Beyond Gravity

Description

ASCENDANCE PROJECT PRESENTS FIRST HOME SEASON BEYOND GRAVITY

AscenDance Project presents their first home season at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Avenue in Berkeley this spring in a series of performances beginning on March 5, 2010. Andy Schmeder, Lara Mercurio, Elena Cochran, Martha Hazel, Susan Owen, Ryan Gaunt and Isabel von Rittberg will be performing Beyond Gravity March 5, 6, 12 & 13 at 8 PM and March 14 at 3 PM. General Admission: $25 ($20 Sunday only), Students and Seniors: $20, Kids under 12: $10. For information contact: [email protected]

AscenDance Project was founded in January 2006 by German-born performance artist and mountaineer, Isabel von Rittberg. Her work explores the aesthetics of rock climbing with dancers performing on a vertical stage. Performing entirely without the use of ropes, their work exhibits strength and grace enhanced by the effects of gravity on the dancers and their ability to overcome it. Using a 24 ft long and 12 ft high climbing wall, AscenDance artists move through three dimensions, using time and space as inconsistent and unpredictable variables.

Von Rittberg’s aspiration is to create a sense of detachment and lightness, to offer a completely new stage perspective and to appeal to a collective appreciation of rhythm and movement.

Following their well-received world premier of Levitate at the San Francisco International Arts Festival 2008 on Union Square, AscenDance Project was invited to perform at the 2009 International Aerial Dance Festival in Boulder, Colorado. After two weeks of teaching dance-climb fusion to students from all over the country, their participation ended with two sold-out performances. Having created a local following through fundraisers and classes, choreographer von Rittberg is ready to contribute to the community which she is proud to be a part of.

Isabel von Rittberg (Artistic Director)grew up in Wuppertal-Beyenburg, Germany, a small historical village in Western Germany. Her mother, who was born in Montana and lived in India, brought her up bilingually. As a child, she danced ballet, played the piano and spent more time on horseback than on foot. Her summers in the Rocky Mountains instilled in her a love of nature. Isabel graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Latin American/Iberian Studies and a French minor from the University of California, Santa Barbara. In preparation for her senior thesis, she spent a year in Santiago de Chile where she performed with a Chilean African-Brazilian dance group and further developed her rock climbing skills. The grace and fluidity of a climber executing technical movement captured Isabel’s attention. During the summer of 2005, Isabel studied what French refer to as ‘danse escalade’ (dance-climb fusion) under Antoine Le Menestrel, a world-class climber and dancer. The urge to convey the magnificence, grace and fluidity of a climber’s delicate and strong movement led her to start the AscenDance Project: a genre that unites climbing, dance and music.


Company History and Mission Statement:
AscenDance Project is a new company founded in January of 2006 by German born performance artist and rock climber Isabel von Rittberg to create work that explores the aesthetics of climbing. A vertical stage, without the use of ropes, has a suppleness and grace enhanced by the effects of gravity on the dancers and their abilities to overcome it.
AscenDance Project integrates the technical precision and strength of climbing with expressive movement and music to create a new kind of aerial performance on a vertical stage.
The group has given numerous performances in varied settings including the theatre and outdoor stages. Recent events include the San Francisco International Arts Festival, May/June 2008, the Outdoor Retailer Expo in July 2009, and the Boulder International Aerial Dance Festival, August 2009. For the San Francisco International Arts Festival, AscenDance Project presented Levitate, a show on Union Square free to the public. Performances ran from May 23 to June 7, 2008. From August 2-15 2009, AscenDance also participated in the 11th Annual Aerial Dance Festival in Boulder, Colorado. Isabel von Rittberg and Ryan Gaunt taught a 2-week repertory class as well as a beginning class. On Friday August 14 AscenDance Project performed at 8 PM and, to accommodate the overflow crowd, put on an unexpected second show at 9:30 PM at the Charlotte York Irey Theater of the Colorado University. Please see review below.





