Artist-in-Residence Calvin Royal III
Calvin Royal III “has an inner light,” remarked Kevin Mackenzie, Artistic Director of American Ballet Theatre. Royal’s recent promotion to principal dancer at the world renowned company is historic: he is the first black male dancer in over two decades and only the third ever to reach that highest position. Joining the ranks of the most accomplished dancers, however, comes as no surprise for Vail audiences, who have witnessed his artistic rise in the Rockies since 2015.
The Vail Dance Festival regular was slated to be last year’s Artist-in-Residence and will fulfil his duties of teaching, performing new roles, and taking part in the Empowering Boys in Dance initiative during this year’s in-person Festival. Each summer, Artistic Director Damian Woetzel highlights an artist who has garnered attention from spectators and peers alike to offer them added opportunities of enrichment.
"Year after year, Calvin has become ever more himself onstage," says Woetzel. "His level of comfort in everything he does has become expansive."
The Florida native began his story at the Festival in a modern premiere by Dorris Duke Artist Pam Tanowitz. Citing his “generous, virtuosic, and humble” qualities as a dance artist, Tanowitz later chose to work with Royal in each of her following Vail creations.
That notable debut in a challenging and untraditional work confirmed Royal’s ability to tackle a wider variety of neoclassical and contemporary roles. He demonstrated playful agility and musical nuance in George Balanchine’s Agon, Apollo and Stars and Stripes and revealed an elegant inwardness in Jerome Robbins Afternoon of a Faun. His technical versatility and pure presence in Michelle Dorrance’s encompassing tap collaborations proved that Royal has merely scratched the surface of his artistic potential.
“It has been a tremendous joy to be a part of Calvin’s story,” remarked Balanchine ballerina Heather Watts, who coached Royal and New York City Ballet soloist Unity Phelan in both Agon and Apollo alongside Woetzel. “His extraordinary dance gifts and kind, strong, and true heart and mind have made this process unbelievably rewarding.”
After his Vail and subsequent New York debuts as Balanchine’s god of music Apollo, Royal was described by the New York Times as “a god stepping into his light.”
Whether his light radiates from inside or illuminates the path in front of him, the brilliance of this rising star will shine far this summer in Vail.
2021 Vail Dance Festival Magazine
NYCB MOVES Returns to Vail
“New York City Ballet has the marriage of music and dance written into its constitution” -The New York Times
Such joining of elements, greater together than separate, illustrates the ethos of the Vail Dance Festival under the leadership of Artistic Director Damian Woetzel, former principal dancer with the renowned ballet company.
NYCB MOVES rejoins the Festival after 9 years to help fete the Vail Valley’s gathering of dances on opening night on July 30. The smaller touring branch of the 90-dancer and 62-musician company will also present an evening program dedicated entirely to NYCB’s rich history on July 31.
Founded in 1948 by neoclassical ballet pioneer George Balanchine and impresario Lincoln Kirsten, the company sustains over 150 works: a repertory of “unequaled richness” and “the envy of the world,” as proclaimed by the New York Times. From pure dance to classic tales, these works have transformed the landscape of ballet and left a map for artists of tomorrow.
MOVES brings four of these masterpieces to Vail. Dances at a Gathering serves as the marking motif of the Festival in its enveloping distillation of humanity in harmony. The quintessential piano ballet was choreographed by City Ballet’s longtime associate artistic director Jerome Robbins to 18 of Frédéric Chopin’s mazurkas, waltzes, and études. The weaving tapestry of ten dancers in music is an intimate affirmation of community through music and dance.
Robbins’ impression of human connection in Chopin’s timeless piano works continues during the following evening’s program on July 31. The company will present Robbins’ 1970 ballet In the Night. The work for three contrasting couples expresses a spectrum of love and partnership, and is composed only of nocturnes, taking on the mood of midsummer at midnight.
The Festival is known for its commitment to reviving seldom seen works while showcasing current leading choreographers. This spirit endures with NYCB MOVES in a rare performance of George Balanchine’s Sonatine. The refined fluidity yet emotional complexity of the work was choreographed to the radiant piano music of Maurice Ravel in 1975. The evening will also include preeminent 21st century choreographer Alexei Ratmansky’s exuberant Pictures at an Exhibition. Like Modest Mussorgsky’s famed score, the 2014 ballet’s dynamic shapes and rhythms evoke a rich palate of sensations.
NYCB’s return to Vail marks the spirited revival of the Festival with dancers, musicians and audiences celebrating the art of life together at the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater.
2021 Vail Dance Festival Magazine
Empowering Boys in Dance
“As a black man in ballet, pursuing this dream was not always fully understood by everyone in my community growing up,” says Artist-in-Residence Calvin Royal III, “It brings me joy to be part of educating and inspiring the next generation of young male dancers to be brave in exploring their interest in dance, too,"
Public perceptions of boys dancing are still too frequently plagued by judgement. When superheroes and sports stars remain the expected role models, boys dreaming of expressing themselves differently feel lost and left out. The Vail Dance Festival is taking action towards these outdated expectations. In partnership with Arts In Society, a project of Redline Contemporary Art Center, the Festival recently launched the Empowering Boys in Dance initiative.
“There is still a real need for role models and mentorship to counter negative stereotypes in this area,” said former New York City Ballet star and VDF Artistic Director Damian Woetzel. “As a boy dancing in Boston, my dreams of a future on the stage were fortified by heroes like Edward Villella who pioneered a positive image of being a male dancer in America.”
The Empowering Boys in Dance initiative directs a needed spotlight on the richness that dance can offer anyone, regardless of gender stereotypes. Royal, an American Ballet Theatre principal dancer, describes his excitement in spearheading the project to “help young guys know that there is a place for them.” He will be joined by fellow modern-day dance heroes ABT principal James Whiteside and Colorado-native tap dancer Dario Natarelli throughout a series of interviews, masterclasses and in-person outreach events prior to and during the Festival.
A choreography challenge will take place for non-professional dancers, ages 8-18 and who identify as boys, to create an opportunity for them to share their story through the art of dance. The winning choreographer will be invited to enjoy Festival performances and directly interact with Festival Artists to further advance their dance training.
“I am so happy that with this program and the participation of a selection of today’s male dance stars, we are able to answer that call for the new generation of boys who dream of dancing,” said Woetzel. Navigating the social terrain of young life in the 21st century poses many challenges. Vail Dance Festival believes that expressing yourself should not be one of them.
Thank you to our partner: Arts in Society
2021 Vail Dance Festival Magazine
NOW: Premieres 2021
Choreographers and composers come together for invigorating new works
New has always been the normal for NOW Premieres, an entire evening dedicated each Festival to presenting never-before-seen work. Commissioned musical compositions accompany a host of new dances, ranging in genre from neo-classical and contemporary ballet, to tap, modern, and jookin. This year promises an invigorating celebration of creative collaboration to close the Festival on August 9.
In response to the many hardships of 2020, festival regular and Grammy-award winning violinist Johnny Gandelsman commissioned a project to highlight the rich cultural tapestry of America’s United States. “This Is America” features twenty-two new works for solo violin produced by twelve presenters throughout the country, including the Vail Dance Festival. Gandelsman interprets intimate reflections on the state of our country by composers from across the nation. He will perform three of these works to accompany premieres by Michelle Dorrance, Jamar Roberts, and a collaboration by Lil Buck and Lauren Lovette.
Building on musical partnerships established during past Festivals, Justin Peck and Tiler Peck (who are not related) will each create new dances to music by Pulitzer-winning Composer-in-Residence Caroline Shaw. Cleo Parker Robinson and James Whiteside will also present world premieres.
Tap dancer extraordinaire Michelle Dorrance will choreograph to music by Rhiannon Giddens, the Grammy-award winning co-founder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Both MacArthur “genius” grant recipients work in performance mediums that are uniquely American in their complex histories. Tap dance and Americana music have long represented a legacy of resiliency and transformation.
Both artists work to amplify forgotten voices and to honor those who paved the way before them. Giddens describes her art as a means to “excavate the past and reveal bold truths about our present.” Dorrance, whose “crux of inspiration is music,” affirms tap as a “powerful vehicle for social and political change.” The new work will feature dancers of various genres, confirming the artists’ commitment to creating space for unexpected harmonies.
