Nova Linea Contemporary Dance Inspires with ‘Perspectives’

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Photo by Andrea Cavaliere

Nova Linea Contemporary Dance's ‘Perspectives’

Nova Linea Contemporary Dance's ‘Perspectives’

The mission of Nova Linea Contemporary Dance is to present accessible, original, contemporary work that can inspire audiences of all ages to a new or deepened love for the art of dance in all its many manifestations. 

Nova Linea translates as New Line. Artistic Director Jared Baker hopes that the company he founded in 2021 in Pewaukee can help to rebuild the area’s dance audience. “I’m going to try to push boundaries,” he told me, “but in a way that’s accessible and understandable.” He hopes to create a new dance lineage.

The company gave its first performance in downtown Milwaukee on February 3 at the Danceworks Studio Theatre. Titled Perspectives, it included eight terrific works staged with audiences on all four sides of the space, in single rows on three of those sides. We couldn’t have been closer to the dancers. The all-ages audience grew increasingly ecstatic as the show unfolded. I slept better than usual that night because of the joy I took in the performance.

Baker served as MC. The show’s unifying theme, he explained, was intimacy. Midway through, he had each audience section move two sections over, so everyone could watch now from the opposite side of the room. In truth, the choreography was so well-designed that every viewpoint on the dancers was constantly compelling.

Full-Bodied, Fast

There is a company performance style, a powerful one: full-bodied, fast, complex, often explosive, and very human. The company of six dancers and one guest artist made it look as if they were inventing it spontaneously. Even in unison with other dancers, movements seemed driven by a shared impulse that was most often bound to the musical accompaniment. It was as if they made the music visible.

Jazzy is the word I’d use to describe the first dance, Moon Glow, by guest choreographer Megan Kelty for the full company to music by Moondog and Fleetwood Mac. It was young, playful, and all-out tribal. Baker described it an exploration of “the energy people give off in intimacy.” 

He went on to explain that a program of short works like this one is highly unusual for Nova Linea, which generally creates full-length pieces built on themes. For example, the company’s Spring Concert, The Living Room on April 12 and 13 at the Sharon Lynn Wilson Center in Brookfield, will be two full-length works by Baker. Lineage is an updating of the first dance Baker made for Nova Linea. The title piece, choreographed to Beirut’s newest album, is “about the power of going inward, learning more about your own identity, and making space for change.”

Mirroring and Shadowing

Next in Perspectives’ look at intimacy was Acquaintance, a duet for the newest company members Sydney Bak and Abbey Vieth by guest choreographer Sydney Goeman. Identically costumed, sometimes mirroring or shadowing, they seemed to meet themselves somehow in meeting one another. It was a gradual coming closer. I felt the energy that comes with that.

Then company member Gracie Plath performed Sea of Love, an emotional solo she’d choreographed to music by Cat Power. “I want to tell you how much I love you,” goes the lyric, and that’s what Plath was saying in full-bodied moves, holding back nothing. Baker told us that she’d performed the dance first at her wedding. This revival, he said, speaks of “what it’s like to be married.”

Baker warned us to push our chairs back for his piece, titled Back Against The Wall and set to thrilling music by minimalist composer Philip Glass and the legendary Kronos Quartet. Indeed, guest soloist Katie Thuemling and the company of six—Bak, Vieth, Plath, Alayna Hauke, Jesse Lozano and Olivia Richardson—tore into and through the space and into fast group lifts with dancers tossed in the air or climbing the wall. An introspective solo by Thuemling led to trembling among the group and an anxious ending.

The same cast danced The Phoenix by guest choreographer Hayley Meier. It begins in a woman’s (Hauke) memory of a love affair with a fellow (Lozano). Their partnering made clear that neither could do without the other. They’re bound. Then he left. We see her free herself with the help of other women. I felt I was meeting the dancers as the people they are.

Lozano choreographed In All This Gloom, a jazz piece with great music by Branford and Sam Cooke, for the trio of Bak, Hauke and Plath. “It’s been too hard living, but I know change will come,” goes the lyric. I was in heaven. Then Richardson made every move worthy of attention in her self-choreographed solo, Lost in Introspection. 

Guest choreographer Chris Jacobsen’s high-energy finale All I Need, set to Joe Cocker’s rendition of The Beatles’ “With ALlittle Help from My Friends,” had the whole room rocking. In purple pants, the dancers had a ball.