AUSTIN360 COVER

Big Range Dance Festival lassos indie modern dance

Throwing dancemakers, and the audience, a challenge keeps festival percolating

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER
Thursday, June 04, 2009

It's not an automatic entertainment draw. And yet in Austin, a creative community of independent dancemakers not only persists, it grows and it continues to draw an audience.

Beginning this weekend the Big Range Dance Festival will gather many of Austin's busiest creators - as well as indie choreographers from around the country - to showcase their short dance works.

Organized by Ellen Bartel, Big Range is now in its second year in its current form, though for three years Bartel staged a similar festival every September. Bartel roughly modeled Big Range after a festival of the same name in Houston, but otherwise just used the benefit of her own 15 years of experience in Austin's art community to create a compact two-weekend festival in early summer just outside the usual September to May arts season.

'The consistency, the compactness, is important for both the audience and the artists,' Bartel says of Big Range.

Bartel set the bar high for those involved with Big Range. All the dances that are presented are new - no recycling material. In addition to Austin modern dancemakers - including Ariel Dance Theater, Chaddick Dance Theatre and Verge Dance Company - Big Range has choreographers and dance companies from Dallas, San Antonio and Bryan along with companies such as Brooklyn's Jamal Jackson Dance Company and Danah Bellah Danceworks from Virginia.

Bartel has also expanded the definition of what modern dance can include. On the festival docket again this year is Schave & Reilly, the husband-and-wife vaudeville-like physical comedic duo.

To up the ante for the choreographers - and the audience - even further, Bartel created a unique challenge for the festival. She commissioned composers Laura Phelan and Austin Schell to each write a new piece of music six to eight minutes in length. Earlier this spring, three choreographers were given Phelan's 'Swings and Arrows' and another three were given Schell's 'Oblivion.' Each dancemaker had to create a new work and all will be presented together on a single evening.

And there's one more challenge in Big Range. For one program, six dancers will be asked to improvise on the spot while musician Adam Sultan unwinds his own rock-inspired musical improvisation.

'I like the idea of pushing,' Bartels says. 'The goal is to keep the indie modern dance scene here vibrant.'

For many, Bartel, a New York native, is the fearless leader of Austin's indie dance scene - a woman who not only stepped into a vacuum and created a community but keeps that community together by continually raising the bar. Her annual 'Dance Carousel,' held as part of the Frontera Fest performance festival, gives 10 choreographers the opportunity to create four one-minute dances. The 40 one-minute dances are then presented in rapid succession, a kind of modern dance performance blitzkrieg.

'Better work gets created if there's a challenge,' says Bartel, who considers her own company, Spank Dance, as much a purveyor of live visual sculpture as dance. 'And we need more edge to what's created here in Austin.'

That kind of pushing wins Bartel fans.

'Ellen has the unusual desire to spend time, not only on her own work, but on developing the dance community in Austin,' says Sharon Marroquin, three-time winner of the Austin Critics' Table Award for Outstanding Choreographer. 'Ellen saw a need and instead of just complaining about it, she decided to do something about it. I respect her immensely and am thankful for her initiative.'

Bartel's own contribution to Big Range is a short dance called 'Fancy.' She drew inspiration from a disparate combination of Victorian decadence and punk rock. Dancers will don towering white wigs and hoop skirts and the music will be a charging rock score. Then again, maybe it's not such a disparate combination, at least not for Bartel.

'I like the challenge of making things fit together,' she says.

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699

Big Range Dance Festival

Where: Austin Ventures Studio Theater, 501 W. Third St.

How much: $12 per show, $30 festival pass, $10 groups of 5 or more, $6 children/senior

Info: www.bigrangedance.org

Program A - Choreographer Showcase

Danah Bella Danceworks (Virginia), ChinaCat Productions (San Antonio), ABDC (Bryan) and from Austin, Verge Dance Company, Mysti Jace Pride, Lorn MacDonald/Alain Le Razer, Leah Smiley Tubbs.

8 p.m. Friday and Saturday

Program B - Composer Challenge

Austin Schell's 'Oblivion' - San Antonio's Jayne King and from Austin, Surface Tension Dance Group and Shawn Nasralla

Laura Phelan's 'Swings and Arrows' - Jazz Ballet Co., Schave & Reilly, Undertow Dance Theatre

8 p.m. June 11 and 12

Program C - Music/Movement Improvisation

Jennifer Micallef, Chell Garcia Trias, Rashana Smith, Mari Akita, Emily Babb, Kirsche Dickson

9:30 p.m. June 11 and 12

Program D - Choreographer showcase

Dallas's M2DT, Brooklyn's Jamal Jackson Dance Company and from Austin Chaddick Dance Theater, Ariel Dance Theatre, Sharon Marroquin and Ellen Bartel

8 p.m. June 13, 6 p.m. June 14

One, two, cha-cha-cha, three, four, ha-ha-ha

Schave & Reilly is the Austin-based husband and wife team of Ben Schave and Caitlin Reilly who have been clowning together since they met in 1997 at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. They perform locally at clubs and festivals and travel nationally to theater and fringe festivals.

