The company's Associate Artistic Director, Elizabeth Coker Giron, has been musing over what each of our audiences has been like and what it has done for us as performers. Here's what she has to say!
SCCo now has three performances under our belt on this Central Asian adventure, and I’ve been particularly struck by how different each show felt. There are more obvious reasons for these differences, especially highlighted by the technical demands (“surprises”) of each space. The grandly impressive Mukamlar Palace theater in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan (pretty much everything in Ashgabat is grandly impressive) provided the challenges of a slick, painted wooden floor with imbedded turntable and two-inch gaps around its seams. In Kazakhstan, Altmay’s opera and ballet theater boasted a slight (but perceptible) rake to the stage, and dancing into the intense side-lighting in Pavlodar rivaled driving into high beams on a rainy nighttime highway. Perhaps we dealt with some trials better than others, but with each show we are more fully armed for the challenges to come.
I feel much more personally affected, however, but the human differences between each performance represented by one of the most compelling reasons we are on this tour in the first place: our audience.
Turkmenistan does not have any contemporary tradition of live performative art. While local companies preserve indigenous folk dances, there are no extant examples of ballet and opera (let alone modern dance). Our schedule in Ashgabat allowed us to teach several master classes in the days leading up to our performance. Many of the class participants attended the show (in their DanceMotion USA t-shirts!). Even in such an exotic and at times alienating city, I felt accepted, confident, and driven to perform well knowing we had an army of new friends and possible modern-dance converts in the audience. The overwhelmingly warm and enthusiastic response after our show only reinforced the mutual empathy felt by audience and performers. I can say I’ve never been part of such a surprising and satisfying event.
Our first stay in Almaty (we return next week) did not include master classes, so I had a feeling of higher stakes at hand before the performance. Our audience would be strangers to us, giving us the challenge of befriending them, letting them trust us and ultimately convincing them through our performance to come along on the ride with us. Personally, I felt the increased pressure of performing in a classic European-style opera and ballet house where the traditional idioms are so well represented and full of such historic weight. Hearing that we’d sold out a thousand seat theater and inspired ticket scalpers was exciting, but also increased the jitters. What started as a polite (nervously quiet?) audience soon warmed to shouting, a standing ovation, and nine curtain calls. The success of the Almaty show felt especially sweet and well-earned.
Last night in Pavlodar we performed to an oversold house including the regional mayor, the US ambassador to Kazakhstan and his wife, and dozens of master class participants from our events the previous day. This city is less privileged than the others on our itinerary and probably better portrays the lives of most Kazakh citizens. I was reminded of what a great privilege it is that I am an artist not only by training but also by trade. Many of the dance students I met were surprised that I was a 30-year-old adult whose profession is “dancer.” This didn’t seem to be a feasible category for employment in most of the students’ imaginations. Once again, our audience went gamely on that ride with us and presented us with a humbling show of appreciation both during the performance and afterwards.
The morning of the Pavlodar performance I was honored to attend the opening of the first American Corner in the city and was really excited to see DMUSA’s gift of some truly stellar books on American dance traditions for their English-language library. I hope that our visit and the success of this American Corner’s programs will encourage a generation of Kazakh students to pursue live dance performance, whether as producers, performers or most necessarily, as a voracious and demanding audience.
SCCo now has three performances under our belt on this Central Asian adventure, and I’ve been particularly struck by how different each show felt. There are more obvious reasons for these differences, especially highlighted by the technical demands (“surprises”) of each space. The grandly impressive Mukamlar Palace theater in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan (pretty much everything in Ashgabat is grandly impressive) provided the challenges of a slick, painted wooden floor with imbedded turntable and two-inch gaps around its seams. In Kazakhstan, Altmay’s opera and ballet theater boasted a slight (but perceptible) rake to the stage, and dancing into the intense side-lighting in Pavlodar rivaled driving into high beams on a rainy nighttime highway. Perhaps we dealt with some trials better than others, but with each show we are more fully armed for the challenges to come.
I feel much more personally affected, however, but the human differences between each performance represented by one of the most compelling reasons we are on this tour in the first place: our audience.
Turkmenistan does not have any contemporary tradition of live performative art. While local companies preserve indigenous folk dances, there are no extant examples of ballet and opera (let alone modern dance). Our schedule in Ashgabat allowed us to teach several master classes in the days leading up to our performance. Many of the class participants attended the show (in their DanceMotion USA t-shirts!). Even in such an exotic and at times alienating city, I felt accepted, confident, and driven to perform well knowing we had an army of new friends and possible modern-dance converts in the audience. The overwhelmingly warm and enthusiastic response after our show only reinforced the mutual empathy felt by audience and performers. I can say I’ve never been part of such a surprising and satisfying event.
Our first stay in Almaty (we return next week) did not include master classes, so I had a feeling of higher stakes at hand before the performance. Our audience would be strangers to us, giving us the challenge of befriending them, letting them trust us and ultimately convincing them through our performance to come along on the ride with us. Personally, I felt the increased pressure of performing in a classic European-style opera and ballet house where the traditional idioms are so well represented and full of such historic weight. Hearing that we’d sold out a thousand seat theater and inspired ticket scalpers was exciting, but also increased the jitters. What started as a polite (nervously quiet?) audience soon warmed to shouting, a standing ovation, and nine curtain calls. The success of the Almaty show felt especially sweet and well-earned.
Last night in Pavlodar we performed to an oversold house including the regional mayor, the US ambassador to Kazakhstan and his wife, and dozens of master class participants from our events the previous day. This city is less privileged than the others on our itinerary and probably better portrays the lives of most Kazakh citizens. I was reminded of what a great privilege it is that I am an artist not only by training but also by trade. Many of the dance students I met were surprised that I was a 30-year-old adult whose profession is “dancer.” This didn’t seem to be a feasible category for employment in most of the students’ imaginations. Once again, our audience went gamely on that ride with us and presented us with a humbling show of appreciation both during the performance and afterwards.
The morning of the Pavlodar performance I was honored to attend the opening of the first American Corner in the city and was really excited to see DMUSA’s gift of some truly stellar books on American dance traditions for their English-language library. I hope that our visit and the success of this American Corner’s programs will encourage a generation of Kazakh students to pursue live dance performance, whether as producers, performers or most necessarily, as a voracious and demanding audience.
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