The Kansas City Ballet and two area modern dance companies will perform an evening of original works this fall at Johnson County Community College titled “New Dance Partners.”
The performances, which will be created by nationally-known choreographers commissioned by the college, will take place at Yardley Hall at 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 27, and again at 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28. Single tickets go on sale June 3. For more information, visit www.jccc.edu/TheSeries or call the college box office at 913-469-4445.
Jodie Gates from San Francisco will work this summer with the ballet, while KT Nelson, also from San Francisco, will work with the Owen/Cox Dance Group and Autumn Eckman of Chicago will work with the Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company.
“The performances feature world premieres of three different works, which is something we’ve never done before,” said Emily Behrmann, general manager of the Performing Arts Series at JCCC. “Our goal is to raise the profile of dance here at the Performing Arts Series and help build dance audiences throughout the metropolitan area.”
Jeffrey J. Bentley, executive director of the Kansas City Ballet, said the ballet’s leaders thought that Behrmann’s invitation to participate was “almost too good to be true.”
New works are essential for the ballet to remain relevant, he said, but they are by their nature high risk so finding a donor or another resource to support them is often difficult. And while expanding the area’s dance audience is a long-term effort, the college event “should move that ball forward measurably,” he said.
“The board that Emily works with and the college should all take a bow for this because it is really special,” he said.
Behrmann approached the ballet and modern dance companies with the idea after visiting with Michael Uthoff, artistic director of Dance St. Louis, who premiered a similar program in 2012. “Michael’s vision at DSL inspired me to think beyond our usual work with commissions,” she said. The series has commissioned dance works in the past, she said, but this is the first time it will involve Kansas City dance companies.
The Kansas City Ballet is well known, of course, but Owen/Cox and Williams/Henry also have been doing very good work for years without as much notoriety, Behrmann said. The project will give the three an opportunity to perform on the same program and hopefully will encourage audiences to discover what each company has to offer.
“With the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts raising the profile of the performing arts in Kansas City and with the ballet’s high profile, now is the time to speak to Kansas City’s dance audience and showcase the wonderful things happening here in our city,” Behrmann said. “You don’t have to travel to New York, Chicago or San Francisco to see great dance.”
The Yardley Endowment in the JCCC Foundation will fund the expenses for the project, which will be about $60,000. The dance companies will pay their dance troupes for their rehearsal time and underwrite any costs for costumes or music.
The ballet has augmented the fee for Gates, Bentley said, because it wants to do a piece that will be a little longer than the one initially envisioned. The ballet plans to perform the new work as part of its fall program on Oct. 11 after its debut at JCCC.
Gates has established herself among the elite in neo-classical dance choreography. She has choreographed ballets for companies worldwide and is the founder and artistic director of the award-winning Laguna Dance Festival based in southern California.
Jennifer Owen, who founded the Owen/Cox Dance Group with Brad Cox in 2007, said New Dance Partners would give audiences a wonderful chance to see all three groups during one evening. Nelson is interested in choreographing a piece to live music, Owen said, which sounds good to her and her partner. Cox is a composer and musician and he often writes original works to accompany Owen’s choreography.
Nelson is co-artistic director of the Oberlin Dance Collective in San Francisco. Since 1976, she has choreographed more than 54 works as well as composing and commissioning numerous scores. In 1986, she choreographed and directed the collective’s first full-length family production, The Velveteen Rabbit, which has been performed annually in the Bay Area and nationwide.
The Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company began its 21st concert season last fall. It is named for Leni Wylliams, a founder who died in 1996, and Mary Pat Henry, a professor of dance at the University of Missouri in Kansas City.
Eckman, who will be choreographing the work for Wylliams/Henry, serves as artistic associate at Giordano Dance Chicago, where she is also director of Giordano II and resident choreographer.
Henry said she was looking forward to working with Eckman, whom she described as “an interesting young choreographer who is doing lots of great things all over the country.”
Pairing the ballet with two modern dance companies, she said, is a unique idea – one that should produce a wonderful smorgasbord of high-quality art.
“It’s a gutsy, bold venture,” Henry said. “In the arts today, that’s the kind of energy and forward-thinking we need.”
Eckman, who was classically trained from the Houston Ballet Academy, began her performance career as a Giordano company member. She has performed with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Luna Negra Dance Theater, Lucky Plush Productions and State Street Ballet (Santa Barbara). Eckman has created several works for the Giordano main company and has been commissioned by companies such as DanceWorks Chicago, Chicago Repertory Ballet and Missouri Contemporary Ballet. She was awarded Dance Chicago’s New Artistic Voice in 2009 and named a Standout Choreographer in the Chicago Tribune in 2010.
