Lucky Penny premieres Blake Beckham’s ‘OneAnother’
Blake Beckham’s newest piece emerges from The Work Room after a year of collaboration and evolution.
???Since its launch in 2015, The Lucky Penny’s Work Room has served as a steady creative haven for contemporary dancers to experiment, sweat, and deepen the evolution of their creations. Collaboratively created by choreographer Blake Beckham and impresario Malina Rodriguez, the Work Room studio houses 10 resident artists who, back in June, performed their diverse works in progress at HEADS UP!, The Work Room’s showcase performance at Emory’s Schwartz Center.
hurs., August 4, Beckham reveals OneAnother in its entirety, a contemporary dance piece from The Work Room that’s a years’-worth of creativity, commitment, and evolution. Beckham started the piece by considering the construction of the space. Sculptors and sound artists Jane Foley Garver and Dana Haugaard served as her collaborators to create a scene where a performance unfolds as two dances for two audiences in one room.
“Garver and Haugaard are both exceptional talents in our community and I think there’s a whole audience of visual artists that will really want to see what they’ve contributed to this environment,” Beckham says.
?? OneAnother is a choreographic investigation about pairings, exploring the complexity of duality between opposing yet simultaneous desires for solitude and togetherness. “It’s a dance that grapples with a universe of twos”, Beckham says. Audience members will perch on both ends of an illuminated corridor, while a cast of five dancers — Anna Bracewell Crowder, Sarah Freeman, Emily Hammond, Claire Molla, and Melissa Word — explore the bifurcation and beauty of twos in arresting duets, fleeting interactions, and demonstrations of opposing and complicated emotions.
em> OneAnother is a highly collaborative work, emerging as a reflection of the dancers’ own interpretations and improvisations surrounding vulnerability and trust. Early iterations of the piece were inspired by Beckman’s improvisation scores, various writing assignments, and movements subsequently manipulated by the dancers.
“As some parts of the piece have developed and become crystallized over time, we have let go of many others,” dancer Emily Hammond told CL over email. “I think the cast has been really supportive of Blake’s editing choices to let go of material, even when we have been working on it for a long time.”
Beckham’s interest in developing the unique language that emerges from her dancers’ bodies has allowed OneAnother to both expand and flourish. “They’ve been phenomenal to work with, such generous and generative people,” Beckham says about her dancers.
Now, a full year of dedication under their belts, Beckham and her dancers are ready to share their work with Atlanta for one weekend only.
“We have spent a lot of time cultivating genuine human interactions throughout the work by utilizing pedestrian movements and forming sincere connections through contact, posture, spacing, and focus,” Hammond says. “There are a lot of subtleties throughout the material that I hope aren’t completely lost to an outside eye, since the small details can hold a lot of weight for us.”
OneAnother features an original score by Blake Williams; set design by Malina Rodriguez, Jane Foley Garver, and Dana Haugaard; and lighting design by Dylan Philips. The venue is wheelchair accessible. Tickets are available in advance with discounts offered for students, seniors, artists, and the military.