Annabelle-2

"The first day is always hard. 

The steps are an excuse," says Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, 
who is choreographing the main work 
of Whim W'Him's next full program.

Yet with time and maturity as a choreographer, 

“you gain emotional intelligence 
and skill in how to communicate. 

Mistakes are welcome, maybe the best idea.
 

You let it happen," 
she says.

"It's all about the process. 
Openness.

If you don't think about it, it becomes unique."







                                              The group for this WhimW’Him program is small,

                                               only 6 dancers—2 women and four men (Olivier may be one).

Total time is limited, and so rehearsal periods need to be long—
this June, when the work was begun, 
in October, when it will be expanded,
in January 2011, before the show at Intiman Theatre. 
One of the ensemble sections started quite simply,

when the dancers and Annabelle started to be exhausted 
by the end of the afternoon.

“Let’s do an arm section,” she said, 
and “good things came of it. 

Now it’s perhaps going to be the center, the leitmotiv of the piece,

going from quite still and blank emotionally to much more expressive, even anguished.”

I love to watch Annabelle at work.

The section for “four boys,” for example—it’s like live billiard balls. 

Each movement passes to another person, to a part of a body—

          a hand goes to a cheek,

               which pushes the head back,

                      so it comes in contact with a shoulder…

a whole series of transferred motions, like a Rube Goldberg contraption. 

But billiard ball and machine metaphors are too mechanical.

This work is infused with a strong sense of interconnectedness,

complexity,

propulsion—

then interruption.

Things are clearly related, 

yet as in life it’s sometimes not clear what they mean,

and they are liable—
in this piece about disturbance, disruptions—
to be stopped, arbitrarily, at any instant.

Annabelle repeatedly takes the place of one or the other dancers

to figure out and demonstrate the next move. 

A bit ends in a "pigpile" on the floor. 
Annabelle pauses for a moment, laughing and thinking, 

then hops up and says, 
"So, how can we make it so you don't have to..."










Despite the somberness of the theme,

there is a lot of laughter in the studio,

a good feeling among the dancers as Annabelle works, a lot of receptivity to her ideas. 

 Even when they had an hour off from working, dancers often stayed in the studio to watch.

Some of what she asks of them is quite unlike what they have attempted before. 

Think of switching between the spine of a racehorse... 

                                                                 and that of a snake...

Annabelle started this new piece for WhimW’Him just with a trio and duet in mind.

Now it has grown to include:

•The trio—Olivier-Andrew Bartee-Chalnessa Eames (all from Pacific Northwest Ballet)

 

•The duet—Melody Herrera (Houston Ballet) and Lucien Postlethwaite (PNB)

•An ensemble of six—the above plus Vincent Lopez (no relation to Annabelle, of Spectrum Dance)

•A section for four men

•And a short duet for two women. 

 

On the last day, says Olivier (I was out of town),

"She put everything together made all the transitions,

and there all of a sudden were 24 minutes."

Annabelle seems to me
a perfect match for Whim W'Him...

•She says, in the same spirit as Olivier, "The more I prepare, the more I get stuck." 

     Although they have strong ideas and intentions about a piece, 
neither likes to over-prepare specifics before going into the studio.

The works of both are suffused with the spontaneity and particularity

of creating directly on/with the dancers.

•They use a wide variety of music, classical and otherwise.

•They employ classical technique (including pointe shoes)

along with very modern, unballetic positions and ways of moving.

•Expressive hands feature prominently in the work of both.

•A whimsical, humorous approach is evident 

in Annabelle’s conversation and way of working,

as well as in her other works (if perhaps less so in this piece because of its theme).

 

And yet, in a program of Annabelle and Olivier pieces side-by-side,

two radically individual sensibilities will leap out, 

to intrigue and absorb the eye, 

the mind, and the heart.

Vive la France!

And then there’s Bastille Day, July 14...


...celebrated this year, at The Triple Door in
Nightcap: L’Edition Francaise. 
Billed as “Sophisticated entertainment 
for Seattle’s Francophiles,” 
it will be “a provocative evening of Francophilia 
not to be missed.”










Three choreographers, among them Olivier Wevers, Artistic Director of WhimW’Him, will present “new dance and burlesque,” exploring “farce, manipulation, naïveté and alluring indifference in three individual short programs.”

Olivier’s piece features the sensational and sensuous queen of slinky, Kylie Lewallen:

and her inscrutable partner in crime, 

known under the name of
Paris Original: 

 






















in an apache/Flamenco/tango number—
smoldering, comic, raunchy, and oddly touching...

