Entrepreneurial Students by Erin Carlisle Norton, M.F.A. 2013
The Department of Dance is home to many Graduate and Ph.D. students who continue to pursue professional opportunities alongside their academic studies. With a broad range of interests and experiences, these five choreographers have made unique contributions to the field of dance in Columbus and beyond. Abby Zbikowski was selected to participate in Philadelphia’s The New Festival as part of the Melanie Stewart Dance Theater residency program (2009-2010) for artists in the New York City and Philadelphia area. In her rehearsal process, Abby was interested in exploring audience, particularly the differences between the cultures of concert dance and rock music. Identifying with the “overlooked brilliance of pop culture” and incorporating it into choreographed dance, Abby developed many methods of exploration, focusing on music versus sound and the connection of performer to forms of music. She allowed the dancers to be in the audience, strapped amps to the dancers themselves, and had a live band play her original music. The final performance was at Philadelphia’s Drake Theater in June 2010 and was titled noiseVision, a take on Willy-Wonka vision, a cohesive title to house all the elements at play. The performance added components of mosh pit activity, melded with contemporary and social art forms, and the use of hard and soft contrasting sounds.
Erin Carlisle Norton, Artistic Director of the Chicago-based dance company The Moving Architects, presented Sacred Spaces in October 2010 at Columbus Dance Theater and in November 2010 at Brooklyn’s Chez Bushwick. The Columbus performance entailed three short works, including Erin’s disjointed
and bound solo “Standing Girl with Raised Right Elbow” that was inspired by the figure drawings of Egon Schiele. The featured work of the concert Sacred Spaces was originally performed in a chapel and has been restaged multiple times for traditional and site-specific venues. Erin developed the work alongside company members and composer Ian Hatcher as an in-depth study of the “history and architecture of religious spaces in correlation or contrast with the sacredness of our inner life.” Erin’s company, including OSU Alums Lauren Bisio and Laura Vinci de Vanegas, also taught master classes at the theater for members of the Columbus and Ohio State dance community.
In November 2010, Michael J. Morris performed a Butoh solo entitled “Re-Membering the Mountains” as part of The Love Art Laboratory’s The Purple Wedding to the Appalachian Mountains in Galbreath Chapel at Ohio University. The Love Art Laboratory conducts yearly performance art weddings focused on making the world a more tolerant, sustainable, and peaceful place. Michael’s solo was inspired by the organization and its values, alongside his research interests in Sexecology and Ecosexuality and the concurrent writings of Catriona Sandilands. Beginning the solo in a crawl, Michael found in his work a sense of deep grief and mourning. “The crawl is a struggle to stand, a struggle to be strong, to survive, to both escape and to push into what it means to be whole” he reflected. The crawling solo progressed with persistence to a solid standing moment of oneness. Michael also had the opportunity to collaborate in many aspects of the wedding and with other artists. Mair W. Culbreth collaborated with visual artist and builder Nicole Bauguss for the installation Domestic Matters: Distilling Geographies,
Identities, and Boundaries at the OSU Urban Arts Space in March 2011. Derived from images and experiences related to their Southern upbringings, the work addressed relocation and the need for community. In speaking about the evolution of the project, Mair explained “Coming from the south, many things about the practices of regular community are for need or necessity, so art is a way to make things beautiful rather than inaccessible.” With this in mind, the installation incorporated decontextualized found materials to create locations, such as a wallpapered covered climbing wall, living room, bedroom, and kitchen for cooking fried pies and bread. Creating this project was a true interchange and collaboration between creators and performers; every day tasks could take place re-imagined with intertwining memories. Throughout the month-long installation, the work continued to change and develop within the locational and thematic structure. Erik Abbott-Main was invited to choreograph a dance work alongside the Columbus Symphony Orchestra’s live performance of Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale” at the Old Governor’s Mansion in Columbus in May 2011. The libretto score originally premiered in 1918 as a touring theatrical work with a Devil, Soldier and dancing Princess as primary characters. In Erik’s revival, he added two more devils into the mix, creating devils with feminine, butterfly and annoying flirtatious traits. Utilizing his choreographic twists of gesture, pantomime, and texture to the tango, waltz, and ragtime score, each character had its own physicality and recognizable movement quality. Erik was drawn to choreograph this work due to the fresh challenge of working with story and character, the historical connections to dance and theater history, and the opportunity to present it with live music in Columbus.
Photo: Victor Jouvert with permission from 651 ARTS.
taking flight
Photo courtesy Erik Abbott-Main.
F E ATURED WORK
FLY
by Arianna Williams, B.F.A. 2011 FLY: Five First Ladies of Dance is a piece consisting of five solos performed by Germaine Acogny, Carmen de Lavallade, Dianne McIntyre, Bebe Miller, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. With a call from producers 651 ARTS in Brooklyn, beginning in 2008, these ladies were brought together to create an evening of work that was greater than themselves in celebration of performances of the African Diaspora. The artists were chosen because of who they are and how they dance. These women are no strangers to the stage or to the art of dancemaking. Founder of Compagnie Jant-Bi and considered to be the “mother of contemporary African dance,” Germaine Acogny, brought her solo “Songbook Yaakaar (Facing Up to Hope),” a work co-choreographed with Pierre Doussaint commenting on the strength of women. Carmen de Lavallade, choreographer and former Alvin Ailey dancer, performed and co-created the solo “The Creation” with her husband Geoffrey Holder, on the existence of the world and how it came to be. The Broadway choreographer and founder of
Dance Diving:
Sounds in Motion Co., Dianne McIntyre (B.F.A. 1969), performed a dedication to her own dance mentors in her solo “If You Don’t Know.” Bebe Miller (M.A. 1975), director of the Bebe Miller Company and Professor at The Ohio State University, performed her piece “Rain” which examines the experience of struggle. Finally, the originator of Urban Bush Women, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, performed the solo “Bring ‘Em Home,” inspired by the effects of Hurricane Katrina. Although these solos cover a wide variety of topics, the concept for the concert is cohesive. These beautiful, inspiring women were brought together to show what exactly we do work for. The piece is more than just a history lesson or a display of movement sequences, it is geared to general audiences, more diverse than the common art enthusiasts, greater than the ideas of race, gender and age. Miller calls it “a connection of what art can do,” she explains that “looking at the gift of somebody’s work of art that they deeply understand says what art is for overtime. Now in its second year of touring, FLY: Five First Ladies of Dance certainly embodies and exemplifies this idea.
The Relationship Between Movement and Control and How it Differs in the Air Versus on the Ground