You probably know Alison Chase as the founder/artistic director of dance companies Pilobolus and Momix, but get ready because she's got more work to share! Her latest venture, Alison Chase/Performance, is making its debut in New York City in a three-night performance series at Columbia's Miller Theatre, January 9-11.  The work to be presented includes two New York premieres, and the world premiere of Drowned, a collaborative endeavor that incorporates mixed media and her signature style of movement: stunning (seemingly impossible) partnering and group work, and imagery that will simply blow you away. The choreographer is already known for her deeply kinetic blend of narrative, movement, and visuals into rich metaphoric worlds; now, with photographer Sean Kernan and videographer Derek Dudek, she explores some of life's most difficult concepts.

I’ve always wondered how your pieces become fully developed, especially now with so many collaborators at work.

Alison Chase: Anybody who comes into the collaboration, whether it’s a dancer or a composer, photographer, videographer… It’s the addition of those different voices, and those different imaginations, and those different impulses that I find enriches the work so that there are a lot of voices embedded in the pieces. And I never start with “Oh, I’m going to do a dance exactly about this, and it’s going to begin like this, and the middle is going to look like this, and the ending will be this.” I sort of have to grope and evolve, and it’s all done through trial and error. But it’s that sort of openness to experimentation and letting go of yourself into that pre-rolling form that at times is very chaotic. (Laughs.)  And it takes a genuine sense of play. There are certain people who have been trained as dancers. They’ve been trained in front of a mirror and they’ve been trained to do this and do that—this step comes first. We were diametrically opposed to that type of training.

I used to teach dance and there would be times I would have to turn my students around so they couldn’t see themselves in the mirror anymore.

Yeah, that's the best way because that mirror is such a magnet.

It really is. Well, your dancers are obviously amazing and strong. But, I feel that they would have to have an immense sense of trust with each other. How do you facilitate this forming of trust? Or is it something they tend to develop on their own?

Well, when we audition, that sort of gives us our beginning portal. If people have an instinctual sense of where their weight is and where other people’s weight is, that allows that trust to develop a little quicker and with greater facility. Along the way we’ve developed some exercises that help us get there. We do these partnering exercises where one person is blindfolded and the other people support them. It’s been a very interesting exercise. It has brought forth not only a greater trust in sharing the weight, but it has also brought a lot of great imagery to the pool that we select from.  So, the process is always ongoing.  Some people may never really want to do this or aren’t able to let go enough to enter that ensemble of trust, but people who are intrigued by it and want to do it usually get there.

That’s great. Now, I’m really interested in hearing more about Drowned, your newest work that will be premiering in New York on January 9. I’ve watched the trailer, and it looks absolutely gorgeous. I hear that it has been in the works for about four years. Is that right?

It has been. And we are excited to finally complete it. Because it’s not a standard dance piece or traditional dance piece, we were really trying to have the media, and the music, and the movement all share the narrative line. It took a while to figure out how that would work. We started at MASS MoCA in 2010, almost before the company was full formed and trained. And then, finding venues and places where we can fit and experiment has been a real problem and huge expense, so that’s why it’s taken us a long time. But, the length of time has allowed us to test drive each section and to continue to upgrade it. First, we get the original bud of the idea, and then we bring the media in, then we upgrade the media, then we have to upgrade the movement line… so it’s been a different type of production than I’ve had in the past. And I think we’re all eager to get it out. (Laughs.)

I’m sure.

I don’t know how long the gestation period of an elephant is, but it feels like a long gestation period. (Laughs.)

Well, can you tell us a little more about the collaborative process between you, the photographer (Sean Kernan), and videographer (Derek Dudek)?

Yes. I sort of describe it as a continuing conversation. It’s a visual/theatrical conversation and because they are trained in a different media, they bring to the table… something I wouldn’t if I had been doing this all by myself. The conversations are similar to the conversations that we as dancers would have, you know? “Does this enhance it?” “Does this fight against it?” We just finished this one section and the media was too overpowering. So, we had to really keep our attention on the foreground versus the background versus the middle ground and try to get the eye in the theater to integrate the images that are projected with the live dancers. It’s very tricky. And you also have to take into account the lighting that helps that blending. But, there are times where we don't really need that much from either the media, or from the music, or from the movement. So, we are always trying to find that theatrical balance point of support to drive the story forward.

That’s fascinating.

