Choreographer Peter Stathas still feels like he’s processing the many layers of the pandemic shutdown, when dance—typically a high-contact art—was impossible to do as a group.
Stathas decided to document what was creatively possible to choreograph when you couldn’t have dancers in the same studio together. Not the choreographer’s ideal circumstance, but the product of that exploratory and isolating period became Measuring Distance, a film excerpt that will set the tone for “From Where We Ascend/Wake,” a multimedia performance featuring dance and documentary filmmaking in the Danceworks, Inc. black box theater this weekend (1661 N. Water St.; 414-277-8480).
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During the 80-minute run time, the audience will witness Lauren Twomley, Ty Graynor, Mariah Gravelin, and Paulina Meneses perform Stathas’ choreographed expression of ascendant consciousness and experience that leaves ripples in the wake. The five-part program looks back on the changes extended uncertainty has brought out in us and the world, and examines the wake we left behind while moving ahead in new directions. The movements you will see in this performance are those ripples from the past. At least, this is how Stathas describes the program to me over coffee on a recent afternoon.
“It doesn’t always occur to me what I’m doing until it occurs to me what I’m doing,” Stathas says of his process.
For someone who seems to draw inspiration out of the atomic levels and distill it into movement, I’m not surprised he feels like creativity is a force that pulls the artist forward, like a waterski, leaving a wake that lends perspective and meaning to the movement. “I tell the dancers, ‘I’m only trying to bring out of you what you need to bring out of yourselves,'” Stathas says. “From Where We Ascend/Wake” will showcase what these professionals are drawing from themselves and leaving on the stage for us to witness.
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Most of the dancers you will see on this stage have José Limón techniques in their toolkit, a style that emphasizes balance and play between weight and weightlessness. Appropriate, then, for a performance that draws inspiration from disrupted waters. In that black box where a dance can absorb your full attention, you might start to see how the dancers fight and give into gravity like pendulums. Other movements you will see in “From Where We Ascend/Wake” are movements choreographed from anxieties that we are on the brink of ruin.
The second film you will see during the Friday and Saturday evening performances was shot in a barn up north. Stathas splits his time between New York and Wisconsin, spending part of the year in a barn with other dancers sketching out new performances, which Sean Kafer has captured on camera. We will see how pieces like “From Where We Ascend/Wake” come together in between Graynor’s solo—a movement in the center of the program that describes, visually, what it means to reconcile with our tethers—and the three concluding duets.
In the Danceworks black box, there is nothing else to shift your attention away from the performance. This expressive production is surely not to be missed.
See “From Where We Ascend/Wake” at Danceworks, Inc. Friday, April 25, and Saturday, April 26 at 8 p.m. Purchase tickets HERE.
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