Fellow MacArthur “genius” grant recipient, Tyshawn Sorey, will compose music for Jamar Roberts, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s first resident choreographer. The rapidly rising dance maker will create work on contemporary ballet company BalletX with Artist-in-Residence Calvin Royal III as guest. His latest work, “Cooped,” commissioned by Guggenheim Works and Process, was praised as “one of the most powerful artistic responses yet to the Covid-19 crises” (New York Times).
Roberts describes his relationship to music as essential to his creative process. After “feeling the score on a deep level,” he continues by “looking at the world in which we live, and then looking at how we as a society are getting along in it.” It is fitting that his premiere will be joined by Sorey, whose new searching meditations on society are hailed as his “most expressive and powerful music yet” (New York Times Magazine).
Cristina Courtin’s “This Is America” composition will accompany a collaboration between Lil Buck and Lauren Lovette. Both dancers are known for their virtuosity and emotional depth on stage. As choreographers, they each attend to the power of dance to uplift, question, and potentially transform our experience of the world. Courtin, a Juilliard trained singer-songwriter and violinist, describes guiding her listeners through a landscape of emotions, from “somber plains and heartbreak” to feelings of “warmth, joy, and hope.”
Lovette demonstrates an “urgency” in her “desire to turn ballet inside out,” (New York Times). The versatile ballerina recently announced her resignation as principal dancer from the New York City Ballet in order to further pursue her choreographic career. Lil Buck’s creative career has also expanded as co-founder of Movement Art Is. The non-profit uses dance to address issues of social injustice and was recently featured on the Netflix series Moves. “When someone is speaking to your spirit through dance, that sticks,” he says, “it’s knowing that it’s not just for entertainment, but that dance can really be used as a tool to help bring change about the world.”
Dance as a mechanism to change society has driven Denver-based choreographer Cleo Parker Robinson for 51 years. The highly lauded Colorado cultural figure will create a new work around the theme of unity and renewal in the face of a year of isolation and polarization. Parker Robinson’s illustrious career spans from collaborating with poet Dr. Maya Angelou to receiving the Colorado Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.
“Let the world dance,” Parker Robinson says after recalling the similarities of today’s struggles to the days growing up under segregation as the daughter of a white woman and a black man. Rooted in dance honoring the African Diaspora, she describes the function of dance “to celebrate and to renew, to stop any regression,” and asserts that the “joy of life is really discovering the harmony together.”
Committed to collective discovery, Tony-award winning choreographer Justin Peck makes work that creates space for processing contemporary life. Peck has choreographed over 40 works, including most recently for Steven Spielberg’s new film adaptation of West Side Story. As resident choreographer of New York City Ballet, Peck refers closely to his roots in classicism while pushing ballet forward to better represent the 21st century.
The choreographer returns to Vail to create a new work on New York City Ballet principal Tiler Peck and American Ballet Theatre principal Herman Cornejo to music by Caroline Shaw. His architectural creations seem to physically synthesize Shaw’s arcing musical compositions, who was herself a student of architecture. Striving to reflect current times and propose new possibilities, Peck’s premiere reimagines the concept of the traditional pas de deux.
Tiler Peck joins the evening not only as dancer, but also as choreographer. The ever curious collaborator builds on top of a remarkably prolific year despite theater closures. “I couldn’t miss anything again!” asserts Peck of the layoff. She had just returned from a potentially career-ending neck injury. Instead, the ballerina taught Instagram classes to thousands of students across the world, produced online performances, worked with renowned choreographers William Forsyth and Alonzo King, choreographed, and even made dance reels with actress Jennifer Garner.
Peck used music by Caroline Shaw for her last work in Vail after being introduced by Artistic Director Damian Woetzel. She also credits Woetzel, along with Balanchine ballerina Heather Watts, for encouraging her to take her first choreographic leap. Peck’s famously nuanced dancing is reflected in her intuitively musical choreography, drawing her again to Shaw’s music. “It’s like a puzzle… like moving music,” she says, “It’s music that needs to be danced to.”
American Ballet Theatre principal James Whiteside is another dancer who refused to slow down during the pandemic. Known for his technical prowess as much as his drama and humor, the dancer, choreographer, singer, and drag queen constantly pursues new ways of expressing himself. By the end of 2020, he recorded an album and wrote a book in addition to extensively training his body for the rigorous demands of ballet.
Whiteside, who is part of the Festival’s Empowering Boys in Dance project, is vocal in supporting young people embrace who they are and the passions they love. Dance Magazine described him as having “redefined the modern male principal by simply being himself.” His dances are at once athletic and tender, and often question assumptions around gender and relationships. This summer’s new work will be a dance for three men.
Despite a year of saturated hospitals, social and economic disparities, and darkened theaters, the artists of the Vail Dance Festival persist in creating work to reflect on the world in which we live. NOW Premieres on August 9 is an opportunity to hear these varied voices from across the United States. It is a chance to join together in celebration of creativity with hope for the future.
2021 Vail Dance Festival Magazine
The Many Roles of Melissa Toogood
Small, thoughtful circles of the wrists frame a strong body dancing with purpose. A quick turn of her head, and we know she knows we are watching her. Melissa Toogood is fully present. At another moment, she throws her arms and one leg forward, her pelvis retreating backwards as she just catches herself from falling off balance. She is a risk-taker who never loses her composure.
Pam Tanowitz’s Broken Story (wherein there is no ecstasy) was a turning point for Toogood, the former Merce Cunningham dancer-turned multi-genre performer and rehearsal director for Pam Tanowitz Dance. The Bessie Award winner embodies force and finesse, technique and humanity. She carries many movement languages with her, having studied jazz, voice, modern, and more at the New World School of the Arts in Miami after growing up in Sydney, Australia. Her keen perspective from both inside and outside of modern dance have accompanied the choreographic ascension of Tanowitz since 2006.
Broken Story was a revelation of vulnerability. “It was a lonely piece,” Toogood described of the 2015 commission created for Guggenheim Works & Process. “Everyone was on their own path in a space that was very open,” she said, “As time went along, you ended up on your own.” Such solitude was rare for Toogood, who, as rehearsal director, sees herself as one of many elements making up a whole organism.
An overarching coexistence persisted despite the disconnect among the four dancers and four composers. Mary Sharp Cronson, founder of Works and Process, described the dancers as seeming to have “always been designed” for the museum’s rotunda. Toogood’s attentive way of outlining the curvature of the walls amplified Tanowitz’s signature use of all aspects of each theater she works in.
Broken Story also laid bare newfound tenderness. “There was a new fragility to the movement that Pam and I developed together: gestures, broken wrists, subtle soft use of the hands,” Toogood described. The more postmodern use of hand gestures, largely known through the silky yet precise works of Trisha Brown, augmented Tanowitz’s dancing lexicon. “That space felt like the next change,” Toogood said, “It felt very emotional.”
Such emotionality was a continuation of a deeper exploration of nuanced expression. It moved beyond the pure formalism that had largely guided Tanowitz since graduate school at Sarah Lawrence College. Her mentor there was star Cunningham dancer Viola Farber Slayton, who is described as preferring “formal patterns and the combinations of steps” above all else (The New York Times).
The Spectators, while decidedly form-based, was one of Tanowitz’s earlier, more exposed dances. Created in 2013, it was Toogood’s first work rejoining Tanowitz after her five-year stint with the Cunningham company. Toogood’s newly acquired performance maturity illuminated the work in a striking way.
She began the dance like a saw cutting the New York Live Arts floor in half. Her straightforward gaze and fearless propulsions up and down the meridian of the stage exuded a strong confidence. “Pam used to tell me I was too much,” Toogood said of their initial works together in 2006. But upon her return, the relationship between the two had found new ground: Tanowitz now trusted Toogood’s own interpretation.
“It felt darker, more personal,” Toogood said of The Spectators. “I was a workhorse! I never left the stage.” The obsessive excavation of a singular location on stage echoed the tireless research inherent in dance making that both artists are familiar with.
Toogood and Tanowitz have worked diligently for years in the studio, together and separately. They are consistently engaged in dialogue around the history and future of dance. “No more walking,” Toogood remembers Tanowitz deciding during the creation of The Spectators. “It was an attempt to not be lazy. Every transition from then on was analyzed and purposeful.”
Within these formal boundaries, the closing duet between Toogood and fellow former Cunningham colleague Dylan Crossman reminded the audience of dance’s humanity. The once sharp, pattern-driven demarcation of space that began The Spectators was softened by the dancers’ gentle clasping of hands. Together, the two traveled the same line created by Toogood’s darting opening sequence. This time, their regard towards the audience felt like the intimate exchange of secrets. In a noticeable shift from formalized steps, Crossman carefully tucked a lost strand of hair behind Toogood’s ear.
