My Daughter was a Knitted Improvist

Jo with almost all of her fav things: Dr. Who,
Knitting and Tricoter LYS in Seattle.
Just need some dancing, which she
really is always doing in her head.

Improvist may not be a word, but it explains perfectly the activity my daughter, Jo, engaged in recently at Vogue Knitting Live in Bellevue, Washington, 2014.

My oldest daughter (almost 26 now--yikes!) has been dancing since she was old enough to stand. We have a video (somewhere) of her dancing to INXS' "Need You Tonight" in her underwear at 3 years old. She was always totally unaware of the camera and just got into the moment and the music every chance she got--er, gets....

Now a grown-up, she has a BFA in dance from Cornish College of the Arts and in her younger years attended Vancouver School of Arts and Academics (VSAA) and was part of several dance studios including Columbia Dance here in Vancouver, Washington, too. (She put herself through that last one by cleaning the studio to pay for her classes)

All this made her a natural for the art exhibit at Vogue Knitting Live. She currently teaches pilates in Seattle, Washington and, at one of those studios, she was approached by a fiber artist and asked to perform as an improvisational dancer at the event. She was sooooooo in.

Watch! Jo is on the right.

The artist, Antonia Price, made the entire knitted "set" for her exhibit and the girls were asked to climb inside and do whatever they wanted. Jo loves improv, and she also loves to surprise people. This was pretty easy since no one could see the girls' faces but the girls could see the passers by. She told me she had a great time holding very still and waiting for someone to stop and stare a moment before she suddenly turned to look at them, as if to strike. (At home, we call this face and motion "Velociraptor" after she saw Jurassic Park as a kid and started imitating the dinosaur.)

I hear the reactions to that were pretty amusing.

You can see a video clip of the exhibit here. It's short, but you get the idea.

I ran into a woman at Twisted yarn shop here in Portland while taking a double-knitting class who actually saw the exhibit. She thought it was a bit strange. Jo, my creative child, was happy to hear that as she smiled to herself.

Jo loves kids!

To hear more about Jolene and her philosophy on dance and creativity, you can listen here to her interview recorded last summer for the All Classical Portland show "On Deck with Young Musicians," at the Metro Arts Kid's Camp, where she has worked for 7 years as a camp teacher. It's a creative camp for kids that takes place over two weeks every summer at the Portland Center for the Performing Arts.

She'll be back there this year, velociraptor, blind folds and all.

She's amazing.

A Cornish performance, after which I punched the air, wishing I could cry out publicly: "That's MY kid! My uterus! MINE!" (Yes,
highly inappropriate, I know. But those were the words in my head and it's important that I am honest.)

Jo at Metro Arts Kids Camp fooling around with the other counselors during a break.

Jo at Cornish in a BFA performance, this photo is mine.