Body works

Cavanaugh's therapeutic choreography

by Johnette Rodriguez

Cavanaugh &Dancers will perform at the Carriage House Theatre
June 13, 14, 20 and 21 at 8 p.m.

For some it might seem a stretch between twin careers of dance and medicine, but for ob-gyn/choreographer Dr. Colleen Cavanaugh, it was a natural leap. A dance student from the age of four, Cavanaugh went on after college to dance in New York and Europe for nine years. Although primarily ballet-trained, she also studied the modern sculptural style of Jose Limon.

To continue her interest in the body and its movement, Cavanaugh the dancer was considering going into physical therapy or rehab medicine. But then she got into med school at Brown, and while there she discovered that she loved obstetrics and gynecology. During her residency, she did some performing with Paula Hunter and she began to choreograph seriously around the time her second child was born two-and-a-half years ago.

"It's wonderful to do both medicine and dance -- it uses all parts of me," Cavanaugh commented, during a break in the Saturday afternoon rehearsal of a new piece, set to Robert Schumann's Piano Quartet, Op. 47.

That piece, untitled at the time of this interview, will be presented along with "Whisper," a six-and-a-half-minute female trio to Janacek's Capriccio for Piano and Chamber Ensemble; a suite of solos, duets and trios to songs sung by Billie Holiday, "What Is This Thing Called Love?"; and "The Fallen House," a duet about domestic violence, set to Bohuslav Martinu's Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra and performed in April at New York City's Ballet Builders.

The topic for "The Fallen House" and for an earlier piece called "Bereavement," about a couple losing a child, came from Cavanaugh's medical practice. But she doesn't intend to always choose such heavy topics for her work. She often takes her inspiration directly from music, as with the Schumann piece.

"Part of it was choreographed on those couples (Danielle Genest and Gregg Saulnier; Melissa Hensley and Donald Acevedo)," Cavanaugh explained. "The first duet is more quick and driven, with a folding in on themselves. The second is more lyrical and languorous, more of an adagio."

Indeed, the first duet has many lifts and impeccable timing, as Genest and Saulnier move under each other's arms and twine through the space around each other's bodies. In the second, Hensley and Acevedo have a moment when their bodies are sensuously spooned on the floor and they rise slowly, still holding each other. The fugue-like finale adds two more female dancers in a fast-paced, high-energy circular sequence.

For the five pieces in the Billie Holiday suite, Cavanaugh wanted to do "something light, something playful." Seen in Festival Ballet's program "To-the-Pointe" in May, the title piece was a swishy, jazzy duet; the second a wrenching solo to "Good Morning Heartache"; the third a satiric take on "Girls Are Made to Take Care of Boys," danced with two women and a man; "Sweet Hunk of Trash" was a let-out-the-stops male solo; and "You Better Go Now" a bittersweet duet.

Cavanaugh has set dances for Island Moving Company ("Whisper" is one of these), worked with dancers from Festival Ballet and two of the dancers for these pieces are from Hartford Ballet (Genest) and Indiana Ballet (Saulnier). As with many choreographers, she looks for dancers who understand the specific vocabulary of contemporary ballet in which she composes; her dancers joked at rehearsal that they are going to publish a "Cavanaugh dictionary" for other dancers, detailing her stylistic elements.

But all of those elements seem to flow organically from Cavanaugh's imagination: "The movement never stops -- there are no abrupt breaks. When an arm moves closely around my head, it is encircling the substance of my body -- to me it feels very natural."

And so it looks. Not un-ballet-like; not starkly modern. Cavanaugh's choreography challenges her dancers but keeps a clean, almost classical line throughout. It is at once inventive and memorably expressive.