XL ARTS

Andrea Ariel dances about world pollution

An island of floating trash in the Pacific becomes inspiration

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
Thursday, March 01, 2007

Choreographer Andrea Ariel has been thinking about floating trash — specifically, the Texas-sized expanse of mainly plastic flotsam that hovers at the center of the North Pacific Gyre, where the clockwise circular pattern of the prevailing ocean currents converge.

Along with a team of collaborators — among others, director Christina J. Moore, writer Cyndi Williams, composers Graham Reynolds and Peter Stopschinski and video designers Nick Keene and Colin Lowry— Ariel has created "Gyre," a dance/theater/video piece that launches today at the Off Center. She staged a version of "Gyre" last year and plans to create a third iteration of the piece in the future.

American-Statesman: How did you get interested in the North Pacific Gyre? Is there something about it symbolically that you found particularly compelling?

Andrea Ariel: I first became aware of the North Pacific Gyre when I was creating four one-minute dances for Spank Dance Company's "Dance Carousel." I became interested in things that occur in one minute. I was amazed at what I found, but one statistic that really stood out was that the world was consuming one million plastic bags a minute. Then someone pointed me toward "Laguna Gyre," an installation of plastic bags at Laguna Gloria by Austin artist Virginia Fleck which was inspired by this island of plastic trash the size of Texas in the North Pacific. Later, I found documents by Captain Charles Moore, a marine biologist who, returning home from a fishing expedition in 2002, decided to take a short-cut through the gyre and wrote, "As I gazed from the deck at the surface of what ought to have been a pristine ocean, I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic."

(My dance-theater piece "Gyre") rose out of a question about what we can do to make a difference for our environment. Where does all our trash go? It doesn't just disappear.

I also started thinking about this island of trash as a metaphor for the debris inside us. Perhaps the way we close ourselves off is inevitably connected to the way we close ourselves off from the environment and each other. In "Gyre," the island of plastic trash then became an isolated place that four characters land in order to examine their inner trash. It isn't until they clear away their own interior trash that they can actually see beyond themselves, connect to others and recognize the trash around them.

Collaboration is a big part of your creative process. How do your collaborators shape your creative process?

I bring collaborators into the process from the beginning. I feel that I am planting a seed and then allow the development of the ideas to grow with everyone.

It is like creating a community of people to explore the idea together. The process is shaped entirely by the interaction of everyone. The sharing of ideas — one idea leading to others.

Also, I am working with a form — merging dance and theater with the other artistic disciplines that we don't really have a road map for. Even the discovery of how these artistic elements come together is part of the process. We are all figuring it out together. I feel incredibly supported by every collaborator.

This iteration of 'Gyre' is the second of three for this particular work. Where are you going with the work and why develop it in this way over a number of years?

Last year one of our actors had to drop out very late in the process so we ended up spending the final part of a very important process sort of recovering from that. I felt like it really short-changed what I was wanting to find out about this so I've decided to make it a three-year project.

Also, I have made many evening-length works that have only been performed for one season. I decided I wanted to take more time to develop a major work.

In this round, we have really cracked open what the characters' stories are and have deepened our understanding of the metaphors we are exploring. I am excited about bringing together an artistic process that engages in current issues.

For the third development, I would like to present this work in a very large space as an installation that surrounds the audience and the work.

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699