Tag Archives: dance

Arts & Entertainment, Dance

tEEth Packs An Emotional Wallop At On the Boards

On the Boards‘ presentation of Portland dance company tEEth‘s Make/Believe packs an emotional wallop as its four dancers wrestle with power, voice, and microphones. Angelle Herbert’s choreography, together with Phillip Kraft’s sound design, openly lays claim to the audience from the get-go and doesn’t release its hold for a moment as the dancers struggle to find their literal and figurative voices.

Make/Believe has all the fundamentals of a great performance; there’s drama, character and a refusal to let the audience get away with passivity. Have no fear of (or hopes for) being asked to get on your feet, but don’t think you’ll escape emotionally either. This show will not let you off the hook and the only thing more devastating would be if they were to shut the audience out. Witnessing these performers struggle to communicate engenders pity, horror and fear as well as delight, sympathy and laughter. The physical, electronic and emotional obstacles that choke back words and make speech inarticulate let through just enough meaning to send ripples of laughter through the audience as we recognize a phrase out of that special garbled language in which only dental care workers and drive-through clerks are fluent.

In addition to Kraft’s composition, sounds come from the dancers, who carry microphones in their mouths, around their necks, and between their legs. Sometimes they actually hold them in their hands, yet even when speaking directly into the microphone the dancers work hard to disrupt our understanding of the sounds and their sources. This draws attention to the non-vocal sounds of limbs and breath. The movements make their own music only to have that music overwhelmed by the amplified soundscape, suggesting that the sound derives from the movement rather than the conventional reverse. With the music at a volume that becomes palpable the dancing takes on the silence of distance.

With the exception of a few lifts, both graceful and harsh, and one extraordinary leap, the movements remain grounded and often focused on the torso. Minimalist unison quartets go from languid to fierce, followed by staccato sections with rapid emotional shifts, before breaking into alternating duets and a few solos.

The dancers’ roles are often highly gendered and sexualized. The women take prominence as characters but the men frequently stifle the women’s voices. Though this dynamic is subverted in a variety of ways these scenes create some of the biggest emotional impacts in the performance. The violence and intimacy of some movements inspires questions of who is in control amongst the dancers, in the performer/audience relationship, and between the individual dancer and her own voice—to say nothing of the technology that keeps threatening to gag and garrote.

There is one really deafening moment during the performance, so it’s helpful to take note of the earplugs available next to the programs as you enter the Griffin (I didn’t take a pair but came out okay: any tinnitus that followed didn’t make it to curtain call).

The technical side of the production is stellar. Alex Gagne-Hawes’s lighting includes extraordinarily sharp focus and extreme shuttering, while Kraft’s soundscape, could almost stand alone as a performance.

This is not dance made purely for an esoteric dance-knowing crowd. It’s accessible without pandering, moving both intellectually and emotionally, and playing here for far too short a run: In addition to yesterday’s opening-night performance, Make/Believe is presented tonight and tomorrow.

Arts & Entertainment, Music, Theatre

12 Minutes Max: The Test Results Are In

Josephine’s Echopraxia. Photo by Tim Summers.

A house of fans, friends, family, and the merely curious filled On The Boards’ Studio Theatre Monday night for the 2011-2012 season’s fourth and penultimate edition of 12 Minutes Max. This OtB institution offers twelve regional artists a twelve-minute slot of lab time for testing new material on audiences, and “testing” is no euphemism. While the crowd was enthusiastic there were no obligatory standing-O’s at this show; the performers earned the responses they received, and more often than not those responses were positive.

The evening was heavy on dance, light on theatre and music, and featured a pair of performance pieces incorporating movement and declamation. Sarah Burgess provided the musical act playing low-key pop piano under a smoky Norah Jones knock-off vocal. She’s a pleasant and comfortable performer who, one hopes, may aspire to greater achievements in her future lyrics.

Dances included a solo, a duet, a trio, and a quintet. Kaitlin McCarthy and Kiplinn Sagmiller danced McCarthy’s choreography using a precise vocabulary of movements to create a narrative of tenderness and aggression that escalated steadily with acts of kindness subverted to violent ends, resulting in the total division of roles between the empowered and the subjugated.

