Even after school is out, Duke’s campus teems with life as the American Dance Festival takes the stage once more.
Since 1977, the biggest and brightest modern choreographers and dancers have flocked to Durham every summer to showcase some of the world’s finest masterpieces. The festival’s 77th season, and 33rd in Durham, explores the theme “What is dance theater?” Answering this question, however, is not what ADF aimed to do when putting together the season’s repertoire.
“[With] all the elements of dance and theater, trying to define them gets interesting… and then you ask what difference does it make,” ADF Director Charles Reinhart, who has been president of the festival since 1969. “We are focusing on a label to get rid of a label.”
In order to veer peoples’ attentions away from categorizations and onto the dance pieces themselves, ADF 2010 features companies and productions with international origins and various stylistic influences.
A perfect example is Durham’s own African American Dance Ensemble, which kicked off the season June 10. Specializing in energetic performances that draw from African traditions, movement and music, AADE may seem like the fusion of theater and dance, but in Africa those two elements see no boundaries.
“Dance is by nature theater; but in Africa, it was thought of as life,” ADF Co-Director Jodee Nimerichter said.
This year’s ADF selections include eight world premieres, one U.S. premiere, two reconstructions and five company debuts.
Veterans such as Pilobolus, Shen Wei Dance Arts and Paul Taylor Dance Company set the stage with several notable new works. Shen Wei, best know for choreographing the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, founded his company at ADF in 2000. He will commemorate a successful decade with a new solo featuring the choreographer himself. Paul Taylor also joins in the celebration by presenting an ADF-commissioned world premiere on his 80th birthday.
The newcomers this year bring a splash of flavor to liven up the festival. Inbal Pinto & Avshalom Pollak Dance Company make their official ADF debut, but they are no strangers to the scene, having collaborated with Pilobolus in 2008 and 2009. They will be presenting their 1999 hit Oyster, which is based on a short film by eccentric filmmaker Tim Burton.
Other groups performing at their inaugural ADF include Canadian company RUBBERBANDance Group, which will showcase a collection of their great works under the collective piece Loan Sharking. In their showcase, audiences experience a dynamic work, where the physicality of hip-hop stylistics mingles with contemporary storytelling that stretches across multiple genres.
Drawing upon an entirely different form of expression, director and choreographer Martha Clarke, the 2010 Samuel H. Scripps ADF Award for Lifetime Achievement recipient and a founding member of Pilobolus, delves into the fascinating world of the Shakers. The world premiere of Angel Reapers, in collaboration with award-winning Driving Miss Daisy writer Alfred Uhry, explores the contradictions of strict celibacy practiced by the Shakers and the sexual tension the individuals released through song and dance.
The diverse and dynamic programming of ADF this year benefits from the inclusion of the Durham Performing Arts Center as one of the venues. This will mark the second year using the facility, and Executive Vice President Tallman Trask said it has really changed the scale of what can be done with the festival.
As the chief administrative and financial officer for the university, Trask has worked with ADF each year to provide institutional support. The 2010 season is dedicated to him for remaining a long-time ally of the organization, Reinhart said.
Duke and the greater Durham community have a stake in ADF, not only because the festival has been a leader in showcasing world-renowned talent, but also because it brings a level of cultural capital that the university did not have previously.
“[ADF] is a major, national cultural event, and having it at Duke for so long is an interesting thing,” Trask said. “You didn’t used to see Duke featured in the arts section of the New York Times that often. When it moved to Durham, it was a major accomplishment.”
ADF also reached new heights this year—they received the largest number of applicants for its dance school in history and were also able to hand out the greatest number of scholarships. The school has long been a cornerstone of ADF’s mission to provide professional education and training to young dancers. This year 400-plus students will partake in the Past/Forward program, which includes a performance of West Side Story.
Though it is hard to pinpoint the exact reason why there was a jump in applicants this past year, one thing is for sure: they are all here for the love of dance.
“There are people from all over the world and from all different walks of life,” Nimerichter said. “But they are all here for one common purpose, and that is pretty special.”
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