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Northwest Dance Project is trying to define itself. The contemporary company's annual opener, always titled New Now Wow!, is its chance to make a statement and introduce itself to the Portland dance scene. But this season, don't expect anything straightforward. Instead, the company starts with three emerging, foreign artists whose pieces are all based on an existential crisis of sorts.
World premieres from Czech choreographer Jirí Pokorný and German choreographer Felix Landerer are on the program, alongside a favorite from the nine-member company's 12-year repertoire—Mother Tongue by the Zurich-based choreographer Ihsan Rustem.
Artistic director Sarah Slipper intentionally chose choreographers who have just begun turning heads in the dance world, hoping this program will give Portlanders a jump on understanding their styles.
"You become one of the beholders of this choreographer," Slipper says. "There's a strength to that because as they rise among the world, we become one of the experts in their language." These languages range from theatrical to fluid to sharp.
Rustem is the theatrical one. The 32-year-old British artist, instated last year as NWDP's first-ever resident choreographer, created Mother Tongue as an exploration of how we find our cultural identity after he visited his ancestral home of Turkey and felt a sense of belonging. Built on round, flowing movements and elegant lifts that slowly unravel to take up the whole stage, everything about Mother Tongue feels big and dramatic. Curtains along the back of the stage lift and lower to introduce new dancers, who are silhouetted for a stark moment by golden light from behind the curtains.
The second piece, from Germany's Landerer, asks the same questions about self-identity—this time in the context of digital media. Landerer's freeze-frame moments, stitched together by his signature floor work, are inspired by Facebook, the social pressure to brand yourself and the fast pace of modern living.
"People are just hunting for the next best thing," Landerer said. "It's never about being happy with what you have, or resting." Like Rustem's, Landerer's piece is a direct translation of his own life. After starting ballet "quite late" at the age of 16, Landerer began choreographing at 26 and went on to work with Commedia Futura in Hannover, Norrdans in Sweden and Scapino Ballet Rotterdam.
"It's something you notice in yourself, in the way you work as a choreographer," he says. "You have to have a lot of output, a lot of creations…but sometimes you have to take the time to stop and stand still and get new inspiration."
In rehearsals, Landerer has a quartet of dancers—Kody Jauron, Lindsey McGill, Elijah Labay and Ching Ching Wong—crouching and pulsing together on the floor, lithely contracting in on themselves before stretching out their legs in sweeping movements. The result is a feeling of strain or restlessness, which will likely continue in Pokorný's piece.
Pokorny made his NWDP debut at last year's New Now Wow!, and this year's The Presence of Absence promises the same stark, fast-paced work that challenged the company's dancers.
"His speed is extraordinary," Slipper says of the choreographer, who trained with Prague National Dance Conservatory and Kidd Pivot. His signature style is sharp and puppetlike, where dancers snap their joints into fierce angles and interrupt fluid motions with sudden, robotic ticks. "It's not a beautiful, thick movement style," said Slipper. "It's not all about flow."
According to Pokorný, his piece is about diving into your own psyche. "I'm trying to find an outline that can lead us through the process of one person talking, in one space, alone," he says. "That person is maybe having different conversations within himself or herself, or with an imaginary friend."
Pokorný's premiere will feature the eight NWDP dancers all in their first performance together this season, but this is no cocky introduction.
"I think I'm still really trying to find the voice," Pokorný says. "It's on its way. Maybe I will never even label it."
see it: New Now Wow! is at PSU's Lincoln Performance Hall, 1620 SW Park Ave., nwdanceproject.org. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, Oct. 22-24. $29-$49.
At Some Hour You Return from Northwest Dance Project on Vimeo.
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