GroundWorks and CityMusic Cleveland Collaborative Performance a Transcendent Experience
Posted from GroundWorks DanceTheatre Blog
By Steve Sucato
A socially distanced audience of four hundred attended Transcendence, GroundWorks DanceTheater’s very first collaboration with CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra on Sunday, February 27 at The Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus.
Transcendence was our “largest concert audience since COVID began,” said CityMusic Cleveland’s Development Director, Laura Potter.
The performance featured GroundWorks DanceTheater’s specially made dance-on-video for the collaboration that accompanied the live playing of French composer Olivier Messiaen’s poignant masterwork, “Quatuor pour la fin du temps” (Quartet for the End of Time) by CityMusic Cleveland musicians Miho Hashizume (violin), Keith Robinson (cello), Daniel Gilbert (clarinet) and Donna Lee (piano).
“I was really pleased with the turnout,” says Groundworks’ Executive Artistic Director David Shimotakahara. “It felt like people were hungry for a way to convene around an art performance of this nature and the fact that it was more than a regular music concert, and that they knew there was this other dimension of dance, intrigued them.”
Choreographed by Shimotakahara in collaboration with GroundWorks company artists Maddie Hanson, Nicole Hennington, Madison Pineda, Teagan Reed and Victoria Rumzis, the dance-on-video, says Shimotakahara, was inspired by his reaction to Messiaen’s music, seeing it as an “internal journey experienced in the process of dying, involving memory and pivotal moments in time.”
The video, shot and edited by Kuo-Heng Huang, was projected on a 16’ wide by 40’ high fabric video screen that towered over the Church’s altar area as a backdrop to the musicians playing of “Quartet for the End of Time.” Imagery from video was interwoven throughout the 50-minute performance.
Said violinist Hashizume of the experience, “GroundWorks’ installation handed over the timeless space of Messiaen’s world, and the musicians and audience walked into this magic box.”
Adding to the overall performance experience was its setting at The Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus.
“The complete environment of that beautiful church and the way the late afternoon light was coming in through the stained-glass windows created this almost magical environment,” says Shimotakahara. “You can sense when an audience is completely engaged in their experience. It felt like that.”
As a member of that captivated audience, and a part of the video, Rumzis, in her first season with the company, said of her experience working on and seeing Transcendence: “It was exciting to start off our season as a company with an extremely collaborative process. We worked quickly in the studio to develop movement that matched the depth and variety of the music. There were many unique elements that went into the creation process including working with fabric and fitting movement into a vertical frame. It was beautiful seeing all the pieces come together for the first time at the performance. The theme of reflection or ‘looking back on your life’ came up often as inspiration in the studio. The video, live music and setting came together to echo this feeling.”
Fellow new company artist and audience member, Reed added, “Watching the music and video finally come together was a very satisfying and cathartic experience for me.”
At the conclusion of the performance, the appreciative St. Stanislaus audience gave Transcendence a standing ovation, further validating GroundWorks’ deep commitment to building community and creating meaningful experiences and exchanges such as this.
GroundWorks would like to give heartfelt thanks once again to Donna Lee, Eugenia Strauss, Laura Potter and everyone at CityMusic Cleveland involved in this project, and to Holly Holsinger, DeAndra Stone, and Cleveland State University’s Department of Theatre and Dance for helping to produce the dance-on-video for Transcendence, as well as David Krakowski, Director of Music and Liturgy at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus, and Chuck Karnak who were instrumental in the video installation and projection.
Photos from the Sunday, February 27 performance of Transcendence at The Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus by Mark Horning.
Video Credits: Excerpt from video/film created for Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time featuring dancer Maddie Hanson and music by permission of CityMusic Cleveland’s recording of Abime des Oiseaux from Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. Videographer and Editor Kuo-Heng Huang. Choreography by David Shimotakahara in collaboration with Maddie Hanson, Nicole Hennington, Madison Pineda, Teagan Reed and Tori Rumzis. Lighting by Dennis Dugan and Costumes by Janet Bolick.
