Joanna Haigood, Artistic Director of Zaccho Dance Theatre, asks Resident Company RAWdance's own Wendy Rein and Ryan T. Smith about their upcoming project, Through My Fingers To The Deep, to learn more about their intimate approach to site-specific work.
Wendy Rein directing collaborators Katerina Wong & Kelly Del Rosario, photo: Charline Formenty
Joanna Haigood: Tell us about your new work and about your
collaborators.
Ryan & Wendy : What happens when the ground beneath your feet is not what you had
imagined? Where does the surface end and the foundation begin? Do we follow the
clearly constructed paths designed for us, or invent our own? And how do our
fantasies interrupt our tangible reality? We’re launching from these broad
questions for Through My Fingers To The Deep, our newest work, being
created for the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival. We’ve been inspired by the topography of the Gardens landscape, the contrast
of organic material and constructed pathways, as well as from the Edgar Allen
Poe poem from which the title of the dance was taken, “A Dream Within a Dream.”
We are working with two amazing past
collaborators for this work. Scenic designer
Sean Riley, known for his unexpected interactive designs, will create a
3-dimensional set for the dance, bringing the strange amalgam of the Gardens’
physical underpinnings into the open as an active, visible partner in the work.
Composer Joel St. Julien will create three distinct, but interwoven scores for
the work, synchronized to start and end at the same time in different
locations.
JH: Is this your first site-specific work?
R & W: We create
a great deal of site-specific work for RAWdance, and have always split our
programming between public spaces and the theater. While we love some of the
drama and craft of working in a controlled theatrical environment, it’s
important to us to regularly bring dance to new people and places. We all know
that the contemporary dance world can feel too insular. For us, sharing work in
diverse public spaces combats that insularity and opens access to the art form.
Furthermore, there are some projects that really only make sense in a
non-theatrical environment. They need to live in the real world to make sense.
Our work Per-Verses (2006) took place in multiple gallery
rooms as a performance installation at the Belcher Street Studios. A
Public Affair (2011) was created for Orson Restaurant, during the middle of
dinner service. The Beauty Project (2009) was created for an empty
storefront in the Westfield mall. Two by 24: Love on Loop (2012) was
created for UN Plaza and To Have and to Hold (2009) and Checkbox
(2007) were created for Union Square Park.
Ryan and Wendy directing collaborators, photo: Charline Formenty
JH: What are
your primary concerns when beginning a new creation? Are they different when
creating a piece for the theater and creating a site-specific work?
R & W: A blank
canvas is always the hardest for us. The beginning of a work can be
overwhelming, whether creating for the theater or site-specifically. So we
start with questions, experiments, vague ideas, a handful of moves and a plan
that may only hold up for a couple of weeks (if we’re lucky). We never really
know where we are going to end up until we are there.
We do always consider the audience
as an integral part of the work from the beginning of creation. How (literally)
will they see the work? This is definitely different for someone who has
“bought in” to a theatrical performance and is seated at a specific angle, than
from someone wandering through Yerba Buena Gardens.
There are additional concerns with
site-specific work or any work without a fully controlled environment: audience
flow, site lines, working with the surrounding environment, making room for the
unpredictable. This particular work, with three simultaneous pieces, in three
different locations in the Gardens, timed to start and end at the same time,
has a slew of extra coordination complications.
RAWdance collaborators, Katerina Wong and Kelly Del Rosario, photo: Charline Formenty
JH:
You asked "where does the surface end and
the foundation begin?” What does “surface" and “foundation” mean to
you?
R & W: In its
simplest form, the surface is everything visible. Concrete pathways, grass, and
benches throughout Yerba Buena Gardens, even the skin of our dancers are all
surfaces that are informing the movement we create. The physical underpinnings
of all these structures consist of the foundation. But the foundation in our
sense is also our belief system - what we hold to be real and true. How does
the ground that supports us feel like it gives way when we suddenly realize our
“truths” may be more shared illusion than actual truth?
The surface of the idyllic-looking
Gardens is a complete illusion. It feels like you’re standing on grassy, solid
earth, but really that grass is just the top of a series of layers of rubber,
styrofoam, and cement. And beneath all of that is the North Wing of the Moscone
Center, housing thousands of conference goers. There’s essentially a giant hole
in the earth beneath the site. Does that change the way you feel when you walk
around the Gardens, or sit on the ground? Or do you block it out and just focus
on the pretty grass?
Similarly, do you block out the
history of the Gardens, which was constructed only a few dozen years ago by
demolishing and/or relocating the homes of the many workers that lived there?
As we, together with so many of our artist counterparts, live with a constant
fear of eviction from our homes, that history is pretty hard to block out. So
in turn, how does this fear shape how we perceive the landscape of the Gardens?
How much does an understanding of the “foundation” affect the way we interact
with the surface?
JH: What is at the center of your movement research?
R & W: It varies
somewhat from piece to piece, but we always start with questions, and usually a
lot of reading. The questions described above started us off with this piece
exploring images of constant rumbling, building and tearing down, illusions,
and unstable ground. Since it’s a site-specific work, we’re also using a lot of
the topography of the site itself to derive the movement.
RAWdance, photo: Charline Formenty
JH: Who are your dance collaborators? Company Members?
R
& W: For this project, we are working with six amazing
dancers, who are all very much active collaborators in the creative process:
Tristan Ching Hartmann, Kerry Demme, Amy Foley, Kelly Del Rosario, Maggie
Stack, and Katerina Wong. We’ll be bringing in several more dancers in another
few weeks, to help with audience flow and transitions from site to site
