After our last practice, we talked about life, liberty and a love of performance. All of us are holding our breath to see what happens in the next presidential election and where that takes our economy and our hopes for the future on the world stage. Although talk of a national recession and depression is sweeping and broad and scary, there are real signs of struggle here at home. For many right here in our dance community, there has been job loss and pennies pinched about as far as they will go. It's one thing to cancel travel plans and forsake a proper vacation because things are tight; it's another thing entirely to go through your grocery list trying to decide if you really need the $4 butter. These are difficult times and there is a lot of suffering at hand.

In the trenches, the things that sustain us and fortify us for the long haul are usually the first to go - and that includes our entertainments as well as our health care. We know that time isn't the only challenge to dance anymore ... and we are dealing with that ourselves as well as hearing about it from our friends.

We love our big, bawdy shows, but we need to practice some restraint now - for the sake of the cost of putting them on and keeping ticket prices easily affordable. When we talk about bringing guests to the Twin Cities for study, we approach the opportunity in terms of possible payment plans and the reality of low attendance. We are currently balancing not only our dancing together with our individual outside efforts, but how we know life is going for others out there. We want to have fun and create opportunities for amazing dance to happen ... and we want to be grounded in reality and sensitive to what is happening in the world.

So ... for now, we are going to concentrate on getting ready for our trip to Texas in January and wait on our larger projects until 2009, which postpones the next "Djinn HARDCORE" originally targeted for February (we'll save that for next spring). We are currently scheming around some dynamite intimate dance happenings and are also pondering what we can easily do as fundraisers to assist local charities who have been hit particularly hard by the downward turn in our money matters. We'll post all of our stuff here and as well as the website and look forward to having you join us when you can.

We hope that all of you are well and happy. Keep dancing.