Hawkinsdance is going it alone.
The company founded in 2017 by dancer, choreographer and University of Arizona alumna Shelly Hawkins is set to premiere its first self-produced show, “The People Electric.” There will be 11 dancers and several Tucson artists in the performance.
Hawkinsdance has mostly worked in collaboration with other organizations to showcase the work, including several performances at the Tucson Museum of Art.
But not this time.
“Instead of being invited to perform somewhere or working in someone else’s space, we’re renting the theatre, we’re buying the costumes, we’re doing everything from scratch and doing it all ourselves. So, this is kind of, in a way, a premiere for us,” says Hawkins, who also serves as the artistic director of Hawkinsdance.
The title piece of the show is 40 minutes long, includes a diverse cast of eight dancers and serves as “an expression of feminism with a stylistic nod to the second-wave feminist movement of the ’70s,” Hawkins said. It also includes a score written by local artists Katie Haverly and Jillian Bessett.
Before jumping into the choreography, Hawkins says she had a conversation with the dancers about what feminism meant to them and how to best incorporate all of those ideas into a single piece.
“We had to sit down and figure out how we felt and what we thought, and we dug into areas and topics that were important to us,” she says. “We touch on things like sexual repression and repression of anger that you apply to yourself as a way to abide by the expectations that are placed upon you.”
It’s this personal connection from the dancers that makes the performance so powerful, says Hawkins.
“It’s been a really cool process,” she says. “The dancers have participated a lot creatively and personally, sharing their own thoughts and their own stories.”
The show will include another featured work, “The Crystal Cave,” which is composed of three male dancers and a score by Anton Faynberg, a neo-classical pianist. The piece, says Hawkins, “imagines a world undisturbed and uncorrupted, subject to the laws of nature but not the effects of humanity.”
For Hawkins, being able to provide dancers, choreographers and other local artists a space to perform their work is what this dance company was founded upon. She also hopes to impact the Tucson community by intertwining contemporary dance into their artistic experience.
“I want people to get excited about contemporary dance and see it as something that’s interesting and fun and can be a part of their lives in some way,” she says. “For Hawkinsdance, what I care about is showcasing contemporary dance as a part of the greater art world and the contemporary art world. That’s something I believe in.”
