Anchorage Daily News

"Grace Under"

Choreography by Leslie Ward

Music direction by Susan Brakeall

Busting her leg while running into a grocery store a few months ago forced Leslie Ward to develop choreography through her dancers rather than through her own body. Creating it to live music only loosened the reins more, she said.

With almost no rehearsal time with the full band -- a bass, keyboards, drums, sax and seven or eight choral singers -- Ward worked with dancers through recordings while orchestrating timing and staging with Susan Brakeall, her music director.

"Every time I talk to her she's added another musician," said Ward, a resident choreographer, jazz program coordinator and teacher at Alaska Dance Theatre. "We're talking about a band that just keeps growing."

That, coupled with the nature of her chosen songs, inspired a focus on improvisation and flexibility.

"I've given dancers a much looser relationship with the music," she said. "They have a lot more visual sense of timing. We've even practiced without music. And we've worked on exercises that engage them musically, so that it becomes another inspiration for them in the performance."

Professional dancer Brittney Otevrel said Ward's piece definitely gives performers a lot of freedom and creative space, which jibes with one of the chosen songs by Anchorage band Stray Dogma, "Freedom." Until the dress rehearsal, the dancers concern themselves with staying in time with one another rather than the music, she said.

To help, Ward worked with Brakeall in forming cues for both the band and the dancers. A slow walk becomes the cue for the band to play while a musical phrase tells the dancers where to start.

Brakeall looked comfortable with these cues, knowing what her musicians can already do. She sings, plays piano and writes original songs for Stray Dogma and serves as the music director for the Alaska Center for Spiritual Living.

"I know Stray Dogma; we're all interconnected," she said, "and I've been working with the choir members for a long time -- eight years. I'm pretty consistent on direction when we're rehearsing, and my body language, since I am pianist, is pretty consistent. It's a professional group of musicians, singers, and they've had lots of stage time."

For her, familiarity with the music and choreographer along with the give and take of ideas and information makes the collaboration comfortable, not tricky.

"I know we'll know the music, and I know everyone we're working with. There aren't any large egos, and they easily adapt."

"Mad World"

Choreography by Gabriel Otevrel

Piano and arrangement by Alexander Zlatkovski

When trying to find inspiration, Gabriel Otevrel latched onto a boyhood favorite by Tears for Fears, the Gary Jules version of "Mad World."

On piano, the song "became very powerful, very strong, very full," Otevrel said, nothing like he expected but everything he wanted.

"The arrangement is improvisational," said pianist Alexander Zlatkovski, who plays for Anchorage Unity Church and in occasional concerts. "I play every time slightly different in details, but the general plan will be the same. Actually, I'll have before me a piece of paper with exactly what I'm doing in each variation" -- say, the details about the second phrase in the third section with the melody in high register in octaves. But "inside these guidelines I will play literally what my hands would like to do."

The interaction with dancers and people in the audience may affect his mood and interpretation but not the plan, he said.

Allowing creative freedom within the limitations of the collaboration mattered considerably to Otevrel, who trained and worked in Europe and now is a resident choreographer and teacher with ADT.

"I like to tell him my ideas but respect his as well," he said. "He's a talented artist, and I want to use his creative side."

The song itself posed presented a creative challenge, Zlatkovski said.

"What is difficult about this piece is that it is very repetitive, basically the same music going on and on and on, so my challenge was to make it different. I'll play this phrase about 30 times, but I don't want to play it the same way every time. There has to be some development.

"So I suggested some variations, and Gabriel would say that he wants the music to go from soft to loud to dramatic, the first phrase to the sixth, something like that, and then I would show him what I came up with, and he would tell me what he likes. That way, through short conversations, the piece begins to have shape."

Otevrel also charged Zlatkovski with setting the mood for the piece with three minutes of music -- any music he chose. To make this introduction logical, a way of entering the piece, the pianist decided to play short phrases from the song itself, as if the composer were looking for inspiration, and then lengthening each repetition until they become the music itself.

When the music takes shape, the dancers appear, he said. "It's like the music draws them to the stage."

Find Dawnell Smith online at adn.com/contact/dsmith or call 257-4587.