Congratulations to the 4 winners of the February 2013 Harlequin Floors Scholarship Video Contest! 

To see the winning videos, scroll down the right sidebar.  To enter for your chance to be 1 of 4 $250 cash prize winners, go to www.TheWorldDances.com and submit your video for the March Harlequin Dance Scholarship Contest today!

A new month brings a new video contest!  If you entered and didn't win in February, keep trying and submit a new video today to enter the March contest. 

In January, the Joyce Theater hosted FOCUS DANCE, a week-long festival that serves as a platform for showcasing American dance companies to international presenters. "While international governments routinely invite U.S. presenters to see work in their countries, there has been no similar unified effort on behalf of our own dance artists," explain Focus organizers. Well-established and lesser-known companies were carefully selected by a team of curators to perform in New York before audiences comprised largely of international dance presenters. It was a unique opportunity for dance companies to "audition" for tour engagements and reach new audiences.

While all the performances were first rate and compelling, one in particular left me thinking. The Miami-based Rosie Herrera Dance Theater delivered a performance totally unlike anything I've seen in all my years of watching dance. "Various Stages of Drowning: A Cabaret," (reviewed here) coalesced successive vignettes into a surreal collage of images and emotion, at turns hilarious and devastating. For example, one section involved a female dancer dressed oddly like a too-young girl trying to be sexy playing dress-up and 3 tuxedoed male partners. At first, she is satirically flattered by the cohort of male dancers, then the males' partnering transitions menacingly. The girl is carried from stool to stool to be set upon some 20 cakes, which squish out from beneath her. It's funny in a sort of slapstick way at first, but the girl's protests become increasingly desperate. By the end, she's screaming and crying as cake oozes off her, then she's violently yanked offstage by anonymous male hands covering her mouth. The impact was intense. I was impressed enough to track Herrera down for an interview, which you can read here.

The Rosie Herrera Dance Theater will be premiering a new piece, "Dining Alone," at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York April 18 and 19. More info and tix are available here.

 Top dance physical therapists point out that walking with your hips and feet turned out on a daily basis outside of class puts too much stress on your feet and ankles.  It also stresses the medial knee which can affect the stability of your patella.  While you strive for turnout in class after a proper warm-up, you want to make sure your regular walking gait is not turned out.  Proper walking alignment and gait will help protect your spine, hips and feet.