Beyond ballet

Moving on with Anne Myer

by Johnette Rodriguez

Choreographer/dancer Anna Myer began her dance life in ballet, training as a scholarship student with the American Ballet Theatre and performing with the Boston Ballet. She has taught ballet and modern dance for 20 years in Boston, and she formed a company in 1992 to present her original work. In the past three years, Anna Myer and Dancers have caught the attention of the New York Times and the Boston Globe and they were the "Pick of the Year" for the '99 Boston dance season by Marcia Siegel of the Boston Phoenix.

Myer and her company of nine dancers (including two from Rhode Island, James Brown and Frank Campisano) will present a varied program of four pieces this weekend (April 7-9) at the Carriage House Theater. Myer characterizes her work as a fusion of classical, modern and post-modern movement. The latter grew out of training with Caitlin Corbett and, in her words, is like "a whole other language."

"It takes things beyond steps and puts the human being into the dance," Myer explained, in a phone conversation from Boston. "It taught me to use movement that was non-dance -- it took away the formality and gave me another way of communicating. I could use everyday, pedestrian movement and mix that in with dance."

Thus, on a trip to Italy with her husband, Myer not only took in the religious postures of crucifixion and supplication that she saw everywhere in Italian art, but she carefully observed the gestures of three Italian men on a street corner giving directions to her husband. To the music of Vivaldi, she invested "In Italian," which premiered last spring in Boston and New York, with images from Renaissance and Baroque art and also from Italian culture.

At the Carriage House, Myer will present "In Italian" and its companion piece, "In Italian II." The second variation is lighter in tone, three love duets set to the opera music of Bellini, Offenbach and Verdi.

"I think my work tends to come from a very emotional place," Myer noted. "Even when a piece seems to have nothing to do with me, people tell me there's an intensity to it."

For a work titled "HeartChunks," from 1994, the second piece that Myer choreographed for her company, there is no mistaking the passionate nature of its creator.

"I felt a great need to put it all out there, without any restraint, to show my heartaches and my joys in life," Myer admitted. "A lot of the piece deals with memories and with struggles, that push and pull of being close to someone."

Myer costumed her dancers (five adults and one child) in various shades of red and set the piece to the romantic strains of Chopin, Chris Isaak, Michael Convertino, and Los Tres Ases.

"The piece is about parts of my heart," Myer reflected. "Chopin refers to my childhood, being in ballet class and loving it. The Mexican music -- I love the luxury and passion of it. The child in the dance represents moving on in life, growing older and putting my childhood behind me. She also sort of represents the child I've never had and the sadness of that."

The fourth dance for the Carriage House performance is "Take 10," a piece commissioned by Dance Umbrella in Boston and based on a concept by Ruth Benson Levin, in which 10 movements from 10 choreographers were given to three choreographers to incorporate into a new work. Myer collaborated with musician Dana Brayton, who composed the music by watching the dance, an inside-out process in itself.

"It was like stepping outside myself and watching somebody else make it," Myer recalled. "I made it very quickly because I was removed from it somehow."

And, as important as steps, gesture and movement are to a choreographer, Myer has also come to believe that non-movement, quiet moments in her dances, are also crucial.

"When you start choreographing, you try to cram everything in," she remarked. "The more I've been doing this, the more value I give to quiet. I see it as so beautiful. The more space there is in your work, the more it allows the audience to sink in, to feel what you're feeling, to step in and absorb."

Be the sponge. Catch the quiet.