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S03E13 - Meet Danielle Kaiser · CINEMACTIVIST

• John C. Lyons: Hi everyone, welcome to Cinema Activist. I'm your host, John Lyons, and I have a special guest here with me today, Danielle Kaiser, the artistic director of Seiche Dance Collective. Hi, Danielle. How are you? Danielle Kaiser: Hi. Good, how are you? Thanks for having me. John C. Lyons: Yeah, of course. it's awesome to see you. It's been it's been a minute. It feels like Danielle Kaiser: It John C. Lyons: it's been a minute. Danielle Kaiser: it has, yeah. It does feel well, c mostly 'cause we were seeing each other almost every day for almost a full year straight. So it's John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: different. John C. Lyons: Yeah, for sure. just a little bit of background of how I know Danielle. So I during COVID got pulled into it was a dance film festival, right? That was happening in Erie, and I met Corinne Justine, who was a a contracted dancer. Is that what you call it? Danielle Kaiser: Yep, she was a company artist for us at the time. John C. Lyons: Company artist for Seiche Dance Collective and working on that short film, I got absolutely hooked on not just creating dance films, but on dance in general. That's all because of Seiche and Corinne. and you, Danielle. And we've worked together on some projects since then. And we have a new project that's called War that's premiering at a festival. in Beverly Hills here in a couple weeks, which we'll get into soon. But before we get to all of that, tell me a little bit about you and how you came to dance. Did you always want to perform like from a young age? Was it always dance? Was it the arts in general? Like where were the kernels of of this story? Danielle Kaiser: Yeah, I think at least for me it was always dance. My mom put me in dance. I think I was three, when I started. And I don't know that I did much dancing. I think she was pretty ticked 'cause my first recital I spent following all the other little girls around collecting the sequins off the floor. So I don't know like when I actually started dancing. But I know I John C. Lyons: Okay. Danielle Kaiser: was supposed to be dancing at the age of three. But I grew up I mean my family was musical. My parents played instruments. My grandparents were singers and and musicians. my mom danced, you know, as a as a preteen through up until, you know, the end of high school. So I've kind of always just been surrounded by music and the arts in my family in some in some capacity. I was just the the very first crazy to want to take dance, you know, further than than just, you know, cute tutos and the age of ten. So I was hooked. Yeah, once once I was in there, that became it. Music and dance, that was my life. it's always been there. It's always been a part of my life since I was a kid. John C. Lyons: Was there a certain genre of dance that you gravitated towards now that I know that there's different different styles? Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: Different kinds. Yeah. I think my soul always loved jazz and music theater most. I I love syncopated rhythms and I think maybe the musician in me just appreciated that. my formal training was in ballet though. through college, you know, I I understood the importance of ballet for setting up my technique correctly. So kind of progressed into that. But my professional performing career was with cruise lines and dance teams. So it was commercial dance work, musical theater, jazz. So I kinda got to stay I got to go back to the first love and just be able to amplify it with some of the the correct training that I had growing up. John C. Lyons: Yeah, that's awesome. So you mentioned some cruise lines. Can you talk about like some of the shows you're in where you trained, what schools you went to, things like Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. I grew up outside of the Philadelphia area. So I was just in a lot of recreational studios out there. and then I went to Mercyhurst University and got a double major in dance and secondary ed math 'cause I thought I wanted to teach math. John C. Lyons: Wow. Danielle Kaiser: yeah, yep. That yep, it was there. It lived there. And I do. I love teaching and I think that's really what it was, is I love the education side of it. And so when I graduated Mercyhurst, I had on a whim auditioned for a talent agency called PGT Entertainment, Peter Grey Terhune. and they cast for a lot of like amusement parks, cruise lines, So I was hired to be on their books. And the two days before graduation from Mercyhurst, I got a call that they had a place for me on the Dawn Princess with Princess Cruise Lines. So PGT was in charge of casting three of the multitudes of ships that Princess has. So I accepted that contract. I packed up. I went home. I think it was a matter of, it was less than a week. Dropped all my stuff at home and went out and I was in. Rehearsals in Coco, Florida for a month. We learned all of our shows. We got on the ship. We placed the shows. That very first contract should have been nine months, and I was extended to 16 months. So I was gone John C. Lyons: Awesome. Danielle Kaiser: for well over a year. straight, straight and John C. Lyons: Awesome. Like straight? Like really? Danielle Kaiser: yeah, talk about crazy. I mean, your first dance job, right? And I'm on this floating ship. And you're using internet cards to be able to use the internet and phone cards to be able to call people. And we weren't even stateside. We were based out of New Zealand and Australia primarily. So I was John C. Lyons: that's incredible. Danielle Kaiser: yeah. I was never home really for that sixty. I remember calling my mom when they extended her contract and I was like, I'm so grateful. Like this is you know, this is awesome, but also like I'm scared, like this is this is a lot to kind of take in. But I loved it. I had the best cast on that ship. we were a mix of new people versus people that had done it before, a mix of Americans. primarily most of my cast for that ship were English. a lot of them from London, South Wales area. And I just fell in love with it. So at the end of that contract, Peter Grey Terhune died. His wife decided John C. Lyons: Mm. Danielle Kaiser: to sell the talent agency. And I was lucky enough to be tapped by Princess's talent crew to come in and be like an in-house dancer. So I had a month off to be at home. And then they flew me back out to Santa Clarita, California, rehearsed for another month, got on my second ship, and I did that. So I was on three ships total, four years at the end of John C. Lyons: Wow. Danielle Kaiser: it. And kind of right John C. Lyons: And right out of school. Danielle Kaiser: out of school. Yeah, right out of school. Didn't think I was ever going to pursue performance dance as like what I was gonna do. I thought I would easily partner up my education and like maybe teach at some studios while I was teaching high school math and, you know, loved to choreograph, John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: so figured I could like throw that in there with the studio stuff. And so when this job came through It was it was crazy. But I had always said to my mom, we were a cruise family. That was like our family vacations. John C. Lyons: you had some familiarity with the culture and stuff? Danielle Kaiser: Yes. Love the water. Grew like just need to be by the water all the time. so I I remember saying to my mom at sixteen we were on a cruise and we were watching one of the shows and I was like, I'm gonna do that one day. Like that's that's what I wanna do. I think that's so cool. Can you imagine living on one of these things? So it was it was definitely a dream come true when that John C. Lyons: So what is it? 