Bringing Woody back to Bob Dylan

by Livia
1/29/08
10 AM  Mountain Time

Today is a travel day from Nebraska  (where it was 45 below this morning) to southern Colorado.  Bus time is great catchup time  (sleeping, reading, organizing).  
Just a quick recap of the last few days:  We had a wonderful reunion with Eileen and Lisa Channer and Lara Ciganko...all formerly from the New Paltz area.   On the morning of the 24th,  Nathan, Evita, Michael, Bill and myself taught 2 swing dance, clogging and percussive dance workshops for the Main Street Performing Arts Charter School where Lara teaches.    The bus picked us up there after the workshops and we drove up to Hibbing, Minnesota where we performed at the most beautiful old, ornate  auditorium,  where Bob Dylan went to high school.  I thought that was ironic....Woody Guthrie comes to Bob Dylan’s home after so many years of Dylan visiting Woody in his home and in hosptial in Queens  in the sixties.   After the show we all went out to a restaurant/pub called:  Zimmy’s, where Linda, the propietress treated us all to t shirts and various Dylan  memorabiilia.....we went back the next morning to take a Caravan photo with her in front of Zimmy’s.  I have to say again how warm and welcoming everyone is our here in the Midwest.  The audiences have been packed and on their feet with standing ovations after every concert.   There’s a real rapport felt between the Company and every audience we meet.   These are real commuities of people who enjoy their subscription seriees for the year.  We then drove to North Dakota
for a concert in Dickinson and last night we performed in Nebraska.  Each day we get into the theatre and do a sound check with Ross,  our fabulous sound engineer and then spend 2 1/2 hours warming up, going over notes from the show before, and fine tuning 2 pieces at a time from the show.  It’s such a pleasure to have this time to work out details, work in dancers to pieces they haven’t performed before  (last night Talli and Michael danced Hangman’s Reel for the first time, and Isa and Talli danced in Do Re Mi for the first time as well).  It’s always interesting to me to go into a theatre/new space and try to make it your “home”,  orienting ourselves to new dimensions, floor quality and just the ambiance of the  theatre itself.   The Company gets stronger each day as we each explore the art of dance and communicating with each other and our new audiences.   Having Herman as our tour bus guide is pretty fabulous. 
 
 On our day off,  he took us to the town of Deadwood, and then to see the rock sculpture of Crazy Horse which has been in process since 1948.  This is well worth looking up on the internet. I sat in the theatre there holding Amy Fradon’s  hand and weeping....similarly to the way we connected 10 years ago visiting Terezinstaat outside of Prague.  When we really constate how the Native Americans have been treated, how greed for gold overrode the promise to leave the Black Hills of North Dakota to the Indians, untouched as sacred land,  our hearts break.  I could have spent the entire day here but we had places to go and more that Herman wanted us to see.  Herman and his bus company,  Stagecoach Tours take 300,000 people each year on these exact tours to Deadwood, Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore  (which was our next stop).  When we got there, the wind was so strong,  it literally blew us through the archway  through all the State flags and onto the stone terrace where we could behold the 4 great sculptures of our Founding Fathers.  One of the highlights was stopping in Rapid City to visit Herman’s digs.  He created his own town, where the busses are stored.  He purchased the set from Dances with Wolves and they serve as an education center and a place for him to store the antiques he collects while on tour with companies such as ours.  Herman and his wife, Wanda, have a chuckwagan/theatre venue there as well, that holds  700.  They entertain during the warmer months as well as running bus tours for thousands of folks to Deadwood,  Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore.. 

Long travel day but beautiful clear blue sky,  lots of trains carrying coal and vast expanse of prairies, cows and buffalo.