Toogood has frequently supported the turning points in Tanowitz’s choreographic career. The 2017 Duke Performances commission, New Work for Goldberg Variations, showcased her behind-the-scenes contributions through the successful cohesion of the company.
As rehearsal director, Toogood is responsible for closing the gap between choreographer and dancer. She leads warm-ups and assures the rigorous technical training required to execute Tanowitz’s demanding dances. She serves as a soundboard for ideas and helps recall and reconstruct phrases dissected in the past. She identifies talent and poses necessary questions throughout the creative process.
Goldberg is a highly humanistic work of many individuals dancing in harmony. The exquisitely exacting choreography and unusual musicality is softened by the dancers’ gentle connections made on stage. Pianist Simone Dinnerstein, who plays the piano center stage, invited Tanowitz to make the work to Bach’s famous score together—a rare reversal of the usual dance-seeking-music direction of inspiration.
“They felt like a family,” said Joan Acocella (The New Yorker) of the highly praised premiere. The dancers, moving in conversation with each other and the music, gave “the experience of a family,” with the occasional disconnect and regrouping, “but always coming back to the true center, never leaving you behind.” Such honest connection is a testament to the bond created within the company.
It was with Goldberg that Tanowitz’s dance language emerged as idiosyncratically her own. The expressiveness of subtle gestures explored in Broken Story were taken further into playfully poetic arrangements. The excavation of space and rigor in movement established in The Spectators made the spirited dance feel infinite and tireless. More than observing people dancing, audiences began to witness snapshots into society through Tanowitz’s choreographic vision.
Toogood and Tanowitz continue to deepen their creative collaboration with a mindset towards experimentation and discovery. Now with the role of Artistic Associate, Toogood takes on even more responsibility offstage. Her longtime presence in the company has helped weave together an impressive body of work whose continued expansion is greater than any single project or performance. “There is no product,” Tanowitz says, “all we have is our progress.”
*THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN THROUGH A COMMISSION BY PAM TANOWITZ DANCE
Music, Form, and People who Dance: Pam Tanowitz’s Royal Ballet Debut
A woman in peach and a man in shades of blue teeter-totter in arabesques across the stage, each taking turns supporting the other. He holds her waist as she balances with her leg extended high á la seconde. She holds the impressive position herself and hops away. Later, she lays down and logrolls upstage, lounging on her side to watch the dance unfold. She is content with him, but also on her own.
Pam Tanowitz challenges the traditional relations inherent in classical ballet. She examines hierarchies, dependencies, and assumptions of legitimacy by questioning relationships: among dancers, choreographers, and audiences; between dance and music; and between dance and everyday life. She uses the very rules that hold norms in place to suggest new ways of expressing existence on stage.
Tanowitz proposes these new ways throughout Everyone Keeps Me, her Royal Ballet debut created for nine dancers. Set to music by Ted Hearne with lighting design by Clifton Taylor, it was commissioned as part of the Merce Cunningham centennial celebration in 2019. The work appeared after Frederic Ashton’s Monotones II, which was inspired by Cunningham’s Cross Currents, also on the program. Tanowitz’s singular choreographic voice clearly resonated amid two of Western dance’s most celebrated dancemakers.
In Monotones II, Ashton’s pure classicism accompanied by Eric Satie’s minimalist Gymnopédies reveals a dance of “unbroken poetic adagio” (New York Times). The 1965 work for one woman and two men dressed in identical white unitards and white head caps embodies the atmospheric score. The woman balances in precise precarity with one man steadying her waist as the other draws her leg high in second. She takes a breath before swooping through her splits, relying entirely on her partners to maneuver her torso around and back up. The dancers evolve through space like a billowing cloud, their waxing and waning informed by the whole, as dependent on each other as on the music.
Tanowitz often questions such codependent relationships between partners and music. Her choice to give independence to the ballerina with her leg extended to the side by having her hop away directly confronts Ashton’s traditional role delegations. Midway through Everyone Keeps Me, two men dance in a generous exchange of movement. One is lowered to a split on the floor as the music crescendos. Soon after, he takes his turn supporting the other to the same position, this time with no obvious relation to the music. They interplay between being the partner and being partnered, dancing with the music and dancing surrounded by it.
The notion of whole elements existing among each other is epitomized in Cunningham’s travelling trio Cross Currents. The work for two women and one man premiered in London in 1964 and received so much praise for “conquering conservatism” that the company’s European season was extended on the spot (New York Times). The Cunningham Trust describes the title of this radical dance as coming “from the way the dancers’ paths frequently intersected...where each dancer had their own, different rhythms, but they would all come together at the end of the phrase” (Cunningham Trust).
The piece begins with one dancer moving through space in a fast, spinning triplet. Simultaneously, another takes deliberate, far-reaching steps in a slower rhythm, while the third springs across the stage, seeming to change rhythms mid-flight. They are each compelled into motion by movement itself. For Cunningham, dance was more than musical illustration. Instead, sound was added after the dance was made as a textural device, allowing moments of harmony to happen by chance.
Tanowitz is greatly influenced by Cunningham, both through her MFA mentor Viola Farber, who was a Cunningham star and performed in the original cast of Cross Currents, and her company dancers, most of whom are steeped in Cunningham’s work. It comes as no surprise that Tanowitz was asked to contribute her voice to the Cunningham celebration. Yet her departures from the modernist remain clear. Where he insisted on dance’s autonomy from music, she chooses musical landmarks for moments of connection and exchange. Where he valued formalism over expression and context, she includes subtle personality and cunning references into her rigorous use of line and structure.
For Tanowitz, as dance is to music, so the dancers are to each other. Unlike Ashton’s ethereal ambiance and Cunningham’s objectivity, Tanowitz highlights the humanity of those dancing. “To just look at each other as people, that’s just as challenging as a triple pirouette, and it’s just as important in my work,” she says. In Everyone Keeps Me, each note and dancer is a whole entity participating in the same complex world.
It is with whom she engages directly in the studio that drives her dance making, rather than music or form leading the way. “It’s always going to be about the people in the room,” she says, “I offer them possibilities and they offer me possibilities back.” Such a person-centered process contextualizes her dances in the everyday, rendering her work relatable while maintaining a clear style and syntax. The woman lounging upstage could be any of us in casual coexistence with our peers.
Ashton’s dancers form a single unit. They appear magnetically drawn to each other, compelled by the music. In the opposite way, Cunningham’s atomistic dancers only overlap when their internal rhythms bring them together, compelled by movement. Tanowitz finds a new reality between these two older realms of dance. Her dancers consciously create community while dancing of their own free will. More than conduits of pure music or movement, they are people first, driven by the particular histories they each embody.
Dancer to dancer, dance to music, stage to everyday life: Tanowitz redefines these relationships throughout her work. All elements retain a bit of the other: they are independent yet permeable forces. Her choreographic weavings show the rewriting of rules set forth by her predecessors. She challenges the essentialism of musicality and form established by Ashton and Cunningham with a virtuosic complexity that opens a window into contemporary life.
*THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN THROUGH A COMMISSION BY PAM TANOWITZ DANCE
Pam Tanowitz’s Democratic Dances at the Vail Dance Festival
Pam Tanowitz is known for her spontaneity and novel use of space. Her seamless blending of varied movement styles through collaboration and juxtaposition offers a new poetic landscape. The uncanny familiarity of known movement made complex through intricate choreography conjures up unexpected emotions—humor, defiance, love, retreat, acceptance. Nothing is intrusively in your face. Rather, the subtle but strong rapport among dancers, the tender exactitude in which they describe each movement, bring you into a dialogue about art, time, space, energy, and dance itself.
Tanowitz first created work for Damian Woetzel’s Vail Dance Festival in 2015, made with then-rising stars Calvin Royal III of American Ballet Theatre and Joseph Gordon and Gretchen Smith of New York City Ballet. Day for Night for Vail, which was co-commissioned by New York City Center and accompanied by the quartet Brooklyn Rider, was a clever conversation through precise movement between music, dancers, and the audience. Quick side-eyed glances reminded the viewers that they were indeed the ones watching.
“I step here, we hold each other, I look at you in Row 37,” the dancers’ clear decision-making in Tanowitz’s choreography seemed to say, granting refreshing agency to subjects often objectified as literal objects of art. Tanowitz’s work highlights that rich humanity.