Austin360: How do you think the type of performance and movement you do fits in with a modern dance festival?

Caitlin Reilly: Silent clowning and narrative dance are the same. We must choreograph all of our movement, pay attention to timing and spacial relationship. Like dance, not very much is left to chance especially since much of the comedy depends on the timing of the movement and some of that movement is dangerous and difficult. And, also like dance, we are communicating emotions with our bodies in a highly stylized, wordless manner. Both are spectacles that do what the audience cannot, would not, or did not think to do.

What made you step up to the Composer Challenge and are you trying something different with your work for it?

(It's) truly a challenge because we usually use music to highlight and support what we do. The music comes later in the process. It was interesting to take a piece of music - in this case Laura Phelan's 'Swings and Arrows' - and create with it. The music is very spacious and rhythmic, causing us to think of a grand waiting room for travelers, such as is in Grand Central Station or Penn Station. Because we work in a partnership, we often start with the question, 'what would happen to these two clowns if ...?' In this case the question was, what would happen if the clowns met in the train station after a horrible tragedy like being mugged?

We liked the idea of taking this very mellow, occasionally dark music and weaving an absurd story around it. It is difficult to work within the parameters that have been laid out by the composer. But it is incredibly interesting. For us, it changes how the clown work is perceived. We both thought of an ending that the music did not support, so we had to chose a relationship with the music: to work with it, or exactly against it. Either way, stylized techniques like mime and slapstick, which we use heavily, are easily accepted by a dance audience. So it makes sense for us to tell an absurd story about clowns who meet not fully clothed, get drunk in a station bar and find an abandoned suitcase which they must handle very, very carefully.

Austin dance community is in step with June

Is June dance month in Austin? Not officially, but there is a convergence of eclectic dance performances this month.

Friday

'The Spirt of Flamenco.' Three generations of the musical Roldán family led by paterfamilias José María Roldán (aka Pepe of Seville), along with a group of dancers, present authentic Spanish flamenco guitar music, singing and dance. 9 p.m. Esquina Tango, 209 Pedernales St. $10. www.esquinatango

austin.com.

Wednesday and Thursday

'Ballet Under the Stars With Elvis & The Beatles.' Austin Metamorphosis Dance Ensemble. 8:30 p.m. Sheffield Hillside Theater, Zilker Park. Free. www.amde.org.

June 13

'Soul to Sole.' Austin's Tapestry Dance Company once again hosts its annual tap dance festival that gathers major international talent for classes and two show-stopping performances. Among the tap legends performing are Arthur Duncan, whose 50-year career includes sharing the stage with the likes of Red Skelton, Sammy Davis Jr., Gregory Hines, Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis. Also on the bill is Dianne Walker dubbed the 'Ella Fitzgerald of Tap Dance.' 8 p.m. June 13. Rollins Studio Theater, Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive. $35. www.tapestry.org.

June 18-20

'KDH Dance Company: Celebrating 10 Years.' Athleticism, expression, wit and charm have characterized the modern dance presented by Kathy Dunn Hamrick and her company. In celebration of the organization's 10th anniversary, the company resurrects its greatest hits and offers some new work as well. 8 p.m. June 18-20. AustinVentures Studio Theater, 501 W. Third St. $12-$15. www.kdhdance.com.

June 19-28

'Impermanence.' Returning to the pair of downtown buildings that have served as her dancescape before, aerial choreographer Sally Jacques creates a new site-specific dance that uses the 150-foot federal building as a stage. Jacques' aerial spectacles feature dancers and rappellers in a Cirque du Soleil-like in a dramatic visually intense theatrical event. 9:15 p.m. Fridays-Sundays, June 19-28. J.J. Pickle Federal Building, 300 E. Eighth St. $20 ($15 students and seniors). www.bluelapislight.org.

June 20 and 21

'The Bomba & Plena of Mayaguez.' Austin's Puerto Rican Folkloric Dance presents a live dance and music spectacular with Los Tambores de Felix Alduen direct from Puerto Rico. 8 p.m. June 20, 2 p.m. June 21. The Theatre at Reagan High, 7104 Berkman Drive. $12 -$15 door, ($5 children 12 & under. www.prfdance.org.

June 27

'Land of the Feathered Serpent.' To celebrate 35 years of creating an original blend of traditional ballet folklorico and modern dance, Austin's own Aztlan Dance Company brings a spectacular show to the big stage of the Long Center. 'Land of the Feathered Serpent' traces Mexico's mythical history. 8 p.m. June 27, Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive. $20-$35, $15 student/senior/child. 474-5664. www.thelongcenter.org.