Wellspring/Cori Terry and Dancers’ Fall Concert of Dance “Food, Home, & Belonging” marks the beginning of a new season of collaborations as well as a seismic shift for the company.
This 44th season opener marks the first performance for the company under new Artistic Director Marisa Bianan, a Wellspring dancer since 2018, who is taking the helm from Founder Cori Terry; their first performance in the newly-named Cori Terry Theatre; and a new collaboration with Chromic Duo as part of the 2024-2025 season of Fontana Chamber Arts.
Though it marks a series of firsts, this cozy collaboration is very much shot through with love for the Kalamazoo community. Featuring local business wares, from a signature scent, called “Labor of Love” blended by The Aroma Labs, to a “concession takeover” in which treats from Cravings Deli, Confections with Convictions, Sweetwaters, and Shawarma King, are made available, it’s notably a literal celebration of food, home, and belonging.
The concert is comprised of four dances performed by six dancers (Marisa Bianan, Alexis Smith, Sarah Holcomb, Emma Kent, Emily McKee, and Angel Sutton) with five pieces of music performed by Lucy Yao and Dorothy Chan (Chromic Duo) and the collaboration here is expansive—the music heightens the dance and the dance gives visual shape to the music; while watching both the musicians and the dancers subtly interact against a red brocade backdrop with exquisite lighting design by Sam Snow that is, at turns, subtle and dramatic, is a joy.
The newly commissioned work “Of the Sweetness We Remember” is the show’s highlight. It blends not only original choreography by Marisa Bianan and music composed by Chromic Duo, but it also features interviews with members of Wellspring’s Youth Program in which they answer the question what food reminds you of home? to signify a larger story about cultural and generational connections.
The dancers kneel around a bowl kneading dough as bookends to this piece while children speak to their memories of food, family, and thankfulness in voiceover clips, and images of hand-written recipes are projected into frames hanging above the stage.
The dancers touch their bellies and chests, move in a circle, make shapes of arabesques and move in pirouettes, ultimately circling the bowl, lifting it up, carrying it, passing it, then placing it down as an offering. This movement is both literal and metaphorical, all happening as the music builds to a crescendo and the interviews fall away, the words still resonant: “food is our family’s way of sharing what we’ve done” and “I feel the sweetness of it” and “it just feels that you should be really thankful.”
The message really lands this weekend before Thanksgiving.
Though the other dances in this Wellspring concert aren’t as overtly focused on food, they do center connection. Cori Terry’s 2019 “Like a Storm” set to Nyokabi Kariuki’s Laika, bluu is especially pretty and whimsical as the five dancers dressed in shades of purple move in tender musicality through the staccato electronic sounds mashed up with elegant notes from the Steinway grand piano on loan from The Gilmore. They twirl and jump off one another, offer little lifts and flips, in a lovely modern ballet that grows more dramatic in both movement and sound.
In the duet “A Conversation with the Self” originally choreographed by Marisa Bianan as “Mixed Messages” reset to Pavane by Maurice Ravel, arranged by chromic duo, dancers Emily McKee and Angel Sutton connect and separate, bounce on their heels, plié deeply, share weight, balance on one another, and hug as a voiceover offers “there is belonging for you”, a message chromic duo needed to emerge from their experience in 2021 amid the anti-Asian American sentiment during the pandemic. This piece comes as a response to the question “Can we imagine a place where our histories are told in classrooms?” Lucy Yao said as an introduction to the piece.
And the playful “From Elaine (With Gratitude)” choreographed by Angel Sutton and set to Yeartide by Kalamazoo composer Samn Johnson includes a “musical eye spy challenge” for everyday sounds embedded in the music. The dancers lean forward and back in a lunge, they move as one, side to side, they come and go, embrace and linger; they run in a circle, fueled by sound, connect in a line, roll and inch forward, unwind to stand, then crawl and embrace in a pile to then elegantly lie on each other on the floor.
“Food, Home, and Belonging” is a love letter to Kalamazoo that offers a heartfelt, meaningful sensual experience perfectly suited to the season and in effect a promise of what’s to come from this long-standing company through its changes: home-grown collaboration, belonging, and connection—between artists, between artist and audience, and among the community.
Wellspring/Cori Terry and Dancers’ Fall Concert of Dance
In Collaboration with Chromic Duo
Cori Terry Theatre
Nov. 22-24
https://www.fontanamusic.org/
