From Blog Director Jill Randall:

Lately, I have been thinking about dance writing and dance publicity. How do we share/invite/entice/preview a work for our potential audience members? Salt Lake City-based artist Molly Heller and I are playing with this idea for the 7 days leading up to her show, very vary, at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center in Berkeley on December 2nd and 3rd. (Get your tickets here.)

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Photo: Duhaime Movement Project

Today, Molly shares about revisiting the work:

Revisiting the work: In a way, the work was just beginning to understand itself in May – for me to understand its complexity and how to layer (and sometimes soften) those complexities with an audience. I think most of my work has a way of feeling unresolved and ever-evolving as the stories and scenes that make up the work are not linear or finite. The audience-performer relationship also deepens the work and changes the performers experientially. The performance becomes a way of intimately knowing and understanding one's self – both for the dancers and the audience members. I think the 6 month gap since the premiere has allowed me to accept and trust this work – I've been more able to let go of my role in its creation and now allow it greater freedom to be its own entity.

The opportunity to show the work at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center (SADC) arose following a conversation this summer with colleague Katie Faulkner. After seeing a rehearsal of "very vary" while setting a new work at the University of Utah (where I currently teach), Katie encouraged me to bring my work to the Bay Area. This led to contacting Jill Randall at SADC, and the work found its way to this space. Jill is also an alumni of the University of Utah, so this partnership seemed to already have depth and a common history. Sharing "very vary" in the Bay Area is exciting to me as we get to "test" the work with a new audience that doesn't (for the most part) know us or our lived experiences. This process holds many unknowns for me, especially as I've never seen SADC in person. This unknown aspect of the tour requires the cast, myself, and the SADC crew to practice adaptability, and this parallels the work and my way of creating.

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very vary, choreographed by Molly Heller

Shawl-Anderson Dance Center

2704 Alcatraz Avenue

Berkeley, CA 94705

Saturday, December 2nd at 8pm (post show Q&A with Heller and cast, moderated by Katie Faulkner)

Sunday, December 3rd at 3:30pm

Tickets: $20 General/ $15 Student

veryvary.brownpapertickets.com

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Related links:

Artist Profile: Molly Heller

MFA Program Spotlight: University of Utah (Molly is a professor in the program)

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