The audience never stopped whistling, cheering and shouting on Saturday night at Lane Community College’s Ragozzino Performance Hall.@@http://eugeneagogo.com/Ragozzino-Performance-Hall/v/TAWCGYR/@@
Eugene’s Dance Northwest, @@http://dancenorthwest.com/?page_id=2@@a local dance company that has been around for approximately nine years, held their annual performance Jan. 14. The show, “Down 4 It,” was a production that mostly featured Dance Northwest members, but also included local groups Flex, C4 Crew, ZAPP, Urban Pulse, Work Dance Company, King’s Krew@@http://www.thingstodoineugeneor.com/details-E0-001-044715976-0/Down_4_It_Eugene/@@ along with Portland groups The Detail and Urban Arts Dance Company@@http://www.urbanartsdance.com/flash.html@@@@http://www.pcpa.com/events/around-world-through-movement-detail-0@@.
Each year, Dance Northwest chooses a local nonprofit to donate a portion of the show’s proceeds. This year the group will support Womenspace,@@http://www.womenspaceinc.org/@@ a local group that works to prevent domestic violence and provide support to survivors.
Dance Northwest director Anita Sanford,@@http://dancenorthwest.com/?page_id=2@@ explained why they chose to support Womenspace this year.
“We wanted to keep it local,” she said. “We wanted to reflect how we are feeling. We really felt empowered, and we wanted to pass that on to a charity that helps empower women.”
Corrine Koke,@@http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e5fovn5j02c13eb0&llr=zdmdc7eab@@ the development director, summed up a big part of Womenspace’s mission.
“We believe that everybody has the right to be free from violence,” she said.
Womenspace has more than 4,500 women and children walking through its doors each year — but Koke explained that despite this, there is still much work to do.
“A national statistic tells us that only 11 percent who need help seek it,” she said.
After collecting the revenue from the performance, Sanford will make sure Dance Northwest has its costs covered and then will send the remainder of the money to Womenspace. In past years, this amount has been anywhere from $200 to $1,000. @@I feel like this story is conflicted; it can’t decide whether it’s about Womenspace or the dance group. Or is it about the event?@@
Over the course of the night, the groups performed 14 pieces. Some pieces were exclusively one-dance group, and others were collaboration between the groups.
“A lot of times, the dance community is so big and there’s so much talent, a lot of the groups collaborate,” said Lindsey Shields, director of Flex@@http://www.wowhall.org/events.php@@. “It’s really great — it doesn’t always happen that way in the dance community.”
Mindy Schmidling,@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=staff&d=person&b=name&s=Mindy+Schmidling@@ a University employee, has been a member of Dance Northwest and its precursor for 10 years. She explained the amount of work that had gone into the performance.
“We’ve rehearsed about eight hours a week,” she said.@@okay … the ‘she explained’ followed by these type of quotes is rather … ugh.@@

Every performance has its challenges, and this year’s performance was no different. A member of the group left with only two weeks until the performance.
“We had to reblock everyone,” Schmindling said.
There is no set process for dancing with the company, but dancer and group publicist Tamarra White@@http://dancenorthwest.com/?page_id=9@@ said that if people want to get involved, they should take classes at the ZAPP Academy of Dance.
“It was such a good show. I’m really pleased,” White said, beaming.