COMPANY BIO: Bennett Dance Company (BDC) engages diverse audiences by presenting dance as an empowering, accessible art form through the creation of collaborative, multi-media performances, which are developed both site-specifically and for the stage. Collaboration is at the heart of the work which blends contemporary dance with visual arts, including sculpture, landscape and photography; diverse movement forms including aerial dance and martial arts; and original music composition, often performed live. The Company crafts work collectively by utilizing the strength and experience of its members. BDC's commitment to marrying dance with diverse mediums continually challenges dancers to discover a new physicality during the creative process. Through visceral, athletic movements in non-traditional settings (on stilts, tangled in nets, encased in boxes), BDC dancers enmesh themselves in unexplored environments, realizing and revealing a sense of poetry and fearlessness beyond mere technique or physicality. DeAnna was a founding member of the company; she danced with BDC from 1999-2007, during which time she was also the company's Rehearsal Director and Assistant Choreographer.
AIR & WATER
"Air & Water", described by the Boston Globe as "vivid, provocative, imaginative, and viscerally satisfying", transports dancers eighteen feet above ground and several feet under water. This evening-length performance features two collaborative works, "The Net" and "WELL". In "WELL" company members Christine Bennett, Mary McCarthy and DeAnna Pellecchia wheel onstage a 4-by-4-foot well designed by visual artist Michael Dowling. As it slowly spins, reddish light glinting off the metal creates flame-like flickers on the walls and ceiling. "The performers dance in and around the tub suggesting cleansing, sustenance, baptism, oblivion," (The Boston Globe) creating an elemental depiction of women as the keepers of water. "The Net" relies on the use of a large rope net (18' high x 26' wide) designed by Dutch visual artist Pieter Smit. In this piece the same trio navigates the web-like terrain using ropes as pendulums. While the netting provides a challenging landscape for the dancers to traverse, it both enables and confines, alternately ensnaring them and allowing them the vehicle to become airborne, spinning, dipping, hovering. Bennett Dance Company performed "The Net" at the Burning Man Festival in 2007 in front of an audience of 4,000 under Root Society's Nightclub Dome (10:00 & Esplanade).
"Time after time, they move away only to be drawn back, like flies lured to a spider's web. It is fascinating to watch" -The Boston Globe "Gravity doesn't appear to be an issue for Bennett Dance Company. They climb, embrace and intertwine on a knotted-rope net high above the stage...performing balancing feats that would have Ringling Bros.' acrobats trembling in fear. They balance precariously on the side of a copper container filled with water...without fear of slipping...And they do both in one performance, combining two movements that would exhaust an average dance company." -Jennifer Lord, Metro West Daily News
"(DeAnna)...effortlessly skims to the top of the netting then inches her way down backward, head first, as the others lay trapped beneath, straining upward. In one duet, (she)...tugs at the ropes as if trying to tame a wild beast." -Karen Campbell, The Boston Globe
BURNING MAN 2007
Bennett Dance Company via sponsorship of Jeff Taylor (founder of monster.com & eons.com) / Root Society, performed at BURNING MAN in August 2007. Burning Man is one part cirque de sole with wild costumes, one part mad max with mutant neon glowing "vehicles", and one part art exhibition unsurpassable in beauty and scale. It attracted over 47,000 people during the summer of 2007 including some of the most well respected & provocative performance artists and art installations in the country. This unique event takes place in Black Rock City (two hours north of Reno, Nevada), a thoroughly flat, prehistoric lakebed, composed of a hardpan alkali, ringed by majestic mountains. Daytime temperatures routinely exceed 100ºF and plummet to 40ºF at night. The humidity is extremely low, which rapidly and continually wicks moisture from your body. At nearly 4,000 feet above sea level the desert's mid-day sun cooks you in no time. The playa is subject to sudden bouts of fierce, unpredictable weather -- high winds, lightning, dust storms in the form of white outs and rain storms that come in with little or no warning ---- we had a blast.
An 18 wheeler made the trip cross country from Boston with all our stuff including all of the food and supplies we needed for the week. BDC members Christine Bennett, Nicole Dagesse, Mary McCarthy and DeAnna Pellecchia with stage manager Jayne Murphy flew to Reno and then drove two hours into the desert. Here, an incredible crew built a theme camp called "Root Society" which we called home for 6 days, from August 28 - September 2. Run by a huge generator, on a 100 x150 size plot, the "camp" included 15 tipis to sleep in, a fully functional kitchen, a bathroom, a big big sound system, and 3 massive domes - one for housing the equivalent of a full-scale Boston Night club. Suspended under this 90-foot dome BDC nightly performed our aerial dance piece "The Net" to crowds numbering up to 4,000 people!
Bennett Dance Company was commissioned to create an original improvisational dance score on the one-of-a-kind “New Balance Climb” at Boston’s Children’s Museum. This 3-story climbing sculpture made of brightly painted curved platforms, and encased in wire netting, rises like a fleet of magic carpets up the new glass lobby of the museum. Christine Bennett, Mary McCarthy and DeAnna Pellecchia with guest performers Danielle DiVito, Melissa Gendreau and Wendy Jehlen offered this hour-long performance during the Grand Re-Opening Gala Celebration, accompanied by all-live music.
