Turning choreographer’s dream into Dance Gala

Choreographer Armando Duarte works with three of his dancers preparing his dance. Photo by Tom Jorgensen.

Fourteen female dancers sprawl on the floor of Halsey Hall Loft, several in splits and other positions that cannot be assumed by most mortals. One works on crunches off to one side. Choreographer Armando Duarte, associate professor of dance, starts a CD and a visitor thinks the opening note is a fire alarm until it resolves into intense, percussive rhythm. The dancers stand.

“You have to say collectively, ‘How can I make this work?’ It’s less about arabesques, more about reaching,” Duarte says, demon- strating with outstretched arm and a lunge to one side. The dancers, intently focused, nod.

They are preparing for “Baque,” the last of five works on this year’s Dance Gala program. As rehearsal is just beginning, they wear sweaters, sweatshirts, heavy socks. At each break following, off come pieces of clothing, tossed to one side before the music begins again. By the end, they’re in leotards and bare feet, their bodies wet and shining.

Dance Gala, the major event of the Department of Dance, is Nov. 8-9 in Hancher Auditorium. It involves not only the dancers and choreographers but also the production unit for technical support, especially scenery and costumes. From mid-August to performance, staff, faculty, and students work long hours to pull off this major performance.

“Baque,” Duarte explains, is a Portuguese term that can have a number of meanings. He slaps a nearby table. “That’s a baque,” he says, “that slap. But it also might mean that one had received sudden news, either tragic or wonderful, or a gift. It’s a percussive word.”

“Baque” is an abstract group dance celebrating the music of Brazil. Some of the scores are based on folk themes from the northeast region of the country. It includes a musical collage of different Brazilian composers.

Fitting costumes to bodies

Across the Iowa River from Halsey, Margaret Wenk and Cindy Kubu talk in a language that appears to have few complete sentences and a number of squeaks and grunts. They’re fitting the dancers’ costumes to “the bodies,” a half-hour process for each student who appears in the dance/opera costume shop. The dancers stand silently as Kubu and Wenk circle them, draping, pinning, cutting, and consulting with the dancer.

Cindy Kubu and Margaret Wenk pin fabric patterns on a dancer in the dance/opera costume workshop. Photo by Tom Jorgensen.

“I like the way that flares,” Wenk says, holding out a skirt with a jagged hemline that is pinned to Erin Huismann’s waist. “It’s a liquid fabric, silk infused with Lycra. It has a shiny side but we use it inside out, for a matte look. It looks like crepe de chine, but crepe de chine is much more expensive.”

Kubu says, “Budgets are a big deal when you’re trying to build 60 costumes individually for dancers. Any time you can achieve the right look for a lot less money, you’ve won.”

Wenk, who recently won a Board of Regents Staff Excellence Award for her 23 years of creating spectacular costumes, sets, and scenery for productions, says her work is different from fine art because it’s collaborative and research-
intensive.

“I worked backstage in high school,” she says, “and then in summer stock. A producer in summer stock told me that production is a real life, that people make a living doing these things. So I did it.”

Kubu has worked with her for 17 years. While Wenk conceives the costumes and chooses the right fabrics, Kubu takes the concept drawings and figures out ways to cut and drape the fabric so the costumes are right for each dancer’s body.

“I started out in high school, too,” she says. “I started out in home economics but that was too restrictive. This is art, sewing, history—a great blend.”

Creating the atmosphere

As fyi is published, Dance Gala is moving into spacing rehearsals on the Hancher stage. Duarte says that’s a time when he begins to distance himself from the dancers, to move back from the stage in order to see the production as the audience would.

Dancers work on arabesque figures in 'Baque,' danced to percussive Brazilian music. Photo by Tom Jorgensen.

Then comes two technical and lighting rehearsals, when the production staff, including Laurel Shoemaker, visiting lighting designer, and Don Schneider, stage manager, work through the production to get the changes right.

Then, the five dances in Dance Gala come together in a crescendo to work out the seamless transitions necessary in a production that uses no front curtain, with one dance flowing into the next. That leads up to three dress rehearsals and then, the two performances.

“When the audience is there,” Duarte says, softly, “that is everything you could pray for. The sharing of a moment. Art.”

Article by Anne Tanner