Velocity Dance Center Presents Made In Seattle: ELLA MAHLER HERE.

By: Feb. 05, 2019
Enter Your Email to Unlock This Article

Plus, get the best of BroadwayWorld delivered to your inbox, and unlimited access to our editorial content across the globe.




Existing user? Just click login.

Velocity Dance Center Presents Made In Seattle: ELLA MAHLER HERE.

Velocity Dance Center is thrilled to kick off our Made In Seattle series with Ella Mahler's Here., a full-length choreographic premiere that will debut at Velocity's Founder's Theater March 7-10. After dancing for notable dance artists like Kuntz & Company and Catherine Cabeen - Hyphen, as well as debuting shorter works at places like On the Boards, Base Arts, and Northwest Film Forum, Mahler's Here. marks the emergence of her own distinct choreographic voice: a unique combination of subtle abstraction and an overt sense of bodies working and doing together that inevitably wakes audiences up to the absolute irrefutability of the ever-changing present moment.

"Full of rhythmic play in both dancing and editing, the environment of [Mahler's] film is inexplicable, existing somewhere outside our normal world." Kaitlin McCarthy, Seattle Dances

While Here. will be Mahler's first full-length work in Seattle, Mahler has been working on its ideas and structures for a long time. It began over three years ago, when Mahler began working on a duet. There was something about the multiplicity of the work - the ever-shifting and constant - that kept calling Mahler back to the studio. The more she worked, the more Mahler seemed to dig into a complex territory of work equally attentive to minute changes and their affect on the whole. The result is a body of work that Mahler describes as "a dance that reads like a flipbook and behaves like a rubix cube."

Amidst this complexity, however there is one very prominent anchor: two people absolutely listening, doing, being, feeling together. Those two people are Seattle dancers Anna Krupp and David Rue. As Mahler herself puts it, Here. "is not a dance of two people. It is a dance of David and Anna." And because of the incredibly close way the two have worked with Mahler, their individual artistry shines through the intimacy, intensity, and intricate precision that define this 45-minute non-stop duet.

Another collaborative relationship that is critical to Here. is Mahler's relationship with her brother, composer, musician, and sound engineer Dustin Mahler. The two began working together in 2008, and have developed what may strike some as a rather unorthodox collaborative structure. Dustin almost never sees the dance Ella is developing until a dress rehearsal or opening night. Rather, the two work very closely over the phone, exchanging structures and ideas for each to work with. Dustin develops the sound, sends it to Ella, and she combines the elements with her dancers in the studio. This work with structure and surprise in their collaboration are what give the work such rich, unexpected turns, and cultivates an atmosphere of jagged precariousness and surprise within even the most precise choreography.

Here. is exactly the kind of piece that Made In Seattle exists to support, and we have been proud to offer Mahler hours of subsidized rehearsal space, promotional support, and artistic development. With Here., Mahler laying the groundwork for a body of research and aesthetic realm that is strong and deep. It is the work she continues to return to, and it is work that reflects the immense richness of Seattle's contemporary dance and art communities. This piece will prove to be a career-defining debut, and we know the city will not want to miss it!


Performance Date + Times:

  • Thursday, MAR 7; 7:30PM

  • Friday, MAR 8; 7:30PM

  • Saturday, MAR 9; 7:30PM

  • Sunday, MAR 10; 7:30PM

Location: Velocity; 1621 12th Ave, Seattle

Tickets: $20 advance ($25 at the door); $17 FRIEND-MVP members; $15 under 25 (w/ ID); $50 Patron



Videos