Ann Law to Give Solo Concert
Thursday, Nov.2 at 7 p.m.
Welcome!
You’re reading DanceChatt, a publication dedicated to dance writing centered in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This week we announce a first-ever: Ann Law, artistic director of Barking Legs Theater, is giving a solo concert on Thursday, Nov. 2. I sat down with her a couple of days ago to learn what it’s all about.
And now, a little news: This is your last issue of DanceChatt with me as publisher and managing editor. I’m passing the torch! I’ll write about dance as I find time, but someone else will keep the trains running. You’ll hear from your new publisher and managing editor very soon.
It’s been a glorious six months running DanceChatt. It’s also been a time that’s made me rethink my relationship to dance. From my first class as a 38-year-old grown-up dancer in 2012 (lying on the sprung floor at Barking Legs finding cross-lateral movement pathways) through studying with WEAVE, Ballet Tennessee, The Pop-Up Project, and Ballet Esprit, it’s been a ride. Chattanooga dancers, I couldn’t thank you enough.
Ann Law to Give Solo Concert
Barking Legs has been host to deep-delving, thought-provoking, heart-breaking, belly-laugh-making art for 30 years. For the most part, though, artistic director Ann Law has appeared onstage as a member of an ensemble cast in the dances she creates or co-creates. However, this Thursday, Ann will present This Place, a full evening solo concert she describes as “a duet with a 1955 Rock-Ola Jukebox.”
The concert will be a mix of forms — dance, spoken monologue, and jukebox music. The subject encompasses family, ancestry, and the past. The purpose, in part, is to encourage others to look into their memories and think more deeply about their history in time and place.
Ann notes that this is her first solo concert, though she’s performed plenty of solo pieces in larger shows.
“I decided to do it now for the 30th anniversary of Barking Legs,” she says. “Why not? What better time to talk about myself and what I want to do?”
Doing the Work
Ann has been creating this series of monologues and dances for a year now, more or less. For a choreographer who may call just three rehearsals for a complicated work of structured improvisation, she’s made this process a long slog.
“What have you learned from the slow burn?” I ask.
The answer: Ann’s in the theater working every day as space is available — which sometimes means she rehearses at 7 a.m.
“You have to be very patient,” she says. “You have to be very disciplined. My body will ask me, ‘We’re going to dance at seven in the morning?!’”
She laughs.
“But it’s fine. That’s what’s so important about art. Sometimes we miss the importance of that — to be disciplined enough to create something out of nothing. Nobody’s handing you any steps. Everything you put into your work has a lot of meaning.”
During those rehearsals, Ann transforms monologues she’s written into a movement score.
“Each movement score is different, with different intention and qualities,” she says.
However, her carefully scored work is still at heart improvisational — and in a fertile paradox, all those hours of work translate to spontaneity on the stage.
“The choreography is what I do, but I do it in the moment,” she says. “And you have these textures, these tensions inside, so you are always looking at what movement seems more appropriate than other movement. I’m very particular about my movement vocabulary … Once my body starts to move inside these dance scores that I’ve created, there is an unbelievable flow of consciousness where it just takes it and rides it. I put my mind in the passenger seat and pay close attention.”
“What about the physical part of training?” I ask. “How do you build stamina to perform for more than an hour, just you?”
She laughs again. “I’m older now! My body sometimes goes, ‘I don’t really like that movement. Can we modify?’ And I say yes, because I’m not into pain. I have to make sure my body is talking as clearly as possible, and if I’m doing stuff that is uncomfortable then it shuts down. Then it’s left the room and I’m out there on stage with just my brain.”
Onward and Upward
Ann hopes younger dancers will use her work to find inspiration to dance critically, questioning their own practice and deliberately stepping outside received knowledge.
“I think everyone is afraid,” she says. “[They think] ‘I only know how to dance this certain way.’ But all dancers should be intellectual, critical thinkers about their art form.”
And speaking of improv, she continues, “The most beautiful part of this whole thing is freedom. That’s what I’m working towards at all time: How do we free up ourselves? — So that we can interact with each other, interact with ourselves, interact with our communities, and make positive decisions?”
Learn more about This Place
Thursday, November 2, 2023
7:30–8:45 p.m.
Barking Legs Theater, 1307 Dodds Avenue, Chattanooga
For more information about this and other performances, visit barkinglegs.org.
About the author
Jenn McCormick is a writer and editor working in Chattanooga.
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Until then, keep dancing!