Our Beacon Dance series, that debuts its 2019 incarnation tonight, drew lots of media attention from the weekly Creative Loafing and the daily digital magazine St. Pete Catalyst.
Creative Loafing made the show a pick of the week calling Beacon “a singularly collaborative and evocative interdisciplinary experience.”
And St. Pete Catalyst did a full story on Beacon. I reprint part of it here. To read the full story, follow this link.
By Bill DeYoung
St. Pete Catalyst
There are quite a few professional dancers in St. Petersburg, says Helen Hansen French, who is herself one. But since the city has no professional dance company, performers, choreographers and the other creative spokes in the wheel of Terpsichore must be proactive.
“You have to create your own opportunities,” French says.
In 2015, she and fellow dancer Lauren Ree Slone – both St. Pete natives and both professionally trained and traveled – created Beacon Dance. “We realized,” explains French, “that the professional world here didn’t have a lot of support or structure. And we wanted to change that.”
Beacon is a “platform,” she stresses, not an official brick, mortar and sprung-floored company. “We also realized that the dance world is really shifting,” she says. “Companies just don’t have the financial means to sustain themselves.”
Although Beacon provides community dance classes, and will soon begin a collaborative artist-in-residence program, “basically, it’s a project-based opportunity for people to go to work and dance.”
The center of the Beacon Universe is the annual performance at the Palladium Theater. Beacon ’19, taking place Friday (April 5), is a collaborative effort that brings different disciplines together for a program of contemporary dance. “A live experience of physical connection,” French and Slone have sub-titled the show.
Among the five pieces on the program, three are premieres. The most ambitious, “Doors,” is performed by French and longtime Beacon collaborator Alex Jones (founder of the local dance collective projectALCHEMY, and dancer-in-residence at thestudio@620). It’s a St. Pete-centric collaboration with writer Sheila Cowley, sound designer Matt Cowley, lighting artist Joseph Oshry, painter Ana María Vasque and master sculptor Mark Aeling.
“We’re exploring the idea of the border wall disconnection,” say French. “It’s actually pretty relevant, when you think about it.”
Also performing in Beacon ’19: Heidi Brewer, Fernando Chonqui, Michael Foley, Abigail Hinson, Sadie Lehmker, Cynthia St. Clair (another hometown artist, now a resident of Colorado, dancing at the Palladium for the first time in 20 years), Lauren Ree Slone, Heidi Brewer, Carleigh Gee, Kellie Harmon, Bliss Kohlmyer, Shila Tirabassi Lagrua, Samantha Miller and Jessica Obiedzinski.
“Lauren and I see Beacon as something that continues to grow,” French adds. “We’re looking at the long game, not just ‘next year, what are we doing?’
“We’re looking 10 years ahead – what’s really needed here in St. Petersburg? Because it might not look anything like what’s needed in New York City, or somewhere in Texas or out in California.”
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