Most Recent Reviews:
AscenDance Project Dazzles Boulder and 2009 Aerial Dance Festival:
Boulder, Colorado's Eleventh Annual Aerial Dance Festival (ADF) presented Oakland California's AscenDance Project in what turned out to be two concerts in the University of Colorado/Boulder's Charlotte York Irey Theater on Friday evening August 14th, 2009. The second concert resulted when it was realized that in a two week residency at ADF Ascendance Project had already captured more than a sell out audience. Festival Director Nancy Smith and AscenDance Founder/Artistic Director, Isabel von Rittberg opted for a second show to accommodate an overflow crowd. Both audiences were thoroughly entranced with over an hour of non-stop performance that varied from adagio to explosions.
AscenDance Project performs on a huge climbing wall. That portable wall is twelve feet high and twenty four feet wide, and includes one-hundred-fifty climbing inserts, with the entire center third of the wall being an overhang set in slopes varying from about 20 to 30 degrees. It's been tried before. But not like this. Von Rittberg sees that surface as a vertical dance floor, and for it she and her dancers have developed an entirely new dance vocabulary. Not flips and tricks, and not watch-us-climb-to-music, AscenDance Project provides an art form in and of itself. That art form, because of where it is performed, we call "dance." In reality, von Rittberg refuses to be labeled in any way by contemporary or classical dance descriptions or phrasing. Yes, you may see something you can call an arabesque, or an attitude leg, but that is your terminology - not AscenDance's. What AscenDance does do is deeply rooted in the rock climbing expertise of the dancers, in the music they choose, the way they use that music, movement invention, the amazing physical capabilities of the performers, and their and von Rittberg's obviously extensive sense of performance, performance life, and using all of that to define a new form of performance.
The concert opened with a student showing of a work developed on them by von Rittberg and Ryan Gaunt in just two weeks of ADF classes. The students were amazing, the work well crafted, well performed, and best described as "stunning." But, the real "stunning" was yet to come. Within four minutes of the end of that student showing von Rittberg walked to the down left part of the wall (performers right as they face the audience) and began an adagio solo that moved slowly into all of the wall. As well chosen music selections moved non-stop five other dancers joined. Other solos, ensembles, duets - some in unison, some with canons, some with partnering - moved along and over the wall. At times movement choices brought audience gasps, at times they were subdued in an inherent beauty set in slowness. Often they took on many or all of the aspects of the music, at other times they ignored any or all of those aspects. The concert slowly built to a climax embodied in a long duet by von Rittberg and Gaunt. That duet used the entire wall and exquisite partnering by Gaunt, in which he provided his strength and flexibility to von Rittberg in ways that rivaled any classical pas de deux you have seen or imagined. The music moved to Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings," and one could not help wondering how the dancers would cope with all the expectations that music establishes - especially the one high note. Von Rittberg did not try. Instead, before that note, Gaunt, hanging from the top of the wall slowly lowered von Rittberg's extended body to the floor, she lowered her arms, the music stopped, and the audience exploded onto its feet.
Von Rittberg has already taken this performance modality well beyond "gimmick." Instead she is in the midst of defining an art form, and all the vocabulary therein. She has, in fact, created a choreographer's dream. Who could not watch this performance and not imagine what can be done with that wall and what she has invented? But beware - it is not for the faint at heart. Von Rittberg has not only invented an art form and a beginning vocabulary for it, but that art form requires incredibly strong performers to make it happen. Von Rittberg and Gaunt are well served by not only their strength and flexibility, but long lean torsos and amazingly long limbs. The torsos and limbs may not be absolutely required, but the strength and flexibility is. As is a sense of performance and a deep understanding of music - some of which comes from von Rittberg's family including her brother, Marcus, some of whose music she used.
The ADF has already booked Ascendance Project to teach and perform in the 2010 Aerial Dance Festival. Plan now to see them.
Donald K. Atwood MFA, Ph.D. © Copyright World Dance Reviews 2009

More Info

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http://www.ascendanceproject.com

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510-225-8844

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