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The dance “To Touch the Sun,” inspired by a Scott Elmquist photograph and part of Starr Foster Dance’s “Spitting Image II,” onstage April 27-29 (Photo by Doug Hayes)
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The inspiration for “To Touch the Sky” (Photo by Scott Elmquist)
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Photo by Doug Hayes
A yellow leaf within an autumnal cluster of auburn and umber, surrounded by a cathedral of green, stirred a dance. Starr Foster, for more than two decades a choreographer of contemporary dance with her own company, viewed this Scott Elmquist image and decided: That’s the one. You can see the results of this inspiration and six others as Starr Foster Dance presents “Spitting Image II,” Thursday, April 27, through Saturday, April 29, at 7:30 p.m. (plus a 5 p.m. matinee performance on April 29) at Firehouse Theatre.
Foster, in addition to her choreography work an educator, mentor, dance impresario and 2006 recipient of Richmond magazine’s Theresa Pollak Prize for Excellence in the Arts, is passionate about creating work drawn from other disciplines, including short stories, poetry, nature and, in this sequel of sorts, photography. And through it all, she has engaged the community, in terms of location, subject and participation. She has sought to encourage audiences who may not have encountered nor considered the possibilities of this way of telling stories through movement.
She is bolstered in this effort by a troupe of professional dancers, some she has known for years, with whom she has enjoyed artistically fruitful relationships.
One company member, Jordan Livermon Glunt, left after 14 years and is now director of the Richmond Ballet’s Minds in Motion program. Foster is involved with the bridge component of Minds in Motion that encourages dancers of merit into formal ballet training. “That is a huge part of my reason of being on this earth,” Foster says, “to share the love of dance and empower young girls, and boys, but to really give them a safe space in which to be an artist.”
Foster met troupe member Anna Branch when Branch was a teen in the ballet training program. After completing her university training, the dancer has performed with the company for seven years, likewise Fran Himmer-Beaumont. A guest dancer, Elena Dimitri, first came under Foster’s tutelage as a teen. Though not usually on the stage, photographer Douglas Hayes, whose work is among that of seven photographers used in this show, is also a company veteran. He has been taking stills for Foster “since before my daughter was born, and she’ll be 25 in July,” Foster says. Richmond magazine Senior Photographer Jay Paul also contributed work to this production.
The first image-based program, “Spitting Image I,” was performed in 2018 with a company of eight. The pandemic years changed the company’s personnel. “I had dancers move away, dancers get married and have babies,” Foster recalls. She decided to reduce her company to five members and round out the troupe for specific shows by hiring guest dancers.
“When you have true artists involved, people who are focused, believe in the work and work well with others, then you have the potential for magic,” Foster reflects. “There’ve been times when I’m standing there and I realize that I have 10 artists in this room — and that they are all women — and we’re involved in this salad of creativity.”
She derives great enjoyment from experiencing the work within the creative process. Understanding that a left foot should be out rather than a right, to prevent an unplanned tumble, is a detail where experience matters. “These kind of decisions don’t affect the aesthetic,” Foster says, but this for her is one of the exciting aspects of watching — and guiding — the way in which her vision for a piece is realized. Bringing a dance from her imagination into reality requires working it through — and working it out — and mutual trust in commitment to the pieces.
This is equally true for “Spitting Image II.” “I know all these photographers, but I’ve not worked with most of them before,” Foster explains. Responding to a call for entries earlier this year, some sent in singular images, others a handful. Foster didn’t know the circumstances behind most of the photographs. She chose the ones to which she felt an immediate response.
Such was Scott Elmquist’s yellow leaf, which became the dance “To Touch the Sun.”
True to her inclination to lift dance off the proscenium stage, for the fall Foster is taking her troupe on something of a tour — of neighborhood porches. She wants to continue pushing the boundaries of where people expect to see dance. “And, hopefully, that’s why people want to be involved with the company,” she says. “We’re always looking to do new and different things and really involve community, and we try to tie in all these ideas.”
