(intense music) - We love dance.

We love dance.

And this story is a story of tragedy, of despair, filled with pathos and love and death.

(intense music) Do you know the original story?

(intense music) (gentle emotional orchestral music) (gentle emotional orchestral music) - I was freelancing as a choreographer.

Pre 2004, I was trying to find my own voice, and I'd worked with other choreographers, young emerging voices.

We were all looking to express ourselves with very different styles.

There was so little opportunity for that in this country at that time.

And I thought, what happens if you bring a group of directors together with an amazing group of choreographers with a variety of young artists who had different backgrounds, and you put them in a room together and see what could be produced?

And that was the beginning of Northwest Dance Project.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) ♪ Sound of water near my feet, you found me ♪ - Good rhythms, good rhythms.

And often when you wanted to hold something, we were here.

- [Sarah] We've made a conscious effort to seek out and invite choreographers from all around the world to develop and create spectacular new work here.

(upbeat music) We titled the show Stravinsky, and Ihsan Rustem has committed himself to doing "The Rite of Spring", and Joseph Hernandez is doing "Petrushka".

(intense emotional music) - Doing "The Rite of Spring" here is a great challenge.

I mean, it's something that I did not want to touch for a long, long time.

(gentle music) It was first performed at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris in 1912.

The costumes were Pagan, ritualistic, and then the music was very challenging and I think people just weren't ready for it.

So the minute the curtain opened, people started booing.

People started screaming, they screamed, "Taboo, shut up!"

A riot already erupted within the theater and it carried on out into the streets after.

And I think they call it the greatest scandal of the performing arts, which I kind of love.

I love a little bit of scandal.

I kind of want to feed in all of that like angst into the piece.

It's going to be very wild.

- Going into "The Rite of Spring", he has a real description of each section of music.

- Four, five, six, seven, eight, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, one, two, three.

At this point, I know every ping and plong of that Stravinsky music, every count, every, and I like that.

I find that really inspiring and I'm trying to be as respectful to the music as possible and trying to let that undercurrent drive much of the creation.

(intense music) Good!

I'm by nature a relatively organized person.

It sort of keeps me in check.

We have some masks coming along, and I kind of like this and I'm using the masks as symbol of the chosen one, but also of removing identity.

I'll always create quite an extensive dossier consisting of many images, consisting of a lot of ideas thrown in there, consisting of costume ideas, prop ideas, set ideas.

All right, why don't we swing a leg and just begin?

- Yeah, oh yeah.

- Yeah?

So just a full eight to come into the space.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, one, two, three, four, that works.

So then- Before I arrive, I pretty much have a clear overview of what I'm going to do and I'll have a timeline and spreadsheets and I have to get this done by this time.

And like I'm giving myself an ambitious task of I have to do 15 minutes in this first week.

I mean, that's crazy, but I have to do it because the timeline we have.

Five, six, seven, eight, one, oh!

(upbeat emotional music) (upbeat emotional music) Five, six, seven, eight, two, four!

The original "Rite of Spring" is based on a pagan ritual coming around in spring.

It's very earthy and very grounded, super physical.

It's actually how my body moves.

In your chest!

I do a lot of floor work.

I'm quite grounded.

I almost never jump.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

In the company right now, there are a couple dancers that we're meeting today for the first time.

So I really want to demonstrate and physically do it myself so they also understand a little bit of my approach to movement.

Maybe help him up.

And then if you could be a little more tactile, like make her work through.

That's great.

Can you go deeper also into like finding that?

That's your ritual?

Like it- - Mm-hmm.

- It's kind of a super interesting space.

Each creation really is quite different, or I do my best to achieve that.

(laughs) - At the heart of Northwest Dance Project, we love to let our choreographers come and try to instill that they can push boundaries and maybe turn the box over and see what we get.

Because I think that's the future.

- We're going to do something we call folding.

So if you get to a point like this, you want to fold a joint in on itself.

- Joseph will surprise me and he is tackling some of the difficulties of the history of the work.

- I remember in a dance history class in school, I was shown a VHS of "Petrushka", and there's three characters.

There's three kind of puppet characters, Petrushka the sad clown that's in love with Ballerina, which is kind of archetypal woman figure.

And then there's the Moore, who's this figure of the masculine.

He of course has this giant saber.

It's usually played by a man in blackface.

And I remember watching this and thinking like, wow, like this was not made with people like me watching this in mind at all.

I felt it was important to kind of take on pieces like this and to kind of take a hold of that history myself and to use it in a way like holding up a sign, like putting a signpost.

Like I also exist here.

We also exist here.

What was the space between what you planned and what happened?

- A small mental space.

- [Sarah] He's working very closely with the dancers.

It's almost like a freeform.

- He had us write little poems about things.

We're pulling from the old "Petrushka", but really kind of opposing it in a new way, kind of really leaning away from what it was in the past.

- Two things, there's like the piece as it exists in history and like the weight of that.

And there's also like a bit of humanity, a bit of honesty.

- He's interested in philosophy and he lets the work kind of develop in front of you.

- What did you think?

How was the thinking process there and how did that manifest in your movement?

And what creates complexity is using that rhythm in strange position ways, you know?

Because so a fold can go this way into that point.

A fold can go down this way, we could build something up this way to then fold back on it again.

About forcing yourself to think of them independently for a little bit.

- I love working with Joseph and Ihsan, so I think they're going to be such contrasting works.

They are both very invested and physical in what they do, but the approaches are so completely different.

It'll be exciting to see how it all plays out.

(intense music) - It's a marathon for the dancers.

I mean an absolute marathon.

But I like that and it's exciting, and I hopefully want to take the audience on that journey.

- Could be excited about, without it being over.

- [Joseph] What we're going to do is take an approach of sort of like talking about talking about the piece.

- We know that the theater isn't perfect, but it should be a place to dream, to experience, to heal instead of constantly perpetuating more harm.

- The piece is quite personal, it's very political, very specific, and it's very vocal about its positions.

I'm excited to share this with people and I'm also a little bit terrified.

(bright music) - [Sound Director] Sound 12 and blue mic go.

(indistinct).

- [Joseph] One, two, one two.

- We have an incredible lighting designer and team that go in, and they will be watching all the work.

- Thank you.

- Lights, sound, and rail go.

- [Sarah] When you transfer a work from the rehearsal studio, there's some magic that starts to happen.

- Just something very Vogue Italia.

- It's like all the finishing touches that are put on.

More like physicality because it's just going into that music.

I call the rehearsals, I call them the kitchen.

So everything is chop, chop, chop, chop, and you're making it, and then you have to put it all together.

And the stage is like the dining room table.

You present it, this brilliant meal that you've cooked, (laughs) and all the pieces of the puzzle be timed and put together at the right moment.

It's like making a big cake.

It's just fantastic.

(laughs) I just love it.

- Lights 201, sound 41 go.

(dramatic music) (dramatic music) - I get continually surprised and continually get excited.

(audience cheering) And I think that is still a joy when you're excited about what you do.

I don't feel like it's a career anymore.

I kind of feel like it's my life.

(dramatic music) (audience claps) (no audio) (no audio) - [Narrator] Oregon Art Beat shares the stories of Oregon's amazing artists, and member support completes the picture.

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