Dance company members at Rise have been rehearsing 31 pieces for the American Dance Awards regional competition.

Sandy Broyard and Sally Cohn will direct What’s Written Within on Sunday, March 23 at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center. This will be the dance group's third annual performance at the Hebrew Center’s arts program.

Alison Manning and Jesse Keller can always return to the dance floor. It’s a lesson they learned at the age of six when they began to dance, and one they’ve carried with them throughout their careers. Now they hope to teach that to the next generation.

For two weekends in August Oak Bluffs goes dancing. The beating of drums begins around 7:30 p.m., beckoning people to the corner of Grove and Narragansett avenues. Inside Union Chapel dancers sway and stretch and leap, warming up to the drumbeats.

Doug Elkins is looking for that weird moment, the uncomfortable that makes you think twice.

“The screw up can be more interesting than the actual phrase,” Mr. Elkins said outside of the Yard theatre in Chilmark this week.

On Thursday night at 8 p.m. Doug Elkins Choreography, etc. performs two original works created at the Yard, Mo(or)town/Redux and Hapless Bizarre. A special benefit performance will take place Saturday night at 6:30 p.m. These will be Mr. Elkins final performances of a three year residency at the Yard.

It’s time for tap to take its seat at the contemporary dance table, and it starts in Chilmark.
Artists colony the Yard began its second annual Tap the Yard festival on Thursday night, July 25, bringing together a host of rhythm and percussive-based dancers that go beyond the standard tap steps to include hiphop, Irish step dancing, body percussion and modern dance.

Three downtown divas arrive on the up-Island dance scene this weekend.

New York choreographers Jodi Melnick, Vicky Shick and Jon Kinzel are performing at the Yard in Chilmark today and tomorrow, June 29 and 30, both performances beginning at 8 p.m.

There won’t be a dance technique that’s not included in the RISE Vineyard Performing Arts student upcoming recital, Americana! The students will perform ballet, tap, contemporary, jazz, acrobatics and a little hip-hop and creative dance as they celebrate all things American at the Performing Arts Center in Oak Bluffs on Saturday, June 22, beginning at 6 p.m., and again on Sunday, June 23, beginning at 2 p.m.

Every dance has its own vocabulary or its own “it-ness” as choreographer David Brick refers to it. For the past three weeks at the Yard, Mr. Brick’s job has been to draw out this “it-ness”, harness it and help three up and coming choreographers dig a little deeper into their work.

This past weekend the World Choreography Institute arrived in Edgartown to have a conversation about dance. On the final day of the think tank, dance masters and interested Islanders sat on couches and pillows on the floor in the living room of the Noepe Center for Literary Arts, formerly the Point Way Inn. They were dissecting a recording of George Balanchine’s ballet, Jewels, in particular the second movement of the piece, known as Rubies.