The Tannery’s breathtaking, new nonprofit dance center gives a global spark to the local scene

The vision of the Tannery Arts Center as a creative mecca of Santa Cruz is about to be realized. Artists and their families have already been occupying the Tannery’s 100 riverfront residential units for the past two years. But now, the second phase of the project is drawing near, with the renovation of two historic tannery buildings complete and slated to open in 2012 as the new Digital Media and Creative Arts Center. Among the individual artists and art cooperatives that will occupy the 28 working studios will be The Tannery World Dance and Cultural Center.

“It’s something I’ve wanted to do for many years,” says Cat Willis, the new dance center’s founder. “Two years ago when I found out that the Tannery was coming to fruition I was intrigued by the idea that it would become a centerpiece for arts and culture in Santa Cruz.”

The Tannery World Dance and Cultural Center will offer children and adults classes in dance from cultures around the globe. Diverse styles will include Afro-Caribbean, flamenco, Bollywood, hip-hop, ballet, Haitian folk, modern, Congolese, Senegalese, contemporary, Afro-urban, street method, urban jazz, tango, and Polynesian. Body-awareness, strength, and alignment classes, such as pilates and Feldenkrais, will also be offered.

Local author finds a sense of purpose in her tennis shoes

The first words out of the obstetrician’s mouth were: “This child will never walk.” Donna Rankin Love was born with a congenital birth defect, where both of her feet were bent upward at an awkward angle, her tiny toes arcing toward her shinbones. This was 1927, before the days of corrective surgery or orthopedic shoes.

Still, the young mother grazed her fingers over the tips of her baby girl’s skyward-pointing toes and met the doctor’s gaze with three prophetic words: “You wanna bet?”

With nothing more than faith and determination, the mother went home and began the loving ritual of massaging her baby’s feet down. By 15 months, the child had taken her first steps. A lifetime later, the woman who had supposedly been born a cripple would celebrate her 59th birthday by walking more than 3,700 miles from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. on the 1986 Great Peace March for global nuclear disarmament. The following year, she would walk and bus from Leningrad to Moscow on the Soviet-American Peace Walk. Then, in 1988, she would traverse the U.S. once again in the American-Soviet Peace Walk from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco.

Editor’s note:  In this week’s Poetry corner, we feature the work of poet and retired physicist Len Anderson, the author of “Invented by the Night” from Hummingbird Press, one previous collection of poems: “Affection for the Unknowable” (Hummingbird Press, 2003), and a chapbook “BEEP: A Version of the History of the Personal Computer Rendered in Free Verse in the Manner of Howl by Allen Ginsberg.” Anderson is a co-founder of Poetry Santa Cruz and serves as secretary-treasurer.

Lifelong dog friendship inspires children’s book series ‘Adventures of Jack and Rugby’

It was the dogs that brought them together. Tory Beale and Cynthia Messer had known each other throughout their sons’ schooling, but it wasn’t until the two families coincidentally adopted puppies within a few months of each other that they began to meet for weekly play-dates. Puppy play-dates, that is.

“As the dogs got to be good friends, we got to be good friends,” says Messer. Amidst those first years of puppy teething and potty training, little did the women know that their adventures with the dogs would form the makings of a children’s book. And as that first book evolved, they wrote another; and then two more. Finally, they had a series.

UCSC’s ‘Attics of Our Lives’ exhibit helps keep the spirit of the Dead alive

Nearly two decades after The Grateful Dead’s demise, the band continues to inspire near-religious devotion among its worldwide fan base. If you never caught a Dead show back in the day, you might well wonder what all the squawk is about. Nicholas Meriwether, director of the Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz’s McHenry Library, offers an excellent explanation for the lasting impression that the band has made.

Attention: Working, professional, up-and-coming and aspiring actors, Impact is hosting a casting call for the films that you see published in GT this week. Please bring a headshot and resume (if you have them) as well as a demo reel or any other professional video footage on a DVD (if you have it). If you don’t have professional acting materials, no worries, just come prepared. Scripts will be present at the auditions, or you can cut them out of the paper, or download below.

MAH’s bold Halloween outing promises to be a visual treat

Give a Santa Cruzan a reason to don a costume and he or she will not disappoint—the chimerical and freakish are celebrated on the streets of downtown each Halloween in all their outlandish splendor. As if Halloween alone were not reason enough, this year marks the first ever Wearable Art Ball at the Museum of Art & History (MAH), with the easy-to-work-with theme, Fractured Fairy Tales. Imagine the modern open space as a blank canvas on which to paint a whimsical Halloween portrait the Brothers Grimm would be proud of—the idea is simply a match made in, well … Santa Cruz.

Local craftsman designs totes for men

The murse—a man purse. That’s the slang term for a messenger bag, a tote—anything that a man uses to carry his stuff around. Just like women, men also have things to haul around. Now, they can do it in style and without that dreaded “murse” title attached to their carryall. Meet Garrett Kautz, who has revolutionized the idea of a man-purse and made it not only hip and stylish to carry a tote bag, but extremely practical, very manly, and quite rugged. So much so that his rough and tumble bags are being sold at places like Unionmade (a very Americana/manly/upscale store in San Francisco), as well as at local Downtown Santa Cruz retailer Stripe.

Editor’s note:  In this week’s Poetry Corner, we feature the work of Rob Sean Wilson, a professor of literature, creative writing, and cultural studies at UC Santa Cruz. He was founding editor of the Berkeley Poetry Review in 1974 as a graduate student in English at UC Berkeley. He has continued writing works of scholarship and poetry from Hawai'i to Hong Kong. His latest book is called “Beat Atttitudes: On the Roads to Beatitude for Post-Beat Writers, Dharma Bums, and Cultural-Political Activists” which will be published by New Pacific Press of Santa Cruz, an offspring of Literary Guillotine Bookstore.

Blue Light Safety Project offers shelter but raises questions

Imagine walking down a dark street flickering with shadows. Or worse, imagine that you are being pursued by someone unsafe on that same dark street. Now picture a halo of blue light glowing from a nearby porch. Imagine that this blue light signifies a safe place to stop, make a phone call—or perhaps even share a meal or stay for the night.

If it sounds comforting to know that there are safe houses where you can seek refuge in your neighborhood, that’s exactly what organizers of the Blue Light Safety Project intend. The idea is simple: anyone can install a blue bulb in their porch light bulb socket and this will let neighbors, community members or passersby know that they are welcome to knock on the door if they feel threatened or unsafe.