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Photo Steven Schreiber
The Adam Miller Dance Project will dance on Saturday. Shown here, Peter de Grasse and Mary Beth Hansohn.
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Niki Cousineau will perform a solo number on Friday night. |
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Dance Festival leaps into second year
By Sue Harrison
Banner Staff
Last year the Provincetown Dance Festival began as a modest one-day affair. Now, buoyed by success, the festival has grown to two days — Oct. 20 and 21 — and will offer an evening of solo performance, an evening of dance troupe performance and two dance workshops, one for adults and one for kids (see ticket information below).
“Dance is the under-served art form in Provincetown,” says festival artistic director Adam Miller, who heads the Adam Miller Dance Project out of Hartford.
He explains that the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill brainstormed the idea and is the producing director. They got assistance from the Provincetown Visitor Services Board and the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod in putting the festival together. His job is to line up the dancers and deal with their needs.
“We wanted to do two days but needed more public awareness which we got last year,” he says. “Hopefully it continues to lead to more and better dance.”
Logistically, the space at The Provincetown Theater, is small, he says. That, plus financial constraints, limit the festival to smaller companies and solo work, which is fine since there are so many talented troupes. Miller says he also wanted to stick to New England as the recruiting ground for now and wanted a diverse offering of dance. He says he’s got that.
The solo work on Friday evening features Provincetown’s David Figueroa (see story page 31) along with Niki Cousineau, Jennifer Lafferty, Sridhar Shanmugam, Maseo Davis and Katie Stevinson-Nollet.
“There’s such a wide range of solo artists and it came together in interesting ways,” Miller says.
Shanmugam mixes classical Indian dance with new choreography to create his own style. Dance is part of Indian culture going back 1,000 years and embraces both traditional and religious styles. “It’s wonderful to have that Asiatic influence,” Miller says of Shanmugam’s inclusion in the program.
All dance, Miller says, flows from either a folk base or from the aristocracy. Not unlike tap dance and classical ballet in American dance. Starting from those points and mixing in other elements leads to an almost limitless range of dance.
Cousineau is from Philadelphia and Miller describes her as a post-modern contemporary performance artist. She performs with videos she creates with her husband.
Lafferty will dance a piece choreographed by Rebecca Lazier of Terrain. Davis will perform solo on Friday and again with the Spectrum in Motion troupe from Hartford on Saturday. Stevinson-Nollet will dance a piece titled “Dirt” that will take place on part of the stage covered in dirt.
On Saturday, the troupes will take over the stage. Miller’s own troupe is ballet but they will be doing a new piece working entirely without en pointe.
Spectrum in Motion is a dance troupe that blends modern with hip hop and a mix of Brazilian martial arts and dance. They offer a year-round schedule of dance programs in Hartford and work closely with inner city, at-risk youth.
Hoi Polloi, returning for a second year, is headed by Sara Sweet Rabidoux. She has been the co-director at the Bates Dance Festival’s Youth Arts Program for over 10 years and is the recipient of several dance grants. Hoi Polloi is out of Boston.
The Island Reflections Dance Company is debuting at the festival. It’s made up of Sonny Salina, one of the world’s top limbo dancers, and Stephen Hankey. Hankey was a founding member of the National Dance Theatre Company of Trinidad and Tobago and toured internationally.
“He wanted to create his own company to take traditional Caribbean dance and infuse it with modern dance,” Miller says adding that he encouraged him to form the new company.
The final troupe is Configuration out of Chatham. Joseph Cipolla and Catherine Batcheller started the troupe in 1999 and consider it a liquid troupe that shifts to work with changing groups of dancers. They also offer apprenticeships to student dancers.
The remaining events are two workshops, one led by Hankey for fourth to sixth grade students at Veterans Memorial Elementary School. The workshop will teach Afro-Caribbean dance.
The other workshop is for adults and will be led by Shanmugam. It will be a master class in traditional Indian dance and will be held at Movement Arts, 306 Commercial St.
Don’t be put off by the title master class. Miller says it’s about as accessible as dance gets for the general public.
“It’s the kind of dance form that you don’t need formal training as you would in ballet or modern,” he says. “You don’t have to be a skinny, lithe person. Anyone can do it.”
Provincetown Dance Festival: performed at The Provincetown Theater, 238 Bradford St., Provincetown at 7:30 p.m. Fri.-Sat. Fri. dance solos, $15. Sat. troupes, $25. For both nights, $35. Student and senior discounts available. Call (508) 487-9793 or go to ptowntix.com
artseditor@provincetownbanner.com
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In the Arts
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Oct 19th, 2006