Dancers Erick Hooten, Anna Branch and Ryan Davis perform a work inspired by Rachel DeFrank's photograph. (Photo by Doug Hayes)
Starr Foster has led her contemporary dance company in the production of inventive and compelling work for the past 16 years. She’s adapted short stories into dances and the company created a mixed media piece that was recorded in the woods of Pocahontas State Park. Now, she’s taking a turn with photography in “Spitting Image,” inspired by eight photographs selected out of 87 submitted by professionals, amateurs and novices, from here and elsewhere.
These images are on display in the lobby of the TheatreLab venue (300 E. Broad St.) through Jan. 14. There are six performances: 8 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 12, after which there is a reception with both the dancers and the photographers; three shows on Saturday, Jan. 13, at 3 p.m., 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.; and two, at 3 p.m. and 5 p.m., on Sunday, Jan. 14.
“We’re always trying to think of different ways to challenge our artistic voices and to incorporate other artists,” says Foster, a 2006 Richmond magazine Pollak Prize honoree. The show also brings to life her own love of photography as an art form.
The photographers are: Rachel DeFrank, Angela Douglas, Mike Harrell, Dennis Lieberman; Claire Midock; Henrietta Near; Cristina Peters and Elizabeth Whitson. You can see the show's pictures here.
Foster used as muse both the image and the titles. Chicagoan Elizabeth Whitson’s rose, “Beauty at the End,” has a connotation both of magnificence and fatality while Brooklynite Mike Harrell’s “Pas de Does” is a pun both in nature and in the form. University of Richmond student and city native Cristina Peters’ “Salt Water Bones” has a trace of a Nirvana album cover, except here the imagery is more mysterious. Henrietta Near — a longtime participant in the arts and supporter of culture here — gives us several individuals in a park setting looking different places and, if you concentrate, the ghost — or is it the reflection? — of a cat.
All these particulars and more will get their revelation. The enjoyment for Foster is finding a way to interpret the imagery, visual and text. “The fun’s been in the information I received about the images. Some of them are literal and some are metaphorical, and that’s kind of where we go in these works.”
The company began building the dances in late September — leaping and rolling from one project to another into 2017’s hazy shades of winter months, “We took off for New Year’s,” Foster notes, and laughs. “Which is great that we’re busy.”
TheatreLab’s space allows options for both presenting dancers — and for audiences. “You can view the shows from two sides,” Foster explains. “You can come one night and see it one way, and another get a whole different perspective.”
Tickets, ($15 for matinees, to $25), are available through brownpapertickets.com, and seating is limited.
