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Sasha Janes has every reason to be glad that the Internet helps people stay in touch across long distances.
Not only does performing with N.C. Dance Theatre keep him far from family in his native Australia, but distance is a hurdle even when he goes home. His two brothers live on opposite coasts, thousands of miles apart.
Even though the Web makes distances shrink, Janes has his reservations about the rise of Facebook, Twitter and such. He recalls being startled by the number of friends he once saw on someone's Facebook page: 2,000.
Janes started thinking about it. How many of the friends signed up on that Facebook page could really be close to its owner?
That was the spark for Janes' "Glass Houses," which premieres tonight as part of N.C. Dance Theatre's annual Innovative Works program. "Glass Houses" looks at the Internet's boom in "supposed friends," Janes says.
At a rehearsal last week, no one mimed sitting at a computer. "Glass Houses" was more abstract than that. As it unfolded - meshing with music by the Kronos Quartet and others - it became clear that one of the six main dancers was separating herself from the others.
"She's trying to break out of this," Janes says afterward. "She doesn't want to be just one of the crowd."
Even without onstage electronics, "Glass Houses" does put one tangible component onstage: a sculpture by Shaun Cassidy, a Winthrop University teacher who has worked at the McColl Center for Visual Art.
After the McColl Center proposed that NCDT collaborate with one of its artists, a photo of a work of Cassidy's caught Janes' attention. An elaborate structure of bright tubing stood outdoors amid rolling hills.
"It just grabbed me," Janes explains. It suggested a living room to him. When the two men talked, Cassidy explained that a living room was just what he had in mind. Cassidy meant the openness of it, Janes says, to symbolize "a family spread all over the world - much like mine."
For Janes, Cassidy created a new sculpture. But it, too, takes on a domestic aura when the dancers settle inside it or perch on it. It puts the dancers in just the transparent, vulnerable setting that the title "Glass Houses" implies.
This is the third work Janes, who's in his seventh season with NCDT, has created for the company as he branches out from his work as a dancer. The opportunity came from NCDT's artistic director, Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux.
"Sasha is a very creative person, and I felt he needed to be encouraged," Bonnefoux says.
"Being a dancer himself, Sasha knows the dancers well and cares about our company. When dancers and choreographers understand each other and work well together, the results are always better."
