For five straight days — Feb. 26 to March 2 — a masterful showcase of dance, art, music and more will combine in the Alabama Repertory Dance Theatre.
This year’s show will feature five performance pieces involving disciplines from art to music, philosophy, telecommunication and film, and more.
One piece that embodies this year’s cross-disciplinary collaboration is “Kinder Things,” a three-way creation of Rebecca Salzer, assistant professor of dance and interim director of the Collaborative Arts Research Initiative, Dr. Amir Zaheri, associate director of the School of Music and Reagan Wells, a senior telecommunication and film major.
Zaheri, who composed music for the 10-minute piece, said “Kinder Things” was inspired by the crisis of forcibly displaced people around the world.
“Rebecca and I have an ongoing collaboration which usually involves our attempts to respond to any crisis of forcibly displaced people,” Zaheri said.
“The piece is all about being human and interconnectedness. It’s about relating to one another. The piece is about our connectedness as a single human race and our responsibility to acknowledge that and try to improve the ways we connect and relate to each other no matter how near or far away we are from one another.”
To reflect that interconnectedness, Zaheri said the dancers not only dance on stage, but in the audience and surrounding them. Dancers also provide vocal and instrumental music for the piece.
Zaheri said the hook the dancers sing repeatedly throughout the piece is, “if only they saw, they would say kinder things.”
This repeated phrase becomes a sort of mantra for the audience to meditate on throughout the piece, he said, so that they focus their minds on the discomforts that migrants experience.
“We’re not trying to be journalists in any way, but we do reference the inhumane living conditions that adults and children continue to experience in holding cells surrounded by cinder block walls in cold, harsh environments and the lack of kindness, understanding and human tenderness shown to them,” he said.
Some of those living conditions are displayed during the performance through projections on three screens.
Wells contributed to the piece by filming and formatting the projections.
“What I created is a long, odd, 10-minute abstract film that focuses on the background screens,” Wells said. When the music starts a video plays on the screens as the dancers dance.
“The video that plays is a mix of dancing, textures like concrete walls, portraits, interesting movements, interesting faces, interesting textures -– it’s all abstract. People will have to see it to understand it.”
Wells said creating this piece was challenging but rewarding because there wasn’t a strict plan going into the project. It was completely organic.
Salzer said the organic approach they used in creating “Kinder Things” caused it to change shape and shift direction often.
“When you make a piece with all these different elements it’s always different than what you imagined it to be,” she said.
“Part of the scale of making collaborative work and art is being open to what shows up that’s unexpected and embracing how that can change your vision.”
Salzer said that she and Zaheri have previously created a film together, a live dance performance, and a live music and dance performance. Now this piece brings all of those elements together into one performance. “This is a next step for us, a bigger step.”
Zaheri said people will not regret attending this year’s ARDT.
“This is an opportunity to see some of UA’s most talented and brightest students coming together to demonstrate their passion and to share that passion,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to see excellent art, which has come about through meaningful collaboration.”
Show times are Feb. 26, 27 and 28 starting at 7:30 p.m.; March 1 at 5:30 p.m. and March 2 at 2 p.m. They all take place in Morgan Auditorium.
Tickets can be purchased online and at the box office. Prices are $14 for children and UA students, $17 for seniors and UA faculty and staff and $20 for adult general admission.