Pre-professional dancers Jared Zeltner and Kaito Aihara rehearse Thursday in Carnahan-Jackson Dance Studios for the School of Dance’s Student Gala I. SKYLAR SEAVEY / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
NORA SMITH
Staff Writer
Dancers will go beyond technicality and bring stories to life at 3 p.m. Sunday when they take to the Amphitheater stage for the first time this season for the Chautauqua School of Dance Student Gala I.
Following a 20-year career performing with various professional dance companies, Kara Wilkes, an educator, choreographer, visual artist and filmmaker, returns for the fourth summer in a row to choreograph and teach as a School of Dance faculty member.
Bonnefoux McBride Artistic Director of Chautauqua School of Dance Sasha Janes has asked Wilkes to create a premiere every summer. Before Wilkes gets to work, she likes to figure out what else is on the program.
“There’s always been a Balanchine work in the summers I’ve been here, and it’s a piece — “Raymonda Variations” — that I myself have danced, and with white tutus, very beautiful classical music. And then Sasha is doing what I would call a neoclassical or contemporary ballet style of piece that’s very vibrant, vibrant colors,” Wilkes said.
After understanding what pieces will accompany her own, Wilkes typically plans her premiere in ways that will both complement and round out the program; her work often has a theatrical edge with contemporary ballet movement.
Because the dancers will be in collaboration with the Music School Festival Orchestra later this season, Wilkes works closely with Artistic Director Timothy Muffitt and selects music that brings this blend of live orchestra and dance to life.
“He’s amazing,” Wilkes said. “I usually conference with him about what is a good piece that uses a lot of his orchestra, and it’s such a big Amphitheater, like, let’s have a huge group of dancers and instruments together.”
With some Philip Glass music simmering on the back burner of her mind for a couple years, Wilkes will use Glass’s Symphony No. 1 “Low” for her piece, “Dreamscape.” The idea for this piece was inspired by Wilke’s observation of an increase in information coming out about the benefits of sleep, dream studies, links of dreams to trauma and how humans process information, events and emotions through dreams.
“I really love to bring topics to audiences where everyone can hopefully relate,” Wilkes said. “So, I thought, ‘Well, we all sleep and not everyone remembers their dreams,’ but I’ve always found dreaming to be so fascinating ever since I was a child. I’m a very vivid dreamer, and I find dream interpretation fascinating.”
The audience will follow an overworked “dreamer” on their journey of sleep as they experience a land of dreams and nightmares.
“I thought with Philip Glass music, it’s a bit ominous,” Wilkes said. “A lot of his music has cycles of repetitive sort of pulsing, but it’s cinematic and it has some big, bold sections as well, and I just thought, ‘This could be a lot of fun.’”
This will be the pre-professional dancers’ first time taking on the Amphitheater stage this season.
“It’s a gift to work with them,” Wilkes said. “I feel super honored and I want them to really enjoy the process, and I love the idea of us talking about character work a little.”
Wilkes considers the ability to act and understand one’s character an amazing skill for dancers and young artists to have.
“Every choreographer is different in how they work, but I like to collaborate with the dancers in the way of, ‘Let’s build this world together, and I have this idea of what you could be representing,’” Wilkes said.
Offering this new layer of artistry in their training and development as artists is something Wilkes enjoys and was something that she most enjoyed as a professional herself.
Wilkes first performed on the Amphitheater stage when she was about 22 years old, fresh in her career and seeking growth as a dancer.
“Then I grew every summer here, more and more, and got more confidence. Thank goodness you grow and get better at what you’re doing,” Wilkes said. “Then, to come back as a choreographer and teacher, which are two different practices in dance, it’s another growing experience.”
Janes has continued to support Wilkes in this growth and experimentation of her work.
“[Janes] was giving a speech and he said, ‘This is a place you can come to fail and experiment,’ and I feel that support here,” Wilkes said. “I feel I can take some risks here, like ‘Well, let’s have a little fun.’”
For Janes, Wilkes’ return to Chautauqua is always a full circle moment because of the time she spent with Alonzo King LINES Ballet; the company will return to Chautauqua later this season, and longtime School of Dance Director Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux’s favorite choreographer was Alonzo King himself.
“To have Kara here with sort of her lineage to Alonzo King and then later on, we’re going to have LINES coming here as well … that’s going to be super exciting,” Janes said. “I just thought it was nice to bring Kara as an ode to Jean-Pierre and what he was trying to do; Jean-Pierre had a love for contemporary works.”