'Cause I've never taken a cruise. So how is it to live on one of those? How often are you on land? Like did you get to see some cool places and stuff, or are you pretty much like working living twenty four seven? Like how's the schedule? Danielle Kaiser: It's really nice. So as a performer, so the dancers, their s crew staff, like entertainment crew staff, singers. If you are encompassed in any of the entertainment staff, you're considered some version of a striped officer, half striped to one stripe. So we're very lucky. Performing is our job. That is it. So we would have in the rep for my first ship, we had a culmination, I think it was total 10 shows. Each were like fifty to fifty five minutes long. And you would perform a show two to three times a night. So you get like fifteen to twenty minutes off in between a show and start it over again. So your work life was like three PM, four PM report time until about midnight. And then Then you know, go and grab dinner at that point. Whatever you need to survive, and then you go and John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: crash. And so we were allowed to get off the ship at every port. we were allowed to be John C. Lyons: Okay. Danielle Kaiser: up in passenger areas so we could eat with the passengers like in the buffets and at the restaurants. And that was part of our job too, was to be up there socializing. A lot of our passengers knew us either by like what our costume or character was or like actually by our names. they're geared towards longer cruises. So some of those passengers were with us for anywhere between two weeks to up to ninety days because they do a ninety day world cruise. Yeah. So John C. Lyons: Really? Whoa. Danielle Kaiser: we really got to know our passengers and they got to know us. So it was just a really it was a really cool experience. I mean the cabins are small. The bathrooms are like the size of a small desk, you know. So Yeah. John C. Lyons: Yeah, is it like you're at camp kind of like for the whole time? Like Danielle Kaiser: Yeah, kinda. You picture these adults, right? And we're cabin, we're we're paired up with a roommate in this very small cabin. John C. Lyons: Okay. Danielle Kaiser: but I think I had a very cool experience on that first one because we were crossing the Tasman Sea back and forth pretty often. We called it the Tasmaniac Sea. John C. Lyons: Mm-hmm. Danielle Kaiser: it was very rough. So it was a huge learning curve of like how to live on the water and You should probably like stick your bottles down so they don't slide off your shelf in the middle of the night when we hit a big wave. My roommate was in the top bunk and she would, you know, on the occasion, when it was needed, like jokingly tie her rope, the belt from her robe across her in the bunk bed just to like stop the motion and everything. But yeah, it's a niche John C. Lyons: wow. Yeah, yeah. So did Danielle Kaiser: thing. John C. Lyons: Yeah. Did you do some of the ninety day ones then? And then how many shows are you performing then? Like how many shows do have to learn on a long haul like that? Danielle Kaiser: My it really dep it really depends on the ship, the class ship, meaning the size, like how big the ship is, how many passengers, and what kind of itinerary they're doing. My first contract that sixteen months was really long and they were longer cruises. I never personally did the ninety day one. I had thirty day cruises that would tour around Australia or around Yeah. John C. Lyons: It's still a long time. Like how do you mix it up from like a performer's side of it? Like Danielle Kaiser: You just learn I think that's actually where I enjoyed it because we had ten to fifteen shows that we would do and over the course of like that thirty day cruise, that's all that you can do. You're not gonna repeat a show. So the thirty-day John C. Lyons: Okay. Danielle Kaiser: cruises, there was more time in between a two-week cruise. You were performing almost every single night and doing three shows a night. So it was pretty intense from a physical and mental standpoint. But I loved it because it's a lot of music theater based stuff. So you kinda got to start to determine a little character and get a little John C. Lyons: Okay. Danielle Kaiser: you know, get some get some tricky with it. So I the by the end of that cruise, sixteen months in, we started playing pranks on each other. Like the boys that we knew wouldn't preset their costumes, we would fill their shoes with shaving cream or, John C. Lyons: Nice. Danielle Kaiser: you know, like staple their pants to the floor. So they were cutting it really close to get on stage. So like you just start John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: messing with each other a little bit. But that's where the fun really kind of kinda goes 'cause you get comfortable enough with the movement that you feel like you can play a little bit more with the character and with the with the choreography. John C. Lyons: Okay. Yeah, just like it baffles my mind the whole choreography of it all, like the things that you all do and and keeping everything straight. I just can't imagine doing that many shows and just having to learn all that. Is some of that like the math brain of you, like being able to kind of does that work to your advantage, like to keep all the steps and the timing and and stuff in line? Danielle Kaiser: I think so. I think everybody adapts differently to it, like how how they can make it work. Muscle memory is a huge play in it. It it's not enough like if you're gonna come in and you're gonna learn a 50-minute show, you certainly don't walk away having learned it once and never touch it again and then come back in and expect it all to live and breathe in your brain. It just John C. Lyons: Mm. Danielle Kaiser: you're