-Cornish College of the Arts has been graduating
accomplished dancers since its founding in 1914.
Well, here is a behind the scenes peek
at an upcoming student performance
led by two excellent Cornish choreographers:
Tonya Lockyer and Heather Kravas.
( tick-tock sound)
-We are in the 9th Avenue Gallery
of Cornish College for the Arts,
where we're going to be doing
something a little different this year.
Instead of doing a performance on a proscenium stage, we're
inviting the audience into a gallery situation
to look at dance in some new ways.
♪♪
Cornish Dance Theater
is really an opportunity
for Cornish students to get to practice performance.
And I can't think of a
kind of more rigorous,
challenging opportunity to explore performance
than being in an intimate setting
when your audience might just be like
a few inches from you.
They can actually take in each dancer.
They can take in their movement.
They can look closely.
They can linger as long as they want.
So we get to play with time really differently.
We get to play with space really differently.
We get to play with our relationship
with the audience really differently.
♪♪
We're not going to pretend that the audience isn't there.
We're about to move and barrel into an audience member.
We're going to look at them one human being to another,
and just have an interaction.
♪♪
Doesn’t that exaggerated look kinda great.
So everyone in this piece are Cornish dance students.
Some of them are first year.
Some of them are in their senior year.
So they are at really different parts of their journey.
(tick-tocking sound)
Part of what I just find so beautiful working with
dancers is each person is their own life course.
They have their own history.
There are different things that make them
just beautiful or captivating.
Good! Awesome!
They have solos that they do against the wall
that they've each really made
and choreographed, and I have helped them shape it.
Other sections are improvised in real time,
and there's other things that are superset.
So there are many different approaches.
But absolutely, these young dance
makers are a significant part of creating it.
And the audience is going to be
a significant part of what unfolds.
Again, remember how we said everyone loves canon...
And now you’ll come over here.
-Tonya Lockyer is running first,
so there's a little bit of
a kind of pause,
but there's a pause with dancing
still happening in it where we can
think of it as like a crossfade.
Like my performance
kind of comes in towards the very end of hers.
♪♪
And I believe that the audience will be
more instructed, like, “Will you please
sit over in this area and watch from here?”
So a little less free range and a little more bossy?
( chuckles )
I think that looks great.
For me, it's been an education to work with these students.
They're teaching me every day and they're teaching me
about what this particular dance wants to be.
♪♪
A lot of the material is
very orchestrated with steps that I am creating,
and they are doing beautifully.
And the other part, I'm giving them more scenarios
and they are
filling out those scenarios with their own bodies
and their own ideas.
But in both cases it is a collaboration
and I'm really excited to see
what they're able to do with the material
with a public.
Yeah, there you go.
♪♪
-Cornish Dance Theater, “An Exploration of Movement
and Energy” plays at the Cornish 9th
Avenue Gallery, November 22nd, 23rd and 24th.
For more information, including how to get tickets,
go to Cornish.edu.
♪♪
Catch Art Zone Friday nights at 8
and anytime online at SeattleChannel.org/ArtZone.
♪♪