Trip The Light is an annual stage performance that focuses on dance, music and sometimes film and theatre to showcase the talents of our region.
This year, instead of having a central theme to create around as they did last year with Ephemera, Trip’s 2012 version is free form but with a surprising thread that has emerged only as the eight local bands and eight choreographers assembled to begin their tech rehearsals earlier this week. Rather than ruin it, I will let you be the judge if this thread continues to emerge in their works.
In addition to a solid eight works from area choreographers that hail from the halls of vaudevillian to academia, these fresh new works are supported by the musical score of these local acts: expunk, Astro Bats, Ritsu, John Hanson, AOK, Ribbons of Song, Jes Kramer and the 2012 CMC-WYCE Jammie Award winning The Crane Wives.
As with every Trip performance, there will be a debut of new works of dance on camera created this time by GVSU’s Shawn T Bible with the band Heavier Than Air Flying Machines and two new works by Seth Thompson featuring the work of Dance In The Annex’s (DITA) Amy Wilson with music from Red Tail Ring and a secret world premiere that the show’s tight-lipped producer, Amy Wilson, would not reveal.
“We keep them coming back each year because of the high value you place on original works of art. Even though contemporary dance is not a big scene here as it is in other larger markets, it is growing and selling out shows more and more now,” says DITA founder Amy Wilson. “We push our dancers and collaborators to be more experimental and to not be afraid to take risks.”
A big plus of this energy created by this and their fall event, Salmagundi, is that the choreography is now being produced with the Wealthy Theatre stage in mind as they begin to react on and off the stage in the works they will present.
Also debuting at this performance is the world premiere of the first LED spotlight from the theatrical lighting manufacturer, Source 4 Lighting, whose owner, Fred Foster, personally selected Wealthy Theatre along with John Hyatt of our local theatrical supply house, Hyatt and Associates, to debut this innovative new lighting product that will change the theatre market with this new breakthrough in LED lighting technology.
It is fitting that it would debut here as Wealthy Theater's current centennial improvement campaign looks to become the country’s first sustainable historical theatre. (It is very close to happening here.)
Trip is produced by DITA and ArtPeers, and is made possible by generous support of the Community Media Center.
Editor's note: If you still want more dance this weekend, be sure to catch the Grand Rapids Ballet Company's new Black Swan, White Swan by Mario Radacovsky whose innovative new vision of the popular Swan Lake is in it's second (and last) weekend. This new performance is not only shaking up audiences but it is being hailed as the one of the greatest dance productions at the GRBC.
Admission: $15, nonmembers / $12.50, members
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