Dance company taking 'Flight'

Crowd several dancers into a small space and tell each to move from part of the space to another. What will they do? How will they react?

Helen Simoneau, an award-winning choreographer and dancer based in Winston-Salem, wanted to know. That was a starting point for the Helen Simoneau Danse company's inaugural performances this week at Hanesbrands Theatre.

In 2009, she had five dancers climb into a shower. She then asked each of them to move from one part of the stall to another, leaving the how part of the exercise up to them.

Dancers stepped over, weaved their way through or ducked under other dancers.

"We had to take breaks because it was just claustrophobic," Simoneau said. "That created the right kind of energy I was looking for, and we translated that into the space."

The "space" was at Hollins University in Roanoke, Va., where Simoneau received a master's in dance in 2009. It since has morphed into a small square of light that dancers will inhabit during the first dance in "Flight Distance I, II and III."

"It almost seemed too tight for things to happen," said Lindsay Fisher, who was among the dancers who climbed into the shower. "It's the whole element of personal space and how much you let someone interfere with or step in your personal space."

"Flight," a trio of dances choreographed by Simoneau, explores "the boundaries of personal space, unwritten spatial rules and intimacy in relation to space" as well as "the power dynamics established between two or among several performers," Simoneau says in media materials. It also aims to provoke such questions as: "How do we react to an intrusion into our personal space? How does close proximity create a sense of intimacy? Is there power in claiming one's space?"

Simoneau, a native of Quebec, has lived for several years in Winston-Salem with her husband, Thomas Wilson. She received a bachelor's in contemporary dance from UNC School of the Arts in 2002.

She said issues related to personal space have always interested her as a choreographer.

"With dance, the relationship and the space between two people are always addressed," she said. "I wanted to consciously address it."

With "Flight," Simoneau's intentions are even more ambitious. She also wants the performance to be an annual Helen Simoneau Danse presentation of programs in Winston-Salem and New York — quite an undertaking in terms of organization and fundraising.

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"Flight" will have cost $30,000 to present in Winston-Salem, with funding coming from individual donors, the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, and the N.C. Arts Council.

The N.C. Arts Council last year awarded Simoneau a $10,000 choreographic fellowship, which became seed money for a two-phase project. One phase is the performance, and the other was a residency last summer at UNCSA, where dancers — many UNCSA alumni based in New York and other cities — learned dances II and III. UNCSA donated rehearsal space for three weeks.

Composers Jonathan Melville Pratt, a UNCSA alumnus, and Chris Andraka were commissioned to write music for "Flight." Nine dancers, including Simoneau, are involved in "Flight," and each was paid a modest wage during the creation phase ($8 an hour) and will be paid for the performance ($400 a week).

Simoneau's plans are ambitious, especially because a relatively large cast is performing new works to commissioned music, but there is precedence for something similar by UNCSA graduates. The No Rules Theatre Company performs regularly in Hanesbrands and in Washington.

"All these people who know me in Winston-Salem have never seen the choreographic work that I do," she said. "I felt it was really important to bring it to Winston-Salem. That's where I live."

Simoneau has established most of her artistic credentials elsewhere. In 2009, she performed "The Gentleness Was in Her Hands," her solo dance, at the Internationales Solo-Tanz-Theater Festival in Stuttgart, winning first place for choreography and third place for performance. Her choreography has also been staged at other dance festivals and venues around the world.

"Her solo was a big eye-opener for audiences, presenters and funders," said Kristin Taylor, a dancer from Durham.

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Taylor studied with Simoneau at UNCSA and will perform in a duet with her Thursday and Friday. The duet is the third dance. It will be accompanied by Pratt's recorded music. Pratt described it as a complex study in polyrhythms with unconventional instruments — found objects made of glass and metal, a pump organ, a celeste and a piano sounding board.

The duet showcases the dancers attacking the same movements in different ways that complement their personalities and strengths.

"I admire her ability to have an automatic sense of what she'd like to see in her work," Taylor said. "You can tell that she prepares for her rehearsals and her work in general."

KKeuffel@wsjournal.com

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