What’s been fascinating for me, again I can’t be too articulated about it because there’s no formula; we’ve found that, again, it’s trial and error. We have to get in the theater and try it with this projection and then change the projection and try it again. We did a showing last June and the videographer had a last minute inspiration and sent us this media file. The photographer was there in the theater; the videographer was back at his studio. And we looked at it (and this was a work-in-progress showing) and we thought we’d experiment with it. We asked the dancers and they said "it’ll be different: the media will be different and the music will be different, but the time will be exactly the same and the light cues will be exactly the same." We all said, “why not?” and it worked! It’s having a team — an entire team — who has that sense of gain to give it a try and not get freaked out. The dancers have had a bit of a difficult time because they feel like they’re competing with an image of themselves that is larger than themselves. So they feel like David and Goliath with their own image! It’s taken them a while to realize that what the audience sees, they are very central to it. Sometimes they feel not central. But if you come out and look at it, you realize that they are central. Behind the scrim, sometimes, they feel like phantoms (laughs).… Shadows of their larger self!

I feel that there are a lot of choreographers now that are playing with mixed media, and I wonder how they are making decisions to ensure that they are communicating what they want to communicate with the body. It’s actually refreshing to hear that it can be a struggle or something you have to work at.

Once you get your germinal idea, it starts generating what works and what doesn’t work, and you sort of have to listen to it. And sometimes it’s not working and you have to go “this isn’t working; why isn’t it working?” (Laughs.) Then, with enough eyes you can identify it, and you… try something different. There’s no given formula or blue print. It’s really that trial and error process. We had this one thing, and I didn’t know if that section needed media or what it needed.  Sean Kernan brought in this video of just clouds moving and it worked beautifully. It actually evolved—it was the beginning of a storm. He had the storm footage, and I said, “that really works.”  Then Derek Dudek came in and went, “Oh, you know what would be really cool…” So, we went to his studio and rigged this green screen thing, and I really didn’t know… I couldn’t see in my head where they could see this would go. But you have to trust the instincts of your collaborators sometimes. And don’t say “no” say “well, let’s give it a try.”

Is that hard sometimes?

No. I’ve learned that the one thing I trust in any great collaborator is rolling with their instincts. And, if the first one might not be perfect, the second one might be, or the fifth one might be. In the dialogue of ideation, you can throw together a lot of disparate ideas that you never thought would work, but then do work.

Now, about Drowned, what I understand is that it explores the “shady line” between some of what I feel like are the most difficult and most delicate aspects of human life: life and death, rage and love, harmony and chaos. Did addressing some of these concepts evolve out of the process, or did you have some of this in mind at the beginning?

Well, it all, I feel, happened to us. There’s a certain… disruptive force to somebody outside of a tribe, or a village, or a community, and to have someone outside the community sort of… wash into your community. The narrative just kept rolling the experimentation forward, and we didn’t really set out to tell this specific tale — the tale just sort of happened to us, and it seemed to fit. When we first started, we said, “well, gee, we can just do an evening of just really cool ideas and really cool images," but they wouldn’t add up to a whole. That’s when we decided to see if we could shape this into a beginning, middle and end that holds together as a narrative and is not a collective basket of all these little things we can do. We have some beautiful imagery that spins off in each music, and movement, and film that we have not used because they didn’t really roll forward with the ideas that developed. And, I sort of feel that life is about light and dark… so we decided to just charge forward into it.

When you bring an outsider into a community, it sort of reveals the fractures within it. Once you disrupt a community, whether it's a community of five or six or seven or thirty, you have to sort of reexamine a connective bond, so that when it comes apart it can be put back together again.

I feel like a lot of your pieces have to do with or communicate a sense of community in some way.

I’m interested in group dynamics, and I think that’s why I like partnering—it’s about people and connections with one another. I love exploring psychological and social subtext within it. They are sort of like dancers, you know, or a different type of family. I enjoy them because they have a certain degree of functionality and are creating together. They overcome a lot of the fault lines that exist in other groups or families because they have to create together and support each other physically, and with that physical support, comes emotional support.

I am very excited to see this new piece. From seeing the trailer, I feel like it's going to be wonderful. 

Well, I hope you enjoy it. You know, contemporary dance is in such a difficult state that I find to do something that integrates the film with dance... it's like a living film. That's the best of both worlds.

Well, is there anything else you’d like to share with us about what we can expect from you in the future before we wrap things up?

I think you can expect a lot of new work. Now that this team (we’re going into our fifth year) has some other work that we decided not to show—we decided to just concentrate on getting Drowned up with pieces that were a little more polished than doing a lot of brand, brand new work. Those pieces are almost completed and we’re going to present them later. And, we hope to do more New York City seasons.

Drowned (trailer) from Alison Chase Performance on Vimeo.