Preview: Inlet Dance Theatre at CPT

Last month we emailed Bill Wade, Artistic Director and Founder of Inlet Dance Theatre, and asked him about his upcoming concert for Cleveland Public Theater’s DanceWorks.

Wade responded at considerable length, listing repertory that he planned to remount or upgrade and 2 totally new pieces.

Those who saw Inlet’s Cain Park concert last summer may remember CREATE, a piece Wade created on students. Wade has “upgraded” CREATE for the company as what he describes as “pop modern dance, something fun as a concert opener for schools and other audiences new to modern dance.”

One of the pieces he’s remounting for CPT is B’ROKE (2004), which, according to Dance Magazine, “brilliantly visualizes a Vivaldi violin concerto with space-carving movements for four women in eye-popping, painted unitards.” Inspired by the postmodern baroque paintings of Frank Stella, B’ROKE demonstrates the lyric beauty that Wade’s choreography and his dancers are capable of but mostly subordinate to other purposes.

In B’ROKE, beauty is its own excuse for being.

But Wade’s work is usually about something, and this concert includes at least 2 dances with ambitious intent. As Inlet’s press release puts it, “In keeping with Inlet’s ongoing artistic focus on the human condition, some pieces in this repertory comment on personal reactions to our recent economic recession and observations about the plight of those in post-industrial (rust belt) communities.”

Reading the press release, we saw no obvious way for a dance to communicate concepts like ‘economic recession’ or ‘rust belt,’ so we arranged to see a rehearsal of BEAUTY IN TENSION, [photo here by Lauren Stonestreet], the dance premiere that aspires to treat of the first great recession of the 21^st century.

From a distance, BEAUTY is much like many Pilobolus-style dances. A prop, in this case elastic fabric, is introduced and the movement possibilities of the prop are explored. In BEAUTY, the dancers variously dance under, over, and behind the 12-foot square sheets, which are so elastic that the audience can read the expression of faces pushed against them and yet so strong that they can form a trampoline for one dancer.

Given such an interesting prop, a creative bunch like Inlet could easily make an entertaining dance about the elastic fabric and its movement possibilities. Indeed, this is the criticism leveled against some Pilobolus dances, that they are about the props and lack larger meanings.

Inlet’s BEAUTY does not fall into the trap of being about a prop.

For one thing, composer Jeremy Allen’s ominous electronic score makes it impossible for the dancers to merely cavort; the score tells us that something bad is about to happen and there’s no obvious escape.

For another, the dancers’ performances are informed by the subject at hand. With neutral expressions, the dancers kneel around the fabric spread on the floor, but when one after another they are trapped underneath the fabric their faces show through with unmistakeable anguish. And riding on top of the fabric is no frolic either; though low key, the dancers’ expressions clearly show well-founded fear: No safety net. The fabric provides an apt metaphore for the anguish and anxiety that accompany economic turmoil.

We watched Inlet’s rehearsal in the Nehemiah Mission gymnasium on W 65^th Street a few blocks south of CPT, a decidedly low-rent setting. Wade was his ever-cheerful self and the dancers were relaxed and taking care of business, patiently cleaning up details. Composer Allen watched the rehearsal and alternately discussed changes in the score and entertained his 2-year old son.

The group rehearsal ended with BEAUTY apparently still unfinished; everyone left except for Joshua Brown and Justin Stentz, who began to rehearse the other premiere, WIND, the new addition to Inlet’s Easter Island suite. While his dancers worked on their own, Wade talked: “When you first meet people on the street, you don’t know what horror story they’re living, so one of the conversations we’ve been having for months now is ‘let’s show some of the anguish.’ Do I have enough to buy groceries? Enough quarters to do the laundry? For us it’s ‘How do I hold down 4 part time jobs and still dance professionally?’” CLOSE SHAVE, another of Inlet’s dances at CPT, also comments on the recession.

The original A CLOSE SHAVE was Wade’s existential expansion on the classic vaudeville bit wherein 2 guys shave as they perfectly mirror each other. As Wade describes his new version of CLOSE SHAVE, “I decided to create 2 characters, ‘the Suit’ and ‘Rusty Steelbelt,’ the ‘have’ and the ‘have not.’ We’ve conducted a few residencies in rust belt towns and the new CLOSE SHAVE reads quite poignantly with that context and these new interpretations that Josh and Justin give the piece.”

Interview completed, we hung around to watch WIND. Like BEAUTY, WIND is also built around props, thick sections of rope which whistle as the dancers twirl them overhead. But omygosh! We quickly realized that Wade, Brown, and Stentz were still improvising, developing material for the dance. Eight days away from 5 sold out shows and they’re still choreographing both premieres! None of the 3 men betrayed any anxiety. They calmly tried it one way, then another, discussing ways to prevent the ropes from unraveling. Driving home we could not recall a single Inlet concert where the dancers looked unprepared.

Inlet performs at CPT’s James Levin Theatre at 7:30pm on Thursday, 4/8, Friday, 4/9, and Saturday, 4/10 and at 3pm on Sunday, 4/11/10. A special Educational Matinee performance at 3pm Saturday, 4/10 shows the work students are doing through Educational Outreach Programming and features members of the Inlet Trainee Program. Tickets @ $10 and $19 are available at CPT Box Office 216-631-2727 or cptonline.org.

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.

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