When you’re dancing in fishermen’s waders, it’s hard to keep a smile off your face.
Amanda Herman and three colleagues are balanced on the edge of the top plaza pool near the Museum of Glass. Dipping and swinging to a cheesy country-and-western song about fishing for true love, they suddenly cartwheel into the pool, splashing and whipping watery arabesques. They’re rehearsing for this weekend’s SiteWorks outdoor contemporary dance festival, and they’re obviously having a bunch of fun.
It’s the second incarnation of SiteWorks, which debuted in 2006 as a production of Barefoot Studios. Last year, the Barefoot directors Paul and Josephine Zmolek left for jobs in Idaho, and the festival was put on hold. But now their successors, the Barefoot Collective, are producing the festival once more, and the Zmoleks are returning to direct. With 14 local, national and international performing groups and a four-day weekend of shows, the festival is looking good.
“We had such a great experience in 2006,” says Paul Zmolek, of why the festival is on again.
It’s also strongly connects the arts to the community, says Zmolek. “An outdoor dance festival attracts spectators, people just taking a walk or visiting the museum. It’s free, normalized.”
And it’s pretty eye-catching. Herman’s dance, the only one to utilize the pools since two are filled with glass installations, involves fishy hand moves, total submersion, swimming and a tango between dancers and their waders. Other dances riff on the similarity of competitive sports and female social behavior (Katie Stricker’s “SoftBall”) and the shifting dynamics of watching and being watched (Carrie Goodnight’s “Watched.”)
“Site-specific dance means making art in new ways, solving new problems,” explains Josephine Zmolek.
Herman agrees: “The tricky thing is that moves we developed in the studio are really different in the water.” Plus, as she points out, the visual backdrop of water and mountain are so stunning that for the choreography, “less is more to capture the audience’s attention.”
Then there are logistics to plan. Each day’s performance will begin at one location and move group by group to the various areas; volunteers will be stationed all over the plaza levels to direct the audience. Dancers have shades handy against the western sun. And if it rains, the show just goes on, albeit more slippery.
“It’s site-specific, the weather is part of what it’s all about,” says Barefoot choreographer Katie Stricker.
But the benefits of outdoor site-specific dance are immediate the moment you start watching. Goodnight’s piece takes account of the stunning backdrop of the waterway and mountain. Herman’s work literally plays with water. A piece by Jenna Bean Veatch uses the rise of the grand stairway as a metaphor for ocean and land.
“Architecture is the mother of the visual arts; dance is the mother of the performing arts,” says Paul Zmolek. “SiteWorks is a way of bringing these two essential art forms together. And it goes with our belief that the arts can’t be healthy without the community, and vice versa.”
Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568
rosemary.ponnekanti@thenewstribune.com
Who’s dancing at SiteWorks?
The biennial site-specific contemporary dance festival SiteWorks features 14 different choreographer/dancer combinations, most from Seattle or Tacoma, but also from San Francisco, Spain and New York. Here’s the line-up:
4 p.m. Thursday: Michael D. Hoover, Carrie Goodnight, Tessee George/Dance Contemporary
4 p.m. Friday: Nicole Sasala/The Asterisk Project, MG&MH Arts, DASS Dance, Amanda Herman
2 p.m. Saturday: Rosa Vissers, André Bouchard/Walrus Dance Company, Katharine M. Stricker, Megan Finlay, Pilar Villanueva/Prism2
2 p.m. Sunday: Jenna Bean Veatch, Carrie Goodnight, Katharine M. Stricker, Lilah Steece//Sapience: Dance Collective, Megan Finlay
Where: The pools and plazas outside Museum of Glass, 1801 Dock St., Tacoma. Volunteers will have programs.
Tickets: free
Rain-plan: The show will go on
Information: 253-627-2273, www.barefootcollective.org
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