PREVIEW: Inlet @ CPT DanceWorks
The Business End of Art
Inlet Dance Theatre’s concert at DanceWorks includes a premiere, Water, as “part one in an in-progress four-part work inspired by the book The Four Elements of Success by Laura Beth Jones. The completed work will reflect attributes of four basic personality types — water, wind, earth, fire.” A dance about a business book? So off we went to see a rehearsal and to hear from Inlet Artistic Director / Founder Bill Wade.
Like much of the modern dance repertoire that concerns water, Inlet’s piece emphasizes flow and their dancers take on an impersonal, elemental quality. But their mastery of Pilobolus-style improvisational partnering and their group focus make Water a worthwhile addition to the genre.
During the rehearsal we attended, we heard only the piano track of Composer Jeremy Allen’s projected piano and violin score. The 3/4 time would be easy to count but there’s no sense that the dancers are counting, no apparent sidelong glances to maintain unison. Wade told us later that the piece was originally choreographed to recordings of the Pacific Ocean. “That’s where I grew up, hanging out on the beach,” he said. After the dancers went to lunch, we turned on the voice-recorder.
CoolCleveland: You read a business book.
Bill Wade: For the past few seasons I’ve been learning to be more of an executive director. Cleveland Foundation has taken Inlet under their wing through a capacity building initiative called Project Access. This is all the stuff about running a business that they don’t teach you when you’re learning how to do your contractions and your plies.
When Inlet started 10 years ago, performing and educating, we had so many projects come our way that we ran on our projects; 74% of our incoming revenue has been earned, traditionally.
That’s a very high ratio of earned income for a dance company. Often it’s reversed. (Here’s a well-thought of dance company that earns less than 40%. http://www.dbdt.com/support/membership.php)
It’s ridiculously high. Inlet has been successful for the last 10 years to the degree to which the dancers have been volunteering to build Inlet. The dancers have traditionally been paid on a project basis for any performing work, any teaching work, and it’s scalable, depending on the project. But they’ve never been paid for rehearsals until this last season, and that is because I’ve been undergoing capacity training. During this past year we’ve done three times the concert work; we have twice as many people on our board; I started the year with two Trainees and now I have six; all as a result of learning how to run the business end of art.
So, just as I read about mentoring and urban studies when I was with the YARD, all of this new kind of thinking has lead me to read a lot of business and marketing-type things. Chris and Judy Schenk, who run Tinamou Consulting (http://www.TinamouConsulting.com) and who also happen to be two of my founding board members, told me about the Laura Beth Jones book, which they use in their workshops, in which the four elements correspond to basic personality types. I figured that with only four elements it can’t be that complicated; a lot easier to remember than MBTI, the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator.
We brought Judy into the studio and for an entire afternoon we went through a workshop based on the topics in this book, our goal being to use the contents of a business book as the inspiration to create art, thinking, “This could be a disaster or this could be really, really cool.” In addition to the dancers we had Jeremy Allen, the Composer, and Rachael Sauber, our Production Stage Manager. By the end of the day we were all going, “That’s because you’re an earth;” “That’s because you’re a fire.” Our language as a group had changed, just as Judy had predicted.
Then we did movement exercises that I had created based on planning meetings that Judy and Chris and I had held.
Movement exercises for your administrative staff, your composer, your stage manager?
Yes. The dancers had to do the paper work part of it and the paperwork people had to do the movement part of it, so that we were all on the same page when we embarked on this project.
We’re trying in this piece to show — with the movement — qualities of water that are also qualities of personality, so that one is the metaphor for the other.
And then the rest of the repertoire for the night is just citing things from our history, but all of it ties into this idea of relationship.
We’re opening with War Effort Eves, which talks about women in America in the 1940’s. It’s a quick little trio, just a riff on some Andrews Sisters material, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, but it’s really about the 3 types of women who arose in our culture during that time: the young USO performer, the escapist Hollywood glamour girl, and of course Rosie the Riveter.
Then we’re doing Wondrous Beasts.
Which we’ve seen and commented on recently. (See video here.)
Then we’re doing Dream of Sleeping, a commission.
Which we’ve also seen. Our favorite dance ever about sleeping.
Dream of Sleeping is a surprisingly difficult dance. And then we’re doing Josh’s solo, Offaxis, which looks at the individual who is marginalized, a metaphor for those of us outside the traditional box who get social feedback that there’s something wrong with us, that we’re weird.
We consider Offaxis a tour de force capitalizing on some of company member Joshua Brown’s special abilities. Hopefully the maniacal laughter is part of the performance.
And Memoriate, another commission, from the long-term care ombudsman. (http://www.Ltco.org)
We remember Memoriate rather well, but during this rehearsal we noticed that, like Water, it began and ended with what you call a “family portrait,” a family-like grouping. The tape montage of voices that accompanies the piece – “his hand started to shake” – “little old lady in tennis shoes” – “I had 57 wonderful years with my husband” – interacts with the dancers’ naturalistic movement in a poignant way. It’s one of our favorite pieces about aging.
All of the repertoire connects with the dynamics of human relationship. Costumes for Water will be by Kristin Wade, my wife, and Judy Peck Richner — remember Judy from when we danced together at Footpath Dance Company?
Inlet Dance Theatre performs at Cleveland Public Theater’s Gordon Square Theater at 7:30pm on Thu 5/12 – Sat 5/14 and at 3pm on Sun 5/15. Tickets $10 – $25. Phone 216-631-2727 ext. 501 or go to http://CPTonline.org.
[Photo: Lauren Stonestreet]
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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