Thu 4/10 – Sat 5/3
By Elsa Johnson & Victor Lucas
Week 1 of Cleveland Public Theatre’s DanceWorks 2014 kicks off this week, Thu 4/10 – Sat 4/12, with Inlet Dance Theatre in a program with lots of new work. Your Cool Cleveland dance journalist watched Inlet in rehearsal and hung out afterwards with Founder and Executive/Artistic Director Bill Wade. Afternoon faded into rush hour as the ever upbeat Wade told the stories behind the dances.
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Cool Cleveland: So your first piece at CPT is inspired by the current exhibit at Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Nature’s Mating Games.
Bill Wade: It was one of those situations that I adore about my work. This exhibit was originally curated in London and it went from London to Paris to Cleveland, smack in the Midwest, and it’s about animal mating behavior.
So I did what I typically do; I over-researched. I met with the scientist, Carin Miller, who’s Director of Education at CMNH, I saw the exhibit several times, I got a hold of the research behind the exhibit, and they basically said to create an evening and a new work based on the topic of this exhibit.
And I said, “Oh my gosh yes,” because I’m a nature freak. What a great opportunity.
As I walked through the exhibit I was struck by — obviously — the beauty. But also because it was done by Brits there’s a bit of a sense of humor inside the whole thing that I found entertaining.
You can walk through the exhibit in any order and — this is a compositional construct for me — the content of each section reads very differently from the other sections but there’s this common denominator of mating and display. So we created a piece, Nature Displays, done in sections so we can pull sections out, put them back in, or change the order.
When you performed this piece at CMNH were the dancers spread out through the exhibit or were they behind the proscenium arch in the auditorium?
Behind the proscenium. When it was over the audience went nuts. We got a standing ovation. Then, on the basis of feedback we got at CMNH, we’ve edited and changed the order of what we open with at CPT.
There are five pieces in the program, and you’re only doing one other piece for DanceWorks that’s not a premiere, Dominic Moore-Dunson’s solo.
Yes. Our second piece at CPT will be Soon I Will Be Done, a solo that Dominic performed at Cain Park a couple of summers ago. It’s a very Alvin Ailey sort of piece set to an old spiritual about a man struggling through life, clinging to hope that he’ll get to the other side. I choreographed it way back when I was working at Cleveland School of the Arts, based on a relationship with a kid there. He was going through stuff that no kid should have to go through, stuff that too many of our kids in the city go through.
When Dominic performed this solo as an apprentice at Cain Park, people were standing and cheering before he was done. When he was finished, the lights went out and the place exploded.
[Moore-Dunson will dance at CPT to the Frankie Knuckles version of Soon I Will Be Done, a version that gains considerable poignancy from Knuckles’ own unexpected demise on 4/1/2014, soon after this interview.]
So after Dominic’s solo there’s intermission and then it’s the three premieres. How did Angels Unaware come to be?
I was down in Houston last August with my dancers helping my friend (Randall Flinn, Founder and Artistic Director of Ad Deum) put together a week-long intensive — a hundred some odd kids in 7 studios — and he asked if I’d set a new piece on his second company. I said, “Dude, that’s tomorrow!” But I woke up the next day thinking how I’ve seen Randall say things to a young dancer, things that had a transformative effect. I thought, “Gosh, I’ve had that experience, too.” There are moments, if you’re paying attention, when you can speak into a person’s life so that their life goes better. And that’s the inspiration for Angels Unaware.
In Angels Unaware the angels are not cherubs. I woke up with the idea that people try to walk, they fall, and someone — an angel — is there to catch them.
That’s the movement metaphor.
I was like, “That’s all I got,” but we went into the studio and in 5 rehearsals we had a really solid sketch. Then in September when our season started we said, “This stuff is cool; we’ve gotta keep working on it.” We just finished it last week and now we’re cleaning and editing.
What’s the music?
It’s from the album Pink by a group called Four Tet. It’s kind of club music and that’s on purpose because I wanted to keep the piece grounded — that this can happen right now. All of us who are intelligent and mindful have the opportunity to help each other along.
So that’s Angels Unaware. What’s next?
Then we do 10, the duet with Elizabeth Pollert and Joshua Brown. It’s to honor their 10 years with the company, all the hard work and sacrifice and beauty, all that they’ve poured into other people.
