30th annual N.C. Dance Festival to feature work by Wilmington artists
The North Carolina Dance Festival is returning to Wilmington on Saturday, Oct. 24. In truth, it will return to the entire state and beyond at 7:30 that evening via the Dance Project Inc's YouTube channel.
The festival stopped touring to Wilmington in 2015 for financial reasons. Its founder, Jan Van Dyke, died the same year.
But as festival director Anne Morris said in a phone interview from Greensboro, 30 years is an accomplishment worth celebrating. In doing so, she said, it was important to include choreographers and dancers from every corner of the state.
Representing the North Carolina coast is Nancy Carson. A leader in Wilmington’s dance community, Carson has long been associated with The Dance Cooperative, the University North Carolina Wilmington and the Dance-a-lorus event of the Cucalorus Festival. There's more to Carson’s journey as one of the chosen choreographers ahead.
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As for Morris and her team, finding a way to present dance and make such a celebration happen in 2020 had to happen quickly once the novel coronavirus pandemic took hold.
“Then as with so many things this year, the planning of what we're actually doing has developed as soon as we could, but later than we wanted to,” she said.
Once the decision was made to keep the festival’s main activities virtual, moving forward became easier. The plan would employ technology that more and more of us are using, from Zoom to videos on any number of social media platforms.
The N.C. Dance Festival is a dance film assembled from 30- to 60-second videos shot by the 20 choreographers selected by a jury. In addition to Wilmington, the pieces come from Boone in the state’s northwest; the urban centers of Asheville, Charlotte, the Triad and the Triangle; and the tiny town of Clyde in the southwest.
Morris said one of the things that was important to her throughout the festival's history is the way that events bring choreographers together: “And not just the choreographers who are selected to tour with the festival in each season, but other choreographers in each city that the festival has visited (who) get to come and reconnect with folks that they might not get to really interact with otherwise.”
Zoom will aid in that desired interaction this year with dancer-choreographer Helen Simoneau at 6:30 Oct. 23 presenting a community conversation titled “Finding Your Own Way through the Dance Industry.” And Laura Gutierrez will offer a master class at 3:30 Oct. 24 on intermediate and advanced contemporary technique for dancers 13 and older.
For Wilmington’s Nancy Carson, the virtual nature of the festival seemed like a mountain to climb. Then, she tested positive for COVID-19 just as she was going into rehearsals with her dancers, Kate Muhlstein and Linda Ann Webb.
“We couldn't rehearse because I was quarantined for 14 days," Carson said. "So I was really thinking about how much time I was in my living room, looking out the window and watching the world go by.”
That looking out the window, Carson said, is very much at the heart of her untitled micro film, which has the advantage, too, of Grecian costumes by Mark Sorensen of UNCW's theater department.
Back to the overall goal of festival, Morris said it felt important that this season have an element of connection.
“So in thinking about how that could happen in a time where we really can't be in the same space as each other, I was looking for some kind of structure that might allow for these creative projects and voices to interact with each other in some way," she said, adding that the structure of how to make a whole of 20 individual short films will make a kind of sense.
“It won't be a narrative and it's not just the 60-second dance films strung together, one after another," she said. "They are being combined in a more organic way. In the way you might choreograph a dance, really, with different phrases and different sections. And that's sort of how we're approaching it."
Audience members watching on YouTube may not experience the dance in a way that one can put into words, but Morris said she hopes that it makes a kind of sense that you can feel when you watch it.
Contact StarNews arts and culture at 910-343-2343.
Want to Go?
What: 30th annual North Carolina Dance Festival
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24
Where: Dance Project Inc on YouTube
Tickets: Free, $20 donation requested.
Details: Registration and information for the main performance and all related events is available at DanceProject.org/ncdf2020