Gallery Dances at NU MVMNT - "Waiting Scales" Part II

When you think of 'dance' in Rochester, the Rochester City Ballet and Garth Fagan Dance come immediately to mind.  Or Nazareth College, with its wide offering of dance programs throughout the year.  Little did I know there's an entire subculture of dance performing in small spaces under the radar, one that you probably only know about if you know one of the dancers or choreographers or the owner of the space.  This weekend, the Rochester Dance Project presented Gallery Dances at  NU MVMNT, which functions as an art gallery as well as a dance/pilates/yoga studio.  But don't look for the performance on either website - it seemed to be word of mouth/Facebook only!

Dancers Kathy Diehl, Kaitley Wozer, and Lauren Kush
with Nadine Sherman on cello

Colleen had originally scheduled a different dance to perform in the Gallery Dances, but decided the floor there was too hard, so substituted our collaborative “Waiting Scales” instead.  Even though the snow was ceaseless and the roads icy, there was a standing room crowd at the gallery/studio (mostly 'friends of,' I suspect).  Eastman student Nadine Sherman, who could easily have been mistaken for a dancer, performed two pieces beautifully on cello.

I recognized one of the dancers, the graceful Kathy Diehl, from the Bill Evans Dance performance at the Fringe Festival.   She is also the founder of the Rochester Dance Project, and choreographed and performed in three of the seven pieces on the program.  One, titled “Unravel,” took me by surprise when the music started – it was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.  Only when the vocals began did I realize it was Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, a piece that my choral group, Concentus, performed last spring!  Here’s just a snippet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVKo6CzYnqI&feature=youtu.be

Colleen Culley

I was so proud as I watched Colleen perform “Waiting Scales.”  She had turned it into a cohesive dance, not just a sum of various movements, and she didn’t seem as nervous as she was in Brockport.  She hit all the musical phrasings we had rehearsed, but without seeming to mark the time, and she progressed through the “waiting” emotions as effortlessly as she progressed through the Laban scales. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tY6L4Ou6fk&feature=youtu.be

It was too bad that the performance space was a bit dark – the illumination was meant for paintings, not people.  And I was sorry that the snow prevented Colleen’s parents from attending, because I know they would have enjoyed seeing this iteration.  Who knows, maybe someday there will be a third...