The Art.If.Act Dance Project continues to grow - stretching its arms wide to embrace music, film, literature, theater and mime in a beautifully constructed experience. The adventurous company founded by co-artistic directors Claire Hancock and Ashley Bowman are turning dance into an encompassing art form that feels like something completely new.
At last weekend's pair of performances in the Stevie Eller Dance Theater at the University of Arizona, the company of eight dancers and mime artists were not leaping and spinning around as they would in a typical dance performance. Instead they were using natural movements enhanced by the body language of theater and mime to interpret three short stories by Edgar Allan Poe.
The stage remained completely bare. A set of three billowing curtainlike white screens hung as a backdrop on which were projected various larger-than-life images, most of them in black-and-white, adding to the macabre dream-feeling of Poe's nightmare stories.
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Each of the stories was accompanied on stage by a different string quartet, performed in various combinations by eight classically trained musicians who are also company members.
The stories are "The Fall of the House of Usher" with original music by Vin Calianno, "The Oval Portrait" set to Dan Coleman's String Quartet No. 1: quartetto ricercare, and "The Tell Tale Heart," using the eighth string quartet of Dmitri Shostakovich.
It is also important to Art.If.Act for the musicians to be visible on stage, never hidden in a pit. During "Tell Tale Heart" the string quartet was seated on a platform high above the stage, so the doleful music would cascade down over the performers.
Such metaphors filled the concert. Bowman and Hancock are the choreographers. They also created and edited all the film projections, choosing a variety of threatening ink blot shapes, troubled faces and bare-limbed trees standing stark as dead sentinels observing the tortured souls onstage.
Yet, the performances did not hinge on disgusting or grotesque moments. Art.If.Act knows the dark side of humanity has its own style of grace, its own indulgence in the beauty of death's seduction.
As an introduction to each piece, Tucson actor Paul Fisher read an excerpt from Poe's story. In this artfully rich setting, the author's words rang with a poetic force you never caught while reading Poe in school.
Up next
On Nov.6 the arts-supporting music group Reverie will host a fundraising evening of music, dance and film to benefit the Art.If.Act Dance Project. For details, visit www.artifactdanceproject.com or call 344-8984.
Chuck Graham has written about the Tucson arts scene for more than 35 years. Read more of his arts coverage at "Let the Show Begin," www.tucsonstage.com
