Next week I drive to Santa Barbara for the second of three “Friday Clubs” with New York choreographer Mark Dendy and his dancers. This is a new offering from DANCEworks, a residency program that gives choreographers a full month to make new work onstage at the lovely 400-seat Lobero Theater, with full technical support. This allows choreographers the rare luxury of developing the work intensively, and in steady collaboration with lighting designers, musical collaborators, costumers, and set architects. The first five DANCEworks residencies have yielded tremendous successes, from Doug Elkins’ celebrated “Mo(or)town Redux” to Brian Brooks’ daring “Big City.”
The mission of DANCEworks is so important, I feel, and the enthusiasm of executive director Dianne Vapnek is so infectious, that I couldn’t sit on the sidelines as a critic/observer, and 18 months ago I joined the DANCEworks board. (Fortunately, this hasn’t yet created too many conflicts of interest in my reviewing life, since DANCEworks commissions only one choreographer per year, and by invitation only–no application process.) I’m on the edge of my seat about what Mark Dendy will do this year in his fresh work, “Dystopian Distractions!” Dendy, who has seen a resurgence in his career recently with his massive (80-dancer) “Ritual Cyclical” at the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors festival, has chosen to take on the war machine of American culture in a dark satire of dance theater. I have no idea what the new work will have to say about Americans and war, no idea how it might provoke, enlighten, or offend–which is a risk at the heart of the DANCEworks mission.
At the new “Friday Club,” anyone who donates $50 or more to DANCEworks can see the work as it progresses, and talk about it with Mark and his dancers on the Lobero Stage. “Dystopian Distractions!” will have a full work-in-progress performance on April 26th, and I will be giving a short pre-curtain lecture.
Here’s an invitation from Mark and his dancers to the “Friday Club.”
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