Tuesday was the first complete rehearsal day since choreographers Mollie Mock and Jeremy Blair completed their new work REFLECT, which is set to the original ‘ohana track “Hidden”. I had seen enough of the work already to know that they and the cast of seven had something very special going on, but the completed work is a strikingly graceful composition, a dynamic story based on an architecture of carefully interwoven passages.
The whole process of making Dance still mystifies me in many ways. Watching Angela, Caitlin, Carrie, Jeff, Kurt and Megan (Brian returns next week) run the piece Tuesday afternoon, I was, once again, more than amazed at what dancers do, and how they do it. I don’t mean the movement, even when it’s stunning; I mean the cooperation. Time-defying cooperation, to move to where somebody else is going to be, again and again, with perfect focus. But also, the remarkable cooperation that makes it possible for nine people (in this case), who may not even know each other when they start the process, to find a way to schedule, learn, communicate, practice, improve, perfect, and finally perform an original composition of movement.
“Reflect” will premiere July 17, 18, 19 at ThodosDanceChicago’s NEW DANCES 2009 at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn Street, Chicago 60610. For tickets, call 312.266.6255. Between now and then, I’m going to speak to the dancers and choreographers and ask them a little about the process of putting a work like this together.
Angela Palladini, originally from California, is a dancer with Same Planet Different World, who came to Chicago initially to join the highly respected Lou Conte Dance Studio scholarship program. Like most of the professional dancers I’ve known, she’s done what seems like a thousand things in Dance; her bio lists seven different dance companies, where she’s either worked, trained or studied, as well as six or seven individual choreographers. This wide-ranging openness to new experiences is certainly a hallmark of the best of the dance community, and it’s a necessary backdrop to understanding how a work like REFLECT can be put together, with such intricate cooperation, by artists who perhaps have never met before.
Angela: “I found out about Thodos’ New Dances from attending last year’s performance, and couldn’t wait to audition this year. … There’s a certain aspect of the New Dances audition that I love, and that’s the opportunity the dancers have to learn a piece of every choreographer’s work. It not only gives the choreographers a chance to appropriately choose their cast, but it gives dancers the experience of having to quickly learn different movement in a short amount of time. These types of experiences are invaluable for the professional dancer. You can think of this audition as a menu of varying appetizers- the dancers get the whole experience by sampling a little bit of everything, and regardless of the audition results, the tasting itself was worth the time.”
Christine Marie Rohde always finds a new path through the musical landscape of choreography. Sometimes, as in her work CAMARILLA from the Thodos Dance Chicago repertoire, she works to edgy, indie-style sounds, but her new work MEMENTO, premiering at NEW DANCES 2009 this July 17-19 takes a remarkable new direction, blending three very different musical styles. MEMENTO, performed by soloist Jackie Stewart, explores an individual’s relationship with experience.