Tanowitz returned to the Rockies in 2017 with Entr’acte, a sharp, bright dance to Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw’s score for four dancers—Jared Angle of NYCB, Jeffrey Cirio now of English National Ballet, Royal, and Melissa Toogood, former Merce Cunningham dancer and Tanowitz’s rehearsal director and longtime company dancer.
That summer also saw an unexpected collaboration hatched in a car ride from the Denver International Airport to the creative incubator of the Vail Dance Festival. By chance, Tanowitz and former Miami City Ballet principal Patricia Delgado shared a shuttle on the way up the mountain and the two clicked. The encounter led to Solo for Patricia, a spur-of-the-moment creation that offered the recently retired ballerina renewed insight into herself as a mover and performer.
“What I love about Pam,” Delgado later recounted, “is that she brings out the strong, independent woman in me.” Delgado rediscovered herself by stripping away the performativity inherent in classical ballet, and instead found new freedom in simply dancing the dance that was made. “Our lives already have so many stories,” she said in describing the tempering of her dramatic expressiveness.
A celebration of the dancers in front of her—framed by a diligent examination of the dance makers who enriched their physical languages—gave Tanowitz’s latest work for Vail in 2019 its fullness. Flavors of George Balanchine’s architectural phrasing and Merce Cunningham’s risk-taking were presented in a purely Tanowitz register in One time more with feeling, her most intricate and expansive piece yet made for the Festival. The graphic-novel-like dance was made in collaboration with Shaw and included former Pacific Northwest Ballet principle Carla Körbes, NYCB soloist Miriam Miller, and corps dancer Preston Chamblee, as well as Toogood, Angle, and Royal.
Two separate scenes begin the dance. Miller in pointe shoes traces the perimeter of the stage while the other four dancers move in calm unison through the amphitheater’s partition between the lawn and the pavilion, down the aisle, and eventually onto the stage. Tanowitz’s rupture of the traditional use of the theater is not made merely to provoke. She awakens the audience to their own participation as onlookers by democratizing the use of the theater itself. Those in the lawn whose seating normally prevents them from such proximity are given priority, while those in the pavilion crane their necks to watch the dance’s departure.
The process of deconstructing hierarchy is a theme seen throughout Tanowitz’s work and echoes the ethos of the avant garde experimentalists who founded the Judson Dance Theater. No single aspect of a dance is more or less valuable. The music is important but does not dictate the work; the movements hold integrity, yet a highly technical classical jump is no more or less expressive than a swaying of the hips. Pointe shoes, sneakers, canvas shoes, and bare feet each say something different, but none holds a greater place than the others. From this leveled grounding, Tanowitz moves forward with her own language.
“I see myself in a continuum of history, not as an isolated artist,” Tanowitz says of her work. “I create work that incorporates history and asks questions of that rich history.”
One time more with feeling is an examination of the rules of dance. Tanowitz irreverently uses ballet dancers to question ballet itself—the rigid constraints of the arms, hips, and torso, the obsessive repetition of steps in search of impossible perfection, the jewelry box pedestal of “dance as woman,” as George Balanchine famously said—all are reviewed in a new light.
The duet between Körbes and Royal modernizes the traditionally antiquated narrative between the genders that is central to ballet. Tanowitz used the ballet textbook Pas de Deux: A Textbook on Partnering, to invert the typical male/female relationship. She took the exact technique described and choreographed the opposite. Instead of Royal taking Körbes’ waist to promenade her around himself, he leaves her standing solo on her own leg and walks around her. We are reminded that these dancers are two separate beings—at times attached, at times utterly alone.
“She wants you to be a person,” says Körbes. “That’s her only requirement. It tells me she cares about the people in front of her.” There is no archetype character being worshipped. Tanowitz presents two people faltering and sometimes succeeding at supporting each other.
Jared Angle, whose reputation as an expert partner at NYCB often supersedes him from dancing on his own, was given a dynamic solo as if to say, “Look here, I am not simply an accessory!” His dance ends sitting in a lawn chair at the back of the stage in watchful contemplation. Again, the audience is reminded of its own role as voyeur.
“Tanowitz gives the audience a different way to experience dance,” says Toogood. “How can you watch in a new way? What do we as the audience take for granted? Entrances and exits, for example, she’s purged that from her work. She never assumes one way of doing something.”
This meticulous examination of how things are and how they might be otherwise reverberates in the score created by Shaw. Similar to Tanowitz, Shaw asked each dancer the type of sound they wanted to hear when dancing, giving them agency in the creative process. A blending of the acoustic sounds of Johnny Gandelsman on violin alongside old wax recordings repeating the phrase “the artist has been censored” brought relevant history into the reality of our 21st-century world.
“I want this audience to hear sounds they don’t normally hear. I want them to become familiar with what they might be judgmental about or deem unimportant,” Shaw said when describing her decision to perform electronic music and recorded voice samples at a festival that more frequently hears acoustic music.
Shaw, who has created work for orchestras as well as rappers, uses a similar reconstruction approach, amplifying Tanowitz’s non-hierarchical framework as a starting point. Sampling Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake next to twinkling jewelry box sounds and an 808 electronic drum rhythm redistributes and questions the assumed significance of certain sound traditions over others.
With a deep grasp on the past, Tanowitz describes a new potential future. Democracy in movement and sound does not diminish the worth of established lineages of creative work. It instead offers a reevaluation of our assumed understandings of relationships between the watchers and those being watched, the legitimate and the illegitimate, and of linear and nonlinear ways of thought. Like the Vail Dance Festival itself, Tanowitz encourages encounters of disparate viewpoints, interactions that establish a new vision for and by the people of dance—the dancers, makers, and spectators alike.
*This essay was written through a commission by Pam Tanowitz Dance
NOW: Premieres 2019
Inspiration and collaboration come together in explosive new works
Now has always been the time for new works at the Vail Dance Festival. This summer’s roster of choreographers and composers restates the Festival’s commitment to innovation by encouraging these exceptional artists to take critical steps forward in their careers through fresh collaborations and explorations into new artistic territories. NOW: Premieres is the evening to witness the creative evolution.
The August 5 evening of world premieres features choreography by Artist-In-Residence and New York City Ballet Principal Lauren Lovette, New York City Ballet Principal Tiler Peck, modern choreographer Pam Tanowitz, tap-innovator Michelle Dorrance, and new music by Pulitzer-Prize-winning Festival Composer-In-Residence Caroline Shaw. The evening also features an encore performance of Alonzo King’s first Festival-commissioned work involving four LINES Ballet artists and four New York City Ballet artists dancing to a new score composed and performed by Jazz pioneer Jason Moran.
Having It All: Lauren Lovette
Lovette initially appeared at the Festival in 2012 for her first foray into soloist roles. The chance to step out of the corps de ballet and into the spotlight is a memory that burns brightly in the ballerina-slash-choreographer’s mind. Lovette describes the encouragement from Woetzel as a turning point that was “essential for my own artistry to be able to appear as my own entity.”
That first summer in the mountains empowered her to dive into developing her voice as a dancer and soon after as a choreographer. And the dance world is listening. Last winter, Lovette was awarded the Virginia B Toulmin Fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU and was commissioned by American Ballet Theatre to create a work for their 2018 fall gala.
Lovette is deeply invested in her developing career as a choreographer, and as profoundly involved in her dancing. “The truth is, I am a ballerina and I love to make movement on people. That’s just it.” Lovette affirms that the two artistic identities of dancer and choreographer flow from the same sources: “I am inspired and shaped personally by what my mind absorbs and digests throughout any creative process.”
It is with such love for multiplicity that Lovette synthesizes the world around her into movement.
Onwards and Upwards: Tiler Peck
Fellow New York City Ballet Principal Tiler Peck’s long-standing relationship with the Vail Dance Festival has proved key to the ballet superstar’s endless well of artistic potential. Guided by Woetzel, Peck has debuted roles in Vail from her earliest days at the Festival when she danced Twyla Tharp’s Sinatra Suite with Woetzel himself; she moved onward to explore repertory by titans Martha Graham, Jose Limon and Paul Taylor, and to take on important new roles including George Balanchine’s Duo Concertant and Jerome Robbins’ Afternoon of a Faun. Through it all, Peck has been a fearlessly musical artist. The New York Times summed up Peck’s Vail connection last year: “She’s a star at New York City Ballet, but each year at the Vail Dance Festival she stretches into new territory as a dancer.”
