XL Arts

Arts: Summertime is a good time to start a new dance troupe

By Clare Croft
Thursday, July 20, 2006

No one told dancer Ikolo Griffin that summertime is downtime in the arts. The only person in the dance studio with Griffin on a recent, hot Austin Friday afternoon who looks even close to relaxing —though her sweaty leotard tells a different story — is his partner, Ballet Austin's Aara Krumpe, perching on Griffin's back smoking a fake cigarette. The cigarette is a prop in Harrison McEldowney's jazzy ballet, one piece in this weekend's 'Dialogues' from Austin's newest performing arts group, American Repertory Ensemble.

Arts groups generally ratchet down their activities during the summer, forcing musicians and dancers to patch together income from guest dancing and teaching gigs. But University of Texas dance professor David Justin (on the faculty in the same department where I am a graduate student) and Rob Deemer, a UT graduate now teaching in Oklahoma, see those low-activity months as opportunities. Though the ensemble's premiere Friday night at UT's McCullough Theater stands out for its blending of live music and dance, it joins a new but growing trend in the dance community toward summer-based companies — Houston favorite Trey McIntyre heads a similarly scheduled group — tapping idle talent and new audiences.

"During the year, Austin's cultural calendar goes through moments when there's so much happening and only so many people going," Justin says. "By bringing this to the summer, we're not competing with those other organizations and are filling a niche in the summer months."

After the Austin performances, the company heads to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. The program includes everything from George Balanchine's neoclassical masterwork "Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux" to a new, more contemporary-flavored ballet by Justin choreographed to a new composition by Deemer.

Before hitting any stage, though, the ensemble packed much into four weeks of rehearsal. That preparation period for both the dancers and Austin musicians Tosca String Quartet and pianists Michelle Schumann and Gregory Allen might seem short, but the ensemble really began two years ago, when Deemer and Justin collaborated on a new ballet for UT's New Works Festival.

Justin recalls the pair's first work together, saying, "We kept discovering complementary administrative strengths and similar artistic aesthetics. Finding a collaborator like this is so rare. When you find a person like that in your social life, you get married. When you find this in your professional life, you have to work together."

Other seeds of collaboration also were planted years ago.

Driving his car shortly after moving to Austin in 2001, Deemer heard Tosca String Quartet on the radio.

"I was amazed," he remembers. "When David and I talked about incorporating multiple styles, they were an obvious choice."

Justin has a similarly strong attachment to the dancers. He invited each of them to the ensemble while guest-teaching for companies such as the Atlanta Ballet and Oregon Ballet Theatre.

Though the individual artists bring deep talent, it is the merging of dance and music that distinguishes the ensemble; the expense generally prevents the combination. The company features musicians playing onstage for the dancers as well as performing alone in musical works.

The ensemble also plans to share its wealth of experience. Students in town for the UT-hosted American Ballet Theatre Summer Intensive Program, Ballet Austin and Austin Chamber Music Center's summer programs will participate in workshops with the ensemble.

In that educational spirit, students with ID will receive free admission to Friday's performance, and the company will host a free question-and-answer session with the artists 45 minutes before each show.

Neither Deemer nor Justin could have predicted the ensemble's shape or scope two years ago.

"So often you go into a new place and you think, 'This is nothing like what I thought it would be,' " Justin says. "This is the complete opposite experience. Everything here is crystallizing into something even better than we imagined."