Dani Kuepper knows that audiences want to know how dances come to be. As artistic director of Danceworks Performance Company (DPC), she’s often asked to talk about the choreographic process. So she’s decided to make it the subject of DPC’s next concert, Writing About Music / Dancing About Architecture. The title comes, of course, from a well-known simile that posits both endeavors as impossible. Kuepper and company intend to upend that.
“You can absolutely dance about architecture,” she says. “Dance has architecture. Music has architecture. People think we’re going to dance about Windhover Hall or the Leaning Tower, which would be great, but that’s not what this is.”
Traditionally, choreographers visualize music through movement. Kuepper decided to flip the process by making a dance that needs no music and then adding music—Schubert’s B flat Piano Trio—that needs no dancing. “The simplest things, like rests, become interesting,” she says. “It’s a play between highly musical physicality and pedestrian physicality. The pedestrian becomes the virtuosic.” Schubert will be performed by the UW-Milwaukee Institute of Chamber Music under Bernard Zinck. The final section of the dance will turn the seated audience into choreographers.
The show is built of bold experiments. Choreographer Christal Wagner asked her DPC colleague Liz Licht, an accomplished writer, to compose a “dance fiction,” a written description of something that’s never been danced, as inspiration. Licht wrote a series of haikus describing, as many haikus do, beautiful paradoxes. The dance possibilities were so exciting that Wagner and Licht invited DPC’s extensive social media network to contribute haikus as source material. Of 32 submissions, three have inspired dances for this concert. The rest will appear in a lobby display that will grow as audience members contribute writings during the run.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Joëlle Worm, DPC’s dance improvisation expert, will create an impromptu performance to recorded choreographic instructions by writer-collaborator Jason Powell, instructions she’s never heard till that moment. She’ll be presented with new, unheard recorded instructions at each performance in the run. The collaborators explored a range of possible outcomes in rehearsal. Then Powell wrote the choreography alone.
DPC’s Andrew Zenoni will make the impossible dance about architecture. He’ll set the lines and angles of dance constructions against the sculptures of artists Posy Knight and Kirk Thomsen.
Writing About Music / Dancing About Architecture takes place at 7:30 p.m., March 3-5, and 2:30 p.m., March 6, at Next Act Theatre, 255 S. Water St. For tickets, call 414-278-0765 or visit nextact.org.
DANCE HAPPENING:
Spending Real Time Together
Danceworks Studio Theatre
1661 N. Water St.
8:30-9:30 p.m., March 4
Dance artists Andrea and Daniel Burkholder will add another chapter to their yearlong monthly series of aerial arts, dance, music, improvisation and conversation at the Danceworks Studio. This episode’s structure and choreography are inspired by statements from previous audience members on matters such as aerial apparatus possibilities; musical choices; and the use of time, space and audience interaction. The current audience will also have a hand in shaping the performance. The pay-what-you-will show will finish as always, with drinks served gratis and casual conversation with the dancers.