Such command of the stage seamlessly translates into her authority at the front of the studio. During the NOW: Premieres performance of last year’s Festival, Peck made her choreographic debut in which she performed with rising dancers of New York City Ballet – Roman Mejia and Christopher Grant.
The New York Times recounted the breakout work as “remarkably musical, seeming to grow from the score.” Impressive but not surprising, her first work accomplished “more than many mature choreographers have mastered.”
This summer again provides Peck the opportunity to step up as choreographer, who says that “now is the time to just go for it.”
More Than One: Michelle Dorrance
Michelle Dorrance is an artist for the 21st century: sophisticatedly sampling history while tenaciously stomping forward into the future. Dorrance, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, has helped bring tap as a purely American art form back into the country’s consciousness and serves as its most ardent ambassador abroad. She’s already enjoyed world tours, a three-part co-commission by the Vail Dance Festival and American Ballet Theatre, and been appointed as an inaugural Creative Associate at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City. And she’s not slowing down.
Dorrance is as much a dancer who makes music through movement as she is a musician who uses her body to produce sound. The New York Times declared, “Ms. Dorrance was in torrential form, a nonstop source of cascading rhythm.” She is lauded as “one of the most imaginative tap choreographers working today” (The New Yorker). Though she could very well appear as a one-woman band, the percussive tapper prefers plurality to singularity or sameness.
It is clear that Dorrance thrives off of the energy of others. Her ensemble works are exhilarating accomplishments of coexistence personified. Her first group piece created for the Festival involved an impressive amalgam of dancers from different traditions titled we seem to be more than one – for Dorrance, the whole is indeed always greater than the sum of its parts. If an ideal world model were to exist on stage, it is Dorrance whose heart and mind could create it. Only in Vail could a cast so expansive be present.
Talking in Dance: Pam Tanowitz
Modern choreographer Pam Tanowitz is quick-witted and rigorous. She redefines tradition through careful examination, subtly referencing those who came before her, yet never yielding to perceptions stuck in the past. Her recent work inspired by the poet T.S. Eliot’s sublime meditation on time and timelessness, Four Quartets, was celebrated as “the greatest creation of dance theater so far this century” (The New York Times).
“I see myself in a continuum of history, not as an isolated artist” Tanowitz said. “I create work that incorporates history and asks questions of that rich history.”
The complex weaving of deconstructed classical and modern movements renders Tanowitz’s work uncannily familiar while being brand-new. “Tanowitz’s choreography devises its own language, idiosyncratic yet entirely consistent” (Indyweek).
Tanowitz returns to Vail this summer to collaborate with Leonard Bernstein Composer-in-Residence Caroline Shaw. Tanowitz has created five works using Shaw’s scores since first hearing her dynamic, architectural compositions.
“I feel simpatico with her,” Tanowitz says of Shaw. “It’s personal, surprising, beautiful. It’s accessible in the best sense of the word.”
Curiosity to Creativity: Caroline Shaw
Leonard Bernstein Composer-in-Residence Caroline Shaw is insatiably curious. The Pulitzer-Prize winning musician pays no heed to the confining borders of genre. She is a vocalist, violinist, pianist, composer, and producer whose range of work is astounding. Shaw has composed for the Grammy Award-winning ensemble Roomful of Teeth, Renée Fleming and the LA Philharmonic, has produced for hip hop artists Kanye West and Nas as well as contributed to the records of alternative rockers The National and Arcade Fire, to name just few of her impressive projects.
For last summer’s NOW: Premieres performance, Shaw produced a song in collaboration with Memphis jooker Lil Buck and shaped a new work for the celebrated choreographer Justin Peck.
“With dancers, I love trying to think about music the way that they often do,” Shaw says in anticipation of her collaboration with Tanowitz for this summer’s evening of premieres.
“How does she think about movement and form, and how does she make decisions? If I could give her the tools to construct music, what would she come up with? How would she interact with musical modules and phrases and textures, and would it be similar to how she choreographs with dancers?”
With more questions than answers, Shaw taps into unexplored reservoirs of creativity.
2019 VAIL DANCE FESTIVAL MAGAZINE
Malpaso’s Creative Riches
Dancing from Havana to Vail
Malpaso Dance Company is Cuba’s most sought-after touring dance group. The acclaimed ensemble will make its Vail Dance Festival debut this summer. Founding Artistic Director Osnel Delgado named the company “Malpaso” or “misstep” in a cheeky response to the initial skepticism he received when he, Executive Director Fernando Sáez and dancer and Co-founder Daileidys Carrazana broke in 2012 from the revered national company Danza Contemporañea de Cuba. Since making its United States debut in 2014, the company has dazzled audiences all over the world.
The eleven virtuosic, versatile, and charming dancers show supple strength in their exquisite musical movements, building off of their extensive training in the Cuban contemporary dance technique “técnica cubana.” The technique was forged in 1959 in Havana as a coalescence of several movement identities that range from classical ballet to Martha Graham Technique to Afro-Cuban folkloric and social dances. The melding of these multiple techniques illustrates the myriad cultural identities that converge into cubanía or a collective sense of “Cuban-ness.”
Having roots in many movement traditions has allowed the company to tackle a wide range of exhilaratingly new works. For Vail, the company will debut with pieces created for them by acclaimed American choreographers Ronald K. Brown and Sonya Tayeh.
Brown, a Guggenheim Fellowship and Bessie Award recipient, was one of the first international choreographers to collaborate with Malpaso. He describes his own work as “telling stories, almost always of spiritual journeys,” and frequently of the African diaspora. Brown said of his collaboration with Malpaso: “I was trying to show them the connections we share,” he said, “and to introduce an idea of liberation.” He wanted to give them a way forward through looking back, as he had discovered in Africa and Cuba. “Why am I in love with Cuban folkloric dance?” he said. “Because without it, I’m brand new. And we know what happens to buildings that are brand new.”
Tayeh is also attuned to the necessity of a stable foundation. Martha Graham Dance Company Artistic Director Janet Eilber described the Emmy and Obie Award winner as “a kind of great granddaughter of the Graham style because the physicality describes the emotions. Sonya is part of our family tree.” Such historical grounding creates the foundation for what comes next in dance, and creates a new base for the artists of Malpaso.
Technically rigorous yet deeply expressive, culturally specific and universally meaningful, Malpaso promises an illuminating window into the contemporary creative richness spilling over the shores of Havana today.
Malpaso will perform at the Vilar Performing Arts Center on July 28.
2019 VAIL DANCE FESTIVAL MAGAZINE
Alonzo King and Jason Moran
Vivid, visceral collaboration
Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet awed Vail audiences last summer with dance that surpassed the simple melding of movement and music to become a visceral experience. King returns in 2019 to choreograph one of the Festival’s most ambitious collaborations yet: four LINES artists alongside four New York City Ballet artists will dance to a new score by pioneering jazz musician Jason Moran. A previous collaboration with Moran, Sand, was presented last summer to rave responses from Festival audiences.
For King, artistic collaboration is central, and he describes his works as, “for people. It’s an attempt to awaken anything that is sleeping in human beings because we are creatures of habit.”
More than a presentation of technical prowess— which his dancers keenly exhibit— King’s works extend into the realm of philosophy. “One of the wonders of art-making is that… it will make you feel connected once again to the largeness of the universe and the insignificance of our teeny little size in the bigger picture."
King’s collaborations highlight his trust in the interconnectedness of humanity. From Shaolin Monks to a Baroque orchestra, no genre of partnership, if met with sincerity and rigor, is out of the question. Jason Moran is equally unencumbered by the confines of form. The MacArthur Fellow’s creative process is based on one of the essential tenets of jazz music: the “set,” where musicians come together to engage in a collaborative process of improvisation, riffing off of one another to create the musical experience.
Such dialogue-based beginnings transfer into all potential artistic mediums. Moran has worked in the realms of multimedia art and theatrical installations, in addition to appearing on over thirty albums ranging from avant-garde jazz, blues, hip hop, classical music and film soundtracks. As the leader of his own trio, The Bandwagon, Moran has released eight studio albums to much critical acclaim. For Vail, Moran will perform solo.
Both King and Moran compose the past and future into works of art for the present. Their new collaborative work will be performed on two Festival programs, International Evenings of Dance II on August 3, and NOW: Premieres on August 5.
