Pearlann Porter is up to her ears in two by fours and running on 12 cups of coffee prior to The Pillow Project’s new season. It’s called Second Saturdays and to Porter, they’re something like “performance happenings.”
“Dance tends to hog your attention,” she says. “”Everyone has to sit down and look a certain way.” But at Construction Junction in Point Breeze, where The Pillow resides in The Space Upstairs, “someone could be three feet away with a drink and his feet up on my cocktail table.”
So she’s trying to prepare her dancers for anything at “Dirty, Hot and Blue,” the inaugural session this weekend. Porter is moving in the direction of “improvography,” her own idea of jazz dance. It’s not musical theater, like the quirky machinations of Bob Fosse, but more like a jazz band, where the members interact with each other and take the structure of the music to new heights.
“I think jazz dance defines the relationship between other forms around you,” she states firmly.”It could be between us and the music, between a dancer and another dancer, between a dancer and a viewer.” To set the stage (or, in this case, the room) for improvography, the Project’s dancers have been trying out all kinds of music and preparing for three people or 300.
This time she’s blocked out the evening. At 7 p.m., patrons will see samples to come, “like a cocktail hour.” Then comes the grit, getting down and dirty withWil E Tri and the Bluescasters, everything saturated in blue light , Tri “crying on the harmonica” and the dancers making the connection.By 10 p.m., viewers can use ipods et. al. and provide their own personal music for the final hour or listen to no music at all.
Just keep it authentic.
There is a suggested donation of $5. More information at The Pillow Project.
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