Valerie Williams is legend in the Iowa dance community. As a dancer and choreographer, she set her own vision for what she wanted to do, and she has done just that, consistently, for over 20 years. As a kid growing up in Ames in the early 80’s you probably...
Performers develop their craft through a combination of study, practice and experience. All three are necessary. Study is what you do in school and through reading books, watching videos and experiencing critiques. Practice is what you do in rehearsal, in the studio...
Creating Social Media Topics with Pip Decks Do Iowa dancers go on to reach the international stage? For Bobbi Jene Smith, born in Centerville Iowa, she became not just an international dancer with the Batsheva Dance Company from 2005-2014, but became the subject of a...
I’ve always loved the interplay of dance and the camera in a good dance documentary. Dance documentaries are great because they take you behind the scenes and help to expand the viewer’s experience of dance. Dancers are usually seen on stage or in photographs, and the...
2019 has been a year of change. My wife, writer Karrie Higgins and I moved from Colorado back to Iowa shortly before her father, Cliff who had been on a long, slow decline, fell on his way from the apartment to the elevator which precipitated a fast decline and a...
In the past few years I’ve found myself more and more interested in videotaping and telling stories about artists. Just last week, longtime Cedar Rapids, IA metal guitarist and singer Eli Wedel branched out, launching his first rap album. Wedel had been...
