1965 to the early 1980’s, with support from the NEA, NYSCA, and Artists in the Schools Programs. She choreographed for opera and theater at The Met, LA Opera, National Theater, Covent Garden, L’Opera Bastille, and Netherlands Opera. She performs her recent concert choreography at Soaking Wet, The Horses Mouth, The Yard, National Museum of Jewish History, Polish National Opera in Tokyo and Washington Opera.
	Tomomi Imai (tomomiimai.com) is from Tokyo, Japan and started her career as a member of the Yoshiki Homma Dance Ballet Theater. There she was an assistant choreographer and main dancer in performances supported by Japanese Ministry of Art and Tokyo Metropolitan, winning several awards at the Asia National Modern Dance competition. She started to choreograph with Dance Collective Sho and created work presented in Tokyo. In 2001 Tomomi moved to New York where she continues to create and perform her work. She studies Butoh with Yukio Waguri and has danced with Maxine Steinman, Susan Vencl, Elizabeth Keen as well as many others. Recently she received a signiﬁcant award for the piece “Undertow” in Japan, which recalls dreams of the tsunami in Japan.
	Claire Porter (www.cportables.com) is a choreographer, writer, dancer with an extensive record of performances in Europe, Asia and the USA. Porter is a Guggenheim Fellow and has received NEA Choreography Fellowships, NJ State Council on the Arts Choreography Fellowships, NewMusicUSA Awards, Mid-Atlantic Choreography Fellowships, and a Rockefeller Foundation Residency at Bellagio Center Italy. She choreographs for Claire Porter/Portables, other dance companies and University Dance Companies. She teaches Laban Movement Analysis, Choreography, and Creative Process at Montclair State U and Creativity as Practice for Fairleigh Dickinson U. She co-wrote The Laban Workbook for Actors, created Dynamics in a Bag, and Awake Breaks, 20 simple movements tasks to do when a break is needed. dropshift Dance Collaborating Movement Artist
	Christina Chammas (shuh-MESS) (she/they): is a Chicago-based dance artist originally from Michigan. Christina earned a BFA in Dance from Wayne State University. They have performed in works by Amanda Ramirez, Kimberly Baker, Enid Smith, Nora Sharp, and Andrea Cerniglia. Christina has been a member of dropshift since 2018.
	Ali Claiborne-Naranjo (she/her): relocated to Chicago in 2016 after graduating from Smith College with a BA in Contemporary Dance Studies. Originally from California, she has worked with such choreographers as Angie Hauser, Rodger Blum, Joy Davis, and Bronwen MacArthur. Ali has been with dropshift since 2017.

Dance Residency in Lamoine - How is all started

Who would have thought there were dancers in Lamoine? It’s a peninsula known for fishing and farming, gathering mussels, clams, and worms off its shores or mooring busy lobster boats. But one resident, who’d summered here since birth to visit family, became a professional dancer in NYC and toured USA and CA coast to coast. Another woman who grew up in Lamoine established herself as a professional dancer in the surrounds of NYC and regularly returned summers to visit her family. A third NYC dancer, noted for choreographing operas and theater pieces in Boston, London, and Paris, also came to Lamoine in the summers -- the last 40 years of them or so. She came to enjoy Blunts Pond and camping out with her friend, that first dancer mentioned, who by the way, decided to retire to Lamoine and became a founding member of Lamoine Community Arts. There’s something about the restorative nature of beautiful, natural surrounds and the creative arts that works. Dance is certainly one of them. As is theater.

Lamoine Community Arts has experienced how performing arts are restorative for all participants. Many people here, at or near the end of their careers, have been delighted to find that performing in plays opened up a dormant part of their lives. It is lots of fun. And having made that step, they even tried taking a workshop or two to try out how movement could enhance their performances.

Couple this with professional choreographers are always looking for open spaces with good hardwood floors on which to work on their pieces. Two of those dancer/choreographers mentioned above realized that the Lamoine Grange hall has such a wonderful space. They asked LCA if they might use the hall for this purpose during their visits. Then, why not also try out some of their compositions here in this intimate setting? They were eager to compare the response of a smalltown audience with that of a large urban audience. Very useful feedback. This is how contemporary Modern Dance came to be one of Lamoine’s arts!

2017	Meghan Frederick worked on choreography in the hall.
2018	Meghan Frederick and Elizabeth Keen gave a joint concert in the hall. Keen taught two movement workshops focusing on gesture.
2019	Meghan Frederick and Elizabeth Keen gave a joint concert in the hall. Keen taught a movement workshop focusing on gesture
2020 - 2021	The Pandemic policies prohibited gatherings in halls.
2022	Keen brought in Claire Porter and Tomomi Imai, from NYC, to create an evening of their choreographies. Keen taught a movement workshop focusing on gesture.
2023	Chicago based experimental dance company *dropshift* perfromance Workshop, breath and improvisation led by Andrea Cerniglia Solo artist, Elizabeth Keen, Claire Porter, Tomomi Imai, and Tracy (Tess) Pattiso perfrom pure dance and comedic spoken word Workshop, breath and improvisation led by Elizabth Keen

Schedule for 2023 Dance Residency in Lamoine

Connecting: Thoughts, Words, Movement

Lamoine Community Arts (LCA) expands upon its summer tradition of offering a residency to dance professionals working on developing choreography. The 2023 Dance Residency in Lamoine - - Connecting: Thoughts, Words, Movement presents two evening performances and two workshops.

The opening event occurs Thursday, August 3, at 7pm, by the Chicago based experimental dance company dropshift directed by Andrea Cerniglia. This evening performance of movement contains excerpts from their works, bloom & dwell. On Saturday, August 5, from 10-11:30, Andrea will lead a workshop, breath and improvisation, a movement practice beginning with a warm up followed by larger movement exploration, improvisations and exercises, that explore our use of space and how this communicates an internal mood. Open to all level of participants, stage performers, and movement enthusiasts, to develop their internal rhythm so they move intuitively and in communication with others.

The second performance, Dancing Words Talking, occurs on Monday, August 7, at 7 pm. This collection of uplifting solos, from pure dance to comedic spoken word, is created and performed by New York and Paris based artists, Tomomi Imai, Elizabeth Keen, Tracy (Tess) Pattison and Claire Porter. On Tuesday, August 8, from 4-5:30 pm, Elizabeth will lead the second workshop of the residency, Moving With Words." Artist will explore ways to enhance their roles with gestures and focused moves to reveal meaning behind the text. Open to all level of participants. Bring lines from a favorite play or a monolog or a poem – and a willingness to experiment!

Join us at the Lamoine Grange Hall, 7 Lamoine Beach Rd. for the Performances: Thursday, August 3 and Monday, August 7, at 7 pm. Tea and refreshments are served after each performance to give audience members time to meet and talk with the artists about their work.

WORKSHOPS: breath and improvisation, Saturday, August 5, 10-11:30 am and Moving with Words, Tuesday, August 8, 4-5:30 pm. Registration is required in order to keep participants to 15. Register online Workshop Registration, If you'd like more information, email Cheryl Claiborne: DanceResidencyLamoine@gmail.com or call 207-667-6775

All events are Free -- though Donations to defray expenses are greatly appreciated. We feel grateful to be able to hold arts events in the historic 100 year old Lamoine Grange Hall. Check our website for all LCA events Lamoine Community Arts or email us for more information on our events, how you can participate in a production, or to support us as a member of LCA: lamoinecommunityarts@gmail.com