setting yourself up for a major anxiety attack. So you just kind of do it over and over again. It becomes muscle memory. I think my math brain and my education brain helped me more to progress. in that field. So by the second contract, I was considered a line captain. So I was in charge of my cast. And if someone was sick, I needed to to reformat formations or step in myself into that role or do what was needed. And I think that's where like the analytical side kind of comes in. I was able to play with that a little bit. It was you know, no two days the same. You're waking up and you're like, what currency do I need today? What time zone am I in today? And just being like super adaptable and meeting people from different backgrounds, different ethnicities and cultures, you just you learn very quickly how to be empathetic and how to get along and just how to find the common ground with the people that you work with. John C. Lyons: Yeah. When did you start getting into the choreography side of things? Danielle Kaiser: I think always I loved it. So I the standing joke in my family, I am the oldest of all of my cousins. And if we were on vacation, I would force them to learn dances and perform them in the yard. So like I think it's just been how my brain works. I just like really enjoy it. I don't know if that's from like the education standpoint or what, but I started seriously John C. Lyons: Mm-hmm. Danielle Kaiser: choreographing through my master's program. After I was done performing with the cruise ships, I had done enough like dabbling in the choreography stuff when I needed to because of the job that I had an interest there. so when I got injured and came home, I knew I wanted to go back to school. I wanted to get that terminal degree. so I got my master's of fine arts with focus in choreography and practices research through Jacksonville University. I did their low res program. and that entire program was based on, you know, your choreographic process and what choreography looks like and and how to work with other disciplines disciplines to make your choreography and your presentation stronger. So that's where I really fell in love with it and kind of got thrown in like full time into the choreography side. John C. Lyons: You did mention an injury, so is that when you had to kind of pivot at that point? Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. I was in the I was in the first ship of what we called a burrito contract. I was contracted for three ships that should have spanned over a year and a half. and throughout the course of that first contract as a line captain, you typically get partnered up with a a male dancer that might be struggling more so that just needs some like extra work so that we're not like putting one of our other female dancers with that human. And there was a an incident during one of our shows where my partner lost track of music. and we had pits that dropped up and down on the stage, two stories. That's how we made a lot of our surprise entrances and exits. John C. Lyons: Okay. Danielle Kaiser: And he dropped me into one of those pits. So I hit off the backboard, landed on the mat, and I ruptured my L four and L5 discs in my back. And proceeded to continue to dance on it as you do as a dancer for about six months. So I was on, you know, doing the muscle relaxers and the painkillers and all the things that you really are not supposed to do. But we were John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: all in the middle of the ocean. It's not like I was gonna get an MRI or an X ray at that point. So you just adapt as you can. And when I came home, I was in enough pain, just like functioning as a human being, trying to dress myself, trying to move around the house that I went in and saw a doctor, got the scans I needed, they found the injury and basically just said. there was no way I could go back to the intensity that I was dancing at. I needed to have at least a year off. So I did. I took the year off from everything. I didn't teach, I didn't choreograph, John C. Lyons: Yeah. Okay. And did you take the year off, Danielle? Wow. Danielle Kaiser: I didn't dance. I lost my mind a little bit because it was John C. Lyons: Yeah, I was gonna say how how was that being so involved and so active that had to have been very difficult for you? Danielle Kaiser: it was reorienting as a human. I kinda had to figure out like how to use what I enjoyed about dance and teaching and choreography and be able to like push that in a different way. so I don't know, maybe that's Maybe that's like a trauma response and that's where my OCD type A personality comes from is because I started to like filter all of that energy into like organizing things and whatnot. But it did let me hone in on the things that I really, really enjoy doing and what I find super important. It was watching a lot of videos, watching a lot of people teach classes. And that's how I started working at at Mercyhurst was through all of that. They needed an admin. And for me, that was like the best option to still be close to dancing and to continue to like learn things. even if my body couldn't be doing the things in the studio at that time. So yeah, it was tough. It was it was an interesting year that year, but definitely helped to kind of shape what I'm doing now, I think. John C. Lyons: So then you go for the masters, you take some choreography. How Danielle Kaiser: Mm-hmm. John C. Lyons: does where does Seiche Dance Collective come from? And am I like missing a step just because I Danielle Kaiser: No. John C. Lyons: don't know in between the story? Okay. Danielle Kaiser: That is the step. That is the step. So I was at Mercyhurst working, decided to get my masters. So I continued to work while I was doing my masters. and the hope was that I would get my masters and get h get hired in a in a dance department, preferably Mercyhurst, because this is where my husband is based. and that didn't happen and Because I had spent that year like really looking through like what it was that I wanted to do, I knew I wanted to work with professional level dancers, not I've I've taught at studios. I adore teaching children from littles to like 18. Love that. but I just have a passion for dancing or for working with like pre-professional to professional dancers. So because I was here, I connected with Jo. We had we were alumni of Mercy Hurst Dance Department, and she was here in here. John C. Lyons: And who's Jo, sorry. Danielle Kaiser: Sorry, so Jo's our company manager. She's one of our co-founders too. There's five of us that started Seiche. And I reached out to her. We were going to an event together and she was like, Let's chat, let's see, like maybe if we can come up with something because I'm feeling lost too. I really need like a home to be an adult dancer and I'm not liking the options that I have currently and let's just see what we can come up with. And then while we were at that event, Kristen Weibel was there, who is another one of our beginning five founders. And so she jumped in on the conversation. And so we all started chatting about what it looks like to be an adult dancer in this area, especially if you're an adult dancer that had the training or even performed professionally and you were just choosing to pursue another area right now, but you still wanted to be actively like in the world of dance. John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: So Jo Jo is a lawyer in her other life. Her real life, she's a lawyer. Kristen teaches. Yeah. John C. Lyons: I will just jump in real quick and interject and say all of the women of Seiche are extremely impressive individuals. Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. John C. Lyons: And yeah, just hearing like the workload and you know the day jobs and how much time you all put into Seiche, it's very relatable as like an independent filmmaker, independent immersive producer, like You all are badasses and Danielle Kaiser: Right. John C. Lyons: I'm just endlessly impressed. So just shout out to everyone involved in Seiche Danielle Kaiser: No, I think we're all just lunatics is what it is. Like I think artists in general are lunatics because you know that what you're doing isn't always gonna pay the bills. So you're gonna find the way to pay the bills, but you're also not gonna walk away from what your passion is. So you're gonna figure out a way to always do that too. So and I think that's what it was for the five of us. So I mean, the three of us had met at this event, we started talking John C. Lyons: Mm-hmm. Danielle Kaiser: Jo called me the very next day and she was like, my gosh, we were talking about all this stuff. And now I have my friend Megan, who also dances and is looking for this outlet, and my friend Andonna, who's danced and she was little, also looking for this outlet. So there's the five of us. Jo kind of was the the center magnet who just knew all of us and connected us. so we met at the BrewErie one night for drinks. And John C. Lyons: Okay. huh. Danielle Kaiser: Seiche was born. We kind of just all started talking about what we wanted it to look like, what individually the each like what were our expectations, what we were wanting out of it. and from there it just became a lot of different let's have brunch, let's have lunch, let's meet here, let's meet there, coming up with a name for it and the format for it, where we wanted to live. we I don't know if I should even say this. We were sneaking in because at the time some one of us, not me, one of us was a member at LECOM So we were using the dance studio over there and sneaking the rest of us in to like set choreography. Our very, very first piece on John C. Lyons: Nice. Danielle Kaiser: today was set there. And that wasn't yeah. John C. Lyons: It's like gorilla gorilla style dance. I love it. Sneaking sneaking into places. Danielle Kaiser: Yeah, we were we were desperate. We needed a space, you know, and John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: we went from there and then rented for just a little bit one of the upstairs areas in PACA. John C. Lyons: Okay. Danielle Kaiser: and we were there for a few months and then just realized that like what we were trying to do, we needed to be in a space where we could like camp out, where we didn't have to pack up, be there for two hours, pack everything back up and go home. John C. Lyons: Yeah, that's awful. Danielle Kaiser: Yeah, we were just needing more space than that. So that's how we wound up at Griswold Plaza. Jo's John C. Lyons: Okay. Danielle Kaiser: law office is there and the landlord had a basement space that was John C. Lyons: Uh-huh. Danielle Kaiser: completely unfinished, but was available to us, and he basically said, you know, you can be down here. Here's what I charge you for rent, but what you do with it is up to you. I'm not gonna build out anything. So John C. Lyons: Well. Danielle Kaiser: my husband and father-in-law with all of their expertise in construction came down and they built walls for us and helped us do what we needed to do, build down there. Megan drew our murals on the walls, did all of our marketing and branding. and Mercyhurst donated quite a bit of our they donated Marley to us, their old sound system. So we got our We got our basics. LEB at the at the time was was phasing out of the space that they were in, which is now 1020 collective. So John C. Lyons: Mm-hmm. Danielle Kaiser: they had bars and mirrors that they were looking to rehome. So we got our bars and mirrors from Lake Erie Ballet as they kind of headed out. So we just became the Erie hoarders, the like, we'll take anything you'll give us so that we can build a studio. John C. Lyons: Yeah, but you've you've done it, you've built it, which is it's so exciting. And I I think you can people can go to Seiche Dance Collective dot org, is it? And I think Danielle Kaiser: Mm-hmm. John C. Lyons: you can see like some videos and photos and stuff, right? Of the before and after kind of situation. Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. We look like minions in our paint suits, you know, painting all of what we now realize was probably lead paint. We shouldn't have been touching it, but we were down there doing what we needed to do to to make it a safe space John C. Lyons: Nice. Danielle Kaiser: to be in. Yeah. John C. Lyons: So talk to me about like adult dancing and because to me it seemed like uncommon in the area. is it uncommon in general to have like dance companies that are, adult focused? Danielle Kaiser: I think it's becoming more common. I think like that need as we identified it here was also being identified in our field in general. So I think you if you're a dancer you're starting to see a larger influx of adult dance education, whether it's classes or it's companies geared specifically to the adult dancer. there are programs that gear themselves specifically to adults over the age of 60 that are really using it to s to stay healthy that had that training as as a younger adult and want to continue that. and that's happening more now in our area. So I think we fill a spot for adult dance education. We probably don't fill that spot for what we would consider the beginner level dancer. We're more there for the people that have had experience and maybe lost touch with it or just kind of lost the ability to be in class and and want that opportunity to still have that solid training. It's it's difficult as an adult as you get older the limitations change. What your body can do changes. So you really can't be in the studio with an 18-year-old. They're