From the press release:

No Hero was created when Ketley traveled extensively throughout the rural parts of the American west interviewing strangers in their homes, community halls, and RV parks about their relationship to dance. The full work is a combination of a video projection collected through these experiences accompanied with a live performance of contemporary dance.

Ketley co-founded The Foundry after dancing for four years with the San Francisco Ballet.

We don’t get many chances in Savannah to see top-notch modern dance, so I hope some folks will turn out and support this effort, despite the fact that it’s a busy weekend around town.

Click here for an article in Do and here for this week’s Connect Savannah coverage.

Click here to buy tickets ($25).

And here are a few images from the multimedia work No Hero:

The movie has gotten stellar reviews, and it is also one of those movies that Savannah missed.

Which makes it a fitting choice for the Psychotoric Film Society‘s Movies Savannah Missed Film Series.

First Position, by Bess Kargman, will be screened on Sunday, August 12 at Muse Arts Warehouse at 2, 5, and 8.

Tickets are $8 at the door, or charge them in advance online at this link for $12, with the extra few bucks going straight to the Savannah Dance Festival.

The inaugural Savannah Dance Festival has scheduled a series of events in October. The next fundraising event is With a Twist, a concert fundraiser at Savannah Arts Academy directed by Karen Burns. More details here.

Here’s the First Position trailer:

I’ve written pretty regularly about the SDF’s efforts, including this post with dozens of photos from their flash mob performance on River Street on July 4th.

From the Kickstarter campaign page:

The Savannah Dance Festival, a 501(c) 3 non profit organization was established about a year ago to address the conspicuous omission of concert, contemporary and modern dance in in a city otherwise noted for outstanding visual and performing art. Music, film and visual art have thrived in Savannah while dance has languished. This project is based on the original premise of the founders of the SDF commission–Bring great contemporary dance to Savannah and the city will get hooked. With that in mind, we set a goal to bring Sean Curran Company, the best we could imagine.

Here’s the campaign video:

I donated to this earlier today, and I hope other arts lovers will come up with a few bucks. If you consider the incredible of other Savannah festivals in recent years, it seems pretty clear that this could turn into something extra special.

One of the highlights of my holiday was the 6 p.m. flash mob by the Savannah Dance Festival at Rousakis Plaza on River Street.

I’ve written about the SDF, scheduled for October 12-13, several times on this blog and in my columns, including this post with photos from the non-profit’s first major fundraiser — a Casablanca-themed party at the Jepson hosted by Stratton and Mary Leopold.

The performance on River Street yesterday was simply electric. It was hard to say who seemed most excited about the 15 minutes or so of frenetic dancing — the dancers, the spectators who knew what was coming, the spectators who just happened to be on hand, the folks who joined in the dancing at the end, or that one little boy who was mesmerized.

I don’t know who any of these dancers are with the exception of SDF president Pat Alley. She’s the one dancing with the two little girls at the bottom of the pics here.

More soon on the SDF’s ongoing fund- and consciousness-raising.

I just kept shooting right through it all. I’ve cropped a few of these but for the most part they’re unedited.

If you’re pictured in one of these, I’d be more than happy to send you a higher-res version. Just email me at billdawers@comcast.net. If you pull one off the blog to use on Facebook or somewhere else, please include a link back to this post (copy the URL in the address bar).

I’ll post these and maybe even more to Facebook eventually.

Click for larger versions. Enjoy.

A “sneak peek” of a photoshoot with Gallim Dance (founded and directed by Andrea Miller) of a piece premiering in June at the Joyce Theater in NYC:

I’ve mentioned Gallim Dance a handful of times on this blog and in my newspaper columns since first seeing them perform I Can See Myself in Your Pupil in 2010 at Spoleto.

As regular readers might recall, I’m really excited about the first annual Savannah Dance Festival this October, featuring the Sean Curran Company at the Lucas Theatre.

A few updates:

• The SDF has a great new website up and running, which includes some beautiful photos of local dancers taken by David Perkins and Hannah Lancaster. (I’ve used one by Perkins as the thumbnail for this post on my home page.)
• The website also has information about how to make donations.
• The Sean Curran Company, one of America’s leading modern dance companies, is still slated for the October 2012 festival.
• The first big SDF fundraiser will be a Casablanca themed Valentine’s Day gala at the Telfair Museums’ Jepson Center. Stratton and Mary Leopold will be honorary chairs of the event. You’ll be reading and hearing a lot more in coming weeks about entertainment and special guests for that event.
• Board president Pat Alley, whom I quote at length in the column linked above, was interviewed for the January issue of Savannah Magazine.