Big APE creates dance community

The March 3 rehearsal for “Everyone Can Dance” began in a circle in the middle of the Mahaney Center for the Arts Dance Theater.  Thirty-five dancers of every shape, size, ethnicity and age created the circle, led by Ellen Smith-Ahern ’05 in a modern dance warm-up, rearranging skeletal and brain muscles and shifting into the particular frame of mind required for the rest of the afternoon’s adventures.

Artist in Residence in Dance Tiffany Rhynard, the orchestrator of this ambitious project, manages to be in 17 places at once: warming up alongside the group, bent over a corner of the floor carpeted with notes and diagrams, directing a filmographer and giving an energetic smile to each of her dancers. Tiffany’s dance troupe, Big Action Performance Ensemble (Big APE), is the impetus behind this performance concept, carrying out a mission to prove that absolutely everyone can dance if they have the passion for it.

Rhynard choreographs on a project-by-project basis, and this latest endeavor has taken her and eight Big APE dance members to three different communities in Vermont (Burlington in December, Montpelier in January and finally Middlebury) for their final rendition of “Everyone Can Dance” that will be performed next Friday and Saturday, March 18-19 at 8 p.m. in the Middlebury Town Hall Theater. Rhynard, in collaboration with the eight dancers (the “core eight”), began choreographing the piece in August, creating a flexible framework with many different sections and parts.  Then they brought the piece into each town and invited community members to participate and form the majority of the cast. Those who committed would spend the next couple weeks in rehearsal with Rhynard and the core eight and then perform “Everyone Can Dance” in their own town theaters.  The only requirements to participate were a pure and simple passion for movement and an open mind.

This project idea came to Rhynard a few years ago when she noted a very limiting image of dance being upheld by the media and assumed in our culture. She wanted to encourage the idea that dance and movement is within everyone’s reach.
“There are a lot of stereotypes in the dance world that I’m interested in blowing apart,” said Rhynard. Much like our views of models or celebrities, these stereotypes involve an expectation for a dancer to look the part — to have a highly-trained balletic body capable of dazzling and precise acrobatics.  Rhynard saw reality TV shows and movies that, despite their entertaining aspects, also confronted the public with accusations — for instance, So You Think You Can Dance?

“Yes,” Rhynard said. “I think everyone can dance.”

In light of this idea, Rhynard was intrigued with working with different shapes and sizes and styles of movement, creating a spectrum on stage instead of society’s homogeneous and predictable vision of dance. She did not want the “overly-polished look” of professional dance. Instead, she wanted to find diverse human movement, “something with soul.”

Rhynard reminds the hardworking dancers, amateur and professional to “[not] get too caught up in all the different steps. I’m more interested in how you’re dancing them. I want you to be comfortable with your body.” This concept is novel, especially for anyone who grew up taking ballet lessons where the most important part was to get the step right.

When asked what she wanted her dancers to get out of this event, Rhynard said, “I want them to have a dancing experience that feels good — a really positive, meaningful time. I want them to feel empowered about dance.”

The group’s warm-up transitions to traveling sequences across the floor, and the room is filled with coiling, twisting, spinning bodies. The kinds of people in this room range from professional dancers, Middlebury dance students, those who love to dance but rarely get a chance, and those who never have danced in an organized setting but are wholeheartedly eager to try. The veteran dancers possess a virtuoso awareness of body, but it is the movements of the dancers who usually sit in desks at school or day jobs that are a pleasure to watch. Laughter ripples through the group as discoveries are made — new ones will be made all afternoon — and the members realize the different places their bodies can take them.

“Their authentic energy about dancing is what’s so interesting,” said Rhynard about this community of non-dancers that have come together to dance.

One of the biggest aspects of this project that emerged in its process was the forming of relationships between people and the building of a community of dancers with connections that would not necessarily have occurred otherwise. Rhynard’s favorite part was meeting all of the amazing people involved and learning about them during the creation of the piece. She and the dancers learned to listen, to compromise, and to negotiate artistically with other people.

“My favorite part is meeting the community … and learning how to move with new people,” said Cat Miller ’11.

The music that will accompany most of the sections of the piece is original compositions and selections by Philippe Bronchtein ’10.

“You really can’t talk about it without talking about the music,” Rhynard said.  “Much of the movement is based on its pure relationship to the music.” Bronchtein will be on stage throughout the performance as a live DJ behind the dancers.
Rhynard admits that there are certain challenges that accompany such a large-scale project. “They are all human beings and people get sick or injured or don’t show up, so the logistics of coordinating a large group of people is a lot … a lot of e-mailing and phone-calling and chart-making,” she said. But with these challenges, she has become even more flexible and practiced in the skill of delegation.  The hard work of Big APE is expected to pay off in their final performances in Middlebury. Rhynard looks forward to it because she believes that “the apex of the whole project is sharing it.”

There is no doubt that this piece will inspire something within the audience. It will make you see beauty in the shapes that people can make. It will make you want to get up and dance, and then it will tell you it is possible; no matter who you are, you can do it. Broken arms, women and men, those undefined by gender, a seven-year-old, black-white-blue-green-skinned people, a mother of five, a cubicle worker, a college student who hasn’t slept in five days — all can dance. You may have to learn to move in a different tempo than the one you live in when you walk down the street, you may have to learn what it means to create and move with other people, but if you are enthusiastic and passionate and open, you can dance.