Headwaters Dance premieres the four-part “Montana Suite”
Published: January 6, 2010
Jes Mullette in "Montana Suite II" (photo
by Terry Cyr)
Headwaters Dance Company premieres its “Montana Suite,” an impressive dance anthology described as “Four Montana landscapes, four choreographers, four dances and four years in the making,” 7:30 p.m. Feb. 4-6, with a matinee at 2 p.m. Saturday at MCT Center for the Performing Arts in Missoula.
According to company director Amy Ragsdale, four internationally known New York choreographers were brought to Montana and given an assignment: Make a 20-minute dance based on your impressions of this place.
Each choreographer was sent on a 7-10 day site visit, paired with a Montana composer and given fiction and non-fiction reading in advance. They met with third and fourth generation Montanans along the way, and spent another 10 weeks creating original works for Headwaters’ dancers. Photographs they took of their trips (which totaled a combined 2, 359 miles) will be projected on stage as links between the pieces.
Three of the four choreographers, Donna Uchizono, John Jasperse and Jane Comfort, will be on hand in Missoula for the opening night benefit concert, and plan to meet with the audience in a post-performance talk-back and reception. The fourth choreographer, Lar Lubovitch, will be on tour with his own company in China.
In “Montana Suite Part I: 100 Miles from Forsyth,” Uchizono traveled through the territory called “Custer” or “Crow” country – a vast area of rocky badlands, dry grasslands, coal mines and oil drills. She spent time with ranchers, historians and Crow and Cheyenne and attended the sacred Sun Dance, seeing firsthand the delicate balance between resource extraction and care for the environment.
The choreography runs the gamut from a calm, sensual fluidity to the fast, angular movement of dancers sliding sloshing water glasses, as they roll and skid across the floor. The music, composed by Beryl Lee Heuermann, ranges from archaic croaking to a Ry Cooder-ish guitar to the driving percussion of Troy Basher’s hoof beats.
For “The Hi-Line,” Jasperse explored the howling, windswept, 600-mile stretch along Montana’s Canadian border. A full-stage set of taut ropes evokes the subtle roll of wheat fields and stiff parchment costumes look like dresses frozen on a clothesline. Philip Aaberg’s music creates the vastness of the space and hints at the life of small-town bands and passing trains.
Batholith" (Photo by Terry Cyr)
For “The Boulder Batholith,” Comfort toured this unique landscape studded with giant granite outcroppings, and encompassing the brawling, ethnically diverse mining towns of Butte and Helena. The piece opens with an off-kilter jig to energetically dissonant music by Charles Nichols, and ends with the meditative gestures of a widespread duet that seems to make the stage space float.
For the final piece, “Angel Feet,” Lubovitch traveled to the Rocky Mountain Front, the spine of majestic peaks that drops precipitously to plains. The choreographer designed his own score from music by old-time Montana fiddlers and integrated sounds of water and weather with help from sound engineer Dan Hartmann. The sweeping movement of the piece evokes the sound and motion of many cascading streams.
Tickets are $25 for the benefit concert and silent auction on Feb. 4, and $10-$15 for the remaining shows. Order online at http://www.headwatersdance.org or call 406-728-1131 for details.
Other events related to the Montana Suite Premiere include:
• Montana Suite Dancers’ Master Class series, noon-1:30 p.m. Sundays, Jan. 3-24, at the Downtown Dance Collective (http://www.ddcmontana.com);
• “Montana Suite Stills,” 6-8 p.m. Feb. 5 during First Friday at the Downtown Dance Collective; view images of Headwaters dancers, past and present, by photographers Neil Chaput, Terry Cyr, Amanda Opitz and Aaron Wiens.
• “From the Outside Looking In,” 4-5:30 p.m. Feb. 6 at the Missoula Art Museum; Bill Bevis, Judy Blunt, Debra Earling and Pat Williams offer short talks about the impact of place.
Dancers take the “Montana Suite” to Helena next for a performance at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 11 at the Myrna Loy Center; call 406-443-0287 or visit http://www.myrnaloycenter.com.
