ARC Dance Takes Over Seattle Rep
ARC Dance in rehearsal for Penny Hutchinson's "Images", part of "Summer Dance at the Center" this week.
This Thursday through Saturday, ARC Dance, a North Seattle contemporary ballet company, is taking over the Leo K. Theatre at Seattle Rep with an ambitious mixed-repertory evening, including four world premier ballets (8 p.m., tix $15-$25). Aside from Trinidad Marinez's Tres Tristes Tigres, this is one of the finest dance experiences available this summer.
Back in 1997, ARC's founder and artistic director, Marie Chong, who'd worked with the likes of Spectrum Dance Theatre and PNB, got the idea to found her own contemporary ballet company that mixed the athleticism and prowess of classical training with a contemporary approach to dance; in other words, ARC isn't so much into tiaras-and-tutus and endless presentations of Balanchine. ARC officially launched in 1999, and since then has maintained its two-show-a-year repertoire, with the addition of an abbreviated yearly Nutcracker in 2001.
Late last week, we got a sneak-peak of the program at ARC's studio, in a converted public school in Crown Hill. The program, called "Summer Dance at the Center," presents five contemporary ballets, including original works by Chong, ARC's resident choreographer Betsy Cooper, and Mark Morris Dance Group founding member Penny Hutchinson.
What the five disparate pieces seem to have in common is a desire to present the dancers in the company with discrete physical challenges, from the intense "Wood, Metal, and Air," which incorporates stomping and clapping, providing physical, rhythmic element to the score by Stravinsky, to "Torches," a creative approach to staging a smattering of Cole Porter torch songs as reinterpreted by k.d. lang and Annie Lennox.
But the most visually arresting we saw, at least in their rehearsal form, were decidedly Hutchinson's "Images" and Chong's "No Regrets." Hutchinson's approach is arrestingly clinical, in the best possible way. This isn't a particularly narrative ballet, rather it's an arresting and challenging exploration of movement itself, as it shifts between tableaux. Chong's approach, on the other hand, is more energized and emotional.
