GroundWorks DanceTheater teams with composer, string quartet on work inspired by Civil War

By Zachary Lewis, The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The dance itself wasn’t the issue. Neither were the music, costume concept or stage design.

No, what gave director David Shimotakahara pause in crafting “House of Sparrows” for GroundWorks DanceTheater was the subject matter.

Grounded in the Civil War, the work struck the choreographer as epic in scale, potentially overwhelming. What he needed, he said, was “a way in.”

“I felt it would be a great opportunity, but when I started to delve into it, I saw how huge it is. It was a little daunting. I didn’t really have a handle on the structure of the work for a while.”

Then came his eureka moment. Sifting through archival letters and photos, his primary source of inspiration, Shimotakahara thought to dwell not on any one battle or story but rather on the general senses of displacement, loss and change felt by almost everybody both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Hence, too, his decision — in tandem with video artist Nic Petry — to cast projections of the “surreal” and “haunting” images he was encountering onto a house-shaped scrim, rather than employ a fixed, physical set.

“I didn’t want to make a war statement or a specific narrative,” he explained. “The way in was to look at civilian accounts and consider what it did to average people and how it changed their lives. I wanted something to resonate in an emotional way.”

This isn’t how the project began, however. No, in fact, “House of Sparrows,” the centerpiece of a program including Amy Miller’s “Current Frame” and a new work by Robert Moses called “The Rub,” originated outside dance, with a completely different ensemble: The Aeolus Quartet.

Eager to develop a new work with a dance company, the New York-based string quartet took the lead and approached GroundWorks. The musicians also proposed the idea of commissioning a score from Austin-based composer Steven Snowden, noting his interest in multimedia collaboration and historical American themes.

“What he [Snowden] did was balance a sense of the period with an abstract world,” said the choreographer, noting that through the composer’s music, the musicians themselves “are really part of the picture. They feel completely integrated into the piece.”

If Shimotakahara sounds like he’s already seen the piece, that’s because he has. While the performances this weekend at the Breen Center mark the local premiere of “House of Sparrows,” the work’s official world premiere was last month at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron.

It was there the choreographer witnessed the fruit of his labor. Absorbing the impact of “House of Sparrows,” some in the audience broke into tears, proving to Shimotakahara that he took the right approach.

“That’s a very unusual thing to happen,” he said. “Somehow it’s resonating with people in this very human way.”