Hi everyone my name is Christopher Bisram,
I started using Green Space during the winter, as the home base for myself and other dancers, who were a part of the first performance I directed! It was amazing to have found a space so close to my apartment that was affordable. I rented Green Space pretty much every Saturday for about 5 or 6 months. The space allowed for me to work with three of my close friends to create an experimental modern flow dance, to demonstrate a relationship between my mothers strength and the waters.
After using Green Space, Valerie Green mentioned Fertile Ground, and I was more than excited to join. It was an noncurated showcase, where performers present a work in progress, and hear feedback from the audience and Valerie. It was the first time that I danced in a professional setting. It was amazing being in the dressing room and talking with other dancers, and hearing the pre-show speech from Valerie. The feedback after the performance was extremely useful because I have performed the piece a few times, but wanted to make it into one block of a show I hope to call Embrace the body.
In this performance I am still making, I hope to cultivate a piece that discusses the body in all shapes and forms. After Fertile Ground I asked Valerie about the work study that she has, and was super excited when she emailed me a couple weeks after that night saying that the position was available. Since then I have been working with Valerie, and learning about various administration tasks and studio/office maintenance.
During the summer, I took part in the summer intensive, where I learned so much. We had various teachers and styles taught to us, which were then integrated during our performance workshop, where we created choreography for our final performance. We had technique classes, a how to create choreography workshop, where we learned various exercises that could be used to generate choreography, that I still use, and a performance workshop. It was my first intensive and I couldn't have been happier to have been a part of it.
Overall my experience at Green Space and Valerie Green/Dance Entropy has been nothing but wonderful, and I am so happy that it has been many firsts for me.
Christopher Bisram, Interdisciplinary Artist