By Margaret Regan
IT TAKES TWO hands to count the artistic collaborators who worked with Orts Theatre of Dance in its big anniversary Ten Years After concert last weekend at the Temple of Music and Art.
Collaborator number one was Tucson artist Nancy Solomon, who made a stunning video that formed a counterpoint to the dancing in "Past Reflections," the newest work by Orts artistic director Annie Bunker. If inanimate objects count--and here they should--number two would be the reflecting pools in the Baja and three the drifting sands in the Utah canyonlands. These gorgeous video images, taped in monochromatic browns and reds by Solomon, were projected onto the backdrop as four Orts performers danced live on the stage in front of them. The dance movements were characteristic Bunker, spins and waving arms that suggested journeys through distant times.
Collaborator number four was Bud Blumenthal, who contributed the Arabian Nights fantasy choreography for the 1989 work "Storkfeathers," danced by Bunker in a powerhouse turn.
Number five was Robert Davidson, the Seattle choreographer whom Orts calls the "trapeze god." It's Davidson who in recent years has gotten Orts dancers swinging so engagingly through the air on trapezes. For the first time Tucson audiences got to see him dance on the trapeze himself, in a dazzling excerpt from his own piece, the 1989 "Ramses Rises." Give a six to his score by Isham/Lande.
Mary Putterman, the puckish Orts member who's pushing and pulling the serious company into humor, counts as number seven. She and Bunker put together another brand-new work, "Bedfellas," a comical five-part look at the bed, performed by a cast of six. The classical jazz score (eight) insinuated itself into a series of dance skits that lampooned morning rituals, nighttime slumbers and unsleepy sex.
Pig-gut artist Ann Keuper is number nine, for her gossamer abstract sculptures gracing the stage and the air above in "Migrations," a 1994 Bunker piece that debuted last fall.
But Bunker's most frequent collaborator in recent years is Chuck Koesters. Koesters composed the music for "Past Reflections," for "Storkfeathers" and for "Migrations," more than half the works on the program. Give the guy a 10. A New Age musician and composer, Koesters is Bunker's husband, executive director of the company and, occasionally, an Orts dancer. Koesters has also written the music for many other of Bunker's most significant pieces in recent years, such as "Latter Ladders."
Bunker and Koesters have worked together so often that their joint pieces have by now become the Orts company signature. Koesters' world rhythms mesh well with Bunker's interests in ancient movements and tribal dance. Both artists delight in works that summon up the distant past, that take dancers on evolutionary journeys down metamorphic time. But by now this path is getting a little too well worn. Even the newest work, "Past Reflections," interesting as it is, strikes many of the same notes Bunker has hit in previous works.
Part of the problem is the sameness of the Koesters style of music. To my ear, his works all begin to blend together into one wall of sound after a while. And three out of five works set to his compositions are about two too many for one concert. Orts' many other collaborators offer a solution. Bunker's works with Putterman and with Davidson are some of the most engaging she's done. In its second 10 years, Orts ought to keep counting up those fresh, outside collaborators--and make sure to keep its tally of musical styles at least as diverse.
Orts Theatre of Dance next appears in Orts in the Park After Dark at 7:30 p.m., April 28, 29 and 30 in the DeMeester Outdoor Performance Center. The concert is free. For more information call 624-3799.
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