Dance | Hill Museum of Arts | Arts & Culture | The Hill
Lynn Peterson, Kate Sutter and Rivkins Christopher, who are members of of SYREN Modern Dance. Lucy Gellman Photos.
The beat started on the floor, persistent as it rose over the audience, then on towards the second story. On the stairs, four dancers became a blur of black and orange, listening to each footfall as they began to move. One stretched his hands toward the ceiling, as if he was ready to take flight. Another let the rhythm guide her into a backbend. A third extended her leg, and began to float down the staircase in the style of a curious, long-legged bird.
It marked the culmination of “Creative Circle,” an hour-long performance, talkback and collaboration among the New York-based company SYREN Modern Dance, New Haven-based kamrDANCE and Hill-based artist and architect Krikko Obbott. Held Saturday at Obbott’s Hill Museum of Arts at 210 West St., the event doubled as a food drive for the The New Haven Inner City Enrichment (NICE) Food Pantry, which sits just blocks away at 410 Howard Ave.
By the end of an hour, it became a master class in improvisation, trust building, and soaring, exuberant communication that happened without any words at all. The two groups perform again on Dec. 2 in New York City; more information on that here.
Karmas (in yellow pants) and Robbins (in yellow shirt).
“You’re part of our experiment,” said Alexis Robbins, who founded kamrDANCE in 2015 and may be best known for her work spreading the gospel of rhythm tap in New Haven. “Our experiment is some real time improvisation as well as choreography.”
From the beginning of the hour, artists used the space, the audience, and each other as a source of inspiration. Located where Hull’s Brewery once stood in the Hill, the museum has become something of a pilgrimage site since its first whispers in 2007 and expansion in 2014. Inside, Obbott’s enormous pencil drawings hang from the walls, so detailed that a viewer could study one for hours and still miss dozens of details.
In an aerial view of Manhattan, tiny cars lurch by on a grid of neat city streets, the skyscrapers soaring in graphite depictions of steel and glass. Across the room, Obbott has mapped out downtown New Haven detail by detail, with tiny pedestrians and cyclists weaving through the city. Most days, his own jazz recordings fill the building, the sound winding up the staircase and wrapping around the banisters.
Saturday, that backdrop became an unspoken character as members of SYREN glided onto the floor. Beneath the building’s high ceilings, kids scurried to and from their spots with Olmo bagels and sweets from Katalina’s Bakery, contemplative as they chewed. Viewers watched from the second story, their eyes on Artistic Director Lynn Peterson as she began to speak. While the company is based in New York, Peterson has made her home in New Haven’s East Rock neighborhood.
“See if you can bring your whole body into the space right now with us,” Peterson began. “And if you feel able and would like to join me, I’m gonna invite you to lift your arms … just reach up to the ceiling and imagine, beyond these beautiful rafters, reaching up to the sky. The clouds. Just acknowledge where you are, in the space, in New Haven, and in the world today.”
Across two floors, attendees reached their arms up to the ceiling, some still wrapped in puffy coats, wool sweaters and all manner of flannel. As Peterson spoke smoothly, the room took a collective inhale, and then seconds later let it out. A few latecomers slipped through the front doors and found a spot on the floor. Another exhale filled the museum, and dancers Victoria Ellis, Rivkins Christopher, and Artistic Director Kate Suttter joined her, fully in the space.
There was a beat, and then Sutter began to speak. For the past months, she said, the group has been creating a new work, scored by the music of L.A.-based music producer Calimossa. Saturday, company members wanted to show how improvisation fits into the process of choreographing.
“We start with a phrase—a string of movement,” Sutter said. On cue, Ellis, Peterson, and Christopher soared across the floor, showing an example in real time. Their bodies transformed, carriages lifted and suddenly pliant at the joints. Arms rose toward the ceiling, as if they were releasing whatever weight they had been holding. Knees and torsos bent, rocking side to side. Dancers gravitated toward each other, ready to make contact and just as quickly become unfixed in time.
Sutter beamed over the group as the museum filled with applause, then searched for the music they were setting the performance to. Calimossa’s “Love Thy Soul” pumped over a speaker system, and SYREN snapped back into movement, sinking into the contours of the work. Members sailed across the floor, then jumped in unison. They folded over at the waist and explored their hands, elbows, arms anew. They pressed hands and foreheads together, probing that wild secret of human connection. It was a rare look into the unscripted, fluid movement that goes into building a piece—some of which never makes the final cut.
Kate Sutter (at the front), who artistic directs the group with Lynn Peterson.
Peterson later said that the process of building work with SYREN has left her more open to change. While the company’s pieces are generally finished before a given premiere (“and never [finished],” she joked to laughter), she doesn’t rule out making changes after a first performance anymore. She used to.
That sense of experiment flowed right into the afternoon’s second performance, a not-yet-titled number from Robbins, Luiza Karnas, and Robbins’ sister Sara set to the song “Addiction.” As she and Karnas laid out heavy wood boards, Robbins took the audience back to the 1990s, when her father was in a band called Mercy Velvet. For years, their practices became a steady backing track to her young life.
Now 29, “I decided that I wanted to dive into that,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about legacy.”
The song comes from a full Mercy Velvet album that she’d like to build a performance around, she later added. From the audience, her parents watched as she and Karnas took the floor, and exploded into a wave of percussion. On the boards, the two began together, mirroring each other as one made an offer in clacking feet, bent wrists and outstretched hands, and then other accepted. As Sarah approached the mic, they synchronized their movements, half-human and half-metronome as they slid, tapped, and shimmied to the left and back.
Sarah Robbins.
Sarah's voice filled the space, and they modulated their tone. They hammered out eighth notes, feet flying until suddenly they slowed. Then just as quickly, they were back in a snappy call and response, Karnas taking a suggestion within seconds of Robbins making it.
Robbins later said that when the two perform, much of the piece is improvised—such that it’s different each time.
“It’s all a conversation,” Karnas added. “Sometimes I bring an idea, and she buys it. It’s all about listening and bringing new ideas.”
Nowhere was that clearer than in a completely improvised group number, as Robbins and Karnas turned themselves into the percussion section, and welcomed members SYREN back onto the floor. Sourcing audience input, Robbins and Karnas hammered out a rhythm, waiting for SYREN to join in. As they descended from the staircase, dancers became jubilant, lifted by the tempo of tap shoes on their wooden board.
They bounced and spun, airborne in the museum’s foyer. Closest to the audience, Peterson let her arms unlock, and sway as if they were made of something far lighter than skin and bones. She lowered herself to the floor, and watched as Christopher half-jogged past her, his arms stretched to their full wingspan. In front of the double doors, Sutter swayed, putting her whole torso into it. When the tap slowed gradually, it seemed shockingly quiet in the space.
The audience burst into applause, cheers slipping into each crack and crevice where sound had been so present just moments before. Peterson suggested that it was the first collaboration that the two groups had done—but wouldn’t be their last.
“We’ve never done this before, so I was like, ‘Wow!’” she said. “This is gonna be really exciting. We can have comfort in not knowing.”
SYREN and kamrDANCE will be performing Dec. 2 at Arts on Site in New York. Learn more about that performance here.