Six Meters at Phoebe Retirement Home

On Wednesday, I performed with Six Meters at Allentown's Phoebe Retirement Home. We began by demonstrating some improvisational dance techniques: 8s, opening spaces, all stopping and starting at the same time, before doing an exercise called "filling in spaces." With a partner, you fill in the spaces of their body, which can be under their arms, between their fingers, between their head and back, anywhere. Then one partner moves away, leaving the other in a dynamic shape.

We then invited the folks at the home to fill in spaces with us. They gladly obliged, and I spent the next few minutes dancing with Bud, an elderly gentleman who used to do the polka.

We finished the performance with twenty minutes of free improv using various silly hats as inspiration. Afterward, the manager told us how happy we had made the residents, whose smiles I remembered all the way home.

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