DANCE

Suchu Dance presents I Can Move Small Objects With My Mind, November 11 through November 21, at Barnevelder Movement/Arts Complex, 2201 Preston Street.

For the show, Suchu is creating two new works, Bump and Huldy Humongous, and revisiting a work, Unite, Dynomite and Smite You White Backbiting Mites.

Bump
One of the new works from Suchu Dance this season is Bump, a piece for eleven dancers in bright, disjointed "sportif" costumes, who, at some points use unusual props, at other points do funny entrances. The music is sometimes wacked out, sometimes nostalgic, sometimes ominous. A portion of this piece premiered at the ARTernative Festival in Sugar Land this October.

From Artistic Director Jennifer Wood: "Most of the sections in this piece were specifically conceived of to be performed outside on any surface. Dance is a sometimes cumbersome art because the kind of floor we perform on is critical. Any rehearsal space or theatrical performance space hopefully has a sprung floor and a special floor covering. If we don't have that, injuries and poor performance could result. I got tired of saying no to a lot of possibilities and I wanted a suite of works that could be done anywhere on any hostile surface or environment (on cement, on grass, on the street, in a bank lobby, under a bridge, in a bar, on a roof, on a barge, etc.) We have to be selective as to what movements are in the choreography since the potential surfaces are coarse or brutally hard, so no rolling, or knee spins or face plants- I don't want anyone planting her face into a pile of broken glass or dog poo."

"As for costuming, I felt a need for color after my last piece, which had all white costumes and the resulting outfits are bright, flat oranges, yellows, pinks and blues and greens. Since most likely there would be times when the dancers would have to don tennies when performing outside on cement, for example, the costumes had to look good with athletic shoes. With this in mind, the costumes took on a sporty theme. I acquired old t-shirts at the thrift store and took them apart, mixed them up and put them back together again in a different style. Each shirt is comprised of at least 5 different shirts. I selected the old, original shirts for their color and for their graphic designs or ridiculous messages on them (For example, "OK. I admit it, he did it!" or "Embrace boredom, it's all you have."). Each shirt is a collage of printed words and advertising that has been dissected and re-assembled."

"My intention, besides being able to perform this work outside- was to create something a little humorous but powerful. One unusual section from Bump is a re-worked portion taken from a larger piece that premiered 8 or 9 years ago. It utilizes costumes that act as props and movement phrases inspired by windsock figures. These costume pieces are overshirts that have super long sleeves that can be flapped in the air. I'm looking at Bump as a piece where anything goes. There are other props in the works as well. Overall, Bump has a sense of fun and confidence."

Huldy Humongous
Huldy Humongous is a piece for ten dancers in richly textured single-color velvet jumpsuits to music that is vaguely "of the noble hunt" with french horns and percussion, but which devolves to something much more out of control. A portion of this work premiered in the Dance Gallery Festival in Huntsville, TX this October.

From Jennifer Wood: "With this new work I'm playing with symmetry and stasis contrasted with dynamic fluidity. The piece starts out with the dancers creating mirror images along a central axis with a lot of "snapshot" moments. The poses are decidedly decorative and I gave the dancers the task of picking the most ridiculous, least efficient pose possible derived from our base movement phrase which is very fluid and loose. I purposely chose this contrasting mode of moving (symmetry/stasis vs fluid, loose and dynamic) so that the piece had somewhere to go. It begins mostly static and transforms to volatility."

Unite, Dynomite and Smite You White Backbiting Mites
The piece, Unite, Dynomite and Smite You White Backbiting Mites was created this past spring for its first performance in the Big Range Dance Festival in June 2010. An excerpt was recently seen at the Weekend of Texas Contemporary Dance at the Miller Outdoor Theater in Houston in September. It is a 22 minute piece for seven dancers in white costumes performed to an original soundscape.

From Artistic Director, Jennifer Wood: "Revisiting a piece is a different for me since I like to create something and move on. It has been interesting to see how it has grown from its original form. We have been refining transitional areas that I felt were a little abrupt and enriching the final group section that previously stayed in the same tenor for too long."

"The sound score has a water motif: drips, bubbles flowing water sounds, but also utilizes air sounds, metronome and clock ticks. The costumes are all white, except they have been sullied on the back. I literally had the dancers wear the pants and sit on some brownish- gray paint. The color white engenders such reverence in people, so I wanted to mess with that phenomenon by making the white costumes already dirty. To me that's humorous."

"Choreographically, I was playing with structures and different ways of making dances. I keep trying to make dances that look and feel improvised, but they never look the same as actual improvisation. Maybe I should just have an improv company. The piece has a recurring theme of tiny gestures and movements that resonate when done in unison by a group. There is a motif of the dancers reaching out to one another in the beginning, but they hesitate and don't complete the interaction. A pervading sense of tension hovers throughout, especially in one quartet. Eventually, the dancers do reach out and come together, but in the end they remain apart."

Choreography by Jennifer Wood
Lighting Design by Jeremy Choate

Dancers: Daniel Adame, Lydia Hance, Lindsay Gee, Ashley Horn, Kristen Frankiewicz, Jessi Harper, Leo Muñoz, Nicole McNeil, Prudence Sun, Tina Shariffskul, Lindsey Thompson, and Alex Soares.

Suchu Dance, under the direction of Jennifer Wood, is in its 12th season of creating and performing its own brand of dance theater. Known for its frequent creation of new works and its attention to visual design, Suchu Dance continues to evolve its exploration of bodies in space. Founded in 1998 and based in Houston, Suchu Dance is a postmodern dance/theatre performing group with 12 company members. Founder and Director Jennifer Wood acts as choreographer, costume designer and, frequently, composer in the direction of each dance work.

Suchu Dance values the creation and development of new works, averaging 2 evening-length premieres and 5-6 performances a season in Houston and beyond. Suchu Dance has been presented in many venues around the Houston area, including DiverseWorks, Wortham Theater, Miller Outdoor Theater, the Jewish Community Center, Main Street Theater Chelsea, Atomic Café, University of Houston Cullen Theater, the Heinen Theatre, Sam Houston State University, University of Texas, Texas A&M and at it's home base, the Barnevelder Movement/Arts Complex, which Suchu Dance constructed and founded in 2003.

In 2008 Suchu Dance was invited to perform at the historic Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, MA where it was the first company of the season to perform on the Inside/Out Series. That same year Suchu Dance also travelled to Atlanta, GA to perform at Emory University in a joint concert with Staib Dance. Every summerm Suchu Dance produces the Big Range Dance Festival, a three week festival focusing on new modern and postmodern works by local, national and international choreographers.