Collaboration is the hallmark of this year's Dance Company of Middlebury (DCM): cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary, and between dancers and choreographers/directors. On April 22 and 23, the Dance Company of Middlebury reveals the fruits of two semesters of creativity and hard work, featuring both Ellen Smith's senior independent work, and music composed especially for the company by Cuban artist Raúl Guará.
Early in 2003, several members of DCM—including Ellen Smith, Julia Basso '04, and dance faculty member Penny Campbell—traveled to Cuba as part of the first Middlebury College Cuba Project, under the direction of Artist in Residence Amy Chavasse. A stimulating exchange of classes and performances in Havana was followed by a visit to Middlebury by la Compañia de la Danza Narciso Medina in May 2003. Later that year, Campbell, artistic director of this year's DCM, made two trips to Cuba—one to learn more about the island and renew ties to Medina and his company, and another to teach a series of classes for the pre-professional Grupo de Desarrollo (or group in development) at Medina's studio/theatre/academy in Havana.
She made several more teaching and research trips to the island in 2004, even as cultural exchange and educational licenses were eliminated or severely curtailed by the U.S. Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). U.S. policy is aimed at starving the Castro government of much-needed international currency. Canceling licenses to travel or study in Cuba is part of a questionably effective, 40-year strategy to bring down that government.
During one of Campbell's visits, she met musician/composer Raúl Guará and conceived the idea of collaborating on a new work for Middlebury's student dance company. InterVaDos, a word crafted from the Spanish for "intervals", is a suite of five pieces in Guará's big-band, tropical swing style, with punchy horn lines and bouncy melodies developed from a dance "score" based on encounter—between two people, two genders, two cultures, two art forms. Director of Music for Dance and well-known Vermont composer, Michael Chorney, has adapted Guará's score for local musicians, adding yet another dimension to the collaboration featured in DCM's work this year.
"This has been an extraordinary challenge. We're trying to maintain a sense of the propulsion and drive, energy and edge that is so recognizably Cuban," explains Campbell. "And we also want to bring up the sweet side and permit our own aesthetic to breathe in the music. It's inevitable that we would emerge with some kind of hybrid. I think it is a lovely, lively one." The choreography for InterVaDos has been created by the dancers themselves under Campbell's direction—one more layer of collaboration. Out of focused improvisational explorations have come risky weight-sharing, explosive, and passionate momentum, with dancers swerving in and out of control, into and out of relationship and connection.
Ellen Smith, co-collaborating and performing in InterVaDos, also contributes a new solo and reconstructs a group piece for the April concerts. Known for her seamless mix of feisty floor work and powerful elegance, Smith experiments with space, light, and surfaces, as well as movement in these pieces. A surprising transformation of the Dance Theatre changes the way audiences see and experience her dances. By working closely with friends in DCM, tapping into group dynamics and questions raised by the dancers themselves for inspiration, Smith merges art and life into a special amalgam of the two.
The Company originally intended to travel to Cuba in March, carrying InterVaDos back to its source and offering their own work to Cuban audiences as they learned more about the danced, sung and played Afro-Cuban religion, Santeria. But, it was not to be. Holders of travel licenses, operating in a climate of stepped-up scrutiny by OFAC, were unwilling to permit the group access to those licenses. But the 2005 Cuba Project continues. If only on video, InterVaDos and the entire April concert will eventually make its way back to the island that inspired it. In the meantime, audiences here in Middlebury, at Bennington College, and in New York City, where DCM presented its work in February and March, share in the work in performance and lecture-demonstration.
Learn more about DCM's work at a free, Behind the Scenes luncheon on Tuesday, April 19 at 12:30 p.m. in the Center for the Arts Dance Theatre. Members of the company, including Campbell, Chorney and Smith, show excerpts from the upcoming concert and talk about the process of creating their work. Composer Raúl Guará joins in via video! Lunch is provided.
DCM performances are Friday and Saturday, April 22 and 23, at 8:00 p.m. in the Center for the Arts Dance theatre. Tickets are $5/4/3 and go on sale April 8 at the Box Office.