2019 VAIL DANCE FESTIVAL MAGAZINE
Martha Graham Dance Company
Trailblazing artistry, then and now
Martha Graham. The name is synonymous with modern dance in America, and as a trailblazer of culture itself. The legendary choreographer forged her own company and technique in 1928 in a Western artistic landscape that was dominated by classicism and an ethereal aesthetic. She sounded a mighty call of creative power that today echoes throughout the world and increases in its impact as it reaches new audiences and generations of dancers.
Graham’s work was rooted in raw emotionality and often in the American experiences of her time. Her sharp, angular and direct movements emerge from the body’s core, allowing her social and historical dramas to “embody the emotional jaggedness of life, both modern and eternal, and anything but neat,” said The New York Times in 2003. Her works marked a significant departure from the fairytale ballets familiar to audiences of the 20th century, and today represent a pinnacle of American artistic achievement.
Today, 27 years after Graham’s death at the age of 96, her Martha Graham Dance Company consistently reinvigorates her masterpieces through new interpretations and stagings, as they appear nationally and internationally to captive audiences. Building on Graham’s creative foundation, Artistic Director Janet Eilber maintains the company’s trailblazing spirit by commissioning vibrant new works from the world’s most daring contemporary choreographers. This summer, Vail audiences will experience both aspects of the Graham legacy: the enduring 1944 classic Appalachian Spring accompanied by the Breckenridge Festival Orchestra, new work by Bessie Award-winning choreographer Pam Tanowitz, and a collaborative new piece by acclaimed theater and dancemakers Maxine Doyle and Bobbi Jene Smith.
Appalachian Spring has been described as “quintessentially American” for its 19th century narrative of a Pennsylvanian newlywed couple building their first farmhouse together and for the bright, traveling score created by Pulitzer Prize winning American composer Aaron Copland. But what is “quintessentially American” goes beyond the promise of new beginnings. Just as Graham was unafraid to express the depths of human emotion, so too was she fearless in addressing challenging contemporary issues related to social, political, psychological and sexual themes. Created during and in response to World War II, Appalachian Spring was an affirmation of democratic values. In her original script for Copland, she spoke of ''a legend of American living'' that should ''by theatrical clarity, add up to a sense of place.''
Pam Tanowitz similarly creates dances in dialogue, though less explicitly in reference to social issues and more in tune to her artistic antecedents and the dancers she engages with directly in the studio. Tanowitz’s combination of wit, rigor, line and tenderness evoke master dance makers of the Graham lineage – Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown – through the weaving of movement, music and space. By contrast, Doyle and Smith are building more on the legacy of theater inherent in Graham. Their new work is built off of the myth of Demeter and Persephone, and harnesses an emotional movement language to tell a story, building a theatrical experience through dance.
It is fitting to have the Graham company back in Vail at the Ford Amphitheater as, in her youth, Mrs. Ford herself was a student of Graham. Her connection to the choreographer and the company remained throughout Mrs. Ford’s lifetime, and now Vail audiences will have the chance to continue that connection and experience one of the greatest dance companies in the world.
The Martha Graham Dance Company will perform on August 9 in a performance that will be a highlight of the 2019 season.
2019 Vail Dance Festival Magazine
Modern Stories
For classically trained ballet dancers, modern dance can be both risky and empowering
Dancers spring, spin, tilt and teeter across the stage in Scenario, Merce Cunningham’s 1997 creation with Commes des Garçons designer Kei Kawakubo. Cunningham’s signature powerful movement quality coupled with clever choreography at once amuses and astonishes. Ballet’s classical lines and body coordinations are flipped and twisted, and the dancers are neutral, extraordinary pedestrians moving in ways possible only through a highly technical practice.
Last summer, Vail audiences were treated to the unusual partnership between American Ballet Theatre’s Herman Cornejo and former Cunningham dancer Melissa Toogood in an excerpted duet from the iconic modern dance. For this year’s Festival, Toogood, who travels the country dancing and reviving Cunningham masterpieces, will restage a larger portion of Scenario involving several other duets featuring dancers from both ballet and modern backgrounds.
Cornejo’s boundless jumps are always exhilarating, but even more so when framed by the dramatic pauses and quirky steps characteristic of Cunningham’s work. His leaps explode from nowhere in the same unpredictable manner with which Toogood seems to carry herself across the stage in a single step. Dancing together, the two literally depend on each other to stay standing, precariously leaning back so far that if a single hand should slip, both would go tumbling.
This summer, Toogood, who travels the country dancing and reviving Cunningham masterpieces, will restage a larger portion of Scenario involving several other duets of dancers from both ballet and modern backgrounds.
“What I chose to stage [on Cornejo] was made for a dancer who was a huge risk-taker,” explains explains Toogood about for why she imagined Cornejo him excelling in the role. Contrary to the quest for perfection that drives classical ballet, the risk-taking central to Cunningham’s work involves accepting and embracing imperfections that arise. “To stumble, to potentially have a line not look perfect. It can be scary!” Toogood says. “But I’d rather fall over than take it safe.”
Allowing imperfection was new for Cornejo, who The New York Times has described as “virtuosic,” and “miraculous,” and “an impulsive force of nature”. He noted that imperfections make the individual, which in turn makes the dance, particularly when there is no story to explicitly portray. “I had to work to accept those imperfections, to be comfortable with them and to create art as a consequence of them.” This discovery allows him to approach the piece with a fresh perspective this summer.
“It’s the dancer who makes the work come across,” says Toogood. “Merce was very open to what each individual would bring to the material — he didn’t discriminate against movement.”
Scenario will be one of many of the modern dance works featured at the Festival this summer. Pam Tanowitz— who has been described as “one of the most formally brilliant choreographers around” (The New York Times)— will present her newest work, Blueprint, to the music of Leonard Bernstein Composer-in-Residence Caroline Shaw. The piece will feature former Miami City Ballet principal Patricia Delgado alongside two Juilliard-trained modern dancers, Jason Collins and Victor Lozano.
Delgado and Tanowitz first worked together last summer after sharing a car ride from Denver to Vail. Sensing strong artistic chemistry, Tanowitz spontaneously asked Artistic Director Damian Woetzel if she could create a solo piece for Delgado. Woetzel agreed and the result was a witty, upbeat and musical creation in which Delgado was praised for being “elegant, wholly unpredictable, commandingly playful” (The New York Times).
“What I love about Pam,” says Delgado, “is that she brings out a strong and independent woman in me in her work.” Tanowitz’s process stems from discovery and does not rely on a constructed character to carry the dancer or the audience away. Delgado “had to work at stripping away the ballerina way of carrying a posture, of always performing,” in order to be purely herself on stage.
“Our lives already have so many stories!” Delgado exclaims as she recounts the challenge of tempering back her dramatic expressiveness. “Modern dance can be like meditation. It can inspire clarity and be transcendent because it’s not driven by beginning, middle and end.” Such clarity invites the audience to bring their own stories and interpretations.
Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener, who both danced alongside Toogood in the Cunningham company, layer many narratives upon complicated and abstract personal stories. The pair last performed their cheeky duet Desire Liar at the Festival in 2016. “We were trying to portray that we are two men in a romantic relationship as collaborators,” Riener says, “and the interesting tensions and humor that come out of that.”
Through a lens of abstraction, the modern choreographers embed stories within their work, allowing for audiences to experience the “multifaceted, complex, ambiguous portrayal of how we live in the world.”
Whether stripped away or radically layered, modern dance encourages letting go of expectations—there is no single correct interpretation. Instead, it offers audiences and dancers alike the freeing experience of reveling in the art of individuality.
2018 VAIL DANCE FESTIVAL MAGAZINE
NOW: Premieres 2018
The debut of these commissioned works showcases a variety of choreographers, embodying the heart and soul of the Festival
New works and collaboration characterize the ethos of the Vail Dance Festival. Through Artistic Director Damian Woetzel’s thoughtful casting and deep well of trust, spontaneous genius springs from the cross-pollination of artists otherwise divided. The Vail Valley is fertile ground, and NOW: Premieres is the evening to experience the newest results of this creative incubator.
Last year’s NOW program celebrated women choreographers in recognition of the need for fostering creative potential without barriers. In continuation of the Festival’s mission to nourish new voices and radically disrupt the status quo, this year, six choreographers— the majority of whom are women— will create works ranging from neoclassical and contemporary ballet to tap and modern dance. Pulitzer Prize-winning Composer-in-Residence Caroline Shaw and Gabriela Lena Frank, named one of the 35 most significant women composers in history by the Washington Post, will compose new scores commissioned by the Festival.
