Fresh Inventions Opens DanceWorks @ CPT
The 2011 edition of Cleveland Public Theatre’s DanceWorks kicks off this Thu 5/5 with Verb Ballets’ Fresh Inventions, featuring new choreography by Verb’s own dancers. Like last year, the program includes live music composed and performed in Northeast Ohio, but this year Verb has also incorporated sculpture into some of the pieces.
As usual, we wanted to know what to expect, so we visited Verb at their new address in the Warrensville-Van Aken neighborhood where they share a building with Christ Episcopal Church. Dr. Margaret Carlson, the company’s director, brought us up to speed.
Cool Cleveland: We hear you’re doing a show, this time including sculpture.
Margaret Carlson: The sculpture is a new element, a minor element. This year, if the dancer / choreographer chose their own music, then they had to work with a sculptural element that I controlled. Or they worked with a Northeast Ohio composer I assigned and the music is played live.
Two of the dancer / choreographers chose their own sound — let’s put it that way — so they had to work with a sculptural element.
Terence Greene, our artist-in-residence, has done a piece he’s called Calligraphy. It’s dedicated to Malcolm and Ernestine Brown, whose gallery has been in business here in Shaker for 30 years, the nation’s oldest African-American fine art gallery. In Calligraphy, Terence has drawn from his experiences in Taiwan. He uses music from the movies Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers and the dance is really an interpretation of the Browns’ relationship with each other as a married couple with this gallery and Malcolm an artist. The dancers have brushes that they use, and so forth.
The sculptural elements for Calligraphy are large plastic sheets, holograms, like enlarged versions of the shiny little logos on your credit cards. The artist who — sort of — invented that is Thomas Cvetkovich, based in Youngstown. His pieces are thin, malleable plastic that you can roll up or hang up and when you shine light on them they get all sparkly.
Antwon Duncan has done a piece which does not use music; instead he has written a text which he has rendered as spoken word using his own voice. In creating his piece, Antwon interviewed eight people, some dancers, some friends. Titled Echoes of Silent Screams, it’s about those things that lie beneath the surface that you ordinarily don’t speak about; they shape who you are but oftentimes they’re painful. Each dancer is one of the characters, but the dancers don’t know the identities of the people Antwon interviewed.
Echoes of Silent Screams was inspired by a piece of sculpture in the collection of Donald Bingham Schmitt.
[Duncan was available for interview later that day so we let him describe the sculpture later in this article.]
Erin Conway Lewis was given music composed by Michael Leese, a piano etude. I think Erin came up with some very creative partnering ideas for this piece, which will be performed for Fresh Inventions by pianist Nicholas Underhill.
Brian Murphy was given music by Katharine O’Connell, a cello solo to be performed for Fresh Inventions by Regina Mushabec. The music, War Elegy, is inspired by an installation piece created by a Russian-American visual artist, Irina Koukhanova, based in Cleveland. (For a slideshow of more of the artist’s work go to http://www.IrinaKoukhanova.com.) I contacted the artist to get that piece and make it part of the set but she had already melted it all down to get material to make another piece, so all we have is a photo. I gave the photo to Brian and he studied it as well as listened to the music. So he had a double challenge which he handled handsomely.
[Again, Murphy was available for interview later that day so we’ll let him describe his process later in this article.]
That leaves dancer / choreographer Stephanie Krise who’s using a string quartet — very modern music — by Stephen Smith, Artistic Director of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the new music orchestra here in Cleveland. That quartet will be performed for Fresh Inventions by Heidi Albert, Susan Britton, Jiah Chung, and Laura Shuster.
As it stands now, all of the pieces are using all of the dancers, although two of the choreographers are out for this program. Erin is on maternity leave. Stephanie was in a car accident two weeks ago.
The other piece on the program is Noumenon Mobilus, which you’ve seen. Its creator, Alwin Nikolais, was the consummate multimedia artist; he wrote the music for his pieces, he did the lighting for his pieces, he did the choreography for his pieces, and he always worked with a sculptural element so I thought it was suitable for this program.
—
Having heard from Carlson, we watched the company rehearsing Echoes of Silent Screams. Duncan would give the dancers movement and they’d do it with surprising facility after the briefest rehearsal. True, the lifts were works in progress and the dancers experienced occasional lapses, but it was easy to see the gist of the piece. Duncan’s voice on the tape was easy to understand and the movement created apt metaphors for an episode of depression and alcoholism, a childhood in poverty, and a youth who found self-esteem in trumpet lessons. Duncan’s choreography was so full of hip-hop influences that one of the dancers jokingly added a hip-hop flourish of her own.
“Yoyoyo,” said Duncan, picking up the joke, but he added an admonition. “I put a lot of movement in there so be very direct and don’t put anything on top of it.” We spoke with Duncan during a break.
I think I see what you’re about here in Echoes of Silent Screams, telling these stories.
Antwon Duncan: Yes, the stories happened at different points in people’s lives, but they’re all definitely eight very true stories. I didn’t add anything. Sometimes I didn’t even put rhyming words because I wanted the direct quote from the person.
Each dancer is one of the anonymous characters and they keep that character?
They do, but sometimes the other dancers become the experience, so that’s why I wanted the dancers dressed in all black, so they don’t so much become the character as become a voice for their hidden story.
Please describe the piece of sculpture, the life-sized human figure you were inspired by.
The sculpture is paper mache and what it said to me is that life can seem paper thin and vulnerable and fragile. The sculpture doesn’t have a gender so it could be the experience of a male or a female. The pose has all these conundrums. It looks like it’s deep in thought but it also looks like it might not be thinking at all; it occupies opposite ends of the spectrum so that’s what I did; I took all these opposites and used them.
—
Brian Murphy was also present at rehearsal so we spoke with him during another break.
Brian Murphy: War Elegy was quite a difficult piece of music because it had multiple themes and no counts. No 3-count or 4-count phrases. What I had to do was time phrases and choreograph to that.
The one man in the dance goes to war and the women in the dance represent different aspects of war. One represents a lover. One actually represents death. Two of the women represent angels guiding the story. Three of the women are war itself.
This might help our readers as they watch your piece.
—
We also asked Rehearsal Director Richard Dickinson for his thoughts on the concert.
Richard Dickinson: I think you’re always taking a chance using student choreographers or — as we are here — using these professional dancers, some of them trying their first hand at choreography, but it’s a great opportunity for the dancers to grow artistically and what I’ve seen so far has been really, really great work, a good experience for everybody, including the audience.
One big thing to think about — they’re all trying to tell a story in 5 minutes or 8 minutes. Antwon’s taking 20 minutes. But they all have only 5 to 9 hours to do it in.
You’re referring to the rule of thumb, one hour of studio time to make one minute of choreography. So a 20-minute dance ordinarily needs 20 hours of rehearsal time.
Yes, but that was his choice. And he’s doing it! He says he’s going to finish it in the next 45 minutes. Not bad.
So, no cliffhangers? Everything will be done in time?
Looks like it. It’s taxing on the dancers because there’s so much to remember — so many musical phrases and what happens next — but I think that just comes with repetition, so once it’s set you just keep repeating it over and over again.
[Top photo of Verb Ballets by Harry Weller]
[Bottom photo by Steven M. Hale]
Verb Ballets presents its Fresh Inventions program at 7:30 pm Thu 5/5, Fri 5/6 and Sat 5/7 at Cleveland Public Theatre’s Gordon Square Theatre, 6415 Detroit Ave, Cleveland 44102. No Sunday performances. Tickets $10 – $25 online at CPT, phone 216-631-2727, or in person at CPT box office.
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.
[Click here to return to the current issue of Cool Cleveland]