CELEBRATING ST. LOUIS’ VIBRANT DANCE COMMUNITY
St. Louis Dance HQ’s Blog is a compilation of writings and performance reviews from a variety of St. Louis based dance writers. If you’re interested in sharing your writing on our blog, please email stlouisdancehq@gmail.com.
Spotlight On: Emily Haussler for Women’s History Month
Spotlight On: Emily Haussler as Founder, Artistic, and Executive Director of RESILIENCE Dance Company for Women’s History Month.
Spotlight On: Cici Houston Sudholt for Women’s History Month
Spotlight On: Cici Houston Sudholt, Saint Louis Ballet Rehearsal Director.
Spotlight On: Rachel Bodi for Women’s History Month
Spotlight On: Rachel Bodi, Executive Director of Ballet 314 for Women’s History Month.
HQ Review: WashU’s 2024 MFA Dance Concert
Washington University in St. Louis Performing Arts Department presents its 2024 MFA Thesis Concert.
Spotlight On: Erin Morris for Women’s History Month
Spotlight On: Erin Morris, Jazz Movement Artist.
HQ Review: “STORYSCAPES” by Karlovsky and Company Dance
In Karlovsky & Company Dance’s evening-length work, STORYSCAPES, the program posed the questions: “What are the stories and attitudes shared that get passed down through the generations? What stories do we want to continue to embrace? What stories should we re-evaluate? What stories should simply end?” If the stories we tell ourselves create the landscapes we live in, then investigating those stories for veracity, usefulness, and value becomes paramount.
Spotlight On: Erin Prange for Women’s History Month
Spotlight On: Erin Prange, Executive Director of The Big Muddy Dance Company.
HQ Review: “Picture Studies” presented by The Big Muddy Dance Company in collaboration with The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
The Big Muddy Dance Company performed the work in partnership with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. Retracing the origins of this work is a little like a spiral diagram of overlapping collaborations and inspirations: composer Adam Schoenberg was invited in 2013 by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City to compose work inspired by certain pieces of visual art. Thus the first iteration of Picture Studies was born. More than ten years later The Big Muddy Dance Company has been invited to respond in movement to Schoenberg's music, which the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra brought to stunning life. Artistic Director and choreographer Kirven Douthit-Boyd notes in the program that inspiration was taken from both Schoengerg’s score and some of the original works of visual art from which they originally sprang. The result was a stunningly successful melding of artistry and disciplines.
Spotlight On: Kasey Cox for Women’s History Month
Spotlight On: Kasey Cox, Director of Theatre and Dance and Assistant Professor of Theatre and Communications at Missouri Baptist University.
HQ Review: Cloven III SpaceStation Dance Residency Fundraiser
“Cloven III” is an evening-length work by Jacob Henss and Betsy Brandt. This duet, performed by both creators, is the third installment of an exploration of the rural relationship between farmer and bovine as a lens for personal reflection. The dairy cow is a site of industrialized sexuality and consumption, and the “Cloven” trilogy is an ode to this overlooked yet ubiquitous animal, symbol, and food source. This eccentric choreographic work lives at the intersections of experimental theater, contemporary dance, burlesque, and performance art. Its St. Louis debut will be followed by a series of performances throughout the Midwest this spring.
Spotlight On: Renée Austin
Spotlight On Renée Austin, current company artist with RESILIENCE Dance Company for Black History Month.
Spotlight On: Antonio Douthit-Boyd
Spotlight On former dancer with The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Antonio Douthit-Boyd. Antonio is the Artistic Director of Dance at the Center of Creative Arts (COCA).
Spotlight On: Keenan Fletcher
Spotlight On company artist with The Big Muddy Dance Company, Keenan Fletcher!
HQ Review: Saint Louis Ballet’s LOVEX3
Saint Louis Ballet’s production of Love X 3, which took place at the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center February 16-18, 2024, featured three pieces of varying styles of ballet, created by three different choreographers. The performances in this show clearly displayed how versatile ballet can be and gave everyone in the audience something to appreciate about ballet, no matter what their personal preferences may be.
Spotlight On: Kirven Douthit-Boyd
Spotlight On former dancer with The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Kirven Douthit-Boyd. Kirven is the Artistic Director of The Big Muddy Dance Company and the Associate Artistic Director of Dance at the Center of Creative Arts (COCA).
Spotlight On: Robert Poe
Spotlight On Ballet 314’s Artistic Director Robert Poe in celebration of Black History Month. Robert is a dance and movement enthusiast who is passionate about dance education and creativity: “I don't claim to save lives with what I do but I am a flourishing example of what movement expression can do to uplift the spirit and improve the quality of ones life on a deeply personal and visible level.”
HQ Review: MADCO’s Dare to Dance - Saturday
The lights flicker off as Kayla Montgomery takes the stage of COCA’s Berges Theatre. At just 14 years old, Kayla had been chosen to perform a solo she created as part of MADCO’s Emerging Student Choreographer Program, in partnership with St. Louis Academy of Dance (SLAD). As the music swells, Kayla emanates a poise and assuredness about her presence on stage. She effortlessly oscillates between multiple movement qualities within a single phrase, capturing the range of a leg extension that then melts to the ground and allows the weight of the floor to sink into her hips and torsos. She uses her spine to punctuate the subtle riffs of Otis Redding’s Try a Little Tenderness, before gliding over the stage with a turn that fills the entire room. Her intuitive musicality and ability to seamlessly transition from one style of movement to the next made Kayla’s performance one of the most striking of the evening, and perhaps most evident of what MADCO’s Dare To Dance Festival is all about. A festival, led by Artistic Director Arianna Russ, to showcase the immense amount of innovation and collaboration that exists in the St. Louis community and beyond.
HQ Review: MADCO’s Dare to Dance - Friday
MADCO presented the first performance of the dance festival, Dare to Dance, on Friday, January 19th. The evening was the first of two performances as part of the festival and featured 13 dance pieces from various independent choreographers and dance companies in St. Louis and beyond. When writing about large performances, the prevailing challenge becomes discerning which pieces to mention. One option is to write in detail about every piece, though the risk is to belabor the task, another is to choose dance works at random, and the very worst option is to write about the dances which are personally most enjoyable to the writer. In lieu of these unsatisfactory options, the pieces mentioned here are those which for various reasons stood out as singular from the rest of the program. The night was full of talented artists and interesting choreographic viewpoints and any who are left absent here should not be viewed as a statement of merit but of the necessity of brevity.
HQ Review: The Big Muddy Dance Company’s EVOLUTION: Program A
EVOLUTION continued The Big Muddy Dance Company’s season at the Catherine B. Berges Theatre on January 11-14, 2024. This winter concert featured three different programs with a mixture of both familiar pieces and world premieres. This review in particular will focus on the pieces in Program A, which the company performed on Friday, January 12.
HQ Review: The Big Muddy Dance Company’s premiere of “New Ritual” by Sidra Bell
A “boutique hybrid brand of prolific movement illustrators,” is how Sidra Bell of Sidra Bell Dance New York self-describes the work she creates. With this in mind, her world premiere of “New Ritual” performed by The Big Muddy Dance Company, brought to St. Louis Bell’s distinct flair for utilizing dance as way to convey the hybrid nature of our bodies. Both as individual bodies, and as collective units, moving about in this contemporary world.