GroundWorks DanceTheater strikes rich vein yielding to art form’s roots

By Zachary Lewis, The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Plots. Messages. Morals. All extraneous to choreographer Eric Michael Handman.

To him, the current guest of GroundWorks DanceTheater, dance alone is dramatic enough. No need for external influences. In creating a new work on the company for premiere this weekend, Handman relied most heavily on the art’s four pillars: energy, space, time and form.

“Rarely do I come in with a set agenda,” said Handman before a recent rehearsal at Cleveland State University, where he also led a summer dance workshop. “I’m a believer in process and method. It’s about not knowing, and finding.”

Set for premiere on the company’s “Summer Series” this Friday through Sunday in the Alma Theater at Cain Park is now a substantial, intensely physical work spanning 20 minutes, complete with an original score by University of Utah composer Michael Wall. Rarely have the dancers been tasked with such concentrated, varied action.

Also on the program: reprisals of “House Broken,” a year-old spoof on social mores by Miami choreographer Rosie Herrera, and “Boom Boom,” a blues tribute from 2009 by artistic director David Shimotakahara.

As it happens, in Handman, Shimotakahara found exactly what he wanted, too. Sifting through dozens of pieces at a recent college dance festival, the GroundWorks leader was struck deeply by Handman, an associate professor at the University of Utah, detecting in his work a bracingly original voice compatible with his company.

“I was immediately taken by it,” Shimotakahara recalled. “The movement itself was really interesting, It wasn’t derivative in any way. It moved in a really sophisticated manner. It created its own context.”

His reactions to the as-yet-untitled work Handman set on GroundWorks are similar. Despite being almost totally abstract – having no specific theme, narrative or message – the piece still provokes a strong open-ended response, Shimotakahara said.

“There’s not that ‘Huh?’ feeling,” he said. “There’s so much that comes to mind. It leaves you with a lot of ideas. It’s a satisfying experience.”

The potential for a challenging new work wasn’t all Shimotakahara saw in Handman, either. No, the director also spotted a solid candidate for guest choreographer at the workshop his company runs in partnership with CSU every summer. An educational moment, in other words.

Lynn Deering, director of dance at CSU, said her students have benefited immeasurably from studying with Handman directly and watching him bring a new work to fruition with GroundWorks. Just as Handman himself can’t map out his creative process, so are the long-term effects of such an immersive, hands-on experience impossible to quantify.

“The opportunity for them has been really thrilling,” Deering said. “Witnessing a work in progress and talking through it with the choreographer has built all sorts of relationships.”