\n<\/p>\n
She put up with the giggles for a while, but they would not stop.<\/p>\n
Finally, Dionne Figgins<\/a> took a break from rehearsing a group of eighth graders for their coming performances at the Joyce Theater to give a mini-lecture. But what started out as a talk about disruptive giggles soon became something more expansive: a consideration of the audience-dancer relationship.<\/p>\n \u201cIf a giggle is taking over the performance, you\u2019re not doing the show anymore,\u201d said Figgins, who is the artistic director of Ballet Tech<\/a>, a tuition-free ballet school in New York. \u201cDance is a service.\u201d<\/p>\n The students stopped talking. Their twitching ceased. \u201cThe patron is our boss,\u201d Figgins said. \u201cDoes that make sense? So you have to care about the experience of the audience, so it doesn\u2019t involve a giggle \u2014 unless a giggle is what we\u2019re providing. And there are<\/em> giggles in there!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n She meant in the dance they were rehearsing, \u201cHomeland,\u201d a lively new work covering an array of cultures and dance forms including West African dance and ballet. \u201cHomeland\u201d will be given its premiere by Kids Dance, the student company of Ballet Tech, which will celebrate its 30th anniversary at the Joyce beginning Thursday<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s six sections, and we\u2019re traveling around the world,\u201d Figgins said in an interview. \u201cEvery year we\u2019ve done new works because I did want to start developing some repertoire of my own. Next year we\u2019re going to cool our jets and do some rep. Because I\u2019m driving everyone insane! This is a big one.\u201d<\/p>\n For Kids Dance, repertory refers to the dances of Eliot Feld, the prolific choreographer who formed Ballet Tech in 1978 to provide opportunities for children in New York City public schools to study dance. And now those dances are available to everyone: Feld, who choreographed his first ballet in 1967 and in the ensuing years stretched the notion of classical dance, has recently put his work in the public domain. (He and Ballet Tech have also donated archival materials to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.)<\/p>\n \u201cWe really want to make a push to see his work being done in professional dance spaces and in university spaces,\u201d Figgins said. \u201cBecause the work is just good.\u201d<\/p>\n