new website!

please visit my new website for the most current information on my work:

http://mwestandcompany.com

and my blog with writings and creative musings here:

http://www.theindependentmover.blogspot.com

springtime cometh

Though it may seem that this is a never ending winter filled with snow, frigid winds, and cabin fever, there are still many exciting cultural things to check out this month. 

I will be performing at the monthly Folk-Off, dancing to Joshua Sotomayor's music as part of the line-up. The skinny is listed below. It has been nearly 2 years since last we performed together and back by popular demand! Should be some good times. 

• Joshua Sotomayor/Melissa West
  songs and things
  Folk-Off at Con Artist
  6-9pm, Sunday February 27 2011 (Free Admission)
  119 Ludlow btw Rivington and Delancey in the basement.
  New York, NY
  ***
  
  
  As NYC's Dance Theater Workshop transitions into the newly merged New York Live Arts (NYLA), they continue to have many shows for low-cost as well as some cool workshops. One workshop of interest is Eva Yaa Asantewaa's Writing on Dance. The application deadline is March 11th so get those wheels turning. Eva is a writer and dancer whose work has appeared in the Village Voice (among many other publications) and on her blog, The Infinite Body.
  Some links: http://infinitebody.blogspot.com/2011/02/apply-now-for-dtws-new-writing-on-dance.html
  http://www.dancetheaterworkshop.org/programs/workshops/writing
  
  ***
  While away at  The Yard this past summer I met a woman in Oak Bluffs who makes hula hoops. Naturally, I had to have one and had a beautifully meditative experience learning as the summer waned. The more I learn and do, the more I wish to share. I cannot wait for the spring to get here so we can continue with the Free Dance Project which included Summer Dance Jams in Central Park. This year, I will be adding to that free-ness, a hoop jam!! More information to come and, as usual, it will be a grassroots/collaborative/come when you can type thing. 
  
  
  While on the subject, check out the Hoop Path! Ann Humphreys teaches in Brooklyn on Tuesday nights at the Lyceum. Low-cost hoop class with a master. Do check it! http://www.hooppath.com/cms/
  
  
  ***
  
  
  And, as always, continue to check out the Second Saturdays Staten Island Art Walk which happens every month on the second Saturday. As the weather gets nicer, more events will turn up. This past month I performed at the Deep Tanks Studio with Mary Ellen Carafice and Alex Amirov. There was a great turn out and many stayed for the live jam that happened afterward. Many thanks to the Deep Tanks Studio for inviting us to perform.
  More on SSSI!: http://www.secondsaturdaystatenisland.com/
  
  
  ***
  Please check out my new website: www.mwestandcompany.wordpress.com. It will have my most current performance information. I update it pretty frequently and will continue to use this blog as a forum for dance critiques (anticipate many this spring, as the winter has been low-key for me), reviews, contemplations, exciting events, and more at the independent movershaker!
  I cannot wait for the snow to melt and to go outside in my jean jacket !!
  -m 

  
  

  
  

   

when the signs get clearer

and knowing what it is you want to do with your life

When I think about it, the signs were always there. I have always been a girl of ideas. At the age of four, I sang Mary Had a Little Lamb to my father and professed, "Daddy, I want to be a singer." And then there was the time when I collected jewelry boxes of beads and sat outside with with my sisters and neighbors and make necklaces and bracelets. All of the ballet lessons that I fought furiously not to go to; the imaginary school that I founded when I was eight; the years in high school when I took apart my jeans, wrote on them, sewed them in odd patterns and wore them with my favorite hats; The notebooks of clothing designs; The nail polish and silk gloves; I wanted to be an actress. A bookstore owner. A dancer. A movie star. A woman of ideas. And I always was. 

It's hard when you are not destined to become a doctor or a lawyer. Things are not so straight and narrow. After studying English and later studying dance, fueling my need to create things, it is apparent that I have always been a creative thinker. Lately, though, things have been falling a bit more into place. My place in the world is not a member of some corps ballet or modern dance company; it is not in a city school system or even a university school system (yet). My place is in a studio. Not as an administrator, though that is something that will come along with it. My career, my profession is to create things. Things that I like. 

Which is why I will be founding my own businesses. It has become ever so clearer that I need to have my own company. Of course, I aim to have a dance company, one that grows and flourishes on Staten Island because that's what makes sense to my body-- the investigation of movement and of my creative soul. However, there's more. In addition to my own dance company, I want to have my own little business-- one where I sell my ideas manifested into pretty little things-- hoops, earrings, clothes, paintings, and things of that nature. It will be a source of income and also of artistic accomplishment. It will supplement my movement ideas, supplement my wallet, and make people smile. The things I create will be pretty, sustainable, practical, and fun.

In the next few years, my energies will shift from "making it" in the world to making my world in the best way I know how-- making things, with a bit of love and care and dedication. This is more articulate than it was even six months ago. So, onward it is!

-m