THE WATER PROJECT
Bennett Dance Company in collaboration with Medicine Wheel Productions and Forest Hills Cemetery
"The Water Project" emerges out of a seven-year collaboration between Bennett Dance Company and Medicine Wheel Productions’ Artistic Director, Michael Dowling. The production draws its themes and materials from the physical attributes of water itself, mirroring the element's ability to adapt and transform in response to its environment. "The Water Project"'s latest incarnation was featured in conjunction with Forest Hills Educational Trust's 2006 sculptural exhibition, "Dwelling: Memory, Architecture and Place". With the picturesque landscape of Forest Hills Cemetery as their stage, BDC dancers interected with Dowling's latest creations, a water-filler copper well, and a floating bridge, surfaced with hand-painted, “freshwater” tiles. Accompanied by cellist Sam Ou, dancers Christine Bennett, Mary McCarthy and DeAnna Pellecchia performed in this riveting, unexplored setting as they took their performance to the center of a Lake Hibiscus.
HINGES KEEP A CITY
A multi-media play featuring Bennett Dance Company presented by The Huntington Theatre Company's Education Department in association with the Boston Center for the Arts
For the development of "HINGES", Huntington educators conducted and transcribed nearly 300 pages of oral history interviews with residents from the South End, Fenway, Mission Hill, and Lower Roxbury. These transcripts were turned over to a team of artists who focused in on the most compelling themes and flushed out a narrative storyline. The artistic team included playwright Kirsten Greenidge, theatre director Judy Braha, visual artist Chandra Dieppa Ortiz, composer Hugh Hinton, and Bennett Dance Company, led by dancer/choreographer Christine Bennett, and dancer/assistant choreographer DeAnna Pellecchia. "HINGES" wove together the memories, transitions, and legacies of people living in Boston neighborhoods during the 20th century, specifically focusing on the social and racial issues facing the community at that time. "HINGES" ran January 14- 23, 2005 at the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts. The play was produced by the Education and Community Outreach Department’s Storytelling for the Ages (STAGES) program. This edition of the program, funded in part by The Boston Globe Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, was designed as part of the Huntington’s inaugural year-long celebration of the new Calderwood Pavilion.
LADDER DANCES
Inspired by the company's work with "The Net", BDC created "Ladder Dances", a more easily portable version of their aerial work which incorporates two individual rope ladders. Pictured right, Mary McCarthy and DeAnna Pellecchia hover, float and weave above the urban landscape of Davis Square, Somerville while suspended 16 feet above ground.
THE COPPER WALKWAY
"The Copper Walkway", a solo made for DeAnna Pellecchia by director Christine Bennett, premiered at Bennett Dance Company’s 10th Anniversary Gala Performance at Emmanuel Church on Newbury Street.Long-time collaborator, visual artist Michael Dowling created a cascading walkway of copper, 14 inches wide by 32 feet long, extending through the main aisle of audience. The dance is set to “Sonata for Violoncello”, a piece in five movements by contemporary composer Paul Hindemith and performed live by cellist Sam Ou. The choreography, made collaboratively by Bennett and Pellecchia, depicts a woman on a journey, navigating the long, narrow path she has chosen.
BOUND
The collaborative production of "Bound" integrates an exploration of multi-layered verticality. Underneath the 50-foot high glass dome of the Boston Center for the Arts' Cyclorama, five 30-foot high columns created by Beth Galston form a looming and surreal environment. The dancers (Christine Bennett, Alissa Cardone, DeAnna Pellecchia and Ingrid Schatz) are either earthbound or bound for something higher as they utilize stilts at times to reach full height in relation to their environment. To a sometimes-delicate sometimes-fierce score by Henryk Gorecki, the dancers undergo a physical and emotional metamorphosis much like the development of child to adult. In three sections, this visually striking performance challenges the viewer's perception of vertical limitations.
"The piece follows the four women as they begin on stilts, become 'grounded' without them and then ascend again. ' It's not narrative,' Bennett says, 'but each character has development. It is an abstraction of the idea that four women go through some metamorphosis on our feet. It's analogous to childhood, then adolescence and then something completely different.” -Mike Mayo, South End News
INNER HOUSE
Ghosts, dreams, rooms, memories, and grandmothers are at the core of "Inner House", a collaborative piece centered in, on, and around a 6 x 6 x 8-foot yellow ochre house with silver tiled interior by visual artist, Michael Dowling. The original music composition by Grayson Hugh is a rich tapestry of acoustic instruments, voice, and text The Boston Globe has called "gorgeous." Combining a time-bending, poetic narrative with athletic physicality, dancers Christine Bennett, Alissa Cardone, Amie Laster, DeAnna Pellecchia and Ingrid Schatz reveal the personal histories within the walls of the house.
"There were some very striking images, especially of one woman hanging upside down, half in and out of the house, as if testing the air, then another standing on the roof as if about to fly, only to fall into the arms of those below with breathtaking abandon." – Karen Campbell, The Boston Globe
SURFACING
Inspired by the birth of her son and his environment to that point in life, Christine Bennett again works with the element of water in "Surfacing". Here dancers Christine Bennett and DeAnna Pellecchia dive, spin, slide and hydroplane across 20-foot spans of marley-covered stage. Repetition and momentum create the rippling undercurrent that powers the dancers across the surface between air and water.
“Christine Bennett and DeAnna Pellecchia…slide while standing, sitting, and even flipping over. The dancers' expressions are intense, their repetitions almost obsessive.” – Christine Temin, The Boston Globe
BRIDGE
For the creation of Bridge, Christine Bennett worked with a T'ai Chi practitioner and guest performer Leda Elliott to incorporate T'ai Chi movement into Modern Dance. The choreography "bridges" a public space with a performance space, Asian culture with American culture, and Chinese martial arts with contemporary dance. Five dancers drop like leaves from a large tree and progress through a flower garden. As they cross over a wrought iron fence and onto a brick courtyard, red fans snap and the dance accelerates. The dancers create a cultural map in their journey from the garden to the courtyard, as if they are discovering a new world.
