I first spoke with Rima Faber in working to find local history articles for the print magazine, Bourgeon. Rima contributed a wonderful piece on Pola Nirenska, which you can see here. Since then, Dr. Faber and I have been chatting about the efforts of Dancing Forever (led my Michelle Ava) to create a DC Dance Archive. One of the components of such an effort is the creation of an oral history project. Two fridays ago I had the pleasure of sitting in on a meeting of the Dancing Forever crew, and videotaping some of their stories. The Dancing Forever group meets at least once a month. This month the focus was on videotaping their stories. I have put together the first two stories: they are the recollections of Judith Judson and Marcia Freeman.

Marcia Freeman:

Judith Judson:

I appreciated so very much – in particular – Marcia’s comments about musicality. Marcia is the founder of the dance program at Gallaudet (the university dedicated to deaf students.) She says that you can teach musicality to dancers who can not hear. I found that interesting….. If you are interested in working with Rima and Michelle on their archive and oral history project you can contact them as follows:

Rima Faber: rfaber@ndeo.org

Michelle Ava: spiritava@aol.com