Shellie Gravitt gave the audience a go-go dance by way of Beckett (perhaps that’s go-go of Godot’s Didi and Gogo). The clown act consistently resolved into a vainglorious reassertion of dignity, enacted in the astonishing beauty of the dancer’s torso slowly rising up over squatting thighs, perched on massive high-heeled shoes only to launch once more into the impossible and ludicrous contortions of the act. After an unperformed transition, masked only by the proscenium wall, but revealed in shadows and the unmuffled sounds of costume and prop transitions, Gravitt reemerged, freed of footwear and with a therapeutic rocks glass at hand. This dance was free and easy, instead of striving to achieve an impossible task.

The other dances included one of transitions between mechanized and organic qualities in a nuanced dynamic of encounters received and compelled within Vancouver’s three-woman ensemble Triadic Dances Works. The other involved Geoffrey Johnson’s ensemble of five performers in athletic and grounded movement, often arranged around a still center with a motif of hand flutters punctuating the sequences. The costuming was remarkable for including a variety of faded t-shirts printed with lettering and images, which helped place the experience of the dance in a very accessible and informal world.

William D. Brattain, or TIT: The Irrealist Theatre, gave the audience a strong performance piece spiraling off from the Fibonacci sequence and conceptions of gender and language that was supported in the physical work with well-integrated form and content and enough authentic personality to win the audience’s sympathy. Meanwhile, Joyce Liao’s Llevame Contigo was a more obtuse piece involving childlike play and ruminations on horses, intermixed with prerecorded voiceovers and followed by primitive and simple dances.

This sort of an evening can be a technical nightmare and the transitions between scenes deadly. I’ve long been of the opinion that scene changes must be totally fascinating or completely invisible. Given the large percentage of dance pieces in the evening, the transitions were relatively smooth and quick, but the slow transition into The Town Theater’s Missed Connections was slow and fascinating, a dance piece unto itself. Unfortunately, the rest of this piece didn’t compare as favorably. The set consisted of a pair of triangles in blue painters’ tape laid out on the floor in a formal choreography seemingly borrowed from the preceding dance.

Nick Hara and Ciera Iveson performed their composition derived from Seattle Missed Connections postings, a forum with which other groups, such as NYC’s Royanth Productions and Ars Nova, have had success. The performance of the text was often engaging. Iveson and Hara committed to their characters, calling out into the theatre for affection and connection, though never so much to suggest that they expected a response. This was all very nice, but the actors were locked onto those triangles. What might have happened had they broken free and had an interaction with one another?

At the end of intermission, The SunBreak’s Arts Intern Emeritus Leah Vendl’s name was chosen out of a glass vase full of entries, which won her the responsibility of guest-curating the next edition of 12 Minutes Max (April 8-9, auditions March 11). If it’s anything like this latest edition, there will be plenty to like—and anything you don’t like will be over soon enough. That and the $8 admission are a small price to pay for the chance to contribute to local performance development and possibly to be the first to see the next big thing.

Arts & Entertainment, Dance

The New Vision Dance Company Lives Up to Its Name

The dancers come from near and from at least as far away as the Bay Area, but the dances in New Vision‘s new program reflect both adjectives in the company’s moniker.

Founder Melissa Gould earned her Bachelor’s in Dance from San Jose State University, logged time in Las Vegas, and took her dancers and choreography to such far-flung locales as Japan, Korea, and Guam.  She’s also taken her work quite literally all over the ocean on Norwegian Cruise Lines.  New Vision is her latest company, and she’ll premiere eight of her own works under the collective title “Harvest.”

In addition to the founder, New Vision consists of Eric Dahl, a graduate of Seattle’s prestigious Cornish College of the Arts; Kyle Scott, a well-versed 21 year-old who began dancing at age 4; Erin Boden, graduate of the University of Washington; and Kathryn Louise, who’s logged dance time in Alaska, Philadelphia, and Washington State.

One of the many featured guests, Kristine Chambers Miller, also graduated from San Jose State University.  Currently a resident of San Mateo, California, she’s taught adults and children for a decade and appears yearly in her hometown as the Snow Queen in the annual Holiday Festival.  She’ll perform a modern ballet solo called “Golden” with choreography from her friend and fellow Bay Area resident Leslie Marx.

“Harvest” plays its second show at 8 p.m. tonight at the Velocity Dance Center, near 12th and Pine, on Capitol Hill.  Tickets are $15 general admission, $30 preferred seating in the first two rows.  Box office opens one hour before each show.

