Tucson Weekly: Rising To Shine (July 9

A New Dance Company Takes Its First Steps On Some Old Stages.
By Margaret Regan
THE DANCE company new ARTiculations has a brand-new loft space for rehearsals. And a brand-new concert full of premieres coming up this weekend. And an almost brand-new trio of artistic directors. In point of fact, there's hardly anything about the modern dance troupe that isn't new.
Review "We're up-and-coming emerging dancers," said Tammy Rosen, one of the company's three founders. "The others are established. We're fresher."
NEW ART, as it's known for short, was founded by Rosen, Jennifer Pollack and Leigh Ann Rangel last February. One evening before rehearsal last week, they got together to talk about their hopes for the fledgling troupe. The conversation took place downstairs from their new rehearsal space at 61 E. Congress St., where the Empire Café and Lounge prospered until it was torched in March 1997. The physical location gives the company an optimistic metaphor: A new lounge, all gleam and polished wood, is rising phoenix-like out of the ashes of the old lounge (it will be called Heart Five); meanwhile upstairs, in their new rehearsal space, a new dance company has emerged out of Tucson's older troupes.
"We felt there was a vacuum of venues for different choreographers," Rosen said of the town's dancescape in the days before NEW ART. In the new company, the three artistic directors each choreograph their own work, dance their own and each other's pieces, and invite the troupe's other dancers to compose works as well. A peek at a rehearsal for this weekend's concert, After the Babble, revealed a mix of styles, from an African rhythmic dance to a lighthearted techno romp to an austere piece about emotional dislocation.
Until now, the new troupe has been performing mostly in alternative venues--in the Club Congress lobby on a Friday night, for instance, and at Maldonado Elementary School and the Bisbee Poetry Festival. Most of those performances were improvised, Rosen says. This weekend's concert will be in a proper theatre, the Tucson Center for the Performing Arts, and most of its works are plotted out precisely in advance. Fully five of the works are choreographed; there will be just one improvisation, created and danced by company member Nathan Dryden and guest artist Greg Colburn.
"I like for us to work experimentally, but that can be a niche," Rosen says. "We don't want to get locked into that."
Other dances on the program include Rosen's "Confidence Storm," a "funky, swing piece" for seven dancers that evokes "a smoky, '20s lounge during Prohibition." Pollack contributes two works. "Aside from That, Things Are Fine," an emotional duet for Dryden and herself set to cello music, grew out of "a solo that was personal...It was a task for myself. I wanted to see what I could do with two bodies." Her second work is the lighthearted "My Friend Fred," a quartet danced to music by local composer Psydel.
Rangel, who said she's wanted to form a company for a long time, is showing "Big Mind Stream," a big work set to a tribal beat by Brent Lewis. Arranged for six dancers, "it's a parallel of my chaotic life," Rangel said. "It's a restless piece. It just never stops." Visiting choreographer Tommy Parlon, an artist in residence at Kent State University, contributed "Drift," a solo for Pollack, who said the piece takes advantage of Parlon's "tactileness. It has an interesting use of the floor: there's a lot of taking time to feel grounded on the floor."
For all NEW ART's emphasis on the new, the company has strong links to Tucson's older modern dance companies. Its three founders each trained out of town--Rosen in Illinois, Pollack in assorted New York City studios, and Rangel at the University of Georgia--but their Tucson point of convergence was a class at Orts Theatre of Dance. Rosen, Dryden and Pollack have all danced with Orts. This spring Dryden showed one of his works in the Zenith Dance Collective choreographers' showcase. Pollack danced in Ellen Bromberg's multi-media concert Falling to Earth last spring, and this fall she'll perform with 10th Street Danceworks in its annual outdoor concert at Reid Park. Tenth Street's artistic director, Charlotte Adams, has been giving the new company tips on filing those all-important, non-profit-status papers.
While Adams and Annie Bunker, Orts' artistic director, each put their own stamp on their respective troupes, the NEW ART trio sees the advantage of triple vision.
"We all have different ideas of what we want to do," Pollack said, "but it all meshes together.
Pollack wants to "bring in outside choreographers and teachers--it can get stale here." This spring she organized a master class taught by a Bill T. Jones dancer, Alex Bellar, a friend of Pollack's from her New York days; and she's pleased that NEW ART was recently awarded a pair of grants to bring in Jana Hicks and Max Stone for workshops this fall. Rangel, who already works in the schools, would like to see NEW ART do educational residencies, while Rosen hopes to expand the dance audience by collaborating with non-dance artists--as the troupe did in its Club Congress date with poet Becky Byrkit.
"It's going very well," Pollack said. "We work well together, maybe because we were friends first."
Added Rangel, "We have so many ideas, we want to produce everything by tomorrow."
NEW ARTiculations presents After the Babble, a dance concert, at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, July 10 and 11, at the Tucson Center for the Performing Arts, 40 E. 14th St. Tickets at the door are $10 general, $8 for students. Advance tickets are $6 and $8, available by calling 622-5018.

Home | Currents | City Week | Music | Review | Books | Cinema | Back Page | Archives