Photo courtesy of Bryce Critser

Charlotte Adams and Dancers members, Michele Kriner and L.D. Kidd, strike a pose in "The Poetry of Physics." "Poetry" will conclude the dance company's performances this weekend at the DeMeester Outdoor Performance Center.

Tuesday September 25, 2001

UA Dance brings choreography back home

Charlotte Adams, the creator and sole choreographer of her dance company, Charlotte Adams and Dancers, knows the artistic workings of Tucson.

Formerly the artistic director of Tucson's Tenth Street Danceworks, Adams graduated from the University of Arizona with a master's degree in dance.

Recently, Adams began to bring all of her choreography together, and for the past three years she worked as a professor of dance at the University of Iowa.

Last February, she finally fulfilled her dream of creating her own company.

To commemorate her days as artistic director of Danceworks, Adams decided to bring her choreography to Tucson for a second company performance in Reid Park - a tradition instilled by the former Tenth Street dancers.

"(The) tradition has continued," she said. "But this year - now that I have this group of dancers - Charlotte Adams and Dancers are doing it."

Her show, called "The Poetry of Physics," played earlier this year at a Joyce SoHo venue in New York.

This weekend, they dance in Tucson at the DeMeester Outdoor Performance Center in Reid Park.

"This is a concert that I did in New York in February of this year," Adams said. "(It is) mainly repertory pieces that I had developed over the years and a couple of new works."

The title of the show was taken from the piece "The Poetry of Physics," that concludes this weekend's performances. Adams said the piece was selected for the National American College Dance Festival last year.

She described the performance as a light piece involving music of a comic and operatic tone.

"(It is a) French farcewhere dancers begin from behind a curtain - as if they've been in an old mansion in the country - (and) everyone's dancing from bed to bed, she said.

She added the piece is based on the concept of "push, pull and fall" and involves several partnering moves as well as gestures and traveling on the floor.

Photo courtesy of Bryce Critser

Dancers Tarek Halaby (in air) and Brian Schuman of Charlotte Adams and Dancers defy gravity through dance. The dancers will perform this weekend at Reid Park's DeMeester Outdoor Performance Center.

"I basically played with the dancers - they were a part of the creation," Adams said. "I molded it and we came up with movement. (I was) really inspired by the design of the pieces - (the) image of the dancers flying out of the wings."

She added that several of her dancers were familiar with this piece - as well her movement and style in general - before they began rehearsing for this show.

"These are dancers that I have been working with in Iowa," she said. "They (are) incredibly wonderful and beautiful dancers - four are graduate (students) and four are alums of the (UA dance) program, pursuing professional programs in dance."

Adams added that one of the new pieces debuting in this weekend's show was, in fact, created for the upcoming performance in Tucson.

"I created a new piece for Tucson (called) 'Just Another Abstract Dance with Feminist Subtext,'" she said.

Although lengthy, she titled the piece intending to inform audiences of the message behind the dance. The movement in this piece was taken from the "great shapes" in a 1921 painting done by Florine Stettheimer.

"The painting had lots of wonderful movement in it," Adams said. "So I really based the movement (on) the painting."

She added that the piece portrays the "false problems of fashion and eternal youth."

"(I) took the movement ideas out of the painting, but then the dance took on a life of its own," she said. "It has a touch of the comic, but also is very 'dancey' - lots of swirling, marvelous costumes (and) very unusual looking hats!"

Adams added that the show, in its entirety, should attract a wide variety of audience members. She said performances in Reid Park are generally a lot of fun and engage the Tucson community as a whole.

"('The Poetry of Physics') has a variety of work in it, so I think it has something for everyone," she said. "Some pieces are really athletic and (some) are fun and humorous - and there's a sense of fun about the concert, too - it has the gamut of emotions and musical style."