Morphing From Moxie

Briley Neugebauer and her fellow dancers at Moxie Contemporary Ballet had a great gig at Portland's newest, body-positive ballet—until the company suddenly shut down and owner Gina Candland disappeared without paying her dancers or instructors, or issuing refunds to angry parents who had paid over $2,000 in tuition.

Dancers scrambled midseason to find work. A Kansas loan company sued Candland and her husband, Joseph, for over $93,000. Moxie's former director of development attempted to sue the couple for libel. And Neugebauer disappeared from the dance scene. As it turns out, she was busy building her own company from the ashes.

Six months later, Neugebauer and a company entirely of ex-Moxie dancers that calls itself PDX Contemporary Ballet is debuting with an aptly titled show.

"Metamorphosis represents our journey through rebirth," the show description reads, "how we need to feel love and purpose as we move forward from sometimes difficult and hurtful situations."

WW talked with Neugebauer about Moxie and making a company without money.

WW: Moxie was a big scandal in July, when the company suddenly closed and Gina Candland left for California. Did you see that coming?

Briley Neugebauer: We just showed up, and the doors were locked and she'd disappeared. None of us got paid. I heard a lot of rumors and talk about lawsuits, but I just stepped away and really have no idea what's going on with that. It sounded like maybe they didn't pay their rent.

How did you and the other dancers recover?

At first, I didn't dance or even take classes. I didn't go to shows or anything for a while, because I was nervous about how the community would react to me. I mean, I was on the Moxie posters and everything. The dance world can be brutal. But when I did get back into it, everyone met me with a lot of sympathy.

You were still without a company, though. What made you decide to form one?

Myself, Joanna Hardy and Emily Schultz did, and six other dancers. They were all somehow in Moxie, either as dancers or in the intensive study program. They came from all over the nation to sign on for that. But we loved what we were doing—the dancing—with Moxie. So when it disappeared, we got together and made PDX Contemporary Ballet.

Finding space and funding was hard even for established companies like Polaris or Conduit in 2015—how did you manage?

I licensed PDX Contemporary in September, right after Moxie, so we're officially an Oregon nonprofit. But it's all on a volunteer basis.

So, no one gets paid?

No. We all do it because we want to. Right now, we're the resident dance company at Alberta Abbey, which has been wonderful and let us use the space. We are doing a trade and working with them to set up dance classes there.

Without money, you got five local choreographers to produce new works, and a full weekend run. How?

Costumes are whatever the choreographers want to provide, I guess. Otherwise, it's what's in the dancers' closets. We're lucky that the Abbey is already set up with lights and a stage.

Do you have plans to do a whole season?

We want to make contemporary ballet a thing in the Northwest, to perform contemporary works en pointe. Only a handful of companies in North America are doing it: Lines in San Francisco, Complexions in Atlanta, Charlotte Ballet in North Carolina, and Ballet Next in New York. We're still just starting up, so we're very tentative about promising too much.

see it: Metamorphosis is at Alberta Abbey, 126 NE Alberta St., albertaabbey.org. 7:30 pm Friday-Saturday and 2 pm Sunday, Feb. 5-7. $15.

Willamette Week