Jess Curtis' Remarks
"Of particular interest ... was the meeting of dance and circus technique in the more intimate setting of dance theater. We created a variety of images utilizing aerial techniques including Corde lisse (vertical rope) and elastics. We explored the meeting of circus-style acrobatics and contact improv, which yielded a particularly engaging men's trio and several lovely duets. And significantly, I believe we were able to do this while maintaining the standard that the technique served the image and contributed to the larger meaning of the piece.
"... In Fallen, I worked with a range of movement qualities from the athletic to the very symbolic. I feel confident in the uniqueness of this blend of interests and feel that I was able to explore the integration of these types of movement more coherently.... The skills that I am interested in exploiting come from years of training, and a dancer with incredible phrase-dancing technique will often not have the experience of "Contact" that I am seeking, and vice-versa. The success of this project is that I was able to start with a team that already had considerable interdisciplinary breadth and that we were able to invest quite a bit of time in the exploration of each disciplinary direction....
"The amount of time I was able to focus on the physical and dramaturgical research in this piece allowed me to work on a level I have not been able to before. In the end, the success for me in this area is measured by the number of audience members and critics alike who responded to the piece with an articulate discussion of the issues and images that we presented, and a clear discussion of how we presented them. People's ability to grasp and take home and think over and write articulately about what we did on stage gave me a lot of satisfaction. The time afforded me on this project was directly responsible for that."
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