The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
ECDC BUSTS MOVES WITH THEN/NOW IN MIND
“If I only knew then what I know now.” It can be a wistful regret, or a sheepish admission. Elm City Dance Collective is giving it a little twist and exploring the “you” — an unfilled reservoir still collecting life’s experiences and expectations — in a worldpremiere work Friday, Saturday and a week later on April 7-8 at Lyric Hall Theater in Westville.
“If You Knew You Then” is a 60-minute work choreographed by Artistic Director Kellie Ann Lynch in what she describes as a totally collaborative company effort, one that’s been marinating since June 2014. Performances are at 7 and 9 p.m. each night (advance tickets $25, or $30 at door: lyrichallnewhaven.com; reserve early, space is limited).
ECDC publicity materials call it “a patchwork reconstruction of circumstances evolved from revisiting past behaviors and memories of the dancers’ younger selves.”
Lynch says: “The reason I use patchwork as a descriptor is because we started with the idea that we would make an overwhelming amount of 2- to 3-minute vignettes of an idea. We did that for a couple of years, and this year, we put together all of those vignettes to make a more cohesive, nonnarrative, nonlinear story.”
The company has been timetraveling back to when they were 16-21 years old, poring through research of those varying eras (the dancers range in age from 20s to mid-30s), coopting journals, diaries, yearbooks and photo albums and storytelling to relive some revealing emotional experiences and find some surprising commonality, no matter what the age.
“…I just love thinking about the human experience, just what it means to be alive, all the good, bad and ugly that goes along with it,” says Lynch, a 2014 Arts Award winner. “I was thinking a lot about this time period. … For some, that means high school, or it just means being 21. Some didn’t go to college. … We were just going to examine our adolescent experience and spend some time unpacking that.”
Conformity — or lack thereof — was a huge part of the experi-
vides a rich framework for structure and movement and interaction among the dancers. Parties and the dynamics of a party as social interaction, feelings of being manipulated or being told how to act also took up a lot of conversation and thought, says Lynch, adding that, “Each time a soloist is presented, you will feel, hopefully, that the energies are different…”
After several years of intermittent sessions on the work, Lynch says, “You have to say ‘we can’t take breaks anymore, because then you stop remembering how we gelled some of these ideas. For the first few years, our process was improvisation. I always use improv as a method for creating, but for two solid years we were in the rehearsal process creating ‘scores’ that were based on concepts and scenes that we would then put together and improvise. We did a lot of exploring and a lot of recording.”
Lynch and her collaborators — Alicia White, Nikki Carrara, Luis Antonio, Lindsey Bauer and Samantha Russell (who was replaced by Tara Burns in December because of Russell’s pregnancy) then spent the past year in earnest recreating those recorded improvised scores into the final choreography.
“There is definitely breathing room and moments for improvisation, but it is very much a choreographed piece at this point,” says Lynch.
Choosing the intimate Lyric Hall as the performance venue ups the energy quotient and the challenge, says Lynch. And by opting to perform in the space where the audience would usually be sitting, rather than on stage, they will be breaking the fourth wall and feeding off the audience energy that dance in the round can naturally create.
ECDC fans will come away knowing they saw a work that has the ECDC signature all over it. To use Lynch’s words: “robust, very physical, nonstop, very, very athletic, rounded-out and three dimensional.”
“…They are going to smell us, feel us and we might even interact with you. It’s thick,” she says.
Despite the personal stories that provided the work’s framework, Lynch says, “As a choreographer, I throw the ball out in your court, and my hope is you will interpret it as you wish, and any way you see this dance is right, your way.”