The dancers race across the stage in a bouncing, yet earthy frenzy, arms circling wildly. They challenge and play off of each other as if old neighbors — arguing good-naturedly through the height of their jumps, throws of their arms and the circles they run around each other. In minutes, this race will be over and the dancers will move on to other stories, helping each other to fly or verbalize their actions as they dance them.
This collection of stories is Danceworks 2009, the Northwestern Theater and Interpretation Center’s annual dancer/choreographer showcase. Danceworks, which runs Friday, Feb 27 through Sunday, March 8, is an eclectic gathering of movement, with no two pieces in the same genre. What binds this collection is each piece’s individual strength — both conceptual and in execution — due in part to both the dancers and the choreographers.
“It’s a showcase of collaboration,” said choreographer and faculty member Joel Valentin-Martinez. “It’s really about everybody. Dance, like any other theater production, really involves a community.”
The community that produced Danceworks is unusually large, with close to 45 undergraduate dancers and seven faculty choreographers, all of whom have created completely original pieces. It’s like “an evening of premieres,” according to Artistic Director and Dance Program Coordinator Susan A. Lee, as it is unusual for one show to contain that many new pieces.
Covering a stunningly diverse range of genres, attitudes and disciplines, the pieces challenge the dancers to bring their best to the stage. The dancers are asked to support each other in gracefully partnered lifts and then almost immediately turn around and confront each other with precise percussion. The showcase even incorporates vocalization in the form of singing, talking, acting and noise-making.
“Be ready for anything, because there are some ‘out-there’ dances,” said Communication sophomore Johnson Vaughn Brock. “There’s types of dances you wouldn’t expect in a dance show.”
But the dancers have stepped up and have met more than the challenge of such a diverse program; their months of rehearsing and stretching their limits are not only evident in Danceworks, but manage to make the pieces look easy. In the high-flying “Into the Blue,” choreographer Laura Wade places emphasis on the more athletic aspect of dancing by experimenting with the ability to take dance into the air through partnering and group lifts. The dancers, who range from dance majors to students who have never before performed in a dance show, work together to make the piece a flying success. The concept behind the piece — that of sending the dancers off into the real world and the feeling Wade gets when she works with the dancers — is as strongly expressed as the performed lifts themselves.
Another example of the concept-driven pieces that comprise Danceworks is Valentin-Martinez’s historically-influenced “Ask Me in the Morning Light.” This piece asks the dancers to symbolically represent the feelings of women left behind in Mexican villages while their husbands and fathers left to work in the U.S. The historical themes hit close to home for choreographer Valentin-Martinez, who also chose to represent the theme through wide, racing movements across the stage and carefully controlled, yet near-flailing arm movements.
“There isn’t any piece that doesn’t have a very unique, creative flair to it,” says Brock. “They all have something special. Each one has a new, big idea that makes you think about something else.”
Usually such a diverse program would threaten the cohesiveness of a showcase, but this consistency of strong ideas is what binds the show together. Danceworks effectively shows that no matter what style of dance is chosen to be performed, the dance can reach out to any audience and deliver a message. The Danceworks community is excited to pass on those big ideas to their audience, and truly, anyone who attends the show will be hard-pressed to ignore them.
Audience members are “having an experience that they’d really have to go all over the city to see — this many styles and forms and really be in contact with that caliber of professional work,” said Artistic Director Lee.
Indeed, Danceworks brings a level of professionalism that students and the public would be ill-advised to pass up. All seven of the faculty choreographers have experience with dance companies in Chicago, including Gus Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, Same Planet Different World, Luna Negra Dance Theater and Jump Rhythm Jazz Project. Many currently split their time between these companies and Northwestern, as well as other universities around the country. According to Lee and Laura Wade respectively, plans for Danceworks began last Spring Quarter and some of the choreographers began work as early as summer 2008. The dancers became involved around Thanksgiving and have rehearsed ever since.
“Each person that [the audience] sees on stage — or not, because we’re also talking about [everyone behind the scenes],” says Valentin-Martinez, “each one of them has put a lot of effort into an imagination that will probably not be replicated.”
A truly unique show from start to finish — and from piece to piece — Danceworks 2009 exhibits the classical beauty of movement while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of dance genres. It is a showcase of choreography, skill, creativity and community. It proves that the community of Northwestern’s dance program can create and exceed the challenge of bringing the earth, the sky and the stage altogether…and do it all with apparent ease.