Kalamazoo modern dance company Wellspring is reviving Tendrils, its 2024 collaboration with the improvising chamber trio Aurora & Antheia, for three performances November 20–22 at the Cori Terry Theatre in downtown Kalamazoo's Epic Center. This year the Connecting Chords Music Festival joins as co-presenter and sponsor.
Artistic Director Marisa Bianan describes an evening of music and dance built around nature and connection. It returns with new cast members and new music. "So it is a revival, but more of a reimagination," she says.
The project started on a bodywork table. Violinist Cori Somers sees Wellspring founder Cori Terry every month, and before Terry retired, Somers asked to make one more piece with her dancers. Somers brought in percussionist Carolyn Koebel and cellist and composer Laurie Jarski. The artists say the 2024 work grew out of a shared hunger for connection after the isolation of the pandemic.
The trio brings a long list of instruments: mountain dulcimer, fretless banjo, cajón, Russian-made tongue drums, a kalimba, doumbek, riq, taiko, and a frog noisemaker. Jarski's playful fretless-banjo piece "Swamp over 8th Street" leads into "The Forest as a Goddess." That piece is a meditative solo choreographed by Terry and dedicated to the late arts advocate Mary Pierce. Bianan will again dance it.
Some of the music is fully written out and some is improvised. "We don't know what's going to happen. It ebbs and flows with different energy, depends on the dancers and the people in the room and just what my brain's doing in the moment," Somers says.
Jarski still remembers how strongly audiences responded in 2024. "This is what I was designed to do, learn all these weird instruments and be able to come to the table and be able to utilize them," she says.
Performances are Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. On Friday, a pre-show gathering called "Bloom" with music by Josh Holcomb takes place at the Black Arts and Cultural Center. After Friday's show there is a talkback with the dancers, the designers and the company's physical therapist. General admission is $30, and there is also a sliding-scale "pay what you can" ticket. Tickets are available at wellspringdance.org.
The interview was summarized by Claude AI and edited by the author.
