<< Front page Arts December 5, 2003

Dances with blocks
Choreography explores compassion

Ten dancers moving onstage, punctuated by shimmering, distorting glass blocks, create a striking image of experience and interpersonal connection. The audience glimpses and somehow becomes part of an intimate, personal ritual. The Oberlin Dance Company performs The Net of Gems, a new ensemble piece by Associate Professor of Dance Elesa Rosasco in this weekend’s Fall Forward Dance Concert. Rosasco, recipient of a 2003 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council, has created this piece as the latest installment in a series of works exploring themes of suffering, compassion, ritual and the evolution of self.

The Net of Gems has its origins in Rosasco’s duet, She Measures Herself, which she performed with Oberlin artist and dancer Jean Kondo Weigl at the Here Here Gallery in Cleveland in November 2002. In the wake of an experience of personal loss and, in the same year, 9/11, Rosasco began crafting a duet about healing, contemplating the suffering that arises in cycles of life and death. This duet was set against Kondo Weigl’s paintings as well as Rosasco’s own installation, which included most prominently a collection of translucent glass blocks.

The glass blocks are the most apparent visual link between She Measures Herself and the newest chapter in Rosasco’s exploration, The Net of Gems. As in the earlier piece, the glass blocks are a physical representation of human experience. The dancers carry, balance, and stand upon the large heavy blocks in the course of the dance. This movement on stage provokes questions of how we negotiate balance, share trials and move from one difficult experience to another. The blocks also stand for individuals moving among others, reiterating the theme established in the bodies of the ten female and male dancers. With definite weight, shape and form, but with permeable borders, the glass suggests both strength and fragility, breathing and human dimensions that go beyond the physical.

Expanding her ideas from a duet into a group piece helped Rosasco to shift her focus from the individual to collective consciousness.

Rosasco explains, “In the Indian mythic image of The Net of Indra, which is a net of gems, there is a gem at every crossing of one thread over another, reflecting all others. This image of compassion, which means ‘to suffer with,’ is related to the Buddhist doctrine of ‘mutual arising.’”

As the movement onstage enacts this image, the audience is reminded of the ways an individual’s suffering is reflected in and interwoven with others’.

Dancer Nic Trovato, ‘04 explains that “working with the other dancers was quite an experience because we had to rely on each other and really watch each other. Actually dancing the piece this movement that is often uncomfortable and bound with tension helped us to understand on a physical level the idea of suffering. And the timing is different every time we perform, so it’s crucial to be in touch with the other dancers, to think and feel with them.”

The Net of Gems is filled with images of sadness and difficulty, but presents them in a tone of beauty and hope. The work’s final moments conclude its statement of interdependence and compassion. The dancers leave the stage, supported by their collective breath. The glass blocks beneath them like breath made visible, the dancers combine their physical breath to join the haunting chant of the music.
Rosasco observes that the piece asks more questions than it provides answers: “In one rehearsal, as the dancers left the stage, one crumpled down. I think she was just tiredit broke the unity of the end of the piece, but it also posed an interesting question literally, her body folded into a kind of human question mark. It seemed to represent all the questions I had about my own ability anyone’s ability to empathize. All the questions I have about a philosophy of living.”

Elesa Rosasco has taught all levels of modern dance, ballet, improvisation, and choreography at Oberlin since 1978. Her choreography reflects her continuing interest in mythology, religion, writing, and sculpture.

The Net of Gems features members of the Oberlin Dance Company, lighting by Astrid Jobe, and costume construction by Emily Hansen and Naomi Lipke, and is set to Como Cierva Sedienta by Arvo Prt. A lobby display features the artwork of Jean Kondo Weigl. Fall Forward Dance Concert also features five new dance works by student choreographers,

Warner Main Space. Friday, Dec. 5 and Satirday Dec. 6 at 8 p.m.

   

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