Laguna Dance Festival Gears Up for New Season

In fluid motion, seven dancers entered the packed main gallery of the Laguna Art Museum. Their steps formed a vivid contrast as well as a complement to the current exhibition by modernist artist Peter Krasnow. His wooden sculptures vaguely resemble the human form and paintings offer as much impetus for interpretation as the dancers’ movements.

Performances titled “Sculpted Motion” by the Kybele Dance Theater and “FAM,” a work done by six of members the L.A. Contemporary Dance Company, served to usher in this year’s Laguna Dance Festival with a preview during  September’s First Thursday Art Walk.

Introducing the festival’s 12th season, founder Jodie Gates praised the collaboration between visual and performing arts and for building a bridge between generations. “The Laguna Dance Festival focuses on education and making dance accessible to all,” said Gates, also vice dean and professor of dance at the USC Kaufman School of Dance.

This year, Gates chose Kyle Abraham with his Abraham.In.Motion company as headliner and brings back popular Los Angeles companies Bodytraffic and Ballet X.

“I like to rotate favorites,” she said.

Bodytraffic’s director, Lillian Rose Barbeito, said that she, co-director Tina Finkelman and Gates determined that showing a range of the troupe’s repertory would be a good fit for this year’s dance fest.

They will open with excerpts from “The New 45,” choreographed by Richard Siegal and “Once again, before you go,” a hybrid of hip-hop and contemporary dance choreographed by Victor Quijada. The company numbers between eight and 10 dancers, depending on whether at home or touring.

“The Laguna Dance Festival is amongst our most enjoyable and memorable venues because of its enthusiastic and dance educated audience,” said Barbeito, 40. The dance professor at Loyola Marymount University  gravitates toward edgy material designed to educate and customize the company’s outreach programming. “When Tina and I commission new work, we scour the world for the most distinctive choreographic voices that will help our dancers continue to evolve,” she said.

Trained in the Anouk vanDijk Countertechnique, which Barbeito describes as “the quantum physics of dance,” she directs her dancers to shed fear and keep their bodies and minds clear and present while dancing in order to enjoy long lasting careers. Like many of her contemporaries, she began her career as a classical ballerina, a “bun head,” but became entranced by modern dance after seeing Paul Taylor perform “Esplanade.”

Abraham.In.Motion will perform “Pavement,” the acclaimed piece that some suggest alludes to the Black Lives Matter movement. Seen through the lens of hip-hop culture, its sense of insurmountable individual challenge and connection to disenfranchised people, though, defies pinpointing a specific time.

After its Laguna Beach run, the troupe will travel to France, Belgium and return to Brooklyn, N.Y., before retiring the work for a time.  “It’s a work heavily driven by social justice, yet many ethnicities play a role and find meaning in it,” said Tamisha Guy, the only female dancer in “Pavement.” “It’s one of the best pieces I have performed. It’s powerful, created before Black Lives Matter but people ask questions and associate it with that,” she said.

Abraham is a 2013 recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a 2016 Princess Grace Foundation award, among many others. The storyline is set in Pittsburgh, Abraham’s hometown. Inspired by the 1991 film “Boyz N the Hood,” W.E.B. Dubois’ “Souls of Black Folk” and the violence-riddled daily life of black communities, it premiered in 2012, featuring a musical repertoire ranging from Bach to Sam Cooke and beyond.

Guy, 26, describes the piece as collaborative, one where dancers have quite a bit of choreographic freedom to create a character arc for themselves within the work.

“The work is a true masterpiece and I will be forever grateful for being able to perform in it here in Laguna Beach and create conversation,” she said.

Born in Trinidad, Guy came to New York at age 9, she said. She danced with the Martha Graham Company and joined Abraham in 2014. This year, she too received a Princess Grace Foundation Dance Fellowship.

This fall, Abraham will join the UCLA dance faculty in its department of World Arts and Culture. He choreographed for the Martha Graham Dance Company and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, among other companies, and has collaborated with individual dancers like Wendy Whelan, a New York City Ballet principal.

So what goes through a dancer’s head and body on stage? Guy said that she stays in the present, in the moment. “Whatever we learned stays in our bodies and lives on, but we add extra artistic layers with every performance,” she explained. “Honesty is important, without anything getting in the way of the message we portray.”

Performances:

“Pavement” with Kyle Abraham/Abraham in Motion, Thursday. Sept. 22, 7:30 p.m.; Friday, Sept. 23, 7:30 p.m. Both followed by conversation with Kyle Abraham.

Bodytraffic “Coast to Coast Contemporary Cool,” Saturday, Sept. 24, 8 p.m.

Ballet X, Sunday, Sept. 25, 3 p.m. Pre-show conversation with director, 2 p.m.

All performances: Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Rd.  Box Office: 949-497-2787 www.lagunaplayhouse.com

Master Classes:

Dance Studio, Laguna Beach High School, 625 Park Ave.

Kyle Abraham, Wednesday, Sept. 21, 6-8 p.m.

Bodytraffic, Saturday, Sept. 24. 10 a.m.-noon.

Ballet X, Sunday, Sept. 25. 10 a.m.-noon.

Register: 949-715-5578