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

Balagan Theatre Cast as an “Off-Broadway” Impresario

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Balagan's Jake "Captain Hammer" Groshong responding to a tenant's request (Photo: M. Elizabeth Eller)

The Seattle Times reported the good news recently that Balagan Theatre finally has a place to lay its collective head again, after “outgrowing” its home in the basement of Boom Noodle, on Capitol Hill. Balagan has been tapped to manage the Erickson Theatre Off-Broadway, owned by Seattle Central Community College.

As a Seattle Central spokesperson explained to CHS:

The Broadway Management Group has had the contract to manage both theatres (BPH and Erickson). However, that contract expires in Sept. and by state rules we must issue an RFP and go through a competitive process to award a new contract. A committee of the college decided to award the BPH contract to the Broadway Management Group and the Erickson contract to Balagan.

As you know, nothing can happen in Seattle’s arts community without an outbreak of paranoid conspiracy theory, often based on people knowing next to nothing about the details. So no surprise there’s already a Save the Erickson page on Facebook. A Seattle Dances post says, based on no evidence provided in the post: “Seattle’s best, most professional, most affordable theatre for small dance companies might be going bye-bye.” [UPDATE: Apology here.]

It is highly unlikely that a single small theatre could hog the Erickson, of course. Small companies are usually struggling to put on the few short runs of shows they can afford to present. Besides dance companies, the Erickson’s tenants have included the highly regarded Strawberry Theatre Workshop and the New Century Theatre Company, without previous public complaint.

Meanwhile, on the Slog post about the move, Annex Theatre’s more due-diligent Chris Comte has questions about the lack of local visibility of the RFP, and Balagan’s qualifications:

…the RFP specifically seeks a PROFESSIONAL MANAGEMENT COMPANY to run the space, and not a VOLUNTEER-RUN PRODUCING ORGANIZATION to both operate the space and use it as a home base for their own productions, which would seem to present a glaringly obvious conflict-of-interest, since SCCC will not only be paying Balagan to run the Erickson, but will now, in effect, be subsidizing their productions to a significant degree.

Comte seems to be reading ahead, here, as I don’t think he’s seen the agreement specifics. It is also true that, generally, it’s easy to be envious of Balagan’s good fortune while being in no way prepared or interested in accepting the duties and headaches of a management company.

I contacted Jake Groshong, Balagan’s executive director, to see about Balagan’s planned usage. Groshong, who has an MFA in Arts Leadership from Seattle University, said he was aware there was anxiety about the change, but offered this reassurance:

Balagan will use it for our own productions only in 4 or 5 months out of the year. We want to see the place used as a true community venue that is accessible to the students, arts groups, and community at-large. This means not blocking off huge chunks of time when only one company can use it as much as possible. In fact, with the rentals we’re inheriting, we’re likely to get a max of 3 productions in the space for the first year. So overall, I think Balagan will use the space about 80 to 120 days/year.

Rather than complain about the change in management, I want to suggest that Groshong is right that the Erickson needs to become a “true community venue”–it’s central to Capitol Hill but tucked away between Pike and Pine on Harvard. It’s a great theatre for small companies, with 133 seats, but often they aren’t filled because small companies don’t have, singly, marketing budgets that can reach mainstream.

If “the Erickson” can become a known destination for Capitol Hill arts performance, then there are efficiencies in terms of cross-promotion and audience building. It might be possible to run some performances in repertory, to further build audience traffic. Certainly a shared home would give three small theatre companies reason to collaborate on back-end services that otherwise would be triplicated.

For a while, I’ve been asking companies to consider the benefits of separating distinct artistic goals and visions from everything it takes to produce them: support staff, lighting grids, box offices. Where there are physical realities that support this, it seems like a cooperative structure is the best way for arts groups to allocate resources. If this emerges bottom-up, out of Balagan Management, it would be a great thing for the arts in general.

UPDATE: Thanks to Chris Comte, who would like you to know his comments on Slog are on his own behalf, we have a link to the RFP (pdf), which I don’t believe either of the two existing tenant companies, Strawberry Theatre Workshop or New Century Theatre Company, were provided with any notice of. It appears Seattle Central Community College didn’t feel that was warranted. Once again, renters get screwed.