“Posting” was a word you used several times during Elizabeth and Josh’s rehearsal.
In non-traditional partnering or gymnastics “posting” refers to locking out a body part to support a weight. For instance, in 10 Elizabeth lies on her back and locks her legs and Josh posts on top.
When I watch rehearsal you often do something over and over but I can’t always tell what you’re trying to change.
Our process is unusual because we don’t use the criteria of right and wrong. It’s always about what is stage-worthy. That is, does it have a psychological or emotional or kinetic resonance that’s strong enough to capture your attention? We talk about choreographing from our gut, not our brains, and keeping our eyes open for what’s stage-worthy.
I see. That would go along way toward explaining why your new stuff is always different. You don’t fall back on routine ways of doing things.
What about music for 10?
Music is being composed especially for 10 by Sean Ellis Hussey, composer and dancer, who is currently studying at the Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Music. He’s already won major awards. You met him at the studio.
Right.
Then we close the show with the newest installment of our four elements series, Fire. We did Water 2 years ago and Air last year.
Fire is a very difficult dance. Dominic, Nicole O’Malley, and Michelle Sipes, the 3 dancers in Fire, have each told me that this is the hardest thing they’ve ever done in their lives, and they love it. (laughs) It’s 6 and a half minutes of very rapid tempos, legs, leaps, down to the floor, triple pirouettes.
It’s based on the book, Four Elements of Success, a business book by Laurie Beth Jones. It’s a lot easier than Meyers Briggs Type Inventory, because you only have to remember 4 elements. It’s a fun read and it’s become internal language in our organization as well as the basis of what will eventually be a multi-part dance.
Music for Fire is by Jeremy Allen, who also composed the music for Water and Air.
CC: Inlet shows often sell out. I hope you have seats left by the time people have a chance to read this. http://inletdance.org
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Week 2 of DanceWorks, Thu 4/17 – Sat 19, presents a double bill. Double-Edge Dance presents works choreographed by Artistic Director Kora Radella with music composed by Michelle Birsky and DEDance co-founder, composer / saxophonist Ross Feller. Also appearing in this half of the evening, artists from another Radella project, boomerang.
Sharing the bill on Week 2, Travesty Dance presents an evening of dance solos accompanied by live music. The choreography is by Artistic Director Kimberly Karpanty, faculty member at Kent State University. The music, contemporary scores for solo piano, cello, French horn, percussion and voice, will be played by Quinn Kalmansson, cellist in the Cleveland Institute of Music’s New Music Ensemble, and Claudia Howard Queen, composer, multi-instrumentalist dance musician, and faculty member at North Texas University.
Week 3 of DanceWorks, Thu 4/24 – Sat 26, presents another double bill. Antaeus Dance presents 2 premieres, Director Joan Meggitt’s Events Leading Up to My Death and the ubiquitous Heather Koniz’s Let My Hero In. Dancers: Jessica Hodges, Koniz, Shannon Sefcik, and Rhian Virostko.
Sharing the bill on Week 3, Shen & Bones Performance Group, a group we have yet to see live. They promise to blend the Japanese dance form of Butoh with western contemporary dance styles. Find video on their website
Week 4 of DanceWorks, Thu 5/1 – Sat 5/3, presents Verb Ballets‘ Spring Series featuring the work of The Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion Artist-in- Residence, Ngo Thanh Phuong, in a new work exploring 21st century Vietnamese life and culture. The program also includes a world premiere by contemporary choreographer Sara Whale, who is on Baldwin Wallace faculty and a Verb Company Teacher.
DanceWorks 2014 runs 4/10 – 5/3. All shows Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30pm in CPT’s Gordon Square Theatre, 6414 Detroit Ave., Cleveland, OH 44102. General Admission $28; Students and Seniors $26; $12 Thursdays. Tickets available at http://cptonline.org or by phone at (216) 631-2727 x 501.
And don’t forget, FREE BEER FRIDAY at CPT. Audience members are invited to mingle with the artists after the show and enjoy a drink or two on CPT.
You can still catch Nature’s Mating Games at CMNH thru 4/20/2014.
[Pictured, top: Inlet Dance Theatre. Photo by Lauren Stonestreet. Bottom: Verb Ballets by Mark Horning]
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.
Cleveland, OH 44102