As part of Vineyard Community Church’s annual Christmas show this year they added a simple flashmob dance after their performance in Springdale. The flashmob dance followed the trend of previous Cincinnati flashmobs and overtook Fountain Square.
“Over 500 suburbanites trekked downtown to dance for two minutes,” said Brad Wise, Creative Director, Vineyard Community Church. “The cool thing was that a lot of them stuck around afterward and went out to eat and enjoy the city.”
The Cincinnati Arts Association presents “Binocular”, the first performance of the 2010 season by Exhale Dance Tribe. This particular presentation is not your typical “going to the ballet” dance experience. Exhale Dance Tribe is a contemporary jazz troupe, mixing modern and rhythm based dance to create “expressionistic and multi-lingual dance rooted in rhythmic language and story telling.” They work hard to push the boundaries and discover new and beautiful ways of expressing oneself through movement.
Exhale Dance Tribe was created by Andrew Hubbard and Misty Lay Zimmer, who met while performing during a Broadway run of the musical “Cats.” According to the Exhale website, the partners noticed a dire need for dancers to reconnect with what dance was originally intended for: self expression and storytelling. As choreographers, performers and educations, Hubbard and Zimmer are committed to drawing out the artistic soul of performers and audiences alike, daring to explore and expand notions of individuality and nonconformity.
Dance is one aspect of the arts community that is often overlooked in Cincinnati. Exhale Dance Tribe takes the preconceived notions of what dance should be and flips them around into something entirely different.
With “Binocular”, the audience is invited to look closer… what we perceive with one “lens” may be transformed when we see with both eyes. It is the first performance of the 2010 season and includes original choreographic works from LA choreographer Kristen Denehy as well as Andrew Hubbard and Missy Lay Zimmer. It includes new works and premieres of “Motion Pictures” and “Valley of the Dolls.”
Performances are Friday and Saturday, January 8th and 9th, at 8pm. The performances will be held in the Jarson-Kaplan Theater at the Aronoff Center for the Arts on Main Street downtown (map). Tickets are $20, and ETA members can use their vouchers or get tickets for $12 the day of the show. Call (513) 621-2787 or email ticketing@cincinnatiarts.org.
All pictures copyright Exhale Dance Tribe. Become a fan on Facebook!
The City of Cincinnati requires one parking space per residential dwelling unit throughout all four sub-districts of the Downtown Development District. For office uses there is one parking space required for every 750 to 1,200 square feet of office space.
These parking facilities could range from initially cheap surface lots to costly structured parking garages. Both facilities have the potential to severely damage the urban fabric in spite of design guidelines in place to improve their appearance. In addition to this damaging effect, the cost of parking is extraordinarily high in urban locations as parking spaces can cost between $20,000 and $30,000 per space in a structured parking garage. While surface lots are cheaper to construct, they squander valuable land and thus shoulder the cost of wasted revenues for local government and private land owners.
The high costs of parking are immediately passed on to the customer (tenant) which results in one of two things. 1) The price points go so high that many are priced out of the market; or 2) The costs become too much for the developer to be able to recoup based on market demands which stymie investment absent substantial public subsidies.
Neither scenario is ideal, but both are seen in Cincinnati’s urban core today. Within the Central Business District the demands are there for increased development, but the prices are higher than the market will bear. As a result affordable living spaces are often not built, and new office development is rare.
In Over-the-Rhine, demand historically was too low to warrant the high parking costs, one factor in under-investment in the neighborhood, did not exist. The demands now exist in several portions of Over-the-Rhine, but in order for the price points of units to be kept artificially low, and keep inventory moving, parking has come in the form of surface lots.
These surface lots throughout Over-the-Rhine have lower initial capital costs, but cause negative externalities for the neighborhood – one of America’s largest and most significant historic districts – and put additional historic structures at risk of demolition for these parking requirements.
Cincinnati Beer Company owner, Bryon Martin, currently owns the former Christian Moerlein residence and office on Elm Street in the Brewery District. His plans are for a brewpub restaurant that would play on the history of the two buildings. Martin would also love to have a large outdoor biergarten area on the vacant adjacent lot, but says that parking may have to be the use for that space at least initially.
There are potential solutions out there to balance out this equation without extreme demands that drive price points of investment in the neighborhood to unaffordable levels, or massive public subsidies. Over the next several weeks UrbanCincy will be looking into these potential policy solutions and how they might impact investment in our urban neighborhoods, preservation of the city’s historic building stock, and help change the way in which we design our communities.
-President Barack Obama discussing the importance of a quality high speed rail system for America.
-Transport Secretary Lord Adonis as he speaks about the transportation issues facing the United Kingdom over the next several years.
This week marks the return of the broomball season to the Fountain Square Ice Rink. In its fourth annual season the Fountain Square Broomball League has consistently been one of the Square’s more popular activities which is amazing considering it is played in the heart of winter. It’s even more amazing when you stop and consider that players run around on ice in gym shoes wielding broomsticks and chasing after a small blue ball.
Give me a second to try to explain, though of course you’ll do yourself much better by stopping by to catch a game or two. The games that broomball most closely resemble are ice hockey & soccer. Hockey in such a way that there are six players to a side, including a goalie, the players run around with sticks and try to put the ball in the opponent’s net. Soccer in a sense that the players wear “regular” shoes, can kick the ball, and are not allowed using their hands aside from knocking the ball down. Make sense now? Probably not, so stop down and see some broomball action. As a bonus, adult beverages are sold in the heated tent alongside the rink for a very reasonable price.
Aside from the normal UrbanCincy post reminding you about all the great things going on in our fair city, this one has a bit more of a personal touch as Jenny Kessler & I are playing this year. We are members of the Little Kings & Queens of Cincinnati, with our big debut coming tonight! The even better news: we are only a small representation of the local blogging scene on the roster. We also have Brad Thomas from CincyStreetcar Blog, Gordon Bombay from Queen City Discovery, and Soapbox contributor Casey Coston. Our number one fan is 5chw4r7z who has promised to enjoy a cigar under the shadows of the Genius of Water during our games.
While the entire weekday broomball schedule can be found here, The Little Kings schedule is listed below (all games are weather permitting). Of course after the game you can join us at JeanRo for specials on buckets of Little Kings.
Broomball photograph by 5chw4r7z.