This weekend and next, Spectrum Dance Theater hosts in its Lake Washington studio fellow choreographers Olivier Wevers (founder of Whim W’Him) and Crispin Spaeth. The Fall Studio Series (tickets) concludes with a world premiere from Spectrum’s Donald Byrd. Opening night is already sold out.
The Stranger suggests you make time to see it. Actually, everyone does, including us. With an evening that includes sex and gender politics, romantic coups de foudre, and meditations on Middle Eastern conflicts, there’s got to be something in there you’ll go for.
Here’s the program:
Back, sack and crack (World Premiere) by Olivier Wevers
This new work by the artistic director of W*him Whim is an examination of sexuality, gender identity and politics. Nominated by Donald Byrd, Wevers was selected in 2011 for a Princess Grace Award the result of which is this world premiere dance. Wevers received his first commission as a choreographer in 2006 from Spectrum, and this premiere will mark his third creation for Spectrum.
Only You (2011) by Crispin Spaeth
Only You springs from new passion. The dance tumbles forward, a cavalcade of coupling, and when partnerships change, it is quickly and with no looking back. Original music by Dale Sather. Original lighting by Jon Harmon. Only You premiered in a slightly different form in Break a Heart at On the Boards in 2010. Spaeth choreographed Only You as a Valentine for Sather. The two have since married.
A Meeting Place (World Premiere) by Donald Byrd
Inspired by the music of “A Meeting Place,” a CD of medieval and Renaissance instrumental music (more than half of which composers are anonymous) by Gus Denhard (lute) and Munir Nurettin Beken (oud), Donald Byrd uses the lute, an instrument associated with European music, and the oud, the lute’s Middle Eastern cousin, as metaphors for cultures, weapons, and ideologies. In this new work, Byrd’s meeting place is a negotiation where the uneasy task of resolving conflict without violence is communicated in Byrd’s signature dance language.
Over on Whim W’Him’s blog, Victoria Farr Brown gives you a further glimpse of what Wevers is up to:
This new work of Olivier’s explores some of the same questions [as Wevers’ FRAGMENTS], but with a larger cast and a whole range of different movements and additional relationships. Set on eight dancers (Vincent, Stacie, Alex, Derek Crescenti, Jade Solomon Curtis, Donald Jones, Jr.,Shadou Mintrone, and Kate Monthy), it opens with seven of them in high heels, posing and prancing in self-absorbed unison, while Vincent, in socks, writhes on the floor below and between them. The piece is strong, almost sinister/scary in its building intensity.
