CD/FW Dance Exchange: A Choreographers Showcase

Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth will perform Kerry Kreiman's ground to air signals which premiered on the Barefoot Brigade Dance Festival at the Bath House Cultural Center in April. A quartet created for Breanna Kimbley, Sarah Newton, Claudia Orcasitas, and Allison Perkins, the dance is structured as two simultaneous duets exploring the mysterious "ties that bind" between people, whether near or far.

CD/FW artistic director Kerry Kreiman will perform the premiere of Verbal Translation by guest choreographer Jeff Slayton (Long Beach). Set to music by Austin composer William H. Meadows, "Verbal Translation" was created when Kreiman traveled to Long Beach last summer. Kreiman's artistic friendship with Slayton began many years ago as a student at the American Dance Festival, where she was selected for his repertory class in two different summers. Back in the studio together as choreographer/dancer for the first time since 1990, Slayton and Kreiman have enjoyed this process, and hope to continue their artistic collaboration in some capacity in the future.

Rebecca Gose Enghauser (Georgia), whose guest solo appearances with CD/FW in Fall 2006 at Orchestra Hall were met with great acclaim, returns with a duet entitled Shuffle Play. A former principal dancer with Garth Fagan Dance, Enghauser serves on faculty at the University of Georgia in addition to continuing her professional career as a choreographer and performer. Collaborator and fellow University of Georgia faculty member Denise Posnak (Georgia) will appear with her in this light-hearted duet set to Texas swing and country music.

Succumbing to the delicious, soaring vocals and driving rhythms of popular country/folk songs from the likes of Hazel Dickens and Bob Wills, choreographers Rebecca Gose Enghauser and Denise Posnak created dance vignettes that play off the songs' phrasings, rhythms and structures, yet strive for an independent, thematic voice.

Curtiss Wesley (Dallas) makes his debut on the CD/FW Dance Exchange with his new contemporary dance company Liquid Movement in the premiere of A: I; OMO (Allein: Interpretation: One, Of Many, Of One) -- a collaborative work created with visual artist Gregory J. Singletary, and based on a series of Singletary's paintings. Singletary began the "ALLEIN" lingual series as counterpoint to messages of intellectual subversion perpetuated by current societal paradigms, customs, and traditions. Utilizing influences of lingual means of interpretation, and harmonic existence with natural environments (evident in studies of pagan and indigenous cultures worldwide, coupled with observed patterns of the natural world), a lexis of characters evolved to serve the function of reuniting the world of humanity with the world of the natural. The word "Allein," German, meaning "alone," has been reinterpreted as "without ornament," and indicates -- with regard to the ALLEIN lingual series -- a philosophy of living within the knowledge of an interconnection of all things.

Phase 2 Dance Ensemble will preview a work in progress by co-artistic director Lacreacia Sanders entitled Un...Break...Able -- the quartet explores the concept of being "broken" both physically and mentally, and pushes the boundaries of what our individual bodies can and desire to do. Phase 2 Dance Ensemble and many of the dancers/choreographers affiliated with the company have made numerous appearances on CD/FW concerts over the years, and have also collaborated with CD/FW and other members of the Barefoot Brigade coalition.

Choking the Earth? Just Take Off Those Clothes and Join the Water in D-Flat by Shelley Cushman is a collaborative group work with eight dancers and music composition/remix by Jesse Coulter of Vortexas. This work juxtaposes the everyday hustle and bustle of the human footprint left on the earth with the beauty of the healing earth we continue to destroy. Ultimately we will all be diluted into the earth's water and swim with the whales who "sing" in D-flat. Local audiences may remember Cushman's slow-motion dance happening during a previous festival, when her dancers evolved through a 3-hour installation scattered inside and outside the museum. A nationally-recognized Denton-based choreographer, she has also appeared with CD/FW at Orchestra Hall.