Dance Ensemble Dedicates ‘Passings’ to Dean

From falling in love and a baby’s first smile to stiffening bones and the loss experienced by a death, life is a powerful leap--flexing and dynamic, sometimes contorted and often painful.

It’s a dance.

“Dance is movement, and not just the physical aspect, either. It’s thoughts and emotions. More than any other art form, it’s something that everyone does. We all dance, we all move, in one form or another,” said Larry Attaway, 41, associate dean of the CalArts School of Dance.

Attaway, who has taught at CalArts for 19 years, is also producing “Passings,” the CalArts Dance Ensemble’s fall concert tonight and Saturday.

Now in its 11th year, the ensemble is choreographed by and composed of faculty members Tina Yuan, Laurence Blake, Rebecca Bobele, Kurt Weinheimer and Mary Ann Kellogg. Also dancing are Hiroko Hojo and Colleen O’Callaghan, along with students Vincas Greene, Makram Hamdan, Jacques Heim and Lisa K. Locke. The program’s five individual pieces are dedicated to Ed Emshwiller, the school’s film and video dean who died of cancer in July at 65.

“This year’s theme was that we had no theme,” Attaway said. “It was all very vague except that we kept coming back to Ed’s life, his work, his creativity.”

Emshwiller, a pioneer video artist, used the camera to capture dancers with radically different points of view than what an audience would witness, and developed computer graphics in film and video.

“We’ve all created our own material, with different staging and lighting, but somehow the threads are loosely tied into life, from birth to death. This concert is a circle and ultimately a celebration,” said Yuan, this year’s artistic director for the modern dance company, and a faculty member 10 years. “It’s quite dramatic.”

Yuan’s piece, “The Revenge of the Lonely Ghost,” is a duet she performs with Kurt Weinheimer. Taken from a Taiwanese folk tale, the story is about a married woman who is killed by her husband after he learns that she’s fallen in love with another. The woman returns as a ghost to bring her lover back to heaven.

“I’m curious as to how the pieces will unfold,” said Yuan, a stickler for details, who said she takes about three months to perfect the intricacies of a choreographed work. “Rehearsing in the studio is so different. All you see is the structure. But on stage, with lighting and costumes, the movements breath. They take on their own life.”

Attaway and Yuan know they will be asking their audience to stretch along with the visual power of “Passings.”

“Dance is something of a paradox. It’s often best experienced by those with little technical understanding because it’s such an emotional art. Yet, that same emotion often frightens people with its vicissitude,” Attaway said. “But as long as the audience is moved, and really moved passionately, that’s all that matters.” “Passings,” a dance concert dedicated to the memory of Ed Emshwiller, at 8 tonight and Saturday at CalArts’ Modular Theatre, 24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia. Tickets are $6, $3 seniors and students. Call (805) 255-1050.