Tiler Peck: The Collaborator
Tiler Peck is a dancer whose speed and finesse stretch time; her meticulous musicality melds movement into sound. Peck has been described by The New York Times has described Peck as a “paragon” of dance, and Vail as where the “prima-ballerina’s ever-increasing versatility has been most evident.” Fittingly, Vail will again provide the backdrop for Peck to take her next artistic step into the role of choreographer.
“Damian has always pushed me out of my comfort zone as a dancer and individual,” says Peck. “If it wasn’t for him, I am not sure I would have taken the leap.”
Peck dabbled in choreography as a young girl, and has created professional works in collaboration with others, such as Time It Was with Bill Irwin created for the 2015 Festival. For her first true solo choreographic work, Peck said she will consider herself to be in collaboration with her dancers.
The ballet world often maintains a strict separation between choreographer and dancer. Peck’s consideration of her dancers as collaborators welcomes a collective puzzle-making process that encourages dancers to become active participants in the creative process. “Sometimes the steps you make on yourself don’t end up looking the same on someone else,” Peck says, “so you have to see what is in front of you and be flexible.”
Lauren Lovette: The Nonconformist
As a dancer, Lauren Lovette has been described as a free spirit. In choreography, the New York City Ballet principal dancer likewise proves herself a nonconformist, naturally progressing ballet forward to better fit into the 21st century.
Lovette makes work with a message. In last year’s NOW program, she choreographed a ballet for four women, including a pas de deux on Patricia Delgado and herself, featuring spoken word by the genderqueer Boulder-based poet Andrea Gibson. “I feel like we fell in love with each other onstage,” Lovette told Dance Magazine of the untraditional partnership.
Most recently, Lovette created a lush pas de deux for two men in Not Our Fate, her second major work for New York City Ballet. The dance was described by The New York Times as “startling and wonderful…a tender, athletic display of desire.” Lovette, who describes herself as being “in a constant flow of information, desire, emotion, and connection with people,” draws inspiration from the powerful personal experiences that move her.
Lovette’s intuitive approach to dance-making renders her work radically relevant without seeming preachy or put on. She simply senses her world— our world—and synthesizes it through movement and music to comment on issues relating to gender and sexuality, race, and sexual harassment. “I want to let out a lot of things that have happened that aren’t necessarily sparkly,” she says, “I don’t want to hide the struggle.”
Claudia Schreier: The Hybridizer
Claudia Schreier is an independent neoclassical choreographer whose burgeoning career climbs skyward. Schreier’s works are free from narrative, allowing for pure interpretation and nuanced expressiveness. This summer will mark Schreier’s third ballet for the Festival, which has kindled her career since she began as an intern ten twelve years ago, during Woetzel’s first year as Artistic Director.
Schreier dives into rhythmically charged music to create ballets that synthesize classical ballet with a distinctively grounded and spiraling style, an impulse that takes on deeper meaning for her latest NOW premiere. She will choreograph a duet for two dancers of Ballet Hispánico, a company that intimately involves music as a means of expressing the varied richness of Latino culture and identity. The work will co-premiere alongside a new score by celebrated composer Gabriela Lena Frank, who has been described as “something of a musical anthropologist.” Frank draws upon her multicultural heritage— she is of Peruvian, Chinese and Lithuanian Jewish descent— mining from traditional Latin American idioms to create hybridized forms for the 21st century.
Frank’s reference to a “genetic memory of culture” as responsible for Peruvian music “sifting” through her compositions resonates powerfully with Schreier, who is of Jamaican and Jewish descent. Schreier’s impulse to create dynamically layered works infused with undulations and twists is fueled in part, she says, “by the exuberance of the Jamaican spirit” that she inherited from her mother. “My choreography is rooted in the cleanliness and rigor of classical ballet technique,” Schreier says, “but I have a visceral response to music that moves me in less traditional ways and makes me want to dance with abandon.”
Michelle Dorrance: The Choreography Chemist
In last summer’s NOW: Premieres program, tap heroine Michelle Dorrance showed the symbiotic benefits of creative conspiring in her premiere of we seem to be more than one. As Choreographer-in-Residence, Dorrance was given free reign to let her wild imagination run and merged the Festival’s myriad styles—including ballet, contemporary, tap, modern, flamenco, and even vaudeville— together. The artistic alchemy confirmed Dorrance’s remarkable ability to coalesce detailed rhythmic and spatial patterns regardless of the movement language.
The accomplishment, witnessed only once in Vail, lead to the co-commissioning of three new works premieres by the Festival and American Ballet Theatre this year: a small gala work to premiere at ABT’s annual spring season at the Met, a group piece in Vail, and a final, larger-scale work for the Company’s fall season in New York.
“The gala piece will be a shorter work, but a foundation for what happens in Vail, which in turn could be a foundation for what happens in the fall,” Dorrance told The New York Times. “But in Vail, the range of the dancers’ styles and the collaborative nature of the Festival means that crazy things happen, and there are likely to be elements that might just stay in Vail.”
Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener: The Shape Shifters
Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener, former members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, return to Vail this summer to create a new work on a cast of modern and ballet dancers, including Lovette. Such interdisciplinary work is nothing new for the duo, who are intrigued by multiplicity. In art and in life, the pair work to incorporate the particularities of the individuals and spaces they find themselves working with and within.
“It’s exciting that we’ll be working with Lauren [Lovette],” the pair says of their collaborative artistic process. “She is a woman making ballet, which is so rare; it’ll be interesting to have that potential perspective in our work.”
While the pair’s work may at first seem purely abstract, it is, in fact, deeply rooted in experiences of the lived world. “Our work is actually very political, but in a frame of abstraction,” Mitchell explains. “We’re constantly engaging in what it means to be a human, the ambiguities, the constant shifting, and how art can activate and change value systems around definitions of beauty. We aren’t neutral.”
Now: Premieres will take place on Monday, August 6th at the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater.
2018 VAIL DANCE FESTIVAL MAGAZINE
Catching Up with Misty Copeland
Since first joining us in Vail in 2011, the world has watched Misty Copeland soar with grace and dignity, all while maintaining a commitment to opening doors and inspiring others to excel. In addition to her performances with American Ballet Theatre and as a guest artist around the world, Copeland recently released a book on health, Ballerina Body, launched a dancewear line, and co-curated the Kennedy Center dance program, Ballet Across America. We checked in with Copeland to hear about her artistry, inspirations, and what she’s looking forward to this summer.
Sarah Silverblatt-Buser: Since your first time at the Festival, you’ve done so much to push the dance world forward, so I was hoping to hear from you as, first and foremost, a dancer and an artist. What do you love about dancing and why?
MC: Having an opportunity to do something that I haven’t been given an opportunity to do for most of my career is really freeing. I like being able to do things like Romeo & Juliet and Swan Lake where I can be extremely expressive and individual in my approach and artistry, and really become a character.
SSB: Are there any composers or musicians you are especially moved or inspired by?
I grew up with soul and R&B and hip hop, and I feel like when I’m not on stage, that’s still so much a part of what motivates me, what kind of calms me down before I go onstage... and really, I think, influences the way I perform as a ballerina.
SSB: I’m curious how our lives offstage influence the art we make on stage. Will you speak a bit more on that?
MC: Absolutely. I feel like when I started working with Prince -- when I met him, his presence, his belief in me – and then watching him perform and rehearse, has had such a huge impact on me as a dancer and as a ballerina. It opened my eyes to what’s possible and to not being afraid of taking chances and… it’s interesting that a rock star would do that for me.
SSB: When you speak of taking chances, what does that mean for you?
MC: When I think of myself and taking chances, it’s about letting myself go, being so completely immersed in the moment and present.
SSB: And now that you’re returning to Vail, is there anyone or anything you’re looking forward to?
MC: I always have a really good time with the dancers from other companies… Damian [Woetzel] just has such an open mind and heart and is really open to bringing in people and giving them opportunities to grow and be seen as the dancer that they are capable of being.
2017 VAIL DANCE FESTIVAL MAGAZINE
Vail Dance Festival: ReMix NYC
New York gets a taste of Vail’s adventurous spirit
Beneath the Moorish, mosaicked ceilings of New York City Center, East Coasters attending Vail Dance Festival: ReMix NYC experienced the exceptional selections of dance and music that have come to define summers in Vail. Year-round Manhattanites enjoyr stellar dance performances in a city that brings the best the world has to offer to the stage and boasts its own world-class companies. But the first days of November left even the most seasoned dance enthusiasts swept up by the expansive artistic vision to which Vail dance-goers are accustomed.
