If your couch could talk, what would it say? If your rocking chair could dance, how would it move?
For Tacoma choreographer Robin Jennings Jaecklein, the answer’s simple: with the athletic, playful moves you’ll see in her “Furniture Series” performances this weekend at the Tacoma School of the Arts theater.
“It’s all little bits out of my life, I suppose,” Jaecklein said while readying for a rehearsal the week before the performances.
Jaecklein, who is a teacher at SOTA, has been working on the “Furniture Series” for about five years. She was inspired by an oversize rocking chair at a Sixth Avenue store.
“I’d drive by every day and think, wouldn’t it be so fun to do a dance on that?” Jaecklein remembered.
The series began with a short piece about a couch in 2006 followed by others, including the rocking chair in 2008. The entire series got its premiere last year but now includes several new pieces and different dancers.
All still tell stories from Jaecklein’s own home life. “Couch,” for instance, centers on the choreographer’s battle-worn item, which she says is used as gymnastics equipment by her four enthusiastic kids. The dance is athletic, with ’80s costumes and colors.
“Table” features her own table, a small, battered one with two wings. The piece has morphed over time into a three-part series through an imaginary life: The first explores the excitement and independence of your first home. Three female dancers express hope and joy with reaching arms, big leaps and cherishing caresses of the table. The second represents a frustrated mid-life crisis in a bar setting, while the third is an empty-nest piece about loneliness.
“Rug,” with a hawk-like solo by Hannah Crowley, features a rug Jaecklein has never thrown away (“It probably smells like my dog”), while “Mirror” is a new piece about reflection using handheld mirrors.
Pride of place is given to the rocking chair. On a giant replica of the one Jaecklein saw on Sixth Avenue, Robin and another dancer play like elves at midnight, costumed by Lisa Fruichantie in funny frills and exploring just how far the chair can rock and counterbalance.
Two other giant furniture items, also made by Jaecklein’s husband, Jim, play with scale and humanity: “Armoire” spills open with a jumble of dancers dressed as toys and “Portrait” is a big empty frame holding Jaecklein’s own SOTA dance students, who dance out self-expression to the soundtrack of their own voices.
“I debated whether to have students in a professional show, but you can’t separate the teacher from my identity. It’s who I am,” she explained.
Collaborating with SOTA teachers and alumni, Jaecklein is using original music for every piece, but the other big collaboration is in the very first movement: “Vases” features dancers Joel Myers and Mary Tuttle weaving around five enormous sculptural vases, each higher than a person and made by artists Terri Placentia and Jimmy Gosselin. To a heavy beat, the dancers echo lithe limbs in a ballet-meets-funk kind of way.
“It’s about shape, color, line, warmth,” Jaecklein said. “It’s how I think of the cross between dance and visual arts.”
There also will be a video piece, and photography by Virginia Bunker.
So at the end of the evening will the audience know all about Jaecklein?
“I suppose,” she said, smiling. “Each piece is very different. They all have their own artistic statement.”
Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568, rosemary.ponnekanti@thenewstribune. com, blog.thenewstribune.com/arts
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