Laguna Dance Festival transported a sold-out crowd last weekend
By MARRIE STONE
Locals lucky enough to experience the Cincinnati Ballet and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago this past weekend at the annual Laguna Dance Festival (LDF) may still be riding the wave of these unparalleled performances. Both companies delivered visually stunning work by dancers imbued with superhuman strength and mind-blowing movements. While the meaning behind each piece is a matter of interpretation, the overall experience accomplished a common goal – to enrapture the audience and leave them feeling transformed.
The pieces crossed cultural landscapes and challenged societal assumptions about race, gender and spirituality. Friday evening opened with Cincinnati Ballet dancing Swivet, a piece choreographed by Andrea Schermoly, that invoked interesting plays with color and costumes that heightened the experience. The weekend closed on one of the most cinematic experiences in dance I’ve witnessed with Hubbard Street performing Busk, a piece choreographed and directed by Aszure Barton and staged by Jonathan Alsberry. Created over the course of a decade, Busk’s dancers brought both intimate personal expression and synergistic collaboration to the work.
“Busk” by Aszure Barton performed by Hubbard Street Dance Chicago as Sunday’s LDF finale
For me, a few themes emerged – love and its limitations, beauty and its perils, the body and its capabilities, death and its finality. The pieces evoked sexuality and religion, race and culture. But that’s only one woman’s view. Each person I talked to took away something different. “Like being inside an abstract painting,” someone said.
If you haven’t experienced dance in the past decade, you haven’t experienced dance. Modern dance, by definition, is always a process of reinvention and discovery. But Cincinnati Ballet’s Artistic Director Jodie Gates brings a similar intention to ballet.
I caught up with both Gates and Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell, artistic director of Hubbard Street Chicago, after their companies’ performances to learn more. Our conversations have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Cincinnati Ballet’s Artistic Director Jodie Gates
Jodie Gates founded the LDF in 2005. She became vice dean and founding director of the University of Southern California’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance in 2013. A former principal ballerina, Gates joined the Cincinnati Ballet last year, but remains the artistic director for LDF.
Cincinnati Ballet, under the artistic direction of Jodie Gates, performed this weekend at the Laguna Dance Festival
Stu News: I assume every dance company brings its own personality to the performance. Can you talk about Cincinnati Ballet’s unique fingerprint? What separates them from other companies you’ve worked with?
Jodie Gates: Cincinnati Ballet is an incredibly versatile dance company. The dancers who I consider to be the finest artist-athletes, are trained extensively in classical ballet yet can also dance contemporary works seamlessly with ultimate abandon. This is a unique quality and was displayed on stage here in Laguna Beach this past weekend. My hope with the company is we continue to leverage the dancers’ strengths in contemporary ballet and amplify the “style” of the company. The dancers work and perform at a very high level of technique, coupled with polished enthusiasm and fierce joy.
SN: I sensed a lot of intense storytelling in the company’s performance. Of course, I can guess at the storytelling behind Don Quixote. But I wonder if you could share some of the stories, as well as the overarching themes, that these dancers aimed to tell beyond the unbelievable athleticism and aesthetics of their performances.
JG: Contemporary ballet often does not need storytelling or narrative to be successful. That’s the beauty of the art form and three of the four dances you saw on Friday contain no story, but all evoke an emotional response, either by lighting, music, costumes, or by an innovative set design (feather and walls) in the final work, Extremely Close. The duet you are referring to named Don Quixote is an excerpt of the three-act ballet based on the Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes.
SN: Ballet has gone through such an evolution, not only in its contemporary use of interesting lighting and other technology, but also in being more expansive with people of color, perhaps plays with gender and sexual orientation, and other important cultural conversations we’ve been having of late. And, of course, an all-female-led production. Can you share your thoughts on that?
JG: Dance, and specifically ballet, is in need of change if it’s to remain relevant. And we saw this change in real time this past weekend at the Laguna Dance Festival. Both dance companies are led by female artistic directors, the dancers on stage are humanized, they are individuals on stage and have an identity. Not everyone has the same skin tone nor the same body type, and we celebrate this beauty with the dance artists who performed on stage Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
SN: Is there anything else you’d like to add from a hindsight perspective about how the weekend went?
JG: Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and Cincinnati Ballet were extraordinary this past weekend. The Saturday performance with both companies on stage in the same performance was electric. I am so grateful to be a part of the experience and look forward to future years with both companies visiting Laguna Beach.
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Photo by Hiromi Platt
Cincinnati Ballet’s Maizyalet Velázquez and Joshua Stayton
Hubbard Street Chicago’s Artistic Director Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell
Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell has led Hubbard Street Chicago since 2021 after a long and successful career as a professional dance artist and educator. A Principal Dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for 13 years, Fisher-Harrell has performed domestically and internationally for distinguished audiences.
