Transcript of Pre-Show Talk by Kristin Wagner | December 3, 2022 8pm show
Hello!
(Audience claps)
Alright I have this pretty well down at this point, but the other day I winged it so today I thought “no I am not going to do that” so pardon me for having my phone out.
Welcome to Refract/Reframe: Reflections on Loss, Love and Light, presented by The Click, in collaboration with Boston Moving Arts Productions and this beautiful, beautiful new space The Cambridge Foundry. We are super excited to be hosting our very first indoor production. We have been doing some outdoor stuff and some works in progress so far, but this is The Click’s very first fully produced show inside a theater, and we could not be more excited to be sharing it with audiences across four different shows. This is also one of the very first shows ever in this brand new space, which opened back in September.
Just a quick note about The Foundry: we are honored to be an Inaugural Anchor Partner with The Cambridge Foundry, which basically means we are in residence. We are helping to animate their spaces, get people in the door and get excitement rising about this new venture. The space as you might have noticed is quite beautiful and big and vast, and welcomes artists of many different mediums and styles and ways of interacting with the public in their space. There is a podcast room, a digital media room, a ton of multipurpose spaces, a community hall, there is soon to be a coffee shop (we cannot wait). There is a costume shop, a commercial kitchen… basically anything you could think of that could have the word “art” or “artisan” after it can happen in this space. That is not necessarily a novel concept; there are many multimaker spaces in our area which is a wonderful thing, but they often do not include dance. That is something that makes The Foundry really special. Another thing that makes The Foundry really special that I get really excited about is that I am standing on a wood sprung floor, which is very rare. Sadly rare for the City of Boston and dance artists. We have laid marley on top of it, and we can slide, we can jump, and we don’t have to worry about our joints crying tomorrow, or tonight depending on how old we are.
Right around the corner there is a wood sprung dance studio that has been a home to many of the classes that we are programming. It has been an absolute treat to have everything we need in this one central location, and to think of all the ways that we can grow alongside The Foundry. So a big round of applause and THANK YOU to The Foundry - keep an eye on all that they are doing and all that they will end up being in the years that come, and support as you can.
Okay, take a breath, Kristin.
(Audience laughs)
The Click is a collection of dance performers, makers, educators, and administrators who came together about a year and a half ago to try to do dance just a little differently in the Greater Boston area and beyond. A lot of times the way the dance world works is very hierarchical, very leveled and can feel really isolating siloed and not always the most welcoming to people who are coming to dance later in the life or people who are looking to keep dance in their life but not doing it as a profession or even people who are doing it professionally but for whatever reason, like me, feel on the outside of things and they aren’t quite sure how to “get in.” We basically wanted to make a more compassionate and open space for all to enjoy the healing and transformative powers of movement. We do that in a variety of ways but mostly notably through education. We are programming classes for as young as (currently) eight all the way through eighty depending on who walks through the door. We do this through creative movement classes, moving meditation classes, open level ballet, and a series of intermediate to advanced technique classes in contemporary styles taught by a rotating roster of teachers all with very different movement backgrounds and bring a different light to each class.
We are firm believers in the idea that all bodies can and should dance, and belong in the world of dance, and I think you will see that very well represented throughout this performance. We have dancers who are fresh out of college with all things working and at their most limber, all the way up to my husband who I love dearly who is a little older and a little creakier and is still a beautiful performer. We have bodies that come in a range of sizes, shapes and colors, and we have a range of movement backgrounds that influence the way that we create and perform in a variety of ways. So what I like to say is that yes you are going to see beautiful lines, you are going to see excellent (hopefully) structure, composition and creativity… but you are also going to see people who are people. We are all people before we are dancers. I like to say we value the person over the pirouette. And, yea, I will leave that there. Enjoy that as you watch and try to notice how you might find and see yourself within each dance, and how movement might be something accessible to you in a way that you hadn’t considered before. And then come take Exhale which is an all levels class that we teach here on Wednesday nights!
If you are thinking to yourself, “Wow, it sounds like they are doing an awful lot” - we are! And we would love to do an awful lot with more support from our community, and that includes every single person in this room. Support comes in a variety of different fashions. First and foremost, we are trying to grow our Instagram following, because who isn’t, so if you felt like opening up your app at some point tonight and searching @the.click.boston and liking a couple reels, sharing a couple things, and adding things to collections because apparently that helps the algorithm in ways that I don’t understand but they say it does so I tell people to do it. That would be an awesome and FREE way to support our collective.
You can also buy merchandise which we are selling - there is an advertisement in the program. It is the holiday season! This is not your average merch; it is actual art made by an actual artist out there, so it is wearable art and it not only helps us financially but it helps us with brand awareness (yes, some artists do know business terminology!). Finally, the most impactful way to help us is through a financial donation which can be made through our fiscal sponsor the Boston Dance Alliance. There is a code to scan in the program if you have the means and desire to do that. We aren’t going anywhere (hopefully) so don’t feel like this is a now or never thing - we are looking for support in a variety of ways over an extended period of time, and we’d love to click with you in whatever way feels best to you.
