Taking ‘Flight’ Island Moving Co. makes its annual outdoor pilgrimage BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ

Island Moving Co. has been presenting original and commissioned works of contemporary ballet for more than 20 years. They have been adventurous in their choice of themes, choreographers, and collaborations. But their most risky decision, born out of necessity but continued out of an affinity for it, has been to perform outdoors.

IMC’s "Flight of Steps" series at Fort Adams began in 2000 and continues this year — July 16 and 17 and July 21 through 24 at 6:30 p.m. — with an incredibly packed program of guest artists and Island’s own dancers and choreographers.

In their first East Coast appearance, the Los Angeles-based Brockus Dance Project will complete a performance trade that began in April with Island Moving Co.’s first appearance on the West Coast. On the 16th and 17th, artistic director/choreographer/dancer Deborah Brockus will perform with her company in three works: a duet from Quest, to music by Drum Spirit; and Phoenix and Clouds, to Dvorak’s Symphony No. 5.

Other guests at IMC’s first weekend are choreographers/dancers Colin Connor and Debra Noble, along with guitarist Alexander Sack — all three are also currently based in LA. Noble will dance Connor’s Obsolete Graces & Emerging Strains to the music of Henry Purcell, set to Sack’s electric guitar. Noble will team with Connor for his Vestiges (2002), to original music by Michael Nyman. The latter work has received acclaim from Richmond to LA, with phrases such as "stunningly danced," "hypnotic," and "dynamically rhapsodic music." Finishing off this weekend’s program is a reprise of an audience favorite that premiered last summer, choreographer/artistic director Miki Ohlsen’s Surrender, a full-company piece with Rolando Troconis and Eva Marie Pacheco in its breathtaking pas de deux.

Surrender will also be presented the following week (July 21 through 24), along with a reworking of IMC dancer Alejandro Gomez’s Patio Andaluz, to the music of the Gipsy Kings; and a new duet by IMC dancer Michael Bolger called folded hands. warm heart. It is set to opera arias, which Bolger performs with Pacheco. The spotlighted guest piece for these four shows will be Colin Connor’s Rose Garden, which he has recast for Island’s dancers and guest artist Mary Beth Murphy. Set to Spanish motets and canciones from the 15th century, Rose Garden has moments of intense drama and moments of fun, as witnessed in rehearsal last week.

One of the sections from Rose Garden has Island’s four male and four female dancers doing gestures that mimic full-throttle passion — clasped hands pulled hari-kiri-like into ribs, fingers stretching out to pluck the luscious fruits of love — and then the women tantalize the men by holding a long-stemmed red rose just out of reach. Connor explained that the dancers will be costumed in red velvet and red mesh, with bare chests for the men.

"The premise is based on that Renaissance era when romantic love was connected with the fall from the Garden of Eden, a death in a kind of way," Connor reflected during a rehearsal break. "We still say, ‘This person’s killing me.’ You throw yourself open to someone, become a willing victim almost."

"The piece is built around the different ways that that can happen," he went on. "In one place, there are two figures who are not necessarily looking for things in each other, but through or past each other."

Another section of the dance features one woman (Meredith Baer) and four men circling her. Each of the men (Troconis, Gomez, Bolger, and David Lawrence) tries to touch her face, her shoulder, her waist, her leg, but at first she’s able to move just beyond them each time their hands come close. It’s disturbing to see her surrounded by men who are not necessarily menacing but nonetheless intrusive, and eventually they do lift her, carry her, and spin her around.

"It’s based on ‘I should be able to touch this,’ " observed Connor. "They all annihilate her; they abstract her. I want the energy of it to make people nervous, but not the iconography."

The motif of the rose garden itself appealed to Connor as a symbol of the temporality of life: "All of them are fleeing or overwhelmed by their senses, but the figures are all roses. The passion of the rose happens so that they can get cut down. Everybody blooms only to die."

Island Moving Co. has previously performed two other pieces by Connor: the moving and lyrical Recent Arrivals (2003) and Quite Early One Morning (1999). Connor’s credentials are all over the map, quite literally, from Finland to the Netherlands, from Boston to Charleston, from Atlanta to Sarasota. He was a soloist for eight years with the Limon Dance Company and has taught at Juilliard, the City College of New York and, currently, at the California Institute of the Arts, where Rose Garden originated.

After the rehearsal, Connor continued to bubble over with enthusiasm for the piece — "I’m still sketching; there’s just so much information" — and for the dancers themselves: "I’m giving them a lot of leeway within a structure. I particularly like working with this company because the dancers maintain their individuality. It’s clear that they’re personalities as well as dancers."

And that’s what gives such life to performances by Island Moving Co. Take a picnic (and maybe raingear) and head to Fort Adams for this year’s "Flight of Steps."

Island Moving Co. will perform on July 16 and 17 and July 21 through 24 at 6:30 p.m. at Fort Adams State Park, Ocean Drive, Newport. Tickets are $15 ($10 for children and seniors). Call 847-4470 (www.newportarts.org).