A collaboration invites chaos into order
A couple months ago, someone said to me: “You need to develop a critical aesthetic.” A set of values as a dance critic, essentially. But The Pulse doesn’t write reviews often; we prefer to look forward. So I’ll start with a memory, but only as a springboard.
First, as an attempt at articulating a creative value or principle. Second, as a way of predicting and even wishing into being the kinds of collaborations Ballet Esprit (the dance company of SPOT Venue), and CoMAP (an ongoing project of Southside Studio), will continue to produce in Chattanooga.
December 28. The last night of the ALTER-NUT. This “alternative Nutcracker,” a cooperative project between Ballet Esprit and CoMAP, might be an arrangement of Tchaikovsky for strings, might be a dance concert, or might be a fancy dress soiree. We’re not sure what to expect.
The magician Drosselmeyer—played by proprietress of SPOT Venue and founder and director of Ballet Esprit Sarah Yvonne—opens the door and hands us off to our hosts. Two very self-possessed children greet us: Clara and her Nutcracker, who lead us around the wide storefront space that is SPOT Venue, telling us: Here’s where you sit, here’s where you can get something to eat or drink, this is where you dance, but please take your shoes off before you step on the floor.
We sit down in the crowded room and take a look at the stage: long wide strips of marley laid on the diagonal, separated with a row of seating down the center, so that some of the audience members are smack in the middle of the action.
The dancers are already in position, snow sprites and angels and woodland creatures with antlers and white fur ears, and some audience members are wearing antlered headpieces, too, so it isn’t immediately obvious who’s in the show, who’s watching.
The string ensemble—musicians led by Bryony Stroud-Watson, owner of the Southside Studio, performing a variation of The Nutcracker Suite arranged by David Dunn—strikes up. The dance is a very simple structured improvisation. First, each person is moving in his or her own space, using a vocabulary matched to her persona—fox (I mistake her for a rabbit), snow spirit, Snow Queen, enchanted child. With the next movement, the dancers begin to move between spaces and interact with one another. By the third movement, they’re reaching out to the watchers, inviting us with eyes and gestures to join them.
The dance itself is a hodge-podge. A couple of professionally trained adults. Other adults whose training might be in yoga or dance team or maybe in no art at all. The two children. All doing something quite difficult—improvising using classical ballet vocabulary, while representing a character—and doing it simply and gravely, without either showiness or awkwardness. The arrangement of the dancers on the floor doesn’t privilege adults or children, professionals or beginners. Instead, each is immersed in his or her own world, which slowly becomes a shared experience.
And we believe it. By the third movement, people are slipping off shoes, stepping out to improvise along, tentatively, then more confidently.
The groups get bigger. People talk as they dance. Laughter ripples. Couples waltz or pantomime or hold hands and spin. A toddler with a tutu over her bouncing diaper scampers through the crowd. Impromptu folk forms arise: a ring of people hold hands and grapevine around the stage, faster and faster. There’s a march. We’re all dancing together in the snowy woods and everything is good and nothing hurts.
It’s magic—but magic borne out of dedicated adherence to a principle.
“CoMAP is a methodology,” Southside Studio’s owners wrote on their website. “The first premise is that we have what we need locally.” The ALTER-NUT’s quest, Sarah Yvonne says, was to answer the question, “What makes the magic happen where the audience is also creating new movement?”
By engaging the local audience as co-creators in a shared imaginary world, ALTER-NUT broke boundaries, and there’s more to come.
“More partnerships with CoMAP will come,” she tells me. “We’ll all come together for open community collaborative performances.”
As well, Ballet Esprit is working with the new Joy Ensemble—a community dance and service group affiliated with St. Luke’s United Methodist. They’re hosting The Road again this spring. Plus, they’re expanding into the former Hamilton Academy of Dance, where they plan to continue the tradition of working with the Great Russian Nutcracker that visits Chattanooga each year, Sarah Yvonne says.
That’s a lot for one company. I’m especially curious to see how the demands of Vaganova-style instruction mesh with Ballet Esprit’s passion for imaginative play and undoing hierarchy.
“Our joint concert will be The Four Seasons this spring,” Sarah Yvonne says. “It’s all about change and transition.”
I can’t wait.