Rainbow Dance Theatre brings innovation to the TEDxSalem stage

Rain­bow Dance The­atre draws inspi­ra­tion from the world around us; from tech­nol­o­gy and social media, from music and art, and from the artists with whom they work and the “messy” cre­ative process that devel­ops through the rela­tion­ships that form.

Atten­dees of TEDxSalem VI will get to watch this inspi­ra­tion come to life on stage Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 5.

Direct­ed by inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned dancer-chore­o­g­ra­phers Valerie Bergman and Dar­ryl Thomas, Rain­bow Dance The­atre cre­ates mod­ern works root­ed in cul­tur­al tra­di­tion, works that cel­e­brates diver­si­ty and style through visu­al expres­sion while meld­ing West African Dance, Hait­ian Dance, Hip Hop, Mar­tial Arts with Amer­i­can Mod­ern Dance.

“Our cre­ative process is very ‘messy,’” said Valerie. “We do not start at the begin­ning of a dance and then work lin­ear­ly through to the end. We may begin with just a ker­nel of an idea or even of cou­ple of move­ment phras­es and/or music choic­es. We will first teach the move­ment and then set para­me­ters for cre­ative explo­ration of those move­ment phras­es with the dancers. They will then phys­i­cal­ly explore from their indi­vid­ual per­spec­tive and return with move­ment gen­er­at­ed from this cre­ative explo­ration. This in turn will send us in a new direc­tion that will in turn gen­er­ate new explo­ration, and so on.”

“Out of this cre­ative ‘soup’ a vision begins to mate­ri­al­ize, often far from the orig­i­nal start­ing idea, and that begins to inform the flow of the chore­og­ra­phy as the con­text emerges,” Valerie said. “Many times it seems that at this point the dance begins to tell us who it is or what it is about, and we do our best to stay with the cre­ative flow and allow it to direct us as much as we are direct­ing it.”

In 2017, Rain­bow Dance Theatre’s pro­duc­tion of The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights evolved as a result of a com­mis­sion from the Salem Con­cert Band (now: Salem Sym­phon­ic Winds) to set a bal­let to the epony­mous score by Leroy Osmon. “We drew inspi­ra­tion from both the music score and the actu­al trip­tych itself. The paint­ing fed us with a pletho­ra of images from the heav­en­ly to the hell­ish and back to the sub­lime. The music score chal­lenged us with a mul­ti­tude of unusu­al rhyth­mic and melod­ic chal­lenges that pushed us to new places in the chore­og­ra­phy.”

And a new place in chore­og­ra­phy, as well as tech­nol­o­gy, is where Rain­bow Dance The­atre will take the audi­ence of TEDxSalem VI, where Valerie said, it is an hon­or for the Com­pa­ny to present.

For the past six years, the Com­pa­ny has been focused on design­ing ways to inter­sect tech­nol­o­gy with dance through a mean­ing­ful approach that push­es the art form into new fron­tiers of expres­sion, said Valerie. “By col­lab­o­rat­ing with engi­neers, tech­ni­cians and artists from oth­er dis­ci­plines, RDT is push­ing the enve­lope on this inte­gra­tive approach. To be includ­ed in the TEDxSalem event offers a rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case this unique artis­tic genre to a diverse audi­ence that might not oth­er­wise attend a more tra­di­tion­al dance per­for­mance.”

But the group will not be rest­ing after its TEDxSalem per­for­mance as the fol­low­ing day they have a tech rehearsal for an upcom­ing per­for­mance of Ori­gins and Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, which will be pre­sent­ed at the Smith Fine Arts Series on Jan­u­ary 11 in Mon­mouth. They will also be pre­mier­ing anoth­er per­for­mance, which includes high-impact chore­og­ra­phy, tech­nol­o­gy, and robot­ics, on May 9, so keep an eye on rainbowdancetheatre.org.

TEDxSalem VI

TEDxSalem VI is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. It runs 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 5 at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Tick­ets are on sale now for $55, $45 for stu­dents. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.