That said, the RFP itself asks only for a “qualified respondent to privately manage, market,
staff, maintain and make improvements to the Erickson Theater,” and most if not all of the requirements they list are something any theatre company would be familiar with.

Further, far from establishing a fiefdom, the RFP requires the management provider to:

…book events and promote services that will significantly expand both the numbers as well as the variety of plays, concerts, and other events held at the facilities, in keeping with the SCCC’s mission and values.

Also, I’m told that the management contract is open to rebidding each year. All that is required is for another company to express an interest in managing the Erickson. As I say, though, venue management is hard work. If you think Balagan has snagged a stealth residency, that’s one thing. If you think that Balagan has just snagged an enormous amount of extra work, as I tend to, that’s another.

In closing, wouldn’t it be wonderful if all three theatre companies (and any dance companies interested) worked on forming a Erickson-specific management company, one that was a distinct legal entity from the arts groups? (Perhaps something on the order of the non-profit partnership known as Beethoven, which consists of the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Opera, and ArtsFund.) If artists aren’t willing to experiment with socialism, who will?

Arts & Entertainment

Dept. of Last Minute Notice: ticktock aerial dance’s New Show is Opening

Photo by Miguel Edwards

A story hastily pulled from the back of the digital drawer where it was accidentally shoved some weeks prior with the best of intentions to return to in more timely fashion, only to unfortunately be forgotten: er…so, starting Friday, June 17, the marvelous performers of Seattle’s ticktock aerial dance are launching their newest show, domestic variations, at Fred Wildlife Refuge (through June 26; tickets $15).

I first caught ticktock last summer, right around this time, when two of the three members, Elizabeth Rose and Jill Schaffner, journeyed to New York to take part in a progressive aerial dance festival. Aerial, of course, is mostly known as a circus act (indeed, Schaffner and Rose are both better known as past or present members of the Aerialistas). But various artists working in the field have been seeking for some time to expand the vocabulary of the sideshow act by borrowing heavily from the world of modern dance, producing complex, metaphorically powerful movement pieces that range freely across both the stage and above it.

But to judge from the festival I saw, most of them are doing a piss-poor job of it, their experiments little more than meta meditations on the form, or deliberately anti-dramatic deconstructions of circus style acts. Not so with ticktock–their work is sophisticated, thoughtful and complex in a way that shamed most other acts I saw. Within their work, Schaffner, Rose and Bridget Gunning, also known for her work with Manifold Motion, among others, present choreographically complex pieces in which the aerial component is applied, albeit in healthy doses, much like you might expect to find ballroom or folk incorporated into the palette of a contemporary dance work.

In domestic variations, performed on an original sculptural aerial apparatus, the three performers tackle the idea of “home,” performing as three individuals who’ve lived in the same space at different times. It’s not something to be missed.

Arts & Entertainment, Dance

Northwest New Works Fest Brings 16 Companies to On the Boards

For the 28th annual Northwest New Works Festival (June 10-12, 17-19; tickets: $14), On the Boards has selected 16 companies from Washington, Oregon, and Victoria BC. Audiences get to see either new or in-progress performance works, all of which clock in under 20 minutes–if you don’t know the names, that’s all right. Discovery is actually the point. (OtB has recordings of the artists interviewing each other here.)

A few dance highlights in the studio this weekend: Alice Gosti brings her “Spaghetti Co.” and its memories of home and belonging (see Jeremy’s interview with Gosti here, my review of the work at NW Film Forum here), and Coriolis Dance Collective (Natascha Greenwalt Murphy and Christin Call) present Call’s “Try to hover,” which is both said to be surreal and about “aspects of illness.” Seattlest instructed you to look out for Coriolis in 2011, so here is your chance.

In dance on the mainstage, Paige Barnes (who has a geography minor, which I mention as a non sequitur) presents “War Is Over,” a solo piece in which a boxer goes three rounds with herself; Jessica Jobaris & general magic present “you’re the stuff that sets me free,” which features wrestling with “the metaphysical and psychotherapy”; and Part & Parcel’s Allie Hankins appears in “By Guess & By God.”

Portland’s Holcombe Waller also appears with “Surfacing,” which is “monologues, original songs and movement.” (Here he is on YouTube.)