This Charlotte Ballet performance features movement inspired by other works of art

Dancemakers draw inspiration from music, literature, nature, animals, their own pasts and the pasts of their countries. So why not from a room-length collection of glass tubes that flexes like a prehistoric bird in flight? Or drones swooping through the night sky, imitating the inscrutable patterns of starlings? Or hundreds of dandelion seeds caged and illuminated by LED lights?

Hope Muir has valued collaboration in three seasons of programming as Charlotte Ballet’s artistic director: with the Charlotte Symphony, with dancers from the Reach program at local recreation centers, with literature professors at UNC Charlotte. But she hasn’t handed out assignments stranger than those for this year’s ”Innovative Works” concert: Choreographers visited the Studio Drift exhibit at Mint Museum Uptown, then drifted into dance studios to turn their impressions into world premieres.

You’ll see the results Jan. 24-Feb. 15 at McBride-Bonnefoux Center for Dance, assuming you can get a ticket; shows in the 200-seat black box theater often sell out. Just what you’ll see remains to be decided: Choreographers Duane Cyrus, Christopher Stuart and Chelsea Dumas were still tweaking movements, music choices and even (in Dumas’ case) a title at press time.

And though none of the three spoke to the others while making decisions, they all ended up exploring various facets of the same idea: How individuals interact with society, willingly or unwillingly, and how that changes them.

Dumas, a dancer with the company and a graduate of its Choreographic Lab, watched the Studio Drift video of computer-programmed drones soaring above the Burning Man crowd and decided to assess “my personal journey to freedom, the way my perceptions and beliefs have sometimes held me back because I believed them so firmly. If I perceived things in a different way, there would be more magic in my world.”

Stuart, resident choreographer at Nashville Ballet, found himself staring at “Fragile Future,” where he learned that dandelion seeds continually adapt to environments to survive: They take root, flower and sail off to do so indefinitely. “I started to think about how people adapt to surroundings, how they overcome anxieties,” he said. “We all do that; I had to do it here, working with dancers I didn’t know.”

Technology and intersectionality

Cyrus, a UNC Greensboro professor who directs the performing and visual art collective Theatre of Movement, said “Amplitude” struck him because its undulating spine reminded him of some of the movement he creates: “Their work exists as a dialogue between nature and technology. In that piece, technology takes on human characteristics.” The show also set him contemplating Kimberlé Crenshaw’s idea of “intersectionality,” which influences his desire “to create a world where intersecting differences are shown in conjunction, as opposed to conflict.”

Each choreographer employed eight dancers — not the same eight, or they’d be panting by the end like Clydesdales pulling a beer wagon — and adapted work to individual performers’ strengths, taking feedback from their casts. As Cyrus noted, “Seeing them learn and perform (my steps) so effectively, then collaborate with me to generate new movement neither of us would have generated separately, is a huge part of why I work in the manner I do.”

Musical choices vary as much as visual inspirations. Dumas will use classically structured pieces by Philip Glass and Mark Yaeger for her segment, which alternates staccato starts and stops with flowing sections. (A different work in the 2019 Choreographic Lab convinced Muir to commission her piece; Dumas started from scratch in the fall, along with Stuart and Cyrus.)

Cyrus’ soundtrack for “Colony of Desire” mixes hip-hop beats from JonBoyOnDaBeat with minimalist percussive effects from Angus Tarnawsky. Stuart picked subtle music by Cristina Spinei, a fellow Nashville resident he befriended through Instagram but has never used before, to go with projections that will appear from time to time in “Dispersal.”

Visual elements

Decisions about sets and costumes had to be made quickly and early in the process, and casting began months ago. As Stuart said, “You need to know from the beginning how music and choreography will complement the (visual elements). It doesn’t seem organic, if you don’t do it that way.” The three planned through the fall and worked intensively through January.

“I start with a blank canvas and build slowly,” Stuart said. “I have nothing planned, not even dance phrases, and I go with my first instincts. This piece just evolved. As (Muir and the dancers) asked questions, it evolved even further, and my ideas came out even more freely.”

Cyrus said, “It’s like walking around a city you’ve never visited before: There are no wrong turns. You absorb everything at first. Eventually, one path becomes more interesting, and you follow it. ... Ultimately, the work tells you what it needs to be.”

Dumas immediately understood the mood and emotions she wanted to evoke after seeing the Studio Drift exhibit. Muir questioned and challenged her, as she does any young choreographer; Dumas accordingly reshaped the piece, but “I knew where I was going from the start.”

All three appreciated the versatility and diversity of the troupe, not only in race but in sizes and dancing abilities. As Cyrus said, “With this beautiful company, I could select people who look the way the world does to me. ... And I know Charlotte Ballet can make anything look good.”

Innovative Works

WHEN: Jan. 24-Feb. 15 at 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. Also 2 p.m. Feb. 1, 8 and 15.

WHERE: McBride-Bonnefoux Center for Dance, 701 N. Tryon St.

TICKETS: $27-$87.

DETAILS: 704-372-1000 or charlotteballet.org.

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