Okay, on to the next thing. Tonight’s performance includes a solo by former Click member now based in Seattle, Leah Misano, she is accompanied by her friend Sage Fogle. I was VERY SILLY and left Sage’s bio out of the program, so I will be reading it here now:
Sage is a current second year master’s student studying Collaborative Piano at the Longy School of Music. Before beginning studies at Longy in Fall 2021, they graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance and Music History from the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music in Ohio. Sage is originally from South Carolina, where they were chosen to attend the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, a residential high school for the arts. Sage is an avid collaborator with instrumentalists and vocalists and aims to continue to build connections between artists from different backgrounds and bring people together through music. Over the summers of 2022 and 2019, Sage lived in southern Austria and studied at the American Institute of Musical Studies. Recent performance engagements include vocal collaboration recitals in Cambridge, MA, opera recitals in Austria, performances with the Baldwin Wallace Symphony Orchestra in Cincinnati,Indianapolis, and Cleveland, solo recital at the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music. Outside of music, Sage enjoys working with children in various learning environments, biking, and gardening.
This performance is an evening of reflections that question, define, and redefine beauty, resilience, grief and longing. We are honored to share these moving meditations with you today, especially since the last show I produced was shut down 45 minutes before curtain on March 12, 2020. Since that time, I have moved out of Boston, gotten married, started teaching yoga, and so many more life changes: I am sure you can all relate. The ebbs and flows of change and grief that we have all experienced over the past few years is at the heart of this show. The final piece on the program, “make light: or how I survived it all”, considers this very specifically in terms of how beauty and joy are tools of survival. At the same time, I want to take a moment to honor and recognize that we did not all in fact survive this time. Over the past few years, we have suffered loss of many kinds, but most prominent perhaps has been loss of life. I want to take a moment to consider the countless lives lost in this country and across the globe due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but also due to suicide, drug and alcohol addiction, domestic violence, and a variety of other every-day-tragedies that our time in isolation brought to the forefront. Most personally to The Click, we suffered the loss of our friend and collaborator Frederick Moss this year. Fred was an original cast member of “make light” and he truly did make so very much light. He is deeply missed, and we honor him with our performance today. I would like to take a brief moment of silence, for each of us to consider Fred, and all the lives young and old cut short in the past few years, as well as a moment to remember how very lucky we are to be here and to experience the healing power of movement.
(Moment of silence)
Thank you so much for being here with us; enjoy the show!
(Audience claps)
(Audience claps)
Alright I have this pretty well down at this point, but the other day I winged it so today I thought “no I am not going to do that” so pardon me for having my phone out.
Welcome to Refract/Reframe: Reflections on Loss, Love and Light, presented by The Click, in collaboration with Boston Moving Arts Productions and this beautiful, beautiful new space The Cambridge Foundry. We are super excited to be hosting our very first indoor production. We have been doing some outdoor stuff and some works in progress so far, but this is The Click’s very first fully produced show inside a theater, and we could not be more excited to be sharing it with audiences across four different shows. This is also one of the very first shows ever in this brand new space, which opened back in September.
Just a quick note about The Foundry: we are honored to be an Inaugural Anchor Partner with The Cambridge Foundry, which basically means we are in residence. We are helping to animate their spaces, get people in the door and get excitement rising about this new venture. The space as you might have noticed is quite beautiful and big and vast, and welcomes artists of many different mediums and styles and ways of interacting with the public in their space. There is a podcast room, a digital media room, a ton of multipurpose spaces, a community hall, there is soon to be a coffee shop (we cannot wait). There is a costume shop, a commercial kitchen… basically anything you could think of that could have the word “art” or “artisan” after it can happen in this space. That is not necessarily a novel concept; there are many multimaker spaces in our area which is a wonderful thing, but they often do not include dance. That is something that makes The Foundry really special. Another thing that makes The Foundry really special that I get really excited about is that I am standing on a wood sprung floor, which is very rare. Sadly rare for the City of Boston and dance artists. We have laid marley on top of it, and we can slide, we can jump, and we don’t have to worry about our joints crying tomorrow, or tonight depending on how old we are.
Right around the corner there is a wood sprung dance studio that has been a home to many of the classes that we are programming. It has been an absolute treat to have everything we need in this one central location, and to think of all the ways that we can grow alongside The Foundry. So a big round of applause and THANK YOU to The Foundry - keep an eye on all that they are doing and all that they will end up being in the years that come, and support as you can.
Okay, take a breath, Kristin.
