Charlotte Adams Demonstrates How To Be In Two Places At Once. By Margaret Regan IT WAS A dark Friday night and the Tenth Street Danceworks dancers were ready to rehearse the brand-new Charlotte Adams piece "Lockjaw," an elaborate five-section work that will premiere at the company's winter concert this weekend. The tech guy was there in the studio, the lighting guy was there, six dancers were there. Everybody, in fact, was there but Adams herself. "You'll see us doing things that make no sense," dancer Thom Lewis warned. Some of those things, he added, would entail the others tossing around the absent Adams. "It's hard to tell without her," dancer Paulette Cauthorn agreed, especially during the Adams solo that would have the dancers cooling their heels on the sidelines while the music played on for a seemingly phantom dancer. Difficulties notwithstanding, the six troupers moved forward through the piece, and it turned out to be not that hard to envision Adams' small body sailing over the heads of the other dancers, or rolling across the floor to the triumphant strains of Scarlatti's harpsichord music. Similarly, it's been tough, but not impossible, for the company to carry on with their artistic director living out of town. Adams definitely will be on stage for the concert Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights at Pima College Center for the Arts Proscenium Theatre, a concert that will also showcase the electrifying McCaleb Dance of San Diego. But during the Tenth Street rehearsal last week, Adams was in Nebraska, where for the last two years she has headed up the dance program at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. "It's better if I'm there," Adams acknowledged via telephone from the chilly prairie heartland. "But it's working well. I come back every three or four weeks. I still own a home in Tucson. This is a great job for me (at the university). I work myself to death and I do lots of choreography, but I like to keep working with professionals." And when Adams is away, the pros in Tenth Street, which Adams founded, work under associate artistic director Kevin Schroder. During the Friday rehearsal, for instance, Schroder danced with the others during "Lockjaw," but still managed to keep an eye out for missteps and to offer critiques afterward. For this big work, one of three premieres featured in the concert, Adams also relied on her dancers for more than soldiering on when she's away. "The movement developed from stories the dancers told me," Adams said, "about what happened to them when they were kids. The parents were always saying, 'Don't do this,' 'Don't do that.' The working title was 'Don't' and the movement works from 'don't' to 'do,' " with oppositional gestures giving way to harmony. Adams said she's long been interested in incorporating dancers' own experiences into her choreography, noting that it "breaks a rut and I have new tools to work with." Last year's "Cement Point Shoes," she said, literally featured dancers coming out on stage and telling their stories one by one. Part of the inspiration comes from a workshop Adams took with nationally known choreographer Liz Lerman, who uses spoken word and the vernacular movements of non-dancers in her work. (Lerman had regular non-pro Tucsonans dancing on stage last year at Centennial Hall.) Adams' interest in "artistic collisions" with other companies also prompted the invitation to McCaleb Dance, whose dancers have twice before performed in Tucson concerts with Tenth Street. Formerly known as Isaacs/McCaleb Dancers, the company gave a stunning performance two years ago at Tenth Street's memorable collaboration concert with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra string players. This year's "Paradisi Gloria" by Nancy McCaleb, set to Haydn's "Stabat Mater," is less outrageous than some previous works, Adams said. "It's a very athletic, dancey piece. There's a beauty to it." Also on the program are compositions by Tenth Street Dancers. Thom Lewis will stage his "Dreaming Under Fire," a Vietnam War work set to chain-gang music by Richard Robbins and adagio strings by Samuel Barber. First performed last spring in Lewis' MFA concert, the dance "parallels the myth of Prometheus and Sisyphus," Lewis said. Another Lewis piece, "Everlast," is a funny-but-sad reverie about a doomed relationship, danced by Lewis and Cauthorn to the songs of Lyle Lovett. Chieko Imada debuts her "Faith and Sorrow," a dance about the samurai warriors of her native Japan. Schroder contributes "This Is for You," a work for three dancers set to the sensuous jazz of Charlie Mingus. At the rehearsal, Schroder, Cauthorn and Imada moved into the work after doing Adams' piece, supplanting the lively gestures of "Lockjaw" with more fluid movements. Schroder's working method points up the imaginative leaps that are taken for granted at Tenth Street: if with Adams the dancers work often without the choreographer immediately at hand, with Schroder they sometimes work without music. "I composed the piece in space and developed it," he said. "I had an idea of what I wanted." When he got the dancers doing exactly the movements he wanted, he added the Mingus music. Somehow, he said, it all just fit together. Tenth Street Danceworks and McCaleb Dance give a modern dance concert at 8 p.m., Friday, Saturday and Sunday, February 20, 21 and 22, at Pima College Center for the Arts Proscenium Theatre, 2202 W. Anklam Road. Advance tickets, available at Bentley's and at the box office, are $8 general and $6 for students and seniors. Tickets at the door are $10 and $8. For more information call 622-1793.

Home | Currents | City Week | Music | Review | Books | Cinema | Back Page | Archives

		© 1995-97 Tucson Weekly . Info Booth