DanceAspen’s winter program will present works by some of its own dancers alongside those of established choreographers like Penny Saunders, Yin Yue and Sebastian Kloborg at the Wheeler Opera House this Friday and Saturday.
At a recent rehearsal for the program, the heavy breathing of the performers matched the emotional weight of their movement as they embraced, then pulled apart, ebbing and flowing through a narrative of love and loss.
Choreographer Penny Saunders said in a Zoom interview that she developed the piece to help process her own experience as she loses a family member to dementia.
The movements of the dancers represent “certain ruts” that “they can’t get out of,” but there’s also a “redeeming duet at the end that feels a little bit like a long love affair,” and a “final goodbye,” Saunders said.
Blake Krapels and Madeleine Scott were the dancers rehearsing last week. They’re also choreographers who, along with fellow company member Matthew Gilmore, have developed their own compositions for the winter program this weekend.
Saunders said that choreography experience among the dancers makes a difference as she develops her own work, titled “In Mind.”
“The room tends to be bubbling, you know, with ideas,” she said. It helps that all parties are routinely engaged in the creative process, according to Saunders.
“The process of a creation is very specific and very vulnerable, for everyone involved,” she said. “And so the more you do it, the better you are at it.”
Krapels agrees.
“I think creatively, choreographing and dancing, they go hand in hand,” Krapels said after rehearsal last week. “I think they just elevate each other and they build each other up, and the more you can practice choreography, the better your dancing will be.”
Krapels choreographed his piece, titled “Where We Once Were,” for himself, Gilmore and DanceAspen artist Sammy Altenau. It’s inspired by the fourth movement in Georgy Sviridov’s “Snowstorm” suite, titled “Romance,” and was originally developed for Dance Aspen’s pop-up performances earlier this season.
Krapels says the opportunity to choreograph an entire piece for a company where he’s also a dancer isn’t always the norm at other dance companies.
“A lot of times the dancers create for smaller segments of shows, but here, I'm presenting my work alongside Yin Yue, Penny Saunders, Sebastian Kloborg — really incredible choreographers that I've looked up to,” he said. “To just know that my work is going to be standing next to their work is really humbling, and I'm thankful that the opportunity was given to me.”
Kloborg reinterpreted a piece he first created six years ago for the English National Ballet to suit contemporary attitudes and work for this weekend’s shows. He said in a Zoom interview that the piece, titled “Flight Mode,” is a darker, deeper variation on a work he originally conceived as a “spoof.”
Kloborg also appreciates the collaborative relationship between dancer and choreographer — after all, he’s worked as both, too.
“I think that that is really the gift, even though our careers are extremely short,” Kloborg said. “I think the gift is that we get to, to really work with a choreographer and sort of have a say in the work because it is our bodies that are the tool.”
But for emerging talents, could working alongside their dream choreographers create pressures of comparison?
Krapels doesn’t think so.
“All art is subjective, and I think as long as the audience reacts to it, I think that's the main objective that I have when I'm creating, is to make the audience feel something, think about something,” he said. “They could hate it, they could love it, but as long as they react and respond, then I think I've succeeded in what I wanted to do.”
Choreographer Yue Yin, who is presenting a piece titled “Ever After” at the show, said she too wants the audience to “feel something.”
“You absorb, and then you feel there is a spark of inspiration, maybe, and then some electricity running through your body,” she said, “like there's some sort of emotional energy, some, maybe, small part of the dance, here, there will touch different parts of your brain, your heart, your soul.”
The performances begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday at the Wheeler.