(Audience laughs)
The Click is a collection of dance performers, makers, educators, and administrators who came together about a year and a half ago to try to do dance just a little differently in the Greater Boston area and beyond. A lot of times the way the dance world works is very hierarchical, very leveled and can feel really isolating siloed and not always the most welcoming to people who are coming to dance later in the life or people who are looking to keep dance in their life but not doing it as a profession or even people who are doing it professionally but for whatever reason, like me, feel on the outside of things and they aren’t quite sure how to “get in.” We basically wanted to make a more compassionate and open space for all to enjoy the healing and transformative powers of movement. We do that in a variety of ways but mostly notably through education. We are programming classes for as young as (currently) eight all the way through eighty depending on who walks through the door. We do this through creative movement classes, moving meditation classes, open level ballet, and a series of intermediate to advanced technique classes in contemporary styles taught by a rotating roster of teachers all with very different movement backgrounds and bring a different light to each class.
We are firm believers in the idea that all bodies can and should dance, and belong in the world of dance, and I think you will see that very well represented throughout this performance. We have dancers who are fresh out of college with all things working and at their most limber, all the way up to my husband who I love dearly who is a little older and a little creakier and is still a beautiful performer. We have bodies that come in a range of sizes, shapes and colors, and we have a range of movement backgrounds that influence the way that we create and perform in a variety of ways. So what I like to say is that yes you are going to see beautiful lines, you are going to see excellent (hopefully) structure, composition and creativity… but you are also going to see people who are people. We are all people before we are dancers. I like to say we value the person over the pirouette. And, yea, I will leave that there. Enjoy that as you watch and try to notice how you might find and see yourself within each dance, and how movement might be something accessible to you in a way that you hadn’t considered before. And then come take Exhale which is an all levels class that we teach here on Wednesday nights!
If you are thinking to yourself, “Wow, it sounds like they are doing an awful lot” - we are! And we would love to do an awful lot with more support from our community, and that includes every single person in this room. Support comes in a variety of different fashions. First and foremost, we are trying to grow our Instagram following, because who isn’t, so if you felt like opening up your app at some point tonight and searching @the.click.boston and liking a couple reels, sharing a couple things, and adding things to collections because apparently that helps the algorithm in ways that I don’t understand but they say it does so I tell people to do it. That would be an awesome and FREE way to support our collective.
You can also buy merchandise which we are selling - there is an advertisement in the program. It is the holiday season! This is not your average merch; it is actual art made by an actual artist out there, so it is wearable art and it not only helps us financially but it helps us with brand awareness (yes, some artists do know business terminology!). Finally, the most impactful way to help us is through a financial donation which can be made through our fiscal sponsor the Boston Dance Alliance. There is a code to scan in the program if you have the means and desire to do that. We aren’t going anywhere (hopefully) so don’t feel like this is a now or never thing - we are looking for support in a variety of ways over an extended period of time, and we’d love to click with you in whatever way feels best to you.
Okay, on to the next thing. Tonight’s performance includes a solo by former Click member now based in Seattle, Leah Misano, she is accompanied by her friend Sage Fogle. I was VERY SILLY and left Sage’s bio out of the program, so I will be reading it here now:
Sage is a current second year master’s student studying Collaborative Piano at the Longy School of Music. Before beginning studies at Longy in Fall 2021, they graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance and Music History from the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music in Ohio. Sage is originally from South Carolina, where they were chosen to attend the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, a residential high school for the arts. Sage is an avid collaborator with instrumentalists and vocalists and aims to continue to build connections between artists from different backgrounds and bring people together through music. Over the summers of 2022 and 2019, Sage lived in southern Austria and studied at the American Institute of Musical Studies. Recent performance engagements include vocal collaboration recitals in Cambridge, MA, opera recitals in Austria, performances with the Baldwin Wallace Symphony Orchestra in Cincinnati,Indianapolis, and Cleveland, solo recital at the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music. Outside of music, Sage enjoys working with children in various learning environments, biking, and gardening.
This performance is an evening of reflections that question, define, and redefine beauty, resilience, grief and longing. We are honored to share these moving meditations with you today, especially since the last show I produced was shut down 45 minutes before curtain on March 12, 2020. Since that time, I have moved out of Boston, gotten married, started teaching yoga, and so many more life changes: I am sure you can all relate. The ebbs and flows of change and grief that we have all experienced over the past few years is at the heart of this show. The final piece on the program, “make light: or how I survived it all”, considers this very specifically in terms of how beauty and joy are tools of survival. At the same time, I want to take a moment to honor and recognize that we did not all in fact survive this time. Over the past few years, we have suffered loss of many kinds, but most prominent perhaps has been loss of life. I want to take a moment to consider the countless lives lost in this country and across the globe due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but also due to suicide, drug and alcohol addiction, domestic violence, and a variety of other every-day-tragedies that our time in isolation brought to the forefront. Most personally to The Click, we suffered the loss of our friend and collaborator Frederick Moss this year. Fred was an original cast member of “make light” and he truly did make so very much light. He is deeply missed, and we honor him with our performance today. I would like to take a brief moment of silence, for each of us to consider Fred, and all the lives young and old cut short in the past few years, as well as a moment to remember how very lucky we are to be here and to experience the healing power of movement.
(Moment of silence)
Thank you so much for being here with us; enjoy the show!
(Audience claps)