Photo via Nova Linea Contemporary Dance - novalineadance.com
Love Is A Game - Nova Linea Contemporary Dance
Dancers perform in 'Love is a Game.'
It seemed like fortune smiling. At my request, Jared Baker—the founder, artistic director, and lead choreographer of Nova Linea Contemporary Dance—had driven from his company’s studio in Pewaukee to Rochambo Coffee Shop on Brady Street for an interview about his company’s new concert, “Love Is A Game,” at the Marcus PAC’s Vogel Hall this Friday and Saturday, April 4-5. We’d just sat down. It was a little noisy, and I held my tape recorder close to him when suddenly he laughed in shock.
“This album they’re playing right now is in the show you’re writing about!” he exclaimed. “This is the title track. It’s by Bon Iver. I’ve never heard it played anywhere besides listening to it for myself. You picked the right place!”
It was indeed the title track from Bon Iver’s 2007 debut album For Emma, Forever Ago. That album, Baker explained, inspires and accompanies the second half of the upcoming concert, his latest full-length world premiere. The two-part concert, however, is named for the evening’s opening act, a revival of Baker’s Love Is a Game which premiered at the Sharon Lynn Wilson Center in 2022 and is set to the English singer/songwriter Adele’s more recent album 30.
“Adele’s 30 didn’t really get a lot of attention,” Baker tells me. “But it’s my favorite of hers because it’s the most complete. It’s a collection of songs that are meant to go together. There’s a really intense story within the framework. And when we ask people what’s your favorite piece of ours, what would you most like to see again, a lot of people say Love Is a Game.
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“The album is about her divorce,” he explains. “She actually wrote it for her really young son, so he could listen to it when he grew up and sort of understand what she was going through and why she made the choices that she did. I originally choreographed to it because I am a son of divorce. When I listened to the album, I could understand my mom’s perspective a little bit. I choreographed it with my mom in mind.
“It’s probably the most theatrical thing I’ve ever done,” he continues. “There’s the mother, the son, and the divorced husband. Two dancers play mom, one in the present and her younger self. It’s intense and personal. It has its upbeat moments, too. It’s contemporary dance but there’s a Broadway jazz feel to it. I think what most people enjoy is that they understand it and they love the music. Everybody can appreciate Adele.”
Eau Clair Cabin to Marcus PAC
The current Nova Linea company of 10 includes just one male dancer, who’ll play the son. Guest artist Fernando Trinidad III, born in Puerto Rico, raised in Florida, and trained at New York’s Tisch School of the Arts will dance the ex-husband.
And then Act Two is set to Bon Iver’s debut album For Emma, Forever Ago. We’d just enjoyed the title track. “The band’s name is Bon Iver,” Baker explains, “but the singer and writer’s name is Justin Vernon and he’s actually from Eau Claire. The album was written after he went through a break-up with his girlfriend in North Carolina. He came back home and spent like an entire winter in his dad’s cabin up there. He wrote, produced, recorded, playing all the instruments, all alone in a cabin in Eau Claire.
“I’ve loved this album for a long time but never dived deep into it like this,” he continues. “So, the title of my piece is this (my excavation). That’s the opening lyric from the album’s last track.
In any relationship, there’s times where things aren’t going well, and you feel you’re in a hole and have to get out the right way. But there’s a quote from Justin Vernon that I think is really important. It’s from an interview he did a few years later. He said ‘Emma is not a person; Emma is a place that you get stuck in; Emma is a pain that you cannot erase.’ So, it’s really any part of life when you feel like you’ve dug yourself into a hole and have to figure out how to escape.”
“So, we’ll have the Broadway feel first and then the program gets a little bit more in depth and darker. There’s way more metaphoric content than narrative in the second piece. There are ten different interpretations that somebody could get from what’s happening, whereas the first is pretty clear cut. But I want people to leave the show feeling and thinking.
“I love the lyrics of all of this Bon Iver album, but my favorite part is the very end. He says. ‘Your love will be safe with me.’ I love that because it doesn’t feel like a conclusion. It just feels like ‘OK, enough said.’”
Performances are at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, April 4-5 at the Marcus Performing Arts Center’s Vogal Hall, 121 E. State Street. For more information, visit novalineadance.com
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