Seattle Dance Project‘s “Project 3″ opens this Friday, January 29, and will have seven performances this weekend and next at ACT. Tickets are $25.
Choreographer Edwaard Liang used to dance himself (Nederlands Dans Theater, NYCB, and for contrast, Fosse on Broadway), and demonstrating movements in rehearsal reveals himself still as buttery-jointed as a yogi. His background in dance is “all over the place,” he says, and credits Buddhist and tai chi practice for the “meditative, flowy, seamless” movement aesthetic that’s his hallmark, whether the piece is ballet or modern.
Like many Buddhists I’ve known, he admits to being a control freak, and this may be why he tells me that he loves the process of creating in the studio most. “It’s not so much the pose,” he says, “but how you get there.” His as-yet-untitled piece for SDP is for six dancers, four male and two female. It’s ballet-infused modern dance–in Michael Upchurch’s story he says it’s inspired by conversation, how people talk with, to, or past each other.
It’s a bit like watching sculpture through time, a chisel of decision constantly refining–adjusting a leg’s travel, or chopping completely through, and leaving a gesture on the floor.
He frequently stops the dancers to remind them that one gesture doesn’t just lead to another–it provokes it. Whether it’s a pas de deux or a solo, the work as a whole is a chain of movement linked not just by sequence, but by pushes and pulls. An equally important “push,” says Liang, is mental. As a choreographer, he says he works mostly with a dancer’s mind, and perceptions of limitation and boundary.
Three words–evoke, inspire, awaken–sum up his goal with dance. (PNB audiences who have seen his “Für Aline” know he delivers.) For SDP, he arrived with three playlists, Bach cello suites, classical Spanish guitar, and an avant-garde composition featuring a distorted cello. The group settled on the Bach, and the collaboration began.
“Project 3″ also includes a commission from former PNB artistic director Kent Stowell, “Goldberg Variations” by Mark Haim, “In Another Land” by Betsy Cooper (also a SDP member), and “Because” by James Canfield.