Boulder Ballet shines spotlight on female choreographers in New Move…

By Riley Ann

Boulder Ballet celebrates internationally-acclaimed choreographers in their show New Moves. The performances, held at Dairy ARTS Center from February 24-26, feature the works of five female choreographers forged from diverse backgrounds. Claudia Anata Hubiak, the executive director of Boulder Ballet, shares, “From exciting emerging creators to established and revered choreographers, we have curated this program to value the voices of women and their groundbreaking contributions in dance.”

Historically, the dance world has underrepresented women in roles ranging from choreographers to administrative directors. Hubiak states, “Everyone in leadership right now has a tremendous opportunity to update the current landscape of art that is brought to their communities and audiences. It’s not just about what will sell, but how we expand perspectives and offer platforms for many different voices.” Choreographers for New Moves include Caili Quan, Makino Hayashi, Twyla Tharp, Viki Psihoyos and Hubiak. The show centers the voices of these women through five short contemporary pieces.

Caili Quan – World Premiere

One of the show’s world premieres includes a piece by Caili Quan, one of the most prominent new choreographers in contemporary dance. Although she left her home in Guam at the age of 16 for New York City’s Ballet Academy East, her Chamorro Filipino roots imbue the heart of her work. Quan says, “My identity seeps into every work I create, no matter what the inspiration is. Who I am and where I come from is what I really know. Representing where I come from and sharing the culture I grew up in is a huge reason why I make dances.”

Her themes often revolve around identity, home and decolonization, such as Love Letter, a dance film she released in 2020 as a tribute to her homeland. Quan blended segments of Love Letter with her own narration and interviews with her friends and family to create Mahålang: A Love Letter To Guam, which won Excellence in Short Filmmaking at the 2022 Asian American International Film Festival. The word mahålang is Chamorro for the longing for a person, place or thing.

Quan made a name for herself through various dance companies, including eight seasons at BalletX, and was recently featured as Vail Dance Festival’s resident choreographer. She currently devotes herself to choreography full-time. For New Moves, Quan is collaborating with Micah Manaitai, a musician originally from Guam that now lives in Los Angeles.

Makino Hayashi – World Premiere

Originally from Kumamoto, Japan, Makino Hayashi performed with various companies, including Colorado Ballet. She currently performs with Oregon Ballet Theatre, choreographs her own works, and makes her own films. Much of her work invokes reverence for nature, and she enjoys creating and performing choreography in nature, which she highlighted in her film Beauty In The Nature. Her piece Black Earth was performed in Budapest as well as IN A LANDSCAPE: Classical Music in the Wild, a nonprofit concert series that connects audiences with music and the beauty of landscapes such as national parks, urban green spaces and ranches. Her film The Message debuted in October of 2022 as part of the Artists Climate Collective project, which challenged four choreographers to create a dance film about climate change.

Hayashi shares, “Inside the camera, the dance becomes a different art form and opens up more possibilities. I’m always interested in capturing these moments.”

For New Moves, Hayashi collaborated with composer Bob Bush to create an original score, “Inside Voice.” She anticipates recording her new work with Boulder Ballet for a future film.

Twyla Tharp – Junk Duet

Another feature in New Moves is Twyla Tharp’s Junk Duet. Tharp, known for her humor as well as her raw edginess, created Junk Duet in conjunction with Donald Knaack’s “Junk Music.” The music is noted for its abrasive but hypnotic rhythms utilizing exclusively recycled materials as nontraditional instruments. The choreography blends humor with a sinister darkness by having two dancers pitted against each other in what Twyla describes as “cartoonish competition.” Her description continues, “The scrapheap sounds enhance the comedic blend of exaggerated pantomime and classical ballet vocabulary.”

The piece remains one of Tharp’s iconic pieces in her signature style, bridging classical techniques with natural, earthly movements, a shift in the evolution of modern dance she pioneered decades ago and continues to innovate within that paradigm. Tharp choreographed over 160 works and earned a Tony Award, two Emmy Awards, a National Medal of the Arts, a Kennedy Center Honor, 19 honorary doctorates, and more. Her works span Hollywood movies, Broadway musicals, television shows, full-length ballets, ice skating routines, and beyond.

 

Claudia Anata Hubiak – World Premiere

Hubiak will unveil a world premiere set to an original score by KWEST addressing the echoes of the past and the power humans have to shift their own narratives.

Hubiak expounds, “Our life experiences live inside our musculature and neuro pathways, reverberating and telling our stories through impulses and daily actions like phantom echoes of our history. The question then becomes: which stories do we hold dear and which do we choose to rewrite? What is the process of curbing the echoes that don’t serve us and cultivating the ones that bring us growth?”

Hubiak, raised as a Buddhist, engages with existential ideas not just in theory, but also in practice. She often starts rehearsals with meditations and integrates mindfulness in her coaching. She says, “Dance is instinctively about the present moment and lends itself to eastern philosophy simply because it is a live art form and focuses on embodiment as a basic training principle. I ask for collaboration and empower dancers to bring themselves fully to the work.”

Viki Psihoyos – World Premiere

Lastly, New Moves features a world premiere by Viki Psihoyos entitled We, an intentional pun meaning “togetherness” in English and a homophone of oui in French meaning “yes.”  Psihoyos comes from the Balanchine tradition, a neoclassical form that emphasizes precise techniques and movements, yet she composes her works in fluid, organic ways. She describes her approach, stating, “It’s a collaborative experience so as a dancer, you feel like you’re part of the creation of a work. When dancers are comfortable and enjoy the movements, that reads across the audience, and dancers take the spirit of the audience along with them.” True to Balanchine, We does not have a specific narrative to convey, though the music comes from the award-winning French film scorer Alexandre Desplat.

Now retired from George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, she stages Balanchine works across the globe as a répétiteur through the George Balanchine Trust. However, she also teaches a weekly Mindful Movement class in Boulder at Dairy ARTS Center, which emerged as part of the Dance for Parkinson’s Disease program based in New York City. Her work resonates at a deeply personal level; Psihoyos’s father had Parkinson’s and expressed that his dance class in New York was the highlight of his week.

Psihoyos commented on the dichotomy of her work, sharing, “It’s rewarding being able to coach high-level ballet and also get to work with people who may not even be able to get out of a chair. We lead them through movements, gestures and imagination, and it’s a rich experience.”

Regarding the upcoming show, Psihoyos comments, “All of the dance works will come from such different places, vocabularies and sounds. The variety is going to be stunning.”

Tickets and more information about New Moves and other upcoming shows are available at BoulderBallet.org.