O la la! 
What more can I say?! 
Come see for yourself:

http://www.thetripledoor.net/Calendar/Events/July-2010/Bastille-Day.aspx


All photos by La Vie Photography

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa-1

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa

is warm, intense, precise.

Quick and brimming with energy in the studio, 

she is a very physical, literally hands-on choreographer,  

sometimes composing one knee-twist at a time, 

sometimes proposing a whole sweep of movement. 







Each of Annabelle's pieces has some autobiographical seed.

This one, for WhimW'Him's next program, grew from a moment on a crowded train in Holland, when she received a phone call:

a marvelous dancer, friend, and subject of her choreography, 
had died, suddenly,

at 33 years old, apparently healthy and strong, 
perhaps of a heart attack... 

The small thread of that large event informs her piece for WhimW'Him in many ways. 

This new work does not yet have a name,

though its title may include the phrase, “The endless continuity of…”

As Annabelle told me during the first week of rehearsals,

it will be a dance of strong feeling,

“but not emotional, weepy—more conceptual.”

There also is, “necessarily, a building up, not just an idea.”

She pauses, then smiles. “Also a bit of theatre.

 








The intuition of the phone
call—
what it did to me, 
how it left me speechless—
will guide me." 

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, born in Belgium of Belgian/Colombian parents, has lived and worked in the Netherlands for 17 years.

She is highly regarded, the recipient of many awards and commissions,

but does not belong to any company. 

“I am very happy being a freelance choreographer.

It gives me opportunities to meet new people and new cultures.

That, already, is a big source of inspiration, 
that I wouldn't want to miss on.”

  
The genesis of Annabelle’s collaboration with WhimW’Him is unusual.

Company Director Olivier Wevers saw a piece she did in LA.

She wasn’t there at the time, 
but he liked it very much and contacted her on Facebook.

She doesn’t usually accept people as Facebook friends unless she knows them,

but, among other things, 
Olivier went to the same primary school in Belgium,

and her brother was in his year (though they didn’t know each other).

There was a connection.

One month later, they had decided to work together,

but still had never met in person until she stepped off the plane

early this summer in Seattle,

the Saturday before a Monday start of rehearsals.

Each workday for two weeks,

Annabelle made a video of the final run-through of the various sections,

then that evening reviewed the DVD and got ideas

about what to change or develop or scrap next day in the studio.

 

Two weeks of creative time with the dancers in June, 
another week in October,

then final preparations before the premiere 
in January 2011 at Seattle’s Intiman Theatre

(along with a new solo and duet by Olivier
plus a new piece by Mark Haim).

It’s an interrupted work-process, but allows for gestation and ripening between times.

For Annabelle, this WhimW’Him project is a very uncommon undertaking in one respect,

the first piece she has choreographed without knowing the music ahead of time.

The score is only now being written, is only partially completed.

Its Belgian composer, David Van Bouwel, “is in an early music band.

He has been very busy travelling this spring and summer.

He also just sold his house and is moving,

so things are going a bit slower than expected.”

Keep in mind that this whole project really just got underway in March.

For Annabelle, it is a wonderful, if scary challenge.

“Music can be a corset.

Without it,” she says, with her engaging grin,

“I am totally there—with my childish imagination.”

 

Since the music isn’t ready yet, during the June rehearsals

she worked against the background of a continuous loop of music

in the mood of the piece she is inventing,

“maybe even some of what will be used.”

The loop incorporates part of a soundscape of Van Bouwel,

some of the Beethoven Moonlight Sonata,

and the beautiful piano Adagio from the Bach Concerto in D Minor,

after Alessandro Marcello (BWV 974), as played by Glenn Gould.

This method of choreographing will need more specific requirements

than normally she would exact of the composer. 

 

It also affects the dancers. 

 

But for them, unlike in last winter’s 3Seasons,

where the choreography had been faithfully set to the Vivaldi score—

and they had to cope with surprise substitutions of Byron Au Yong’s 

just-composed and exceedingly different music—

Annabelle’s sound loop has been present thoughout the process so far.

Along with learning the movements,

they have learned to modify the spirit of what they are doing

to fit whatever particular music is being played at the moment—

new or old, fast or slow, harsh and angular or gentle and smooth—

so that each musical/choreographic iteration adds a layer of what is possible. 

 

In the next few days, look for more posts, 

on Annabelle's piece, 

            rehearsal of a new Olivier work, 

                            and *preparations for Bastille Day at the Triple Door...

 *already up!

 

All photos by La Vie Photography, 

except the first, from Annabelle's own website:

http://web.me.com/annabellelopezochoa/http___web.me.com_annabellelopezochoa/Welcome.html