Stu News: Sunday night was magical. I was so blown away and left with this feeling like, “What did I just experience?!”
Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell: I’m so glad you enjoyed it. That’s always so great to hear.
SN: In the aftermath of this successful weekend, what were your takeaways? Is there anything you can share retrospectively?
LDFH: I like to pay attention to the audience’s response and the energy we feel from the audience as they leave. I’m noting how people walk into the theater and then how they’re leaving. And it just seems like people left changed.
SN: Is there any advice you can give people – like my own husband who was experiencing modern dance for the first time this weekend – about how to approach these performances? Should we watch with an eye towards narrative or simply aim for an emotional experience?
LDFH: I don’t think I would be able to tell someone how to watch or experience art. You have to come to it as you are. Did your husband have an experience? How did he feel after he left?
SN: He really felt taken on a journey. I overheard one person say, and he agreed, they felt like they were inside an abstract painting and experienced a range of emotions. It’s amazing what could be accomplished with music, without music (as you did with Ne Me Quitte Pas), with lighting and costuming.
LDFH: OK, success! Then we achieved exactly what we set out to do. And that’s the beautiful thing. Art should be accessible to anyone. You shouldn’t feel like, “I don’t know anything about dance, so I can’t approach it, or I can’t experience it.” I think what your husband experienced was correct. I cannot guide that for each individual. But he stated it beautifully – “I felt like I was in an abstract painting.” There were probably things that made complete sense to him, and there were probably things that made him ask questions, made him wonder, made him curious. We want to show a wide range of styles, a wide range of techniques, and have the audience leave inspired.
SN: Do you look at what each of your dancers are physically capable of doing and choreograph around their abilities? Because I’m thinking of Bolero, this amazing duo dance with these hypnotic arm movements, and feeling like not everybody can do that.
LDFH: I look for dancers who can do everything. Each choreographer who works with the company can do whatever they want. They don’t feel limited. That’s the beauty. We are so invested in the process and the journey. When a choreographer comes in with an idea, and really tries to incubate and facilitate what those ideas are, [they’re able] to reach what you saw on the stage. I look for dancers who have strong control over their bodies. They can dive into multiple techniques with ease.
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Photo by Danica Paulos/Courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow
From Hubbard Street Dance’s “As the Wind Blows,” choreographed by Amy Hall Garner
SN: Going back to that earlier question about narrative – because I overheard so many people during intermission trying to parse out ideas about each piece – and somebody said that’s the wrong question to ask in modern dance. To close that loop for people – is narrative the right or wrong way to approach modern dance, even if it’s open to different interpretations?
LDFH: See, this is what I love. There’s no right or wrong way to approach it. Because we do such a wide variety of dance, some things are narrative and some things aren’t, and some things are completely abstract. I always ask the audience, or people ask me, “What is it about?” And I say, “What did you take away from it?” Hearing people’s interpretations is fascinating. It’s like, “Yes!” I always say, “Yes!”
It’s like going to a museum and experiencing visual art. There’s no right or wrong way to take in a painting. Everyone is going to have their interpretation. So it depends on the choreographer, and what the choreographer wants to say, and how they say it. How you take it in is really up to you.
SN: This weekend felt so culturally inclusive, gender inclusive, sexually inclusive and spiritually inclusive. How were you able to creatively weave in all those societal conversations and shed light on these topics?
LDFH: Oh my God. I’m smiling from ear to ear to hear that’s what you felt. At the end of the day, that’s what we want. I want to accept dancers how they are in the space. I’m looking at how incredible of an artist they each are and really trying to foster a diverse group of choreographers.
I would love for the company to reflect the audience and vice versa. That’s probably what you felt. Everybody belongs here. When you said that it felt spiritually inclusive, culturally inclusive, racially inclusive – yes, yes, yes and yes! I can go home now. I’m good.
SN: Were there other highlights that came out of this weekend for you?
LDFH: I had the opportunity to teach a master class at Laguna High. To be able to touch and connect with the dance community here is so special. It just rounds out the experience. I had dancers of all ages, from itty-bitties up to mature dancers like myself. We were all in the same space, sharing movement together and it was a beautiful sidebar to what you experienced within the concert Sunday night.
SN: How much thought did you give to the synergy between Hubbard and the Cincinnati Ballet? Were the performances in conversation with each other, or more existing alongside each other?
LDFH: Jodie and I talked about programming. She beautifully received comments like, “This will go beautifully after this piece.” It was a wonderful collaboration of curation. Jodie Gates is an incredible curator, artist and teacher, so it was really easy to work with her and discuss what each company could contribute to the evening. The dancers were beautiful [together] backstage, talking and fellowship. It was a wonderful collaboration overall.
For more information about the Laguna Dance Festival, upcoming events and workshops, and to support the work they do, visit their website here.