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Expressions and images
Moving Current will open its season with dances partly based on nostalgic themes.
By JOHN FLEMING
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 28, 2000
Where does a dance come from? For choreographer Cynthia Hennessy, inspiration for a trio called My Father's Footsteps came from her childhood in St. Petersburg.
"It's basically my images of the beach, which are mixed with my memories of my father, because we used to spend a lot of time at the beach together," said Hennessy, a co-founder of Moving Current, a modern dance collective in Tampa.
My Father's Footsteps and another Hennessy work, Falling Forward, are on Moving Current's season-opening program, which has three performances Friday and Saturday.
For another choreographer, David Dorfman, some of his dance ideas come from words.
"I like taking little expressions -- you know, like "better late than never' or words like "lie' -- and playing around with them," Dorfman said last week, speaking from New York, where he has had his own company, David Dorfman Dance, for 15 years.
Dorfman is featured this weekend as a guest artist with Moving Current. He'll perform a solo called To Lie Tenderly or Better Than Never.
"The conceit of it is to think of the multiple meanings of the word "lie,' and then adding "tenderly' to it," he said. "How does one tell falsehoods tenderly? Is that even possible? Then there is the idea of being intimate with somebody, or with yourself, just being calm, lying down for a moment, taking a rest, something I have a hard time doing on a crazy schedule."
As for the other part of the title of the 15-minute work, Dorfman said that "by taking the "late' out of "better late than never,' it implies the idea that you can change at any time, always go into a different area, grow, improve, better oneself, and how we sometimes get thwarted when we're attempting to do that."
Dorfman's solo, taken from a larger work he's choreographing for his company, also concerns rock 'n' roll. Most of the music is by Amy Denio, a composer from Seattle.
"The magic thing about rock 'n' roll is that it came into its height of existence when I was learning about music," he said. "My dad took me to see the Beatles when they were in Chicago and I was 8 years old. The history of rock has kind of become the arc of the piece. And it's become, at least partially, about nostalgia. Is nostalgia a lie?"
Three years ago, Moving Current started out as a collective of choreographers Hennessy, Erin Cardinal and Elsa Valbuena. They later added designer G.B. Stephens. Eight dancers, all women, will be performing in the program, whose largest work is Cardinal's three-movement Meetings in Raga, to music by Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar.
"One of the changes in Moving Current is that we've been working with a lot of the same dancers," Hennessy said. "We never intended to be a company. It was always going to be something that was project-based. But now we've worked with the same dancers, and it's accidentally turned into a company, I think."
Hennessy, who teaches dance at Eckerd College and St. Petersburg Junior College, thinks the company is developing a style of its own. She, Cardinal and Valbuena all work within a movement theory called release technique.
"It means moving with as little muscle tension or effort as you can," she said. "So you use just what you need. If you need a leg extension, you're not tightening all the muscles in your back but just the muscles that you need.
"Choreographically, we all have our own separate voices. But because we're working with the same dancers, they influence us. We influence each other on a subconscious level. As far as an aesthetic, we like simple and elegant."
Modern dance can be a tough sell, and Moving Current has performed for its share of small crowds, but the collective's persistance is starting to pay off. It has received arts funding from Hillsborough County and the state of Florida.
"I think it's a natural development of being together several years," Hennessy said. "We began on the theory that if you create dance, you will create an audience, but you have to create it consistently and the audience will grow. I think we're finding that to be true. I think we're making headway."
Dance preview
Moving Current and guest artist David Dorfman perform at 8 p.m. Friday and 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday at the Performing Arts Building, Hillsborough Community College, 14th Street and Palm Avenue, Tampa. Tickets: $6 and $12. (813) 237-0216.
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