It's fortunate for Rhode Island dance enthusiasts that Island Moving Co. artistic director Miki Ohlsen and Island's executive director Dominique Alfandre met and joined forces at the very beginning of IMC's 20-year run.

Ohlsen had studied at the State Ballet of Rhode Island and then, in college, she took off for Amsterdam, where she graduated in classical ballet from the Fine Arts Academy. After several seasons performing in Europe, she returned to Rhode Island in 1979 and founded the Newport Academy of Ballet.

Alfandre, meanwhile, had pursued medieval history in college, though she also became involved in theater production and sought something in arts administration after graduation. Her first job was at the Nikolais Dance Theatre in New York; she later moved on to work at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for several years. When her husband's job brought them to Newport in 1982, she went to the second performance of Island Moving Co. and joined the board shortly afterward.

From her European experiences, Ohlsen brought a vision of collaboration among dance artists to the fledgling company, along with a dedication to developing an appreciation of dance among the Aquidneck audiences and the wider Rhode Island community. Alfandre had a similar commitment to reaching outside their own particular company.

"Both of us have always had the feeling that the more dance there is, the better off we're going to be, instead of 'Oh, my goodness, let it only be the Island Moving Co.,' " Ohlsen emphasized in a recent conversation at the company's studio. "We really have always had the feeling that promoting dance is what's going to promote Island Moving Co."

So they've put their heads together and come up with productions like the 1992 multi-company "Wall to Wall," an entire day of dance performances, workshops, and master classes at the Columbus Theatre in Providence; the Rhode Island Dance Consortium, which presented concerts called DanceX6 (six companies) around the state in the early '90s; their own wide-open presentations of guest choreographers and companies at Goat Island; their 2001 choreographers' competition, which drew 70 applications, and three finalists; and their 2002 extravaganza, Open for Dancing, a collaboration between guest choreographers, local visual artists and musicians, student dancers, and community members who wanted to dance.

"The more people see dance, the more they become educated and aware," Ohlsen continued. "We realized that the more we could present and look outside ourselves, the better off this company's going to be."

"We keep thinking, and I still believe," concurred Alfandre, "that if people see different kinds of dance, be it Lydia Perez's Afro-Puerto Rican drumming or Brian Jones's tap, they will no longer be able to say that they've never been to a dance concert. And those tiny steps are helping to build our own audience."

The initial impulse to bring a group of dancers together who wanted to create their own contemporary ballets came about because of an invitation to Ohlsen from the Newport Art Association to perform in their large gallery in the spring of '82. But the company's attempt to present a second dance concert that summer at the International Tennis Hall of Fame's Casino was a harbinger of ongoing space issues. The casino roof fell in, and the performance had to be moved to the following February at Rogers High School, where Alfandre first saw the company.

Though Ohlsen hoped to lure Newport visitors to Island's summer performances, the company was still presenting their dances indoors at Rogers. Their technical director at the time was working at St. George's School in Middletown, and he suggested, "What about outside?"

Alfandre and Ohlsen got a grant from the Rhode Island Foundation to build a portable stage -- the same one they are still using 16 years later -- and the outdoor concerts at St. George's became a huge success.

"People who didn't ordinarily see dance were willing to come and sit on the lawn and bring a picnic," recalled Ohlsen. "They'd watch a little dance, look at the water, talk to their friends, in that more non-threatening atmosphere. It did introduce a lot of people to dance, and that did enhance our winter audiences."

That summer tradition of performing outdoors was expanded upon, to four different locations in four different years on Jamestown, to the pavilion at Goat Island for three years and to Fort Adams, beginning in 2001. Then, this past September, as the finale to their 20th anniversary year, the company pushed the limits of outdoor performance even farther by offering two weekend afternoons of a moveable feast of dances, from the Doris Duke estate at Rough Point, looking out over the wide Atlantic, to the wild meadow inside an abandoned quarry at Ballard Park, to the sunken garden and weeping beech trees at the Elms, to their own current home stage at Fort Adams.

Open for Dancing had old-fashioned trolleys shuttling audiences between venues; it had curiosity-seekers who stopped to watch, from the Cliff Walk behind Rough Point, from the residential neighborhood near Ballard Park, and from passers-by at the Elms who happened to be touring the mansion and its grounds; it had dramatic natural backdrops. It was a memorable culmination of Island's custom of outdoor performances. Discussion is currently underway about a follow-up to Open for Dancing, whether to make it an annual or biennial event, how to find more funding, how to get larger audiences. The same questions that plague all the small dance companies in Rhode Island.

But Ohlsen and Alfandre are undaunted by such challenges. Through lean years and boom times, they've remained good friends and colleagues.

"I think what's remarkable is the exchange of ideas and the willingness to hear the ideas," Ohlsen, now 50, mused. "Me from her, her from me, and to go with it. We rarely nix an idea at the outset, even the craziest ones. And sometimes we decide to go ahead with the crazy idea anyway. And sometimes we just say, `Well, I can't get behind that at all.' More often than not, we're stepping off that cliff, hand in hand. No parachutes."

"This Nutcracker thing is a perfect example," chimed in Alfandre, now 45. "Both of us have said for years that we wouldn't do a Nutcracker. But then the idea to do it at Rosecliff got thrown into the hat. And now it's going to be completely consistent with our vision and really good creatively for the company. It's something that will get everybody thinking."

And though Island Moving Co. has built up a large repertoire of pieces, many choreographed by Ohlsen, others by well-known choreographers such as Carol Somers and Daniel McCusker, they have tended to charge ahead to new things. This past year took them to New York for the first time (to good notices), to Cambridge (ditto), to Waterplace Park and Rhode Island College -- audiences totaled more than 10,000, with an additional 3000 children.

From all of the new choreographers they've worked with over the past year and a half, they've realized how important their place in the dance world really is: "If you want to make a dance, we're here," noted Alfrandre. "We're commissioning."

In addition, Ohlsen has noticed how thrilled the guest choreographers are to walk into a roomful of well-trained classical dancers who are willing to try almost anything. "Every note we got from the choreographers was about the dancers' openness. It's not only about what they want to do. And that shows tremendous respect for the art form. Without that, we can't grow."

So they choose dancers for strong technique but also as articulate individuals. Looking at the dancers as "little slices of life in themselves" has inspired Ohlsen to take more risks: "I have a different courage than I had before to tackle the things I want to do." And Alfandre is right beside her, checking out possibilities for new venues, projects, funding sources, collaborations.

"It's intrinsic to us," Ohlsen remarked. "It isn't always to other companies. But when we look back, without even knowing it, it's who we are. We have been a huge catalyst for cooperation and communication."

And dance in Rhode Island has been the better for it.

Issue Date: October 25 - 31, 2002