By Anne W. Semmes
Sentinel Columnist
There is a magical dance group that has met for many a year at the Greenwich Arts Council on Greenwich Avenue.
They are called the Moving Arts Collaborative (MAC) dancers and they do move about a lot in their improvisational way – they’ve danced on that late, great Greek amphitheater in Cos Cob, and once at the New York Botanical Garden when the officials weren’t looking, but most recently they danced for one of their own, Jane Milliken, homebound in the last weeks of her life.
Picture them in Jane’s Riverside garden with her looking on. What she saw is described by her daughter Cordelia Persen as the dancers danced their tribute to her, “Dance to the Egret,” a bird that frequented her garden. “Dressed in white they moved through her garden embracing nature and embodying the beauty Jane has worked so hard to create. Jane sat on the porch and danced along with her eyes, arms and feet and came alive in the most powerful kind of way. The dancers radiated love and energy and Jane soaked it in and beamed it back at them.”
MAC is more than a dance group – it’s a community, of like-minded artists. “There are singers, writers, actors and educators,” says Marsi Burns, a professional dancer who travels from the Bronx. “Everyone has the soul of an artist. Everyone has a connection.”
“This is where my people are,” confirms Dede Farnsworth, a physician’s assistant in Norwalk. “They’re simpatico about movement. We are people who would be dancing in the supermarket aisles if they’d allow us.”
Dede and Marsi are some of the up to 20 attendees of the MAC class meeting on the third floor of the Arts Council on Tuesday mornings. Dede’s been coming for 20 years -and Greenwich artist Florence Suerig for 25 years. Florence learned about MAC the year her son Michael died of AIDS. “I went and it probably saved me,” she says. “The freedom to move as one’s body leads and the joy of movement and love that flows in the class, the closeness we all feel with one another is indescribable.”
Also coming from the Bronx to lead this group of dancers is Meryl Green who was auditioning for the Alvin Ailey dance company but with a young family chose to provide her dance skills at Greenwich Academy where she headed the Arts for some dozen years before coming to MAC in 1995. Green’s modus operandi is: “I teach my students dance improvisation, with music – a great variety, the visual arts, poetry, and life references. It gets them to be more lively, to express what they’re feeling inside.”
Meryl took over from another noted Greenwich dance teacher Adele Packer who had taught at Greenwich Country Day School before being recruited in the mid 1980’s by a group of talented Greenwich women who had first gathered for some “improv:” actress and dancer Madelyn O’Neil, arts lover Jane Milliken, and Lela Bogardus, an Ice Capades skater.
“Improv” became MAC and as they danced they aged, and they danced on. “When you get older you can keep dancing longer,” attests Lela Bogardus. “You can either improvise or sit out on the sidelines.” The bottom line for Lela is, “I love to dance. The class is very well led. I love the people and the dancing, and the improvisation is just fun.”
“An older person can dance,” says Meryl, “It doesn’t go away. That’s what’s key now. We dance more slowly. We dance our personal feelings and share those.” But she’s on the lookout for “some younger people.” Two of her summertime students Annie Church and Marcia Brooks, are dance teachers at Greenwich Academy. “It helps to have strong dancers and not strong dancers – viva la difference kind of improves things.”
So, what is an improv class like? Meryl invites me to attend her MAC class in the mirrored room. There are nine students. They are to improvise to words taken from a birthday poem Meryl wrote for one of her students. “Before each dance I’ll give you a word,” she instructs, “You will choose the dance steps to the music I choose.” The first word is ‘open.’ She suggests an image of a flower opening up. “You’ll have five minutes and 27 seconds.”
The dancers are all interpreting flowers, in stages of opening up, and growing. The music stops as she calls out, “Curtain!”
The next words are ‘cut, plant, relocate.’ “Think of a dancer changing places,” says Meryl, and, “You have four minutes.” The music pulsates – its Paul Pena singing the Genghis Blues.
But it’s when she divides up the group into five and five with her joining a group that the strength of communal dancing is seen. “Each group will make a plan and have a show,” but, she adds, “As we always say this is not a competition.”
Music requests are made by each group.
One group creates a winsome flower picture, followed by applause; the other group acts out swimming and splashing to the music of Laurie Anderson’s “Bodies in Motion.” “Curtain and finale,” Meryl calls. Smiles all round.
“The words to that song says it all,” says Judy Garfinkel, a life coach and professional dancer. “We’re all bodies in motion. Improvisation allows us to connect with ourselves and to each other. This is the most validating, continuing inspirational group of women – our relationship is beyond words.”
