Monday July – Oberon's Glade

Above: Cedar Lake dancers prepare for Cedar Lab (above: from Vânia Doutel Vaz’s new work)

Monday July 21st, 2014 – Today I visited Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet at their home on West 26th Street. The Company are preparing for Cedar Lab, a new venture in which Company dancers create new choreography on their colleagues. The works will be presented at four showings on July 29th and 30th, 2014. Details here. It’s a free event!

Jon Bond, Navarra Novy-Williams, Matthew Rich, Joaquim de Santana and Vânia Doutel Vaz are the choreographers, and today I watched rehearsals of the works being created by Navarra and Vânia. I had met these two young women in 2012 when Kokyat photographed them rehearsing Angelin Preljocaj’s magnificent dancework L’ANNONCIATION.

I love watching danceworks under construction! Navarra is create a piece with three of the Company’s women: Madeline Wong and Acacia Schachte (above)…

…and Rachelle Scott (above). Each dancer has a solo, and Navarra was working with them today on the detailing process. I heard some of the music, which is quite lyrical, and Rachelle dances to a beautiful rendition of ‘Moon River‘.

Navarra (above, with Rachelle); I love observing the creative process and seeing the dancers at close range.

We moved from the theater space to the studio where Vânia Doutel Vaz (above) was working on her ensemble piece. She conducted her rehearsal in silence, so I am not sure what the musical setting will be. Or maybe it’s a silent dancework…which could be very interesting.

The dancers were mastering a complicated set of freeze-frame poses to which they had applied a numeric encoding. There was a light-hearted atmosphere as they worked to get the sequence right.

Later the work expands dynamically into the space. Now that I’ve had a sampling from these new works, I look forward to seeing them – and the other new creations – in a performance setting next week.

Here are a few more images of the individual dancers rehearsing today: