The end of the State's Disaster Declaration, combined with relaxed COVID guidelines for gatherings and, just, May in Homer mean that this weekend will be full of performances and activities. KBBI's Kathleen Gustafson attended a dance rehearsal for a performance this weekend.
The Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival is underway now and will be in full swing by the weekend. Bars and restaurants are hiring solo musicians and whole bands again, and on the deck of the Kachemak Bay Shellfish Co-op, six dancers, a complement of musicians, a DJ and M.C. will be performing a show called Emerge.
The dancers are working with hula hoops, baby carriages, stilts and ropes.
Dancer Bridget Doran will be swinging in the air.
"I have a free standing aerial rig, like aluminum pyramid, and you can hang any aerial apparatus from it and I will be doing trapeze," Doran said.
The dancers started meeting and rehearsing in July and conceiving the show; six women under the direction of dancer and choreographer Breezy Berryman. Berryman had a bad case of COVID-19 that lasted for months. She says she is recovered now but is still using an inhaler between acts during rehearsal.
" My lungs just don't feel quite as expansive. That's why I was hitting the inhaler. Just trying to get that strength back in my lungs. I was pretty darn sick," said Berryman.
Berryman says she is on the mend, has now been vaccinated and has incorporated some of her COVID care practices over the last several months into one of her dances, a piece called Track the Darkness in You.
"The piece I choreographed, some parts of it were kind of about that healing process and the meditations I had to do. I have some of the gestural work in the piece, Berryman said.
Tickets are available ahead of time at motivitydancecollective.com or they are taking cash donations at the venue. Kammi Matson is one of the dancers, she says they have arranged the space, a deck overlooking Kachemak Bay, to be as COVID safe as possible.
"When people come, they can pick up their own chairs and then place them wherever they want, want to sit by and then masks are encouraged to be worn. And it's all obviously, outside on the Kachemak Growers deck," says Matson.
Emerge will be performed this Saturday at 3:30 and 6 p.m. on the deck at the Kachemak Shellfish Growers Co-op on the Homer Spit.
