I thoroughly enjoyed reading Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet written by retired New York City Ballet (NYCB) Principal Dancer, Jenifer Ringer.
She writes openly, honestly, and with great grace about her lifetime of experiences in the world of ballet. She takes the reader on a journey from the time when she was a small girl and first started dancing, through her struggles with her body image, up until the apex of her impending retirement from NYCB.
As with any artistic project, what you start out to create takes on a life of its own and turns into exactly what it is meant to be.
While the creative journey may take a different path than originally expected, I find that the destination generally remains the same. It is what we discover along the journey that clarifies our true intentions. Continue reading
Thank you for your interest in performing with Sasso & Company in our annual Spring Performance Series!
We are looking for established contemporary and modern dance artists from the Boston community to share an exciting variety of work with new and returning audiences. Sasso & Company aims to further the sense of connectivity in our local dance community through this collaborative performance opportunity. Continue reading
On how to protect your choreography from being copied, an issue I have, unfortunately worried about as an artist:
““The technical moves themselves are like words for an author,” she says, and therefore are available for anyone to use… But, says Haye, “when you put a series of words together, they become paragraphs and therefore copyrightable.”
I recently participated in a jazz class in London and was shocked to find out that it was a legitimate technique class!
Over the last several years, I have been overwhelmingly disappointed when I have gone to take professional level classes in various cities in the US and UK. My expectation is that I will receive a proper warm up that requires technical skill and finesse (i.e. plies, tendus, balances, etc) followed by a combination that is designed to be fun, challenging, and fits into the genre of the class.
Well, let me tell you about my experience:
So many classes that call themselves jazz or even modern are this new brand of contemporary that’s a bit of modern thrown in with a lot of acrobatics and scary tricks that look sort of cool, but will land most of us in the hospital with knee problems sooner rather than later.
I naively thought that once I started my company and had a season, that things would sort of roll forward from there.
I would have an audition, gain some new dancers, create more work, and have more performances. I knew that it would always be hard work., even the big, established companies such as Paul Taylor Dance Company, continually seek to grow and engage audiences in new and innovative ways (hence the change to Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance).
I am excited to pour myself into Sasso & Company, but I did not anticipate I would be directing my second season from across the Atlantic Ocean.
I am all at once nervous and proud. In just a few short weeks, this dance show has come together. In September, when most companies are getting into their regular rehearsal schedule, I was contemplating if I would create anything at all. By December I was in the studio with two of my dancers creating a duet and experimenting with ideas surrounding love styles and Sternberg’s triangular love theory. As the work started coming together, I realized that I really wanted to produce a season and introduce my work as an independent choreographer and artistic director of LaceySassoDance/Sasso & Company.
I, like everyone else, have my preferred genre(s) of dance to perform, create, and view. I say this to recognize the fact that there were works in this show that I simply did not like, although this is valid, I also found myself walking away frustrated that choreographers seem to be missing the point of KEEPING IT SIMPLE.
Let me tell you a bit about my recent experience with burnout. I will be bluntly honest and say that I am currently struggling with finding the creative energy to burst into the studio beaming about my newest ideas, amazing musical choices, and challenging steps, since all of these things seem to be evading me at the moment.
Founder and artistic director of Sasso & Company.
I've worked as a professional dancer for over 15 years in New York City, Boston and London. I've taught internationally in the UK, Europe, and South America.
Lacey Sasso 