A driving rain two weeks ago almost sidelined the dance Kimi Eisele
was planning for this weekend’s NEW ART concert.

“Dew Point” is about longing for the monsoon. “It’s taking that
moment in time in June, those weeks when the temperature is rising, and
the clouds are building,” Eisele said last week. “It plays off that
feeling of listlessness, of false buildups.”

But “weird weather” intervened, in the form of “two days of
drenching rain.”

Welcome as the downpour was, it took the edge off of Eisele’s
longing. She had to force herself to step back into the newly humid
studio and remember the bone-dry air and white-hot temps of the usual
pre-monsoon season. Luckily for Eisele, if not for the rest of the
desert’s dwellers, a series of arid 100-degree days followed.

Her dancers—Amy Barr-Holm, Corinne Hobson and Katie
Rutterer—start out with sluggish movements; they glance
impatiently at the sky and look for thunderclouds. Then they go into
the “frenzy of anticipation.”

The dance, Eisele said, is “really about waiting. First, you’re
desperate. Then you say, ‘OK, I’m here.'”

The monsoon-madness dance is one of nine short modern works to be
performed on Pima Community College’s Proscenium stage Friday and
Saturday nights, in an eponymous concert titled simply NEW ART.
Company members choreographed seven of them, and two guest
choreographers, Charlotte Adams and Amber Duke, provided the
others.

The troupe usually brings in choreographers from out of town for its
guest slots, company director Rutterer noted, but this year, in the
interest of economy and a lower carbon footprint, they decided to
“dance locally.”

Duke earned her MFA in dance at the UA last year, graduating in the
same class as Rutterer; she just finished her first year teaching dance
at Flowing Wells High School. Her “Three Cups” was inspired by the
proverb that prefaces Greg Mortenson’s best-seller Three
Cups of Tea, about his successful effort to build schools for girls
in Taliban territory. The saying notes that the first time you share
tea with someone, “you are a stranger.” The second time, “you are an
honored guest,” and by the third cup, “you become family.”

“Amber made three duets that represent the three stages of
friendship,” Rutterer said. Six dancers—Renee Blakeley, Polly
Deason, Amanda Morse, Barr-Holm, Hobson and Eisele—make their
amicable overtures to the electronic music of Albert Mathias.

Adams, a celebrated co-founder of the defunct Tenth Street
Danceworks, one of the first modern troupes in town, has been teaching
at the University of Iowa for a decade. And she’s taken her Iowa
troupe, Charlotte Adams and Dancers, to New York to perform at the
Joyce SoHo theater. She meets the local rule, though, because she keeps
a house in Tucson and lives here half the year.

Her dance, “Katie Feels Guilty About Library Fines, Amy Feels Guilty
About Lost Dogs,” is a collaboration with Rutterer and Barr-Holm.

“We started it last summer,” Rutterer recounted. “We wrote down all
the things we feel guilty about. I do feel guilty about library
fines” over at the Himmel library, near her house.

The dancers wear “layered petticoats that weigh us down. We fall
down and get up again.” Eventually, to the music of Circus Maximus and
Accordion Tribe, they “stumble to redemption,” as Adams puts it in a
program note.

Rutterer’s own “15 Minutes” takes the modern dancers in an
unexpected showbiz direction. Decked out in skimpy black and red
leotards, fishnet stockings and high heels, five women shake and shimmy
like Bob Fosse showgirls.

“It started with a song I really liked by the Lascivious Biddies, a
jazz-vocal group of women. It’s a silly song about being famous. I
always wanted to be a musical-theater star. Cabaret is my
favorite musical.”

The dancers—Blakeley, Eisele, Hobson, Morse and Rutterer
herself—try to find their inner Broadway babe while each competes
for that elusive 15 minutes of fame.

Rutterer’s other piece, “Social Dis-Ease,” turns inward, exploring
her own shyness.

“Amanda is the main character. She observes the other dancers and
then jumps in and tries out their movements. Then there’s an intimate
duet between Amy and Amanda, about opening up to another person.”

So far, the dance has had four titles, and might get still another,
Rutterer joked. The music, a song by David Byrne, “might change at
rehearsal tonight,” she said last Friday. “The dancers go with the
flow.”

Former co-artistic director Tammy Rosen contributes a quirky solo.
Blakeley’s entry is a group work; a dance teacher at Pistor Middle
School, she recently won a Lumie art award for her work as an arts
educator. And Morse, who spends her days running the garden at the
Community Food Bank and teaching Tucsonans to eat locally, branches
into local choreography with a work of her own.

The H2O Eisele and the rest of us are hoping for turns up on stage
in Barr-Holm’s “Standing Water.” Last performed in February as a guest
piece at Ballet Arizona’s choreography showcase, the trio is a
celebration of the Slip ‘n Slide.

Water is pooled on a large sheet of plastic stretched across the
stage. Hobson, Morse and Rutterer, exchanging fishnets for swimsuits,
throw themselves onto the wet plastic and do a full-body glide,
throwing their arms out wide, embracing the water.

It’s not rain, but it will do for now.

This article appears in Jun 4-10, 2009.