Lo-Tec Workshop Concerts Showcase Modern Dance

For 17 years, summer workshops given by Three’s Company dancers and visiting faculty have been a tradition in San Diego. So, too, have the annual concerts that display the results.

But this year’s annual Faculty-Student Workshop Concert, which takes place at 8:30 p.m. tonight and tomorrow, promises more than prior years. The program at the Three’s Company studio, 3255 5th Ave. will be bigger and more focused.

“We’re having seven different choreographers,” said Jean Isaacs, Three’s Company’s artistic director. “That’s more than ever, and that includes two colleagues I’ve invited. I rarely ask someone (other than the workshop faculty) to show, but I think they both had work that deserves to be seen.”

Three noted New York dance makers (Richard Haisma, Ron Brown, and Albert Reid), San Diego independent choreographer Cate Bell, the two invited artists (Jahna Tabulan and Amelia, and Isaacs herself, will test the students’ skills at 8:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The program will be varied in scope but with a common thread binding the potpourri of separate pieces.

“This year, it’s all modern. In the past, we’ve had to include some jazz (to attract students). This was the first year we taught only modern dance--from 9:30 in the morning to 5 p.m.--and the classes have been full,” Isaacs said. “Modern dance has so many points of view, and we’re interested in exposing our students to all of them.”

As usual with workshop concerts, the quality of the dancing will be inconsistent. But thanks to increased financial support, male dancers will be more visible this year.

“We’ve scholarshiped a lot of men, and we have a pretty good crop of dancers overall,” said Isaacs. “We always pull a lot of diversity (from fledgling to professional), but we get our company members from these workshops. We never put out a casting call. People say we’re so lucky to get the best dancers in San Diego, but we train them ourselves. That’s how we do it. And these concerts are essential to the process.”

Many of this weekend’s works have been created especially for the students, as is the case with Isaacs’ “Trophy,” a dance she considers “a dry-run,” rather than an attempt at serious art.

“It’s a different process working with students,” she said. “Sometimes, an idea will creep out that I want to use later in a dance, but this is an exercise for the student dancers.”

Amelia, whose work was funded by the San Diego Area Dance Alliance, designed her dance from scratch, too. But as the San Diego-based choreographer said in a break from rehearsals, the piece is not just a workshop throw-away. It was conceived as the first step in a major collaborative effort.

“I’m working with professional dancers,” she said. “Terry Wilson, Yvonne Harquindeguy, Brian Cluggish, Melissa Cottle, Gregory Adams--they dance with Three’s Company, and technically the piece is somewhat challenging. I would like to expand it to a full evening work if I can get some funding.”

Unaffiliated choreographers thrive on workshop settings, because they offer malleable bodies on which to experiment. Without dancers to serve as sounding boards for their kinetic visions, independent dance makers, such as Bell, would be hard-pressed to keep their art alive.

“If I want to do a piece on my own, it’s a real hassle,” said Bell. “It’s hard to get dancers who can be available at the same place and the same time for rehearsals, and then for performances. Even getting rehearsal space is difficult, and coordinating everything is a real headache.”

For the aspiring dancers involved in these intensive training grounds, the sessions provide access to several different teaching and choreographic approaches, and to artists with national profiles such as the trio of New York dance makers who dominated last week’s Lo-Tec concert.

Richard Haisma, Ron Brown, and Albert Reid each taught two-week workshops for Three’s Company’s students this summer. They also introduced their students to at least one new work apiece. Brown was inspired enough by two of the advanced participants (company dancers Terri Shipman and Wilson) to design something special for them.

Bell’s classes took the learning process a step further, and offered the students a chance to become active participants in the creative process.

“I’ve been teaching the workshop students how to look at the quality of movement, to use it as a tool for improving their professional skills,” Bell said. “The students are generating their own movement for my piece, based on our techniques.”

Although the future of the Lo-Tec series is in jeopardy, and Isaacs maintains there will be no 1991 season if it is not underwritten by a donor, one way or another, she said, the workshop concerts will continue.

“Students need to perform. They have to get experience dancing in front of an audience, and we would find a way to do that even if we had to put on performances with no lighting (support) at all.”