History
SpiritDanceRI: A Dance Event With a Rich History
The following was submitted to us from Doug Victor, creative dance teacher, dance visionary, and student of the legendary Barbara Mettler.
The first known dance event of this genre was created in the late 1960s by Allison Binder, a colleague of mine and fellow student of Barbara Mettler. Binder’s event, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was called Dance Free and was started as a collective by those who wanted to create a free dance event that people could come to as volunteers to produce for all to enjoy. Dance Free morphed into what is now called Dance Freedom under the good care of Bonita Weisman.
For several years, especially in the 1970s and early 1980s, similar groups were spawned all over the country, including Dance Friday in Watertown, Massachusetts, Get High on Dance in Tucson, Arizona and Dance Spree in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Get High on Dance was started by Joanna Cashman, Margo Taylor, and Beverly Watson, friends who also studied with Mettler. Joanna now resides in Olympia, Washington where she runs Wild Grace Arts, which includes a monthly free dance event.
Dance Spree was created by Kate Austin who also studied with Mettler and teaches for Lesley University in the Integrated Teaching Through the Arts Graduate Progam.
In the 1980s I was involved with a group who produced a free dance monthly called Providance, a full non-profit organization. Providance started off with great guns but as the 1980s decade took shape, less people continued dancing. Attendance dropped and ultimately Providance, sadly, died out.
But now, in 2010, it seems that more and more people are dancing again. Good news on your effort and good news for the planet!
More About Doug Victor
Doug Victor has taught creative dance for over 30 years. In addition to his private teaching, he directs Creative Dance Providence and teaches nationally for the Creative Arts in Learning Graduate Program at Lesley University in Cambridge. A founder of the International Association for Creative Dance, he has taught extensively across the United States, and in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Hawaii. Upcoming teaching venues include New Jersey, Montana and Scotland. www.dancecreative.org