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 Tenth Street Dance and Orts join forces to set Tucson in motion. By Margaret Regan IT'S BEEN A while since Tucson audiences saw longtime favorites Tenth Street Danceworks on the stage; nine months to be precise. "Our last big public concert was in the park (Reid Park) last September," says Charlotte Adams, company artistic director and choreographer. But that doesn't mean the 14-year-old company hasn't been busy. The modern dancers performed in a series of schoolchildren's shows in February at Pima College, did a one-week tour of Nebraska and worked some school residencies in Phoenix and here in Tucson. Such projects at least provide income to the artists, Adams notes, adding with understatement that "performing doesn't always pay."
"It's the first time we've ever done a collaborative concert with Orts," Adams says. "We have danced in each other's concerts. A dancer from Tenth Street will dance for Orts, or vice versa." This is different. The concert is a co-production by the two companies, and will intersperse three dances by Tenth Street with four by Orts. The busy Orts company gave an all-trapeze concert on the same stage last weekend, and Adams is hoping to tap into their audience, since the two troupes' core fans don't necessarily overlap. "One of the main things in doing a concert together is bringing together people we've worked around all these years," Adams says. "We're bringing our audiences together. It's half the work and twice the fun." Adams works as an assistant professor of dance at the University of Iowa, where she moved last year after a stint at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. She says she loves her new job: she finds her students serious about dance and the locals supportive of the arts. Nevertheless, she returns as often as possible to work with her own company in the Old Pueblo, noting, "After being in the cold weather, this heat feels really good to me." But her commuter schedule has its costs. Because Adams returned to Tucson only in late May, she didn't have time to set her two new dances on the Tenth Streeters. A trio of her Iowa students will travel to town to perform the works instead. In "The End of the Affair," a dance-video collaboration between Adams and Tucsonan Keith Collea, Iowa students Brighid Anda and Joe Poulson will dance the parts of the lovers. Jazzy music is provided first by saxophonist Bob Thompson and then by Miles Davis, on tape. "It's a lovely, sad love duet," Adams said. "The video represents a view of the relationship from the man's point of view; there's a different ending on the video than on the stage. And the video images of the dancers are different: they're closer up and show more intimacy." The other new work, "Abandoned Summer," was inspired by "A Summer Indoors," a New Yorker article by Alison Rose. Iowa grad student Michelle Kriner is the soloist in the dance, which Adams calls "a sweetly sad, quirky piece done to traditional Mexican music. There's a bathtub in the piece and it's a major hassle. It weighs 500 pounds." "Lockjaw," a humorous Adams group work for six, debuted in the company's winter concert in February 1998. "It's a big, athletic piece," she says. Three familiar Tenth Street dancers return for this gig, including Paulette Cauthorn, Thom Lewis and Mark English. They're joined by Jennifer Pollack, who danced with the company in last fall's park concert, Tammy Rosen and Deborah Mendoza. (Pollack and Rosen are two of the three co-founders of the NEW ARTiculations troupe.) Though Adams danced in the piece last year, this time around she says she's content to direct.
ON THE ORTS side, Bunker is not to be outdone by Adams' bathtub. Bunker also deploys actual plumbing fixtures in her "Toiletries," a work-in-progress that debuted at the Orts in the Park concert in April. Inspired by the location of the new Movement Arts Warehouse adjacent to Benjamin Plumbing Supply, the piece involves juggling plungers. Two new dances draw on a trip Bunker took with her family last year to the Scottish Highlands. "Stories in the Walls," a premiere, has a trio of dancers performing against a video of castle walls taped by Chuck Koesters, Bunker's husband and company composer. Koesters describes the dance as full of "intensity and joy, stories and memories expressed in dance through the span of time and human experience." Dancing with Bunker on stage will be Flor de Liz Alzate and Tsu-hua (Mimi) Chen. "Islands," the other Scottish dance, is a work-in-progress set to music by Koesters. Orts dancers will take to their trapezes for this one.
Together at Last, a shared concert of modern dance
by Tenth Street Danceworks and Orts Theatre of Dance,
opens at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, June 18 and 19, at the PCC
Center for the Arts Proscenium Theatre, 2202 W. Anklam Road. Advance
tickets, available at the box office, Bentley's, Antigone Books,
Silverbell Trading and by email at orts@rtd.com, are $10 general,
$8 for seniors and students. Tickets at the door are $2 more.
For more information, call 624-3799.
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Nevertheless, this weekend, Tenth Street returns to public view
in a first-ever concert with Tucson's other mainstay of modern
dance, Orts Theatre of Dance. Together at Last exclusively
shows works by Adams and Anne Bunker, artistic director of Orts,
two women who have been leaders of the city's dance scene for
years. Each choreographer is showing several new works along with
some reprises. The show is set for Friday and Saturday evenings
on the Proscenium Stage of the Pima College Center for the Arts.
The endearing "Lockjaw" is based on childhood stories
Tenth Street dancers shared with Adams, and its movements follow
the push-pull, yes-no rhythms that shape parent-child relationships.
Fulsome harpsichord music by Scarlatti adds to the drama.
