{"id":243829,"date":"2010-09-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-03T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/everyones-a-dancer-at-weekly-improv-night\/"},"modified":"2010-09-03T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-03T07:00:00","slug":"everyones-a-dancer-at-weekly-improv-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/everyones-a-dancer-at-weekly-improv-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyone\u2019s a dancer at weekly improv night"},"content":{"rendered":"

Por Cynthia Robertson
\nReportero SDUN<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Everyone\u2019s<\/a>
Lighted hula hoops are some of the props dancers bring with them to DanceJam, every Friday night at Eveoke Dance Theatre in North Park. (Cynthia Robertson\/SDUN) <\/figcaption><\/figure>Jamming in San Diego has come into full swing\u2014or jazz or any kind of dance one prefers. DanceJamming, that is.<\/p>\n

Every Friday evening at Eveoke Dance Theatre in North Park, 20-70 people come together to jive to the strains of whatever the DJ is playing. The fun starts at 9 p.m., lasting until midnight. <\/p>\n

Todd Zipp, one of the regular DJs who has played there off and on for 10 years, explained that the music\u2019s genre cannot be pinned down. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s movement music,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Zipp spins everything from Techno and Celtic to World Beat and New Age. The dancers move around on the hardwood floor, sometimes coming together and moving with the other dancers in their reveries. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t really label a DanceJammer, either,\u201d said Mel Lions, who facilitates the Friday evening dances.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone from artists to CEOs feels comfortable here,\u201d Zipp said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDanceJam really runs itself,\u201d Lions said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have to tell people how to dance.\u201d<\/p>\n

What exactly is DanceJam?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a byproduct of the post-modern dance movement since the 1960s,\u201d participant Cara Cadwallader said. \u201cI like to call myself an improvisational dance artist.\u201d<\/p>\n

South Park resident Suzanne Simmons said she de-stresses from her job when she cavorts around on the wooden floor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI put everything into it when I dance. It\u2019s like letting go of everything,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Simmons studied Ecstatic Dance and Belly Dance Meditation in Massachusetts before moving to San Diego. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt took me two years to get to DanceJam,\u201d she said with a laugh. \u201cI\u2019d drive every day by the studio and kept saying I ought to try it. Now [I\u2019m] a regular.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another east coast transplant, Andrea Sperling, moved to University Heights from New York five years ago, discovering DanceJam two years later. <\/p>\n

\u201cI had danced in an improvisational dance community in New York, so when I came out here I looked for the same thing,\u201d Sperling said. \u201cIt\u2019s not like a club where you have to look cool. There\u2019s no style you have to follow, and there\u2019s no drinking or smoking.\u201d <\/p>\n

Lions had been reluctant to try it at first. \u201cI\u2019d never been a dancer in my life, and I was afraid to let go,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On his 44th birthday, he wanted to try something new. At DanceJam, he found people who didn\u2019t care how he looked when he danced. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I discovered how great it was to move my body,\u201d he said. \u201cPlus, I had come into an entire community of people\u2014everybody from businessmen and lawyers to hippies and children, and people in wheelchairs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judith Greer Essex is considered the mother of DanceJam\u2014she hosted the dances during their early years in the El Cortez Hotel ballroom. In the \u201990s, dancers grooved at the Center for the Moving Arts on Fifth Avenue.<\/p>\n

Yet DanceJamming had its origins outside San Diego. The first free-form jam occurred in the basement of a Cambridge, Mass., church during the summers of 1967 and 1968, with the wild drum music and dancing attracting multitudes. The drummers and dancers connected with Father Kenny of Christ’s Church on Garden Street, agreeing on a Wednesday night gathering where the dancers could move in free-formed creative movement, which the dancers dubbed \u201cDance Free.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 1978, the 10th anniversary of the free-form DanceJams, the movement had spread across the country from New York City to San Francisco and even Honolulu. <\/p>\n

In San Diego, free-form dancing finally took hold, and is still holding strong.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like a rave party for adults without any of the bad stuff,\u201d Simmons said. <\/p>\n

Don\u2019t have dance shoes? No problem. Bare feet and a free spirit are all that are needed. Cost is $5 for dancing on Friday nights before 9:30, and $7 after, at Eveoke Dance Theatre, 2811 University Ave. For more information, go to movingarts.net<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Cynthia Robertson SDUN Reporter Jamming in San Diego has come into full swing\u2014or jazz or any kind of dance one prefers. DanceJamming, that is. Every Friday evening at Eveoke Dance Theatre in North Park, 20-70 people come together to jive to the strains of whatever the DJ is playing. The fun starts at 9 […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":749,"featured_media":243830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Everyone\u2019s a dancer at weekly improv night","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/749"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}