Photo Credit: Kym McDaniel
Danceworks provides a valuable service with its DanceLAB series “Get It Out There.” At almost no cost, audiences can witness a dozen radically different short performances by area artists. Each attendee receives pen and paper as they enter the cozy Danceworks studio. We’re invited to jot descriptions of what we saw and any thoughts it provoked. The house lights brighten after each act to facilitate our writing and to point up the importance of this aspect of the event. Danceworks collates the feedback and passes it on to the artists. All the acts are categorized as “works in progress” although most seem finished; of course, all art is only finished in the presence of an audience.
Dancer/choreographer Elizabeth Roskopf and filmmaker Kym McDaniel presented an anxious woman alone at our great lake; I thought of climate change, the need for art, loneliness and resolve. Catey Ott Thompson and her dancers seem to manipulate energy, connecting us to a non-intellectual place where healing might happen; Meghan McKale’s fleshy visual art assisted while Randall Woolf’s music told a harsher story. Colin Gawronski’s beautiful lighting enriched Nadine Bailey’s autobiographical solo: giving birth has changed her irrevocably; this look back was affecting. The athletic young women of Fusion Dance love high energy dancing; I saw self-possession and solidarity. Great performances by Joelle Worm and Posy Knight brought Lindsay M. Stevens Monster Love to electrifying life. Monster and maker are, perhaps, each of us and all we’ll never be? Cyenthia Vijayakumar and Amy Brinkman’s fusion of classical Indian and American tap dance abets cross-cultural understanding.
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Maggie Seer, Annie Peterson, Zach Schorsch and Jimmi Weyneth have a hit on their hands: And We Are All Together takes the pop dance of mid-20th century white kids to millennial extremes, all honest and true. Hannah Garcia’s dramatic solo addressed obsession. Katherine Zavada’s ballet to George Gershwin’s music was danced by women who, for whatever reasons, couldn’t fully embody it; I saw frailty and valor. Cyenthia Vijayakumar performed an awesome classical Indian dance, beautifully costumed and executed, living history more than work in progress. I admire greatly Piper Morgan Hayes’ tragicomic solo Bee Stings & Oil Pouring: The “Super (man) performed against a recorded TED talk by Brene Brown on how a woman must live today. To close, the young S.A.I.N.T.S Jasper Sanchez, Sophie Sullivan and Jed Violanda performed All Yours, an original Hip Hop dance of great beauty.
