Ground Works and Amy Miller
Ground Works Dance Theater is giving dancer and choreographer Amy Miller a well-deserved sendoff, a veritable Farewell Tour for one who has long been a mainstay of Ground Works and of the dance community of Northeast Ohio.
We saw the Cleveland stop on the tour at Cain Park’s Alma Theater where Ground Works performed Valence (2009) and the world premiere of Say Yes — both choreographed on Ground Works by Miller — and Unpublished Dialogues, Ground Works’ Virginia Woolf dance starring Miller as the embattled author.
Valence was impossible not to watch but difficult to describe. Its original score by Peter Swendsen – a roaring, clattering subway platform punctuated by unearthly chimes — and the short, intense passages between the dancers made one of our friends think of young, urban professionals in New York City, coupling and uncoupling around work, friendship, and romance.
Could be. But we prefer to think of Valence in the light of Miller’s other choreography for Ground Works, seldom supporting much of a narrative arc but always concerned with human emotion on a tight rope between the intimate and the formal.
Perhaps Miller was influenced by the darkly sexy work of Guest Artist Keely Garfield, or Alex Ketley, who used rock-climbing techniques in a dance for Ground Works that sometimes became violent and adversarial. But whatever her influences, Miller absorbed them as a member of Ground Works, a group marked by unusually high levels of mutual respect and genuine pleasure in each other’s company.
One of Miller’s signature choreographic devices is what we describe as a sustained, full body embrace, something she has learned to deploy with extreme economy. ‘Valence” has, by our count, only one, featuring Miller hanging onto new company member Todd VanSlambrouck like a rock climber on the face of a cliff.
If you read the brief program note before watching it, Unpublished Dialogues, the Virginia Woolf dance, had all the specificity of character and narrative arc that Valence so rigorously eschewed. Choreographer Lynn Taylor-Corbett and the Ground Works dancers make a convincing case for dance drama. The period costumes by Janet Bolick with Diana Fries and Naima Hadden add considerably to the effect.
Saying Yes occupied pride of place at the end of the program. Four dancers not including Miller – Felise Bagley, Sarah Perrett, Damien Highfield, and VanSlambrouck – danced to a half dozen short pieces of bubbling pop minimalism from Mark Mellits’ Tight Sweater. Colorful, lighthearted costumes by Kristine Davies prevented any but the most positive emotions.
Some of the formal elements in Saying Yes were new to Miller’s choreography but struck a familiar note with us nonetheless. Our former Scottish Country Dance instructor Diane Klann was in the Alma and she confirmed our suspicion after the show. “Did you see the ladies’ chain and the reel of 4?” she bubbled happily. It seems Miller had just finished an intensive study of Scottish Country Dance with Klann. We also studied with Klann back in the days when Scottish dancing didn’t make our feet hurt – hence our recognition of the reel.
Although Miller leaves Northeast Ohio soon to accompany her husband David to New York where he will study at the French Culinary Institute, Ground Works Artistic Director David Shimotakahara seems to leave open the possibility of an ongoing association with Miller. Another longtime Ground Works associate, Director of Music Gustavo Aguilar, has maintained artistic ties despite relocating from Akron to the West coast and now the East coast.
Miller continues to perform with Ground Works through the company’s collaboration with Opera Cleveland at the end of September.
We watched Ground Works Dance Theater at Cain Park’s Alma Theater on Sat 7/17/10. Ground Works performed the same repertory on Fri and Sat, 7/30 and 7/31/10 at Akron’s Glendale Cemetery as part of the Heinz Poll Summer Dance Festival, http://www.AkronDanceFestival.org
See photos and video of Miller and Ground Works at http://www.GroundworksDance.org or http://www.NotSoObvious.com. Click on the Performance balloon for times, places, and ticket information for future performances.
From Cool Cleveland contributors Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas. Elsa and Vic are both longtime Clevelanders. Elsa is a landscape designer. She studied ballet as an avocation for 2 decades. Vic has been a dancer and dance teacher for most of his working life, performing in a number of dance companies in NYC and Cleveland. They write about dance as a way to learn more and keep in touch with the dance community. E-mail them at vicnelsaATearthlink.net.