“It was never about the classes for me, it was always about the choreography. Much more than working on precise technical detail, it’s that whole process of making something that’s appealing to me,” says Jane Franklin, Artistic Director of Jane Franklin Dance, a company well-known for performing in non-traditional spaces including galleries and the outdoors.
Franklin welcomes Dance Is The Answer participants to experience part of that creative process even before venturing out to the Torpedo Factory Art Center for tonight's free 7 pm performance of Take a Deep Breath.
The company's latest cross-disciplinary choreographic adventure is a “dance event” consisting of two works, A Vivid Sense of Place and Double Take, which address our connection to place using the built-in space, video projection, music, dance, and visual art inspiration. The project embodies this year's Dance Is The Answer Art That Moves theme of which Dance/Metro DC Director Peter DiMuro emphasizes, "Art galleries will come alive with movement.”
In Double Take, “our project is really about the space itself,” explains Franklin. Prior to this evening's performance, the company spent time becoming intimately familiar with the Torpedo Factory space, twisting along a staircase, seeping into the floor, and weaving through arms and legs while balanced on chairs. Tonight, this exploratory "pre-performance" will be video-projected into the space while the audience simultaneously views a live performance of the same movement. Afterward, dancers will lead the audience to the original location of the video shoot where they can experience the movement again - as projected on screen and identically within the space itself. How will you identify with these visual experiences and spatial continuums?
Jane Franklin Dance performs Take a Deep Breath on Wednesday, April 27 at 7 pm at the Torpedo Factory located at 105 N. Union Street, Alexandria, VA 22314. Performance is free.
