I must’ve decided a long time ago that it would be best if I didn’t set my company’s repertory on students. I am committed to collaborative process and it always seemed far more beneficial, educationally and artistically, for me to create new work with and for student artists. In that context, I could help students embody their own voices and thematic concerns while driving them to push past their perceived boundaries. I could also play to their strengths, knowledge base and skill sets. My experience directing Dialogue Cycles, an interdisciplinary student ensemble at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts (GHAA) from 2006-2011, provided an important laboratory for testing this art making platform in a school setting. And while the emphasis was on the students and their experience, over the years I found that approach led to the development of some of my most compelling works.
In the last few months, I’ve also overcome what I now acknowledge was a general lack of the faith in setting repertory. I might have seemingly infinite patience when the end product is as yet unknown and unfolding in creative process, but when the work already has a life and a definitive shape, I am quietly resistant to the idea of giving it over to performers who may or may not be ready to embody that work adequately in a limited amount of time. I was glad to confront these ideas this August when I spent a week setting “debate” on 5 students at GHAA. In what amounted to 30 hours over 5 days, we danced, talked, played games, and watched lots of video. And by the end of the week, these 5 dancers had a loose but promising grasp of one of Scapegoat Garden’s signature works.
Those students have rehearsed without me on a weekly basis since then, and I joined them on just two occasions to clean things up and clarify intention a bit. Late last week, we all met to translate all their hard work to GHAA’s main stage with all the theatrical elements. After they donned their crisp white suits and took to the stage, the lights dimmed and the music started. Suddenly, all of our discussions about politics as performance, competition, scarcity versus abundance, aggression, gender and desire all found meaning in their bodies. They were making small idiosyncratic choices I never mandated. And they had come alive in the work, finding themselves in the structure I provided and claiming it as their own.
So for the last two days, debate was performed for the GHAA student body as part of the school day, alongside student-performed works by Leslie Frye Maietta, Gregory Dolbashian (The Dash Ensemble), and Jennifer Webber (Deca Dance Theatre). Besides these 4 dynamic student performances, the professionals take to the stage as well. Leslie herself performed the solo she developed as part of her recently completed MFA studies. Jennifer Webber offered a solo work. And Scapegoat Garden is represented by Kelly Silliman and I performing relentless: third attempt. Leslie and I developed this duet over the last couple of years. Then this past summer, it was woven into Boiling Point, a new work in progress with Kelly and me performing the duet together. It has been so fascinating to experience this work anew with Kelly while witnessing Leslie’s blossoming as a choreographer in her own right. It is exciting to grow in an environment of growth.
So, join us tonight, for this program’s only public performance. Judi Tolomea has been a thoughtful and engaged curator, bringing working dance artists, compelling choreographic works and incredibly talented student artists together on one stage in a single program. Don’t miss this chance to bear witness to this rendering of what is happening with contemporary dance now alongside the art form’s future.
I look forward to seeing you there.
~Deborah
