A new event series is coming to Milwaukee Artist Resource Network (MARN), starting on Thursday, Oct. 12. Choreo Kitchen challenges three choreographers to cook up dance performances based on mystery prompts they draw from a box. The twist? They only get one rehearsal to put their performances together. The prompts range from pieces of writing to images, objects or songs.
The first event is at 5:30 p.m., and the performances are set to begin a little after 6 p.m. The performances are set to go until 7:30 p.m. with an informal Q&A afterward.
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Milwaukee-based contemporary dance studio, Wild Space Dance Company, is behind the event series. The company is known for working in between set, choreographed dance and improvisation.
All of the choreographers at Wild Space are also dancers. For these performances, they can choose to either direct from the position of the “outside eye” and cast the performance with other dancers or to dance in the performance themselves.
“We do a lot of site-specific work where we make dances in different locations, particularly for those places,” said Dan Schuchart, artistic director at Wild Space and the emcee for the event. “So it’s not unfamiliar for us to go into the space and then we really kind of respond to the room or the environment that we’re in.”
There will also be a live musician performing alongside the dancers. For the Oct. 12 date it will be local musician Paul Westfall. He will perform live accompaniment to the dance as well as an improvised solo set based on the same prompts.
“Right now, we’re kind of keeping it a little bit more in-house with the choreographers invited, so it’s company members,” said Schuchart. “But I do think that this series could grow where we can invite different people to respond to these prompts. So we’d see a visual artist or other mediums that are going through this kind of process.”
Admission will be $10 for MARN members and $15 for non-members. Tickets can be purchased MARN’s website.
If you can’t make this one, don’t worry! There will be another session, also at MARN on Nov. 9.
