Photo courtesy of Wild Space Dance Company
Debra Loewen’s Wild Space Dance Company gave the last live professional dance performance in town before the pandemic forced a shutdown in March. Now, Loewen and company will present the first live dance performances of the COVID era. Titled Drive-in Dance, the shows at 8 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. on July 28-30 will take place in the huge Interstate Parking/Italian Community Center parking lot at 178 N. Jackson Street. A practiced crew will safely guide a maximum 20 cars into and out of the lot where 14 feet will separate each car. The free performance will serve as a pilot for a series of parking lot shows Loewen plans to present till the virus is beaten.
“I’ve never had a television set,” Loewen said. “To look at that box is very unsatisfying to me. Uploading to Zoom wasn’t an option.”
Loewen’s career, of course, has been built on creating dance theatre for non-theatre sites. She spends at least as much time imagining, researching and addressing every aspect of a site-specific performance in terms of the safety and well-being of audiences, dancers and crew as she does in creating choreography. Her life has unexpectedly prepared her for this.
The imminent March shutdown hurt attendance for Off the Page, Loewen’s delightful audience-immersive show at Boswell Book Company. Worse, her studio and office in MPS’s Lincoln Center of the Arts was suddenly inaccessible. She was locked out. Devastated and looking for any way forward, she noticed that drive-in movies were back. She’d created a show years ago in the parking structure of the Pabst Brewery complex, befriending the CEO of Interstate Parking, LLC in the process. He responded positively to her appeal for space, giving her use of the ICC lot now and the promise of any of the company’s many lots going forward.
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“So I sent out word to a pretty big net of people who’ve worked with Wild Space,” Loewen said. “The point was to just get together and move and improvise, at least six feet apart, never touching and always masked; and then assess if this works for people. Can this go someplace? Could we share some things we’ve been trying and let people watch from their cars?”
An excellent cast solidified gradually: Katelyn Altmann, Chelsey Becher, Simone Ferro, Tori Issac, Mauriah Kraker, Molly Keifer, Danielle Lohuis, Jenni Reinke, Lindsey Ruenger and Yeng Vang-Strath. Everyone is working for free.
Much of the movement is improvised. “We have structures we’re playing with,” Loewen explained. “I’ve been improvising, too. I’ve been really careful not to put my director’s hat on.” She described exciting lighting and sound plans, but added,“We’re doing this as bare- bones as possible. It will be very gritty but the highlights are fantastic. It’s gorgeous, seeing the beauty of the city and the Hoan Bridge and beyond. We have the best studio in town right now.”
The work is a survival tactic and meant to help others. “I’m so happy to be doing what I do,” Loewen said. “It’s about not forgetting who we are. It’s so lovely to move. We had one night when it was raining and people moved like frolicking puppies sopping wet. That told me again that we really need this. It’s intimacy in a huge parking lot. We have to have ways to be intimate now because we can’t get into large groups anymore, not for a long time. That’s the reality.”
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