not, they are not the same foundations that you that you're John C. Lyons: Uh-huh. Danielle Kaiser: working from. So it's nice to walk into an entire room full of people that are more or less at the same stage of life that you are all functioning with recovering injuries, or, hey, I picked up my five year old today and he threw himself backwards and now I can't move. Like we all have that general understanding of what it means to be an adult functioning in the world, but still wanting to do the kind of movement that's not normal for a normal adult. what that looks like. So it's been very cool to give a home to some of those dancers that had all of this crazy talent and just didn't have anywhere to to go with it. And they didn't maybe they didn't want to go to a studio and walk through a sea of cute little tutu babies getting ready for their class because they felt self-conscious about being in a space like that. So John C. Lyons: Mm-hmm. Danielle Kaiser: I like to think we create an environment where people can come in as they are at the stage of life that they're in and feel comfortable enough just to say, Hey, I have no idea what I'm doing. Let's try to figure it out together and be in a common John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: space for that. John C. Lyons: Yeah, it's awesome that you've created that space. And it it I mean, just watching from, you know, where I'm at, it seems like you offer quite a variety of classes. Do you wanna talk about some of the offerings and when you do offer those? Danielle Kaiser: Yeah, we try. we try to to switch up what we offer while also offering consistency. It's tough, as we all know, as like a working adult, you can sign up for a Monday class and life happens and maybe you can't get there every Monday. So we try to create a system where you come when you're able to and you don't come when you can't, and you're not falling behind. You're not, you know, having any kind of consequence of that. So right now our most frequently offered, maybe that's the the way to say it, genre is our ballet classes. Jo teaches primarily the community ballet classes. All of our classes happen during company class time. So you're in with our company members. there's not a person on this earth that can't benefit from a basic or an intermediate level class. Like getting back to the basics is one of the best things you can do for your body and for your technique. So our dancers recognize that. So they come in, they utilize That company or that community class as their warmup, and then we have rehearsals later. So John C. Lyons: No, okay. Danielle Kaiser: all of our classes run from 5:30 to 6:30, Monday through Thursday. this upcoming season, we're offering community ballet specifically just for our fall and winter season. And then we usually reevaluate in the spring. We would love to be able to offer a contemporary class. Last year we were able to offer a tap class. so it just depends on the teachers that we have available to us and John C. Lyons: Mm-hmm. Danielle Kaiser: what the company schedule. and repertoire kind of asks of the company because we have to also make sure that what we're offering is gonna supplement what they need to do as the evening kind of goes on. So it's a puzzle. But it's John C. Lyons: Yeah, yeah. I mean I've even seen like stretching classes. Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. Jo's great. Jo offers a stretch and tone, which sounds like so nice and kind, but it's not it's not like coming in a dark room and sit on a yoga mat and and you know like breathe through things. She really gets into the good stretching that's needed to be healthy and also then working on like strengthening those areas of your body. So that's been a consistent class that we've been able to offer during the summer because we're seeing interest in that course more during the summer than we are during the the actual year. So we John C. Lyons: Okay. Okay. Danielle Kaiser: just finished our rotation of our stretch and tone. The ballet will come and then hopefully in the spring, you know, we're offering some contemporary I'm looking into getting certified in a dance fit So it could be more of like a cardio fitness kind of situation that we would offer in the spring. John C. Lyons: Nice. Danielle Kaiser: And we do some one off things. We'll do, you know, dance and wine night. So come and have a glass of wine and throw it back and learn some salt n' peppa and, you know, do something just fun. I Jo did a Britney Spears themed class, one of our first years. And John C. Lyons: Nice. Danielle Kaiser: we just try to to have like some fun nights. If you're looking for like a fun night out to do something that's a little bit out of the box, you can come and one of those. John C. Lyons: Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. okay, before we get into the dance to dance for camera stuff, Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. John C. Lyons: what do you have coming up? I know you probably don't have dates yet, but again I'll remind everybody to check out the website, Seiche Dance Collective dot org. And actually I didn't ask where the name Seiche came from. Why don't we start there too? Danielle Kaiser: That's Megan. Our founder, Megan, she has such a breadth of knowledge of Lake Erie, the history of Lake Erie, the Battle of Lake Erie, through her own educational avenues that she pursued. She is an art teacher in the elementary school system here in Erie and also teaches classes down at the Children's Museum, some of the art classes there. and she focused a lot of her studies towards the history of Erie and the Battle of Lake Erie. So we knew we wanted it to be a water based title. We also wanted to make sure that we were not repeating other water based titles that already existed in our community. John C. Lyons: Uh-huh. Danielle Kaiser: bigger challenge. So she came to BrewErie that night with like a list of different nautical water terms that were specific to a lake that you wouldn't John C. Lyons: Uh-huh. Danielle Kaiser: find, you know, towards an ocean. And seiche was one of those words that came up, which it's a blessing and a curse. I don't know that I've met one person that can pronounce it correctly the very first time they read it, but we're getting there. We're we're trying to trying to educate, but John C. Lyons: I think it's cool. Danielle Kaiser: Ever since we named ever since the company was formed, actually now we've had like an increase in Seiche on Lake Erie. We've we've had it happen a couple of times. So John C. Lyons: well. Danielle Kaiser: not I'm not saying that we caused that, but it would be cool to think that maybe we had something to do with it. Yeah. We put it in the universe somehow. John C. Lyons: I think you caused that. I'm going