Choreographer returns to her roots
Choreographer and director for the Ipswich Moving Company Janet Taisey Craft returns to the stage after a seven year absence.
by Steve Landwehr
Founder of the Ipswich Moving Company Janet Taisey Craft is returning to the stage in a full role for the first time in seven years.
Craft had a hip replacement five years ago, but that's not what's kept her in the wings lately.
"I ice down my knee every night," she says with a chuckle.
Craft was classically trained in ballet but discovered modern dance when she moved to New York City in her early 20s.
"My body and heart found its soul," she says of dancing.
A trick knee didn't keep her from doing what she most enjoys about dance for the past seven years: choreography.
"Most of my curiosity in dance is in creating it," she says.
Dancers, more than any other artists, can be betrayed by their bodies as they grow older. Many need hip replacements at a relatively young age, and, like everyone else, dancers' bodies don't respond as well at 52 as they did at 32. Craft points to Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham as rare examples of dancers who worked into their later years.
Craft's presence isn't the only thing out of the ordinary about the dance company's latest offering, "Dreaming Head," which was inspired by the surrealism movement.
Dancers will perform around and on top of a number of props rather than on a bare stage.
"Working with a set is very unusual for us," Craft said.
Craft said her inspiration for choreography in recent years has come from impulses she gets in her dreams. From there, she begins improvising until she develops a dance that feels right.
"You throw away 50 percent of what you do," she said.
Craft, 65, opened the studio in the late 1970s and was very active there until the mid-1980s. By then, she was starting to raise a family and also heading the Emerson College dance program, so she didn't have a lot of free time.
Now she's hoping to get both herself and the company more active and offer more performances each year. She'd also like to form a board of directors, so the company has a solid footing beyond her involvement.
"People love the idea of coming to this barn in little Ipswich and seeing a performance of the same quality as in Boston or New York," she said.
