Synergy of 3

Hollins Dance Project at Center for Dance Development

By Tanya Whiton

Hollins Dance Project performs, at New Dance Studio, 61 Pleasant Street, Dec. 12, at 6 and 8 p.m. Call (207) 780-0554.

MAGIC NUMBER: Zarritt, Chris, and Procopio, together again.

Hollins Dance Project company members Melissa Chris, Sara Procopio, and Jesse Zarritt used to live together, eat together, and lecture together. They were engaged in an ongoing exchange of ideas, and their process was part of a shared life, centered around Hollins University, a small liberal arts college in the Virginia mountains, where Chris and Procopio both attended graduate school and which helped create both their program and the Project.

Now, Chris resides in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Procopio and Zarritt are based in New York, dancing with Shen Wei Dance Arts. Thanks to Portland’s Center for Dance Development, the three friends and collaborators have reunited for a two-week residency. After seeing a brief rehearsal and talking with the dancers over lunch, it became apparent that they have had a profound effect on each other. They are affectionate and supportive of each other without being precious, and analytical without being harsh. Procopio and Zarritt both seem to have implicit faith in Chris’s choreographic impulses, and the freedom to bring their own unique qualities to crafting pieces. The Phoenix interviews the trio.

Phoenix: How did you all come together? What kind of background did you bring to the project?

Chris: Well, I went [to college] as a calculus major. I danced when I was a kid — I went through the whole progression, from ballet to jazz to basketball.

Procopio: I’ve danced since I was young, and I was in this program I really wasn’t happy with. I took time off from dancing, and then I went to the American Dance Festival, and found out about Hollins . . .

Zarritt: I had a different experience — see, Hollins is all women. I started dancing in college. Then, I met these women, there was this connection.

 

Q: Where do your ideas come from?

Chris: I usually choose a book. [She slides a small pile of books across the table, and opens up a copy of Darwin’s Worms: On Life Stories and Death Stories, to reveal pages of words underlined and circled in red ink.] It helps me give meaning to images — I underline the way the words become visual. And I make a word list. [Chris extracts one of many lined yellow sheets from the book, and pulls out the list: conflict, chance, survival, reproduction, family, sexual satisfaction, death, digestion.]

Q: Those are some pretty abstract concepts. How do you build from that?

Zarritt: What’s great about something this abstract and open is you can go into a different source. I let go of my preconceived idea about what my body does in dance, I think about different ways that I can embody the idea of death. [Chris opens another book, The Observation Deck, and points at a passage: “Stage confrontations so the characters will say surprising and revealing things.”]

Chris: Conflict — the first word on the list.

 

Q: Do you experience that emotional range in rehearsal? Does it feel like a conflict?

Zarritt: When we were working on it, it became sort of like a puzzle.

Chris: I’m using this piece [she puts a Shostakovich CD on top of the books] Cadenza. It starts out really sparse, and then builds up until he’s attacking the space.

Zarritt: It’s unusual to fit our movements to a really specific score.

[Chris explains, with a slightly rueful expression, that since she doesn’t have her collaborators to draw from, she felt the need to start devising some architecture, some frame to work within.]

 

Q: So what specific qualities do you each bring to the collaboration?

Chris: When I see these two move, I feel anyone could jump into their bodies.

 

Q: What does that mean?

Zarritt: It’s like there’s a neutrality to our self-presentation that allows other people to jump into our movement. [He pauses, and looks at Sara.] What’s really special about Sara is her presence — there’s no affect in her performance.

Procopio: Melissa has an amazing sense of musicality, when she’s moving, she can match the notes.

Chris: I follow the math. [She smiles.] And Jesse, he’s strong, but he’s capable of showing vulnerability.

 

Clearly, the three miss each other, and distance and separation have made them all the more appreciative of the relationship they have, and had. In rehearsal, however, they are all business. Chris and Zarritt show Procopio a section of their new duet, aný she steps in to Chris’s role, her striking face and still hesitant steps a contrast to Chris’s more body centric expression. Zarritt and Procopio work the section, a falling forward/almost releasing motion that twists back into a snapshot: Procopio’s head resting on Zarritt’s shoulder.

Chris watches, giving suggestions and demonstrating corrections, and at one point, when Procopio’s interpretation of a movement differs from her own, she demonstrates it again, saying, “I’m like the mast of a ship — 3/4 boom BAH.” Procopio repeats the pattern over and over until Chris says, “That’s it!” Then, when another gesture is altered in transference, Chris exclaims; “Oh, that was so cool! Do it again.”

Tanya Whiton can be reached at twhiton@prexar.com.