with that version. That's right. Awesome. Okay, so that's Seiche. And then what what do you have coming up for this season? Which the season should be starting real soon, right? Danielle Kaiser: Yeah, a company comes back into session on Monday for us. So we'll start John C. Lyons: damn. All right. Yep. Danielle Kaiser: August 31st. And then we typically run through like the beginning of the sorry, the middle to end of May is the the full length year for us. We typically would do a fundraiser in the fall, a fundraising performance. For the past three years, four years, we've done something called what we call the spooky speakeasy, which has been down at Kellers. and it's an opportunity for our dancers who love their jazz and musical theater. to flex those John C. Lyons: Mm-hmm. Danielle Kaiser: muscles. And we've had great success with that. Our dancers love that. But we have done it now for so many years in a row that we wanted to sort of start to shift that show to an every other year production and supplement John C. Lyons: no. Danielle Kaiser: that with additional work for our more contemporary and ballet dancers. So this year, we're I believe it's gonna be October twenty-fourth. We're gonna be at the 1020 collective. and we are going to do a fundraiser that centers around eerie ghost stories. So there will be John C. Lyons: Okay, cool. Danielle Kaiser: Dancing that's happening there, reading of the ghost stories. We're gonna have different vendors there, figure drawers, tarot card readers, psychics, that kind of thing to kind of round out the night. we're gonna have some food donated to us by some of our local restaurants and Sarah down at 1020, their bar will be open for so we'll have some food and drinks, lots of cool interactive moments. Audiences will be in charge of making the dancers dance. They'll be given flashlights, so they'll be in charge of kind of making the night What they want it to look like. John C. Lyons: Awesome. Danielle Kaiser: That's our fall. we've been in the process of developing our own full-length winter ballet. we all know the Nutcracker, that is the the most recognized full-length ballet around the holiday time. We do ours in January, and it's based around the folklore of Bessie, the Lake Erie monster. John C. Lyons: Mm-hmm. Danielle Kaiser: Which one of our dancers who's been with us for quite some time has has become Bessie. We call her Bessie like all the time. When we shouldn't. Yeah, Maya. John C. Lyons: Maya. Danielle Kaiser: and she's done such a fantastic job of it. I think that's John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: why. So we will be continuing to add on to that and actually putting it on the stage for the first time this year. So we'll be at Strong Vincent in January with that ballet. Yeah. John C. Lyons: Ooh. That's exciting. Congrats. Danielle Kaiser: Thanks. Intimidating and exciting all at the same John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: time. And then we'll do our spring performance probably about the third week of May. Probably back at Strong Vincent for that. We would actually love to be an alternative space. So we're looking at other options like the Erie Art Museum or something of the like where it could be a non-traditional performance space. and the whole season is spoke is focusing on spoken word. So everything will be choreographed to poetry or narration or spoken word of of some sort with music laid over it. John C. Lyons: Love that too. Awesome. Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. John C. Lyons: Okay. Well, that's cool. we did a short film called Funeral, which I think was all initiated by Corinne probably, and Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. John C. Lyons: then in coordination with you all, and we filmed that in the Seiche space. Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. John C. Lyons: I think that's probably the first time that I met everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: Think so. Mm-hmm. John C. Lyons: So we did that and that was awesome and fun. And we had a couple screenings of that film around the region. And then was it the summer of twenty twenty four? Was it like two summers ago that we started working on war? Okay. Danielle Kaiser: Yeah, I think so. I think you had spoken in passing somehow with Jo about the John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: concept and then she came, brought it to all of us. We all started talking and then yeah, I think it was that summer that things really started to go. John C. Lyons: Yeah, it was like Jo, Megan, and and Donna, I think I met with first about it. And Danielle Kaiser: Mm-hmm. John C. Lyons: yeah, it it took, you know, many forms. it started as kind of like a battle of Lake Erie situation, and then it kind of then we kind of broadened it. and then we brought in yeah, I'm trying to remember like how how this story went, but McCreary Roofing. Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. John C. Lyons: came into the story at some point because we needed we decided we wanted to work in like water, right? Danielle Kaiser: Yeah, I think we we thought we were gonna do all this in a pool at one point and then quickly realized John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: that that was really just not not John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: gonna be realistic. John C. Lyons: I still wanna work in a pool with you, Danielle, and do stuff underwater. That yeah. Danielle Kaiser: Underwater dance stuff is give me all the elements: sand, water, wind, all the things. John C. Lyons: Yeah. Fire. Danielle Kaiser: I would love it. Yeah. John C. Lyons: Yeah. We'll we'll get there. We still have time. Danielle Kaiser: Mm. John C. Lyons: but yeah, so McCreary Roofing, big shout out to them. Danielle Kaiser: Mm. John C. Lyons: we started talking to them about building a set and like kind of drew it out. And it really it looks like how it was drawn out, like back Danielle Kaiser: It does. John C. Lyons: when we were just talking about it. And Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. John C. Lyons: yeah, so they have this big What would you call it? I mean it's basically where they store all their equipment and yeah, it's a huge warehouse. Danielle Kaiser: Giant warehouse kind of Yeah. Yeah. John C. Lyons: and we had like twenty some foot walls that we projected onto and then we built a trough of like how deep would you say the water was like Danielle Kaiser: Think it was like two, two and a half inches by and how much slashing we were doing. I think sometimes it was deeper than John C. Lyons: Depending on where you're standing from. Yeah. Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: than the end. John C. Lyons: Yeah. So I mean, my my job with this one was pretty easy. It was it was me, Jesse, Kristen. you know, we were kind of like on the crew and it was lighting and camera stuff, but I mean, it was all on you all. So how do you start like choreographing for something that People are gonna be standing in a couple inches of water for when you can't actually practice in water. Like what's that process like? Danielle Kaiser: It started for us 'cause I think you all at least had the dimensions of the trough for us. So John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: we came into the studio and immediately taped that out on our Marley floor so that we knew kind of how tight movement had to be. Once we saw that shape, we kind of figured out, okay, probably the most number of bodies we can have in this space, really like full out moving, is three to four. Like that's where we're gonna max out. We can pile people in there, but they're not gonna be able to dance. John C. Lyons: Mm-hmm. Danielle Kaiser: And I think that's at the point of our planning process with you all that we decided to kind of like make it into different groups because we realized we couldn't use as many bodies at one time as we thought we were going to. So it became like smaller segments. I just knew the shower pan liner that we used to line the trough. Is a dupe for Marley. Like people who don't have Marley for a dance floor, you can use shower pan liner and it it kind of mimics that texture of a Marley floor. so we had a feel for what the texture was gonna be like. The water was a different level altogether. So we knew John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: were gonna be out of the question unless they were, you know. jumps that were happening from like two feet to two feet. But to try to do like a shifting one foot jump that was gonna land kind of unstably probably wasn't a good a call. It was really slippery. John C. Lyons: Yeah. It was very slippery, right? Once you got on there. Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. And it again that was a learning curve for us too. We finally had to look at the dancers and say, W if you're gonna shower, like no conditioner in your hair, no lotion on your body, no oils, no sprays, because it just sat in that water and made everything like a slip and slide, really. John C. Lyons: Yeah. We did Danielle Kaiser: So we John C. Lyons: change the water every night. We sh we need to note that 'cause otherwise it would have been really freaking gross. Danielle Kaiser: We did. It would have been nasty. Yeah. Even just controlling our feet getting in and out was a learning curve to not track John C. Lyons: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Danielle Kaiser: the dirt from the warehouse floor like into that trough and and back out. But Jo and I just attacked it. I just attacked it as, okay, we need to kind of make this movement very grounded. It needs to maintain contact with the floor. We're not gonna be looking to do what we would consider like the more advanced or flashier technical elements, like like turns and leaps and and that kind of stuff. We're gonna try to just keep this more upper body and and grounded, you know, down into it. So that was our launching off point. And then we knew we needed the three groups to be somewhat different in in their John C. Lyons: Mm-hmm. Danielle Kaiser: dynamic attack and the way that they looked dancing together. so we just kind of kept building it. I'm a choreographer that has to have music. I choreographed to music. I think that's where the background of music comes from. And we didn't have that at the start of this process. John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: So I was just trying to and and all of us kind of looked at each other at the studio the one night and I was like, I can't tell you what this is gonna sound like. So like we'll set it to counts your prayer. And we'll John C. Lyons: Yeah. Okay, so that's how you did it? You like Okay. Yeah, I was Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. John C. Lyons: very curious about about that. Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: We knew the tempo If I wanted to fill like one minute for group one and that was the tempo, I knew I probably needed about 32-ish counts would help to fill that like one minute. So I had to gauge on how much choreography to give each group. And then once we got the music, it was a matter of, okay, now how do we make this like visually and from an auditory perspective intriguing? Like we don't want each step to just be on a single count. That gets really boring. So John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: just kind of playing with it that way. John C. Lyons: Yeah, quite a challenge, all the way around for sure. So then we get into the space. and Danielle Kaiser: Mm. John C. Lyons: and you say there's three groups, but honestly, like if I'm thinking about it, it's kinda like there's like five or six different setups in the in the Danielle Kaiser: It yeah. John C. Lyons: end product, right? Danielle Kaiser: We broke it up even once we were in there. I think the very first night we were in the space we did have a group of five or six and we quickly realized that that that wasn't gonna fly either. And the the way that the music once we had the music at that point, the music was longer than we anticipated. So I think we like sub chunked a couple of things out to make John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: groups. John C. Lyons: It was a great work of like improvisation and then and for sure like pivoting, right? Which we have Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. Mm-hmm. John C. Lyons: to do so many times. And I guess that was, you know, the benefit of this being filmed as opposed to like you could never do what this was live, right? It would have been a a disaster. Danielle Kaiser: Live. No. Mm mm. No. John C. Lyons: yeah. And probably some injuries as well. But we were able to like Take it in pieces, right? Individual setups. I'm trying to remember how many days we were in there filming. Was it like two weekends? Danielle Kaiser: I think it was two weekends, yeah, 'cause we kinda did each group in its own little pocket of time and then there were the in between group moments where we were really utilizing like everybody. They were kinda coming off and on and tr the transitions between the group. So I think it was. I think it was like two John C. Lyons: Yeah. Danielle Kaiser: weekends. John C. Lyons: And then even Andonna who played our water nymph, we had some some rigging for her too as well, which we need to, you know, also figure out and put some time towards. I mean, while we're talking here, I'm gonna be like, you know, putting some behind the scenes photos and videos and stuff into into all of this. Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. John C. Lyons: but man, it was for me, it was It was such an amazing experience. I had so much fun like making this short film with you all. It was like it was like a a ten like every day, seriously. It was so like joyous and you know, everybody was just kind of laughing. Like the water's so unpredictable and the situation's so unpredictable that we were just like rolling with stuff and we had We were very blessed. thank you again to our hosts at McCreary Roofing. Like we were so blessed with time and you all for and the dancers for being there. Like, you know, we really maximized that time, right? We were tweaking Danielle Kaiser: Everything. Yeah. John C. Lyons: the lights, we were changing things up like in the moment, figuring out where to put the camera and it was just a blast. It was Danielle Kaiser: It was definitely From our perspective as dancers, and I think if you're a dancer and you're listening to this, you know, like adaptability is maybe not our strong suit as dancers, like being flexible and spontaneous during an actual performance time. So I think for us it was really cool because this process was a masterclass in adaptability, in the dancers coming in and thinking they knew exactly what they were gonna be doing from a choreography standpoint. And then like halfway through, I would look at them and go, Okay, that's not working. It's not reading because of the water or suddenly we don't have any splashing and we need to we need to like use the water as a prop in the best way. So I was changing things on them on film day, you know, like just ten minutes before they were filming something. So it was we call it like a bonding experience for our company because you kind of come together in those moments where you're feeling even just slightly uncomfortable and because something is so new and the pressure is there to like do it well, that that tends to kind of like glue you together as a group of humans. So we did. We ate way too much candy and went through way too many towels and saw the gross flops. We were yeah. Yeah. It was very cool. John C. Lyons: Way too many chefs. We're giving chef shout outs left and right. Yeah, it was a it was a blast. so it's nice, it's very nice to be selected, of course, for a film festival and this film festival is called Lady Filmmakers, I know you're gonna get a a shout out, at the festival and you know, because it's about women in leadership roles and starring roles and heads of department and stuff. and it was definitely a a full on collab, definitely the whole way through. Danielle Kaiser: everything I do is is like, you know, at a seventy percent 'cause there's so much of so much of anything that I John C. Lyons: Yeah, yeah. Danielle Kaiser: do coming in, it's fun 'cause I just get to be the voice. So I look like I'm the one well, it's not fun all the time, but most of the time it's fun 'cause I look like I'm the voice that knows what's going on. But behind the scenes I I joke with Jo and Andonna now we are the mm we are constantly on the phone with each other. It's like multiple John C. Lyons: Right. Danielle Kaiser: times day, you know. So I think going through that process with you and with Jesse and with everyone that was kinda like pitching in. It made the way that we communicate, the way that we produce together as like a cluster of women that much stronger because we kind of learned each other's communication styles and where the line is of like, I'm tapped out, someone else needs to step in, kind of situation. So it's cool, it's very cool. John C. Lyons: Yeah. it's good to know that with partners too, for sure. That's really important to have that communication and that understanding of of each other. So you can give each other breaks when when needed, Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. John C. Lyons: right? Danielle Kaiser: Yeah, we can't I could never do what we're doing by myself, not a chance in anywhere. And I I'm sure the other two would agree, but they're my lifelines and hopefully I'm a lifeline for them as we go through these projects together too. So John C. Lyons: Yeah, absolutely. I'll I'll share with everybody that our screening is happening. Friday, September 25th, in the two o'clock block, they're doing a dance and music block of films. It's like a two-hour block of films. and that is happening at the Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills. That's at 8556 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Again, that's Friday, September 25th in the two o'clock. block is where war is going to be playing and you can get tickets for this at Lady Filmmakers which is the name of the festival which is our festival premiere of the film which is super cool. Danielle Kaiser: cool. Yeah. John C. Lyons: and hopefully hopefully we get some more as well. But thanks to them for choosing us. before we do wrap, Danielle, I just want to Danielle Kaiser: Mm-hmm. John C. Lyons: say too that the first two years of of tethered would not have been possible either without this relationship. Danielle Kaiser: yeah. John C. Lyons: Seiche is basically, you know, that ninety-nine percent of the dancers involved in in the first two years of the show were company members or connections from you all. Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. John C. Lyons: you know, this year we're doing like an all narrative based, no movement show. I'm trying to mix it up. Taylor's still in. Yep. Yeah, Taylor's Danielle Kaiser: Which Taylor's still in. One of our dancers, Taylor still yeah, she's still still in for it. So it's John C. Lyons: Taylor's the the OG and yeah, our our veteran. but yeah, there will be more tethereds, there will be more dance films, I hope. And you know, I I love working with you all. I think you all are incredibly inspiring. I hope I hope we get to work together again soon. Danielle Kaiser: Definitely. It's we learn something every time. And I think that's I mean, that's what I love through my masters is being able to work with people that are not dancer types. I think you learn a lot about your craft when you're working with people who don't know your craft. So I love that. So we've enjoyed working with you and yeah, same. To future projects. Yeah. Yeah. John C. Lyons: Yeah. For sure. To future projects. Well, thanks for being here. thanks everybody for listening. Remember, go to Seiche Dance Collective dot org to check out their classes that they have coming up as well as their programming for the new season. And of course, you can also go to Lady Filmmakers if you're going to be out in California at the end of September. check out our film and let us know how it looks and sounds. Danielle Kaiser: Yeah. John C. Lyons: thanks everybody for listening. We'll be back soon.