COURTESY: FORD CENTER
Michael Spencer Phillips wandered between the up-stretched hands, teetering through jungle music occasionally interrupted by scratching feet on a matted floor. The students mimicked his and the other leading dancers’ movements like marionettes, controlled by the gentle critiques of their puppeteer.
Rioult Dance New York is a highly credited modern dance company on tour celebrating their 20th anniversary. Rioult will perform at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Gertrude C. Ford Center. Instead of solely performing, however, they also held workshops for students and citizens to learn firsthand what a professional dancer’s life is like.
On Sunday, members of Rioult met in Lamar Park to perform and meet interested citizens of Oxford.
“It was beautiful to be able to do some of Pascal’s choreography in a natural setting,” Phillips said. “To have a park as your stage is pretty spectacular.”
Monday, the Rioult crew held a master class for Ole Miss dance students and visited the Lafayette High School for a workshop. Norman Easterbrook, director of the Gertrude C. Ford Center, attended the workshop at Lafayette High School.
“This is an extraordinary opportunity for these students, especially for students on our campus to get an opportunity to see something that they’ve never seen before,” Easterbrook said. “To me, that’s what part of the university education is all about – to get to do things that, ordinarily, you wouldn’t try to go do.”
The Ford Center also offered free tickets to Wednesday night’s performance to anyone who attended the workshops and classes.
“If a student comes to observe a rehearsal or anything, we make it so they get to attend the performance,” Easterbrook said. “Those students have had the chance to work with a world class modern dance company with some noted dancers and some really noted people.”
“The beauty of the university and Oxford is the university brings so much culture,” said Laura Smith, whose daughter, Virginia, participated in the workshop. “We’re in this small community, but we get so much.”
Kate Meacham, marketing director at the Ford Center, also attended the workshop.
“I think that, for many of the students here, this is something so very different than anything they’ve ever experienced,” Meacham said. “This is a modern dance company. Unless you’re following modern dance, you don’t really know what it is. For them, a lot of them never had any dance training or any dance class. It’s sort of a whole new thing to work with someone who is a professional dancer.”
These workshops are part of a program Rioult has recently implemented, DanceReach.
“I think that students really benefit from seeing and experiencing this type of work simply because modern dance is an American art form that was created here in the United States,” Phillips said. “A lot of young people as well as adults don’t know about modern dance and contemporary dance. The performing arts are just beautiful because they are always different and always changing. When something happens on stage, it’s not the same as a painting or a sculpture. Everyone brings their own life experience to it, but then they see different things. As artists, each performance is different.”
Based in New York City, Rioult is led by the founder and Artist Director/Choreographer Pascal Rioult. Joyce Herring, Rioult’s wife, is the Associate Artistic Director and had danced with the company for a decade.
The organization was originally operated in Rioult and Herring’s New York City apartment.
“For a while the office was their living room, and they employed dancers on a part time basis,” Phillips said.
Phillips explained that the company slowly grew on the foundation of Rioult’s engaging choreography.
“Pascal’s work has continued to evolve and develop,” Phillps said. “His work is incredibly complex but incredibly beautiful.”
Today, Rioult will present a company class from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m and a rehearsal from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Ford Center; both are free and open to the public.
The repertory pieces that will be performed on Wednesday are “Bolero,” “On Distant Shores … A Redemption Fantasy,” “Views of the Fleeting World” and “Wien.” Each piece is unique and depicts a story for the audience.
The dancers of Rioult said they love what they do. One performer, Sara Seger, said she enjoys the personal interaction with Pascal Rioult.
“I think he pushes each individual dancer to grow in their own way,” Seger said. “It’s a rare opportunity that a boss is concerned about the process of getting to be a stronger artist than just producing the product.”
