Listening to dance

Summer Heat Dance Festival connects us, teaches us to listen

There’s a lot to grieve, these past few weeks. In a house on fire, we shout into the void, or over one another. We mourn. We rage. We work for common ground, for respect and visibility. Mostly, if we can find the humility, we try to listen.

Language can be a weapon for truth and clarity; it can also distort and polarize. How do we communicate when words don’t suffice? 

Indigenous cultures use movement for ritual of all kinds, including the ritual of grieving, understanding that dancing bypasses the landmines of language and speeds to the heart of what matters. It speaks without words, articulates without division. It’s specific but open-ended, personal and universal. It’s a visceral visual reminder that everybody has a body, and that every body, in all its fragility and strength, is equally present on this earth. 

When we’re silent, we can listen. Dance brings us into a listening space like none other, then fills it with the stories only flesh and blood can tell. 

When French choreographer Hervé Koubi asked his grandfather, “Where do we come from?” he began a journey of listening at this deep level of the body. Presented with a photograph of a Muslim tribesman and told it was his great-grandfather, Koubi went in search of his lineage and ended up in Algeria, where he found street kids hip-hopping, whirling dervishes spinning, and tribal elders doing ancient dances. 

Koubi tried to bring the movements back to his French dancers, but ended up recruiting the Algerian natives and others from Burkina Faso to join his company instead. The result is a group of 12 men who deliver a scorching, gorgeous mix of physical and social realities, from explosive acrobatics and breakdancing to transcendent Sufi chants. 

“If you want to introduce a boy to dance,” said Choregus Productions director Ken Tracy, “bring him to Compagnie Hervé KOUBI.”

The company debuts in August at the prestigious Jacob’s Pillow Festival in Massachusetts, but thanks to Choregus, they’ll first appear in Tulsa. Compagnie Hervé KOUBI opens the first-ever Summer Heat International Dance Festival at the Tulsa PAC, July 30-August 6, where audiences can hear many different human experiences in the language of dance.

Tracy hopes that fans of shows like “So You Think You Can Dance” will come see “the real thing” during Summer Heat, and that local dance artists will take advantage of the master classes these companies will offer during the festival. With this event, he hopes Tulsa might eventually become a destination for dance lovers to see two or three dance companies in a weekend. “Why go to Jacob’s Pillow when you could stay here, or drive here from Fayetteville or Kansas City?” Tracy asks.

Over eight days, some of the most well-known contemporary dance groups in the world—Compagnie Hervé KOUBI (France), L-E-V (Israel), BodyTraffic (Los Angeles), Ten Hairy Legs (New York), and Koresh Dance Company (Philadelphia)—will take the stage, presenting work by the likes of Hofesh Shechter and Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar, formerly of world-renowned Batsheva. 

These companies are ones you want to see if you’re keen to understand how dance speaks to us in a relevant way. They join diverse culture with contemporary impulses to ask, “What’s already here that needs attending to?” 

L-E-V will perform “OCD Love,” about obsession, compulsion, and disorder in life and in relationships. In works by six choreographers, Ten Hairy Legs will explore the emotional and technical range of the male dancer, and with some female guests artists will bring “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” to life in two special performances for kids. 

BodyTraffic will present dance ranging from comedic and ebullient to gritty and political, with Shechter’s particularly riveting “Dust” taking “a dark look at the powers that steer us in today’s society.” And the Tulsa-beloved Koresh, the first dance group Choregus ever presented, will bring a program featuring a new work for its 25th anniversary, a collaboration between choreographer Roni Koresh and DJ Spooky called “23: Deconstructing Mozart.”

Summer Heat provides a way to identify—body to body, soul to soul—with those who both are and aren’t us: across language, without words.

Summer Heat International Dance Festival
July 30 through August 6, 2016, Tulsa Performing Arts Center
Tickets and information: Choregus.org.

Compagnie Hervé KOUBI: July 30, 8 p.m.
Koresh: July 31, 8 p.m.
L-E-V: August 3, 8 p.m.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: August 4, 8 p.m., August 5, 2 p.m.
10 Hairy Legs: August 5, 8 p.m.
BodyTraffic: August 6, 8 p.m.

For more from Alicia, read her article on Tulsa's need for more training opportunities for performing artists.