The Blanket has morphed into so many configurations during its brief Pittsburgh life, but never so more as this year. After one of their rehearsal sessions, this one at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s light-filled and spacious studios, the central figures split off in three different directions: Matt Pardo to teach ballet at the American Dance Festival, Caitlin Scranton to perform in Africa (and go on a safari) and the latest choreographer, Beth Gill, to Ireland to work on an upcoming project.
Let’s just say they are all in demand, but still want to add to the Pittsburgh dance scene. That they will do at the Carrie Furnaces in Rankin July 5-6. Dance fans were the first to see this iconic national heritage site up close and personal when Pearl Ann Porter (The Pillow Project) put together the inaugural event in 2013 (dance to the forefront!). Since then it has housed a movie location (Out of the Furnace with Christian Bale), a Wiz Khalifa video and, most recently, the locale for Quantum Theater’s King Lear, among others.
The Blanket plans to put its own mark on the Power House area of the Furnaces. HEAR Corp will design the lighting, some of which will come from American cars parked at the perimeter, radios blaring. It’s the way that The Blanket assimilates itself into the Pittsburgh artistic fabric, by “aligning with other institutions,” with Pardo calling the city “such a close-knit community with incredible artists.”
After all, the Furnaces are “just massive,” exclaims Pardo, his wonderment apparent over the phone. But he still pondered at first how they would design this “cool space” to benefit Gill’s work.
Gill will continue in The Blanket’s philosophical vein, to introduce artists who haven’t appeared in Pittsburgh before. It all began with Lucinda Child’s post-modern patterns of repetition, followed by a surprise in Christopher Williams’ fantastical series of solos, “Ursula and the 10,000 Virgins,” and now, Gill.
She, too, has a minimal element and restrains the movement itself, according to Pardo. But Gill says, “unlike maybe someone like Lucinda, I don’t feel I have a primary style or vocabulary that I continually refer to. So I’m really pushing myself with each project to grow and shift gears.”
Just for the record, Gill is a newbie compared to her veteran Blanket predecessors. She has been choreographing, though, since 2005 and received two Bessie Awards in New York City. Dance Magazine awarded her one of “25 to Watch” (2012) evolving to Time Out New York, which named her Catacomb one of the best dances of the year (2016).
She will combine two previous works, Yolk & Grove, in a new way for the Pittsburgh performances, bringing her “detail-oriented” eye to this current composition. She thinks about it in terms of “care. I care very much how I’m communicating information to the dancers.”
“In this particular piece, the finickiness you’re seeing about spacing has to do with the fact that this has to do with the puzzled dance they’re working in. Because they’re working in cycles. they have to be in the right place at the end of each cycle for it to start over. Their relationship to each other is actually very important.”
And in the end, how they relate to the steel-making environment around them.
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