Photo: Catey Ott Thompson - Facebook
Catey Ott Dance Collective
Catey Ott Dance Collective in flannel for the Doors Open Milwaukee Tolkien performance.
On Sunday afternoon, Sept. 25, the Catey Ott Dance Collective will give two free performances at Marquette University’s Helfaer Theatre, in collaboration with the Haggerty Museum of Art’s exhibit of manuscripts by J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings. The performances at 1 and 2:30 p.m. will be in the theater’s small studio where choreographer Catey Ott Thompson, in addition to teaching, creates and rehearses. The studio has room for just 35 chairs and some floor seating, so reservations are requested.
The Haggerty exhibit and the dance concert are part of this year’s city-wide Doors Open Milwaukee event. Audiences are urged to view both exhibit and concert, which is easily done since the museum is just steps from the theatre. And it’s free, Ott says, “Because it’s a challenging time for many, and we want to make sure that people are able to see things that can make a difference to their lives.”
Her show’s title, The Roads Go Ever On and On, honors Tolkien’s epic fantasies as well as two new deeply personal Ott Thompson works. The Tolkien segment is a structured improvisation on the writer’s work and life, danced as if around a campfire at a rest stop on a journey. The personal works mark a journey, too; one we’ve all taken in our own ways since COVID arrived.
Direct Expression
The company tested the dances this summer. I saw a performance in August at the East Library. The grace and tenderness that characterize Ott Thompson’s work remains on full display, but the style has shifted to dance theatre or performance art. There’s less emphasis on line, contrast, musicality and other elements of abstract contemporary dance, and more on the direct expression of human experience.
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Pressures and Pulls Can Alone Control the Whole is a sequence of solos by four dancers who then join for a fifth movement. In creating it, Ott Thompson says, “I brought in each dancer’s life with stories and images they gave me. This project was more collaborative than the work that usually comes out my body.”
In performance, we see and feel the pressures of being a working mother, the pulls of marriage and children, the feeling of being completely alone, the effort to control careers, schedules, or school situations. Then, as Ott Thompson puts it, “The forces come together, stand strong and clear and visible to each other and grounded; like, we got this.”
“I had a difficult spring and had to do some rebuilding,” she confesses. She made a dance for herself from that experience, INVISIBLE MIND(e)scape. “My task was to create a solo that really let out the discomfort and disharmony going on inside of me. Comfort and beauty couldn’t be my goals.”
“It’s a movement journey through a physical, mental and emotional period of my life. And in describing that journey non-verbally, I was able to work through some things, so it brought about a lot of clarity and healing. Now it’s about sharing -- not to over-share but to share enough to let out my reality to the audience, to myself, to my family. We’re at a time when we’re not hiding anymore, I believe.”
At the East Library performance, she introduced the piece this way: “Think back to a time when you were worried and wanted to escape.” Then she lay on the floor, holding herself, breaking into actions that seemed out of place, moves that an impulse-driven body makes in a state of uncontrollable anxiety, and a mind’s effort to overcome that state. It was a moving and, yes, very beautiful performance.
For reservations, visit cateyott.com/events.
