ST Shimi, incomparable aerial artist (among many other things) has been spending the week working with Ollie Hudgins, the Bear Angel for Headwaters.  Tonight she made a 16 minute instructional video to leave with Ollie, so that he has a clear visual record of the sequence and content of his movements.  Here’s a few minutes of it, with one of my favorite Nellie McKay songs.

The Bear Angel has a greatly expanded role this year, and we’re really fortunate to have Ollie as the performer in this role.  He’s been participating in Cirque classes at his school, Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School.  He looked at what the "baerialists" last year did, and told his mom (Jennifer) "I can do that."  And so we’re teaching him a whole new set of skills, and by the end of the run he’ll be in terrific shape. 

This is quite a different working arrangement than we had on last year’s Headwaters, where five different performers from Canopy Studios in Athens performed the role of the Bear Angel.  Last year, however, the Bear Angel didn’t speak.  This year, there’s more information to help people understand why this person’s crawling around in the air.  Last year it was pretty, but confusing. 

Shimi is here from San Antonio, TX where she works with Jump-Start Performance Company - www.jump-start.org - and she and I know each other because of Alternate ROOTS.  Last year a ROOTS Artistic Assistance grant brought Shimi to Sautee Nacoochee to teach an aerials workshop, which opened up the connection with Canopy. 

Shimi and I flew to Atlanta together on Sunday, coming back from the National Performing Arts Convention in Denver.  NPAC was inspiring and affirming, not without controversy (in which I was a proud participant), and very useful for the performing arts field.  Denver was hospitable, attractive, and arts-friendly.  Many of the speakers focused on the importance of engaging everyone in art-making - one of my basic tenets - and "value and relevance" was a goal the conference participants agreed on for the field as a whole.  Seems to me that’s what we’re up to in an old gymnasium in Sautee Nacoochee.

Tonight, June 18, is the full moon.  Great things happen in the full moon.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 12:41 am and is filed under Headwaters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.