ByGD
I saw on social media last summer that Seattle Dance Collective was working with choreographers in some kind of residency. But the summer came and went without a performance – live or virtual – and I thought maybe there wouldn’t be an SDC production this year. Then I got an announcement that their new program, Here & Now, would be available for streaming on Veteran’s Day. Just as I’ve come to expect from SDC, the program was both enjoyable and challenging, often at the same time.
ByGD
Chapter One. Down the Rabbit Hole. Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting and of having nothing to do.
That’s the very familiar beginning to a very new artwork. Because while many of us have been sitting around with nothing to do most of this year, local dancers have been hard at work. Seattle Dance Collective and Pacific Northwest Ballet have both created some of my favorite dances during the pandemic, and last week they added one more: ALICE.
ByGD
I guess you could technically call the spring performance of Kaleidoscope Dance Company at the Broadway Performance Hall a “recital” since the performers are all children studying at the Creative Dance Center. But the performance is so much more interesting and entertaining than that word implies. Attending it is starting to become a tradition for me.
I admit, when I went for the first time last year, it was for the very recital-like reason that my family had friends who were performing. I first learned about the Kaleidoscope Dance Company researching an article for ParentMap that included the Creative Dance Center, a non-profit dance studio that teaches dance to infants through adults based on brain development theory. Kaleidoscope is the performance division of the school, and they’ve recently added a second performance group, Mosaic Junior Company, for younger dancers.
Even though my research made me curious and I knew two kids who were performing, busy schedules and distraction kept me from attending for years. Last year, I finally got tickets to the spring show (they also perform in December) and I could have kicked myself for waiting so long.
Since dance is almost synonymous with classical ballet in my world, almost any contemporary dance company would probably seem fresh and different to me. But the fact that Kaleidoscope dancers are all youth also works in its favor. Whatever may be lost in technique and precision (which is a lot less than you would expect, actually) is made up for in the avoidance of cliché.
The choreography (mostly by program alumni, and some by the dancers themselves) takes advantage of the fact that the dancers are kids in stages of development. This doesn’t just help to compensate for any pre-professional skill levels, it also results in choreography that wouldn’t be possible for a professional company of adult dancers with their relatively uniform bodies.
Good luck finding kids who want to dance a love story, so you won’t find elegant pas de deux here. Instead you’ll find partnering based on size rather than gender – in fact, the choreography and costuming is almost completely ungendered – and it opens up a world of movement. The dancers are more likely to team up in stacks like Jenga blocks than engage in soaring lifts that require potentially embarrassing contact. When they do lifts, smaller kids get tossed around like props and toys.
Eschewing romance opens up a lot of space for other topics, and since these dancers are young it’s no surprise that many of the pieces explore questions of identity and the role of the individual within a larger group. In the opening piece, “Lotus,” the white-clad dancers almost resembled cells under a microscope, growing, clumping, and dividing. The effect was heightened when the dancers curled into balls, vibrating as the music faded. From the bright blue socks in “Electric Feet” to the proliferation of snacks in “So Whatta We Got Here?” there was a lot of humor in the dances as well.
In an audience of mostly parents and friends, every piece was a hit, but for viewers with no skin in the game, some pieces were stronger than others. A couple pieces drew on African-American dance traditions. This made me uncomfortably aware of the overwhelmingly white cast and raised a few questions that I hope have good answers. A school of contemporary American dance that doesn’t teach African-American traditions would be guilty of erasure. But a white-majority company must proceed with caution.
“Falling Continuum” was my family’s favorite. The booklet said it “explores the assumption that the opportunities we are presented with will always be there.” I don’t think I took any thoughts about FOMO away from the piece, but then again, all I could think was, “Beautiful,” while I watched it.
Kaleidoscope and Mosaic are clear believers that every body is a dancer’s body, and for the most part, the performances bear that out. In a company of 47 performers ranging in age from second grade to seniors in high school (pro tip: A second grader will always steal the show) there was inevitably variation in the skill and talent demonstrated. But everyone remembered their parts and a few dancers stood out as particularly charismatic or committed – a couple even managed to sell the hokey final “Hoedown” number. Within that range, there was a unique delight in being able to see visible growth in individual dancers from last year’s performance (and not just my kids’ friends).
The music and lighting design for “Witness” were as interesting as the dance itself, reminding of the lesson that I learned at Barnekunst. Sometimes the difference between professional and childish is only presentation.