“Action-packed, stylistically eclectic and with deluxe casting,” praised The New York Times chief dance critic Alastair Macaulay of the thoughtfully constructed programs. In his 2016 year-end dance review, the critic singled out Sara Mearns’ ReMix performance of Alexie Ratmansky’s Fandago, stating “we’re lucky to live in times that produce creations and performances of this ilk.”
Like the Festival in Vail, each night was as dynamic as it was exceptional, with a repertory built off of 10 years of programming under the artistic direction of Damian Woetzel.
“I found it particularly exciting to see the music and dance come together in the historic space at City Center,” reflected Woetzel. “It was thrilling to premiere pieces created in Vail, but unseen in New York, and then on the same program to present Balanchine’s 1928 Apollo on the stage where New York City Ballet performed it in the 1950s.”
Apollo was presented in its seldom-seen original version, depicting the birth of the god, and was made complete with Kurt Crowley, Music Director of Broadway’s Hamilton and the Festival’s first Music Director, leading a full orchestra in Stravinsky’s invigorating score.
Live music added extra energy to an already dazzling lineup of dancers. Yo-Yo Ma, who first accompanied Lil Buck playing Camille Saint-Saens’s The Swan in a now-viral video, reunited with the jooker for a Jookin’ Jam Session, and was joined by a collection of musicians, including members of the Silk Road Ensemble, the Catalyst Quartet, and Kate Davis.
Witnessing partnerships first cultivated in Vail was another highlight for New York audiences. Among many, one remarkable moment was the reuniting of Ron “Prime Tyme” Myles and Fang-Yi Sheu, whose exquisite Anywhere on this Road exemplifies the adventurous, collaborative spirit that is central to the Festival’s identity.
When asked if audiences can look forward to new iterations of Vail Dance Festival: ReMix NYC, Woetzel hinted that the happening was “designed and even titled with the anticipation of taking this to other cities.”
2017 VAIL DANCE FESTIVAL MAGAZINE
Modern in the Mountains
Modern dance thrives in the Vail Valley each summer, where fresh forms mingle with classical traditions. The Rockies are a testament to the weathering forces that have sculpted them over the years—and like the mountains, dancing bodies archive the past as present.
American modern dance originated in the late 19th century with Isadora Duncan’s Ancient Greek-inspired “free dances” and the Ancient Egyptian and Indian-inspired movements of Ruth St. Denis. Martha Graham later created the first American modern dance technique and company, laying the groundwork for many luminaries to follow. More than merely reacting to ballet, these contemporary artists explored new ways of living in and responding to the world they inhabited.
The Vail International Dance Festival maintains a commitment to both the classical and contemporary. Choreographers and dancers fluent in their own movement languages are invited to collaborate in unlikely partnerships, nurturing new relationships and perspectives. From Shantala Shivalingappa’s descriptive Kuchipudi—a style of Indian classical dance—to Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener’s boundless explorations into abstraction, the Festival programming encourages similarities to shine by preserving the beauty of difference. Though not all Festival choreographers and dancers collaborate directly, sharing studio space and programs such as NOW: Premiers offers artists the opportunity to explore where their embodied biographies might overlap.
The use of the body as an artistic tool cuts across disparate contexts, content and textures—be it Merce Cunningham’s avoidance of narrative and representation, Paul Taylor’s athleticism and meticulous musicality, or Trisha Brown’s attention to pedestrian gestures. Collaboration and juxtaposition enliven these histories, revealing the dance DNA that links the artists both to each other and to their antecedents.
This year, the Festival welcomes back Paul Taylor, who is frequently cited as one of the greatest living choreographers working today. Taylor has ventured into new artistic ground since 2013, his company’s last appearance in Vail. This past March, the Taylor company performed two commissions by outside choreographers, Doug Elkins and previous Festival choreographer Larry Keigwin, adding new influences to the company’s development. “Mr. Taylor has exemplified modern dance,” says Michael Trusnovec, the most senior member of the company. A true paragon of dance innovation, it is fitting for Mr. Taylor to welcome new choreographic voices.
The company’s comprehensive repertoire, fueled by Mr. Taylor’s encompassing musical interests, has established the troupe as foundational to American modern dance. Such abiding curiosity and creativity have allowed the company to progress in tandem with the shifting dance landscape.
“We are discovering and stretching the meaning of the word ‘Modern’ because it continues to evolve,” Trusnovec explains, noting the sometimes “stuffy” association some have with the term. He suggests that, to combat this, dance not be rigidly parsed out into various eras and categories. Trusnovec’s love for all iterations of the art form is palpable: “With so much touring, the Vail Festival is definitely a highlight,” he says, “I admire a lot of these other artists. It’s impressive how intelligent the [programming] choices are. It’s like a laboratory for creation.”
Genre Clashing
Dance alchemy is a defining characteristic of the Festival, where Artistic Director Damian Woetzel’s commissions often result in revealing chemistry. Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener, who first began working together as dancers in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, are inspired by the challenge of creating work across boundaries. Building upon their 2015 Festival debut, this summer the duo will create work on ballet dancers to a predetermined piece of music. Both elements are unusual for the choreographers. Typically, the two create on themselves or with other modern-trained dancers, and only add music as a texture after already establishing movement.
Investigating the clashing of genres, mediums and ideas is integral to their process, explain Mitchell and Riener in between performances at the Museo Jumex, a contemporary art museum in Mexico City. “The tension between the stylistic differences of the ballet and contemporary dancers” Mitchell says, “will certainly shape the content of what we’re making, which is exciting for us.” Riener agrees, adding that finding “common ground” among contrasting dance languages is an enlightening experience. Much of the pair’s work focuses on the “deeply honest and really individual self.” Such self-awareness, Riener explains, relies on the dancers’ access to their own physical and intellectual histories. It is in this abstract realm where unexpected connections are made.
Another former Cunningham dancer, Melissa Toogood, made her Festival debut last summer as well, dancing alongside Mitchell and Riener in addition to assisting choreographer Pam Tanowitz. Toogood will again be joining the duo, adding her bold yet sensitive style to the mix. Toogood was recently named a Dance Magazine “25 to Watch” and calls herself an interpreter of all expressions of dance, from the abstract to the theatrical. When asked how she is able to bridge the many different worlds of her freelance career, Toogood describes Cunningham Technique classes as her anchor. Her consistent connection to a specific method is crucial to staying grounded while experimenting with new forms.
Shantala Shivalingappa similarly relies on a strong connection to her particular dance language when creating contemporary works. She admires the Festival for its celebration of multiple genres, and is excited to rejoin VIDF’s vibrant and welcoming atmosphere. Shivalingappa has a robust history of collaboration, having worked with artists including the French ballet choreographer Maurice Béjart and the groundbreaking postmodernist Pina Bausch. In 2014, Shivalingappa worked with Lil Buck, a Festival regular, and will likely collaborate with the Memphis Jookin’ innovator again this summer.
Shivalingappa’s dance vocabulary of Kuchipudi dates back over 2,000 years and is a marriage between pure rhythmic movement and dramatic narrations. Shivalingappa credits her mastery of Kuchipudi with enabling her to interpret unfamiliar dance and music genres. She is fascinated by the complexities that arise through the deep study of a codified technique, mentioning the similarities between Lil Buck’s incredible precision and her discrete hand movements or mudras.
But Shivalingappa is drawn to the humanity of the dancer even more than superb technique. “Something about the inner approach is the same,” she says. “When you come through the language of dance and music and rhythm and shared energy, you realize we can all be connected in some way.”
Jodi Melnick, whose Festival debut was in 2012, enticingly expresses her own inner world. Melnick is a supremely intelligent dancer and possesses an innate ability to synthesize multiple levels of movement knowledge. Also a highly regarded teacher, her classes focus on awakening the body from the inside out by using imagery that draws awareness to each element of the body and how they all connect.
One of Melnick’s most influential collaborators was Trisha Brown, whose work focuses on the sequential nature of movements more than a singular movement or shape. Melnick’s choreography, while decidedly her own, echoes Brown’s process. She has been described by The New Yorker as mercurial, “like water made human,” simultaneously expressing vulnerability and strength.
While a work of modern dance may not move mountains, it certainly does chisel an artistic landscape. Balancing on the precipice of the past and present, this summer’s contemporary choreographers tenaciously carve space into the future.