Think you don’t like dance? Think again.
This weekend, Repertory Dance Theatre brings to the stage fire jugglers and twirlers, singers, dancers, actors, a wide variety of musical styles, large slides of paintings, a trapeze artist and an aerialist. And the group added as many pairs of identical twins as it could find.
The show, titled, “Outside Blake’s Window,” is a “festival of the arts in one evening,” said choreographer Tandy Beal. With Beal’s background and experience, this performance is not surprising.
Beal choreographed Frank Zappa’s orchestral premiere. She choreographed all the movement for the characters in Tim Burton’s “A Nightmare Before Christmas.” She also directed the Pickle Family Circus for 10 years and the Moscow Circus in Japan for two years. She choreographed a halftime show for the San Francisco 49ers, as well.
It’s no wonder she says this weekend’s show is about the “flight of imagination” and the “fire of inspiration.” She has plenty of it.
Beal and her husband, Jon Scoville, have been teaching music and workshop classes through the U modern dance department every Spring Semester for years. It was Scoville who first suggested to her that she “work with a historical figure for inspiration,” Beal said.
William Blake, who lived from 1757 to 1827, was the poet who wrote the lines that inspired the piece: “Tiger, tiger, burning bright/ In the forests of the night,/ What immortal hand or eye/ Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”
However, “you don’t need to know anything about Blake” to enjoy this performance, Beal said. “This is a show that’s made up of ideas, but it’s also entertaining.”
To see “Outside Blake’s Window” is to “come into a very big visual world,” Beal said. It is “very theatrical” and inspires a “magical sense of wonder?Even if you don’t like dance, you’re going to like this show.”
“Outside Blake’s Window” will be presented today through Saturday, April 14, at 8 p.m. in the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $30 for the general public, $10 for students and $15 for public school teachers and high school seniors. Tickets can be purchased by calling 355-ARTS or visiting www.arttix.org.