Three Point Project Dancing to the ‘Noise Within’

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Image courtesy of Three Point Project

Three Point Project - You Don't Hear it Do You? Poster

You Don’t Hear It Do You? is the title of the fourth major concert by Three Point Project, the two-year-old boundary-pushing Milwaukee dance company founded and directed by Ashley Tomaszewski. There are two performances on Sunday, Nov. 16, at The Gage in West Allis.

Tomaszewski discovered The Gage online while searching for unconventional dance venues. It’s primarily a wedding venue, she tells me. It’s never hosted a professional performance. She loves its beauty and informality. There’s a bar with cocktail tables on a level above the open area where the concert will take place. The dressing rooms for brides and grooms will serve her dancers’ needs.

“We’re an unconventional company in an unconventional venue,” she says. “Come as a clear slate, because that’s when you’re most open to receiving what’s in front of you.”

Tomaszewski was a leading dancer and associate artistic director of Water Street Dance MKE, and she’ll return to dancing in this show with a self-choreographed solo titled The Noise Within. “That’s where this show came from,” she admits. “Our first rehearsals were in the winter of last year. It’s been a long process, but it started from, personally, the director feeling a lot of noise.

“A lot of the themes of You Don’t Hear It Do You?, like the title, are related to noise,” she tells me. “Internal and external, the noise of the world, this noise landscape that sometimes we feel we can’t escape or filter. My solo started from a deep-rooted feeling of chaotic noise that felt inescapable. The other pieces tie into it.”

“The first piece we started to work on as a group was titled You Don’t Hear It Do You?”, she explains. “I wanted to create a space where everyone involved in the show could bring in their own noise. There’s been tears, there’s been conversation, there’s been grounding in the idea that ‘I didn’t even know my noise; how do we handle all this? How can we help each other?’”

Super-Healing

“The process,” she adds, “has been super-healing and connecting as a company, too. I think it’s our job as artists to take what’s happening in our lives and in the world and do something with it. This is meant to challenge the audience’s understanding and awareness of their own noise, and the noise of the world, which there’s clearly a lot of now, and most likely always was. If they’re hearing it, how are they hearing it? How are they choosing to listen? And what then?”

She describes the creative process. “I’m not a choreographer that comes in and says this piece is about blank. Every artist in every piece has an individual experience and connection. We invite journaling into our process, because the things that we’re finding while creating movement are all our own. I ask them to share personal things, and to be receptive, and to hold that with care. That vulnerability is one of the main reasons Three Point exists the way it does. With anything I choreograph, the movement comes very much from me, but the process of how we’re doing comes from everyone.”

Three Point Project also maintains a preprofessional training program. These young dancers will perform a preshow program of five works. Two of these high schoolers understudied the main program, and one has stepped into a professional piece.

“We’ll have both live movement, and dance on film, in this show,” Tomaszewski continues. “Our preshow has three live pieces and two films with the training company.”

The professional company dancers are Jo Brockway, Emma Domacinovich, Jade Eitel, Greta Jenkins and Tomaszewski. Charlotte Reynolds is a new apprentice. This is her first show.

Two-Act Show

Their program has two acts. It opens with a group piece by guest choreographer Madi Thomas, a friend from Los Angeles. It’s her third work for the Three Point company, which recently performed in Los Angeles. The first act continues with a solo for Domacinovich choreographed by Brockway, and continues with a combined live and film duet, the solo, and a second group piece by Tomaszewski.

Act Two opens with a new group piece by Chicago choreographer Johnie Boxell, their first for the company. A group piece by Brockway, a duet, a film, and an improv follow.

The finale by Tomaszewski is set to the song Homegrown by HAUX. “It hopefully lands us in a place where the artists have been able to clear some of the noise, or at least acknowledge it, which is part of the clearing,” she says. “To know and be able to hear it is part of the clearing, to me.”

“Art is much bigger than ourselves,” she finishes. “Three Point believes in purpose and community. If you can bring a non-perishable food item, I’ll make sure it gets to the Waukesha Food Pantry.”

Performances are at 2:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 16, at The Gage, 1139 S. 70th Street. For more information, visit threepointprojectwi@gmail.com or see @threepointprojectwi.