For her latest evening-length work, The Distance Between Us, choreographer Gina Gibney has migrated Uptown from the longtime Downtown presenter Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church—which has nurtured several of her recent works—to the sleek black box space housed within the shiny new Alvin Ailey headquarters in Hell’s Kitchen. With the move, she has also given up the “serenity and openness” of St. Mark’s for a more traditional design—and increased theatrical possibilities—because she arrived at a point where “I suddenly realized I want to use sets, work with lighting in a much more intense way—almost to the extent where I feel like the dancers without that feel unprotected to me,” she said during a recent rehearsal break. “The development of this piece coincided with my really wanting to heighten the production values of my work, and test it in a more traditional space.”
Lex Liang’s set features two large, patterned panels suspended so that they divide the space into corridors and alter magically under Kathy Kaufmann’s lighting design. “I wanted the set to feel like a frame or a model of something, and to suggest a transitory space. I didn’t want it to look like it was fully realized,” Gibney explained. In her previous work, the acclaimed unbounded, she felt “the dancers were more beings or essences than they were real people. I wanted this not to be so ethereal, to be more of a feet-on-the-ground piece, where you are drawn into them as people, into their humanity.”
In this latest work, Gibney’s ensemble of six strong, expansive women guard their personal space but also engage in plenty of restless, turbulent partnering. Carried along by the supportive pulse and shifting textures of Ryan Lott’s score, which provides a gentle undercurrent of turbulence, they resemble modern-day descendents of the committed, resolute, daring women who danced for choreographers such as Doris Humphrey; their lush, daring sequences imbuing them with an inherent nobility.
Gibney, who has been cited for her sophisticated craftsmanship and poetic sensibility, says that often the title of a work will come to her first, inspired by the ideas and concerns of the moment. “I often start from one image that seems to speak to me at this moment. For The Distance Between Us, I was thinking a lot about layers of emotion, and how we travel internally and externally, how our relationships emerge, different layers of proximity to people that we’re close to: the whole concept of coming to terms with how we’re going to fit with people.”
Since opting to work exclusively with female dancers nearly 10 years ago, Gibney has created seven full-evening pieces, and it is a form she finds particularly rich in possibilities. “It gives me an opportunity to dig into something with a lot of depth and intensity.” But while the format may be familiar, she recognizes that in many other ways she is venturing into new territory this time. “I look at this as a transitional season; I really want to put myself out there in a different way.”
Nov. 28-Dec. 1, Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 W. 55 St. (at 9th Ave.), 212-868-4444; 8, 420.
Lex Liang’s set features two large, patterned panels suspended so that they divide the space into corridors and alter magically under Kathy Kaufmann’s lighting design. “I wanted the set to feel like a frame or a model of something, and to suggest a transitory space. I didn’t want it to look like it was fully realized,” Gibney explained. In her previous work, the acclaimed unbounded, she felt “the dancers were more beings or essences than they were real people. I wanted this not to be so ethereal, to be more of a feet-on-the-ground piece, where you are drawn into them as people, into their humanity.”
In this latest work, Gibney’s ensemble of six strong, expansive women guard their personal space but also engage in plenty of restless, turbulent partnering. Carried along by the supportive pulse and shifting textures of Ryan Lott’s score, which provides a gentle undercurrent of turbulence, they resemble modern-day descendents of the committed, resolute, daring women who danced for choreographers such as Doris Humphrey; their lush, daring sequences imbuing them with an inherent nobility.
Gibney, who has been cited for her sophisticated craftsmanship and poetic sensibility, says that often the title of a work will come to her first, inspired by the ideas and concerns of the moment. “I often start from one image that seems to speak to me at this moment. For The Distance Between Us, I was thinking a lot about layers of emotion, and how we travel internally and externally, how our relationships emerge, different layers of proximity to people that we’re close to: the whole concept of coming to terms with how we’re going to fit with people.”
Since opting to work exclusively with female dancers nearly 10 years ago, Gibney has created seven full-evening pieces, and it is a form she finds particularly rich in possibilities. “It gives me an opportunity to dig into something with a lot of depth and intensity.” But while the format may be familiar, she recognizes that in many other ways she is venturing into new territory this time. “I look at this as a transitional season; I really want to put myself out there in a different way.”
Nov. 28-Dec. 1, Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 W. 55 St. (at 9th Ave.), 212-868-4444; 8, 420.
