CLASSICAL
Kinetic and Houston Contemporary Dance are collaborating.
Colorful conversations brimming with insights and perspectives come to life onstage, as musicians, much like dancers, engage with one another through the breadth and physicality of their artistic expression — a language spoken without words.
This weekend, for two consecutive evenings, Kinetic will carry on such an exchange between four of its string players — violinists Samuel Park and Jacob Schafer, alongside violist Sebastian Stefanovic and cellist Bree Ahern — while broadening the scope of its communicative ability by banding together with the Houston Contemporary Dance Company (HCDC) and its second company, Houston Contemporary 2 (HC2), in “Parallel Play” at Discovery Green.
The collaborative, in-person program references the early stage in childhood development when toddlers play near other kids but not with them, a phase that strangely relates to the collective experience of isolation during the pandemic. To maintain social distancing, a limited audience will be spread out across the lawn in 10-foot-wide “pods,” or spray-painted circles, each of which will comfortably fit two to eight people.
The interdisciplinary program will shine light on both local arts organizations individually before bringing them together in a world premiere by Thai American guest choreographer Keerati Jinakunwiphat, who was named one of this year’s “25 to Watch” by Dance Magazine. Using the concept of sense memory as a catalyst, her four-movement work, featuring musical selections by Benjamin Britten, Osvaldo Golijov and Philip Glass, draws inspiration from the four seasons, taking audience members on an emotional journey through the loneliness of winter, the buoyant playfulness of spring and the introspective nature of summer that endures even as the leaves begin to reveal the brilliant shades of fall.
“We have a passion for working with dancers,” says Ahern, a graduate of Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music who has performed with Kinetic for nearly two years. Thanks to modern technology, Ahern worked closely with Jinakunwiphat, a member of Kyle Abraham’s New York-based contemporary dance troupe A.I.M, while thoughtfully curating Kinetic’s portion of the program. “It’s so interesting as musicians to see all the work that we do aurally physicalized in dance form and to see what kind of interpretations, what kind of messages, we can make if we bridge that medium.”
Marking the conductorless ensemble’s first live concert in over a year, Kinetic will kick off the evening with Jessie Montgomery’s “Break Away” for string quartet. The technically demanding composition, which Ahern describes as a dialogue in and of itself, explores various musical textures throughout its five movements and plays on the complexity of improvisation.
The musicians will then make way for the dancers of HCDC and the pre-professional youth in HC2 to perform works from the company’s repertoire, alongside two premieres by choreographers Kelsey Walsh and Donald Shorter, and a timely new piece by founder and artistic director Marlana Doyle. Created for the four founding company members, the latter, titled “Cadence,” embodies the rhythm of the organization’s present identity, as an entity formed only six months before the pandemic, while also looking to its future.
For both groups, conversations shaped by music and movement never truly ceased to exist, persevering through the challenges of the last year by way of innovative, virtual programming, but as live performances return, little by little, community engagement takes on even greater meaning.
“We’ve missed being able to connect with audiences face to face,” Ahern said. “We’ve done a couple of events digitally, but there’s nothing that can compare to being out there, seeing everyone’s faces and letting it pass in real time. There’s just a great energy onstage that can’t really be paralleled.”