Remix and match
LOCAL DANCE TROUPE the Cambrians aren’t a sedentary bunch. What began as the Nexus Project— an experimental oneoff in 2013, conceived by former Hubbard Street dancer Benjamin Holliday Wardell— has morphed into a network of “dance personalities” with a growing international pedigree.
Since informally rebranding to what’s now known as the Cambrians, Wardell has enlisted friends, colleagues, and former collaborators to partake in a type of nomadic residency, pairing two dancers at a time in different cities with different choreographers. After learning several pieces of source material, the performers mix the choreography together to produce an original dance. As with the Nexus Project, the concept is to “treat the performers as the main drivers of what’s on stage.”
“There’s certainly a lot of overlap,” Wardell says. “It’s one of those things where every relationship is different.” The relationship in
Empress Archer, the company’s latest, “goes to far more places than any other we’ve done,” he continues. Performers Ariel Freedman ( from Israel) and Meredith Webster ( California) spent time in Tel Aviv, Vermont, San Francisco, and Montreal to unpack material from 11 local and international choreographers, each with their own style and taste. There are a lot of contrasts and surprises in the remix, according to Wardell: Webster is five foot ten, Freedman is five foot two; there’s aggression, tenderness, and power dynamics; the piece fluctuates in tempo; and technically the two of them are “just crazy.”