Editorial
Front Page - Friday, January 29, 2010
Tennessee bringing acclaimed Harlem Ensemble to Chattanooga
David Laprad
Anna Baker-VanCura, artistic director and co-founder of Ballet Tennessee, wants the people of Chattanooga to know all dance is not the same. There’s art, she says, and then there’s dance.
The regional dance company will be presenting a lot of both when it hosts the nationally acclaimed Dance Theatre of Harlem Ensemble on Feb. 26 and 27. The two-day affair will include master classes, community events and a Saturday evening performance at Tivoli Theatre geared toward people for whom dance is not a native language.
“It’s not going to be what you might think of as a traditional dance performance, where you walk in, sit down, the lights go out, the curtain goes up, you watch a performance and then you leave,” Baker-VanCura says. “It will be an interactive performance.”
“Interactive” does not mean the Harlem Ensemble will be asking members of the audience to step onstage and learn a pirouette in front of 1,700 people. Rather, the dancers will engage the audience in an effort to teach them about ballet. “They’re going to explain things to the audience in an attempt to demystify dance for people who don’t understand it,” Baker-VanCura says. “They’re going to have a piano and ballet bars onstage, and show the dancers warming up and practicing, and discuss why they do these things, and allow the audience to ask questions.”
Baker-VanCura promises the performance won’t feel like a lecture. “It’s a full theatrical production. They’ll be costumed and dance excerpts from different works.”
Her husband, Executive Director and Co-Founder Barry VanCura, calls the performance “user-friendly.”
“A lot of the time when you go to a performance, there’s a distance between you and the artists. They’re doing their art, but you’re removed from it,” he says. “With the dialog between the audience and the Harlem Ensemble, you’re going to get to know the dancers, which will make you feel more akin to what they do and who they are.”
Harlem Ensemble is a nationally celebrated dance company with a history of demonstrating that minorities can surpass modern ballet standards. Arthur Miller, the first African American to become a leading soloist in the New York City Ballet, founded the company 40 years ago as he prepared to retire from a successful career. “He looked around and saw African Americans were not being served in ballet,” VanCura says. “So he went back to his old community, opened a school and created a company.”
The ensemble of almost all African American dancers has toured around the world, including Russia and China, and is undergoing what VanCura calls “a revival and a renaissance” as it performs across the U.S.
The performance will mark a homecoming for one of its dancers, Fredrick Davis. VanCura and his wife discovered Davis in 1998 during a Ballet Tennessee and Department of Chattanooga Parks and Recreation Dance Alive Program. Impressed with his talent, they awarded Davis, then 11 years old, a full Talent Identification Program scholarship to train at the VanCura Ballet Conservatory. Later, Davis auditioned to join and was accepted into Ballet Tennessee, where he captivated local audiences for several years. Upon graduation from the Center for Creative Arts, Davis went to New York on a full Joffrey Ballet School scholarship. He’s returned to Chattanooga before to dance the lead roles in various ballets, including “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty.”
“We knew Fredrick had the talent to become a professional dancer,” VanCura says. “When he was a senior in high school, we took him and a female dancer to New York to show them what was out there, because it’s one thing to see something on YouTube and another to actually be there. Dancing with Harlem became one of Fredrick’s dreams, and he went on to achieve it.”
VanCura and his wife dream not just about sending new talent out into the world but also of bringing quality dance to Chattanooga. And they have achieved it – with help from their friends. Stepping up to provide the funding that allowed Ballet Tennessee to bring Harlem Ensemble to Chattanooga was the National Endowment for the Arts Touring Grant, which the Southern Arts Federation awarded in partnership with the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which Allied Arts of Greater Chattanooga and the National Endowment for the Arts provided.
And Ballet Tennessee will get its money’s worth when Harlem Ensemble comes in one day before their performance to teach master classes and host events for children through the Department of Chattanooga Parks and Recreation. “That will allow young children without much training to experience the excitement of someone coming from New York to talk about dance,” Baker-VanCura says.
Tickets go on sale February 1 and will cost $10 to $30. Children under 12, college students with an ID and senior citizens will get a discount. To learn more, visit www.BalletTennessee .org.
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