Exit: Just what the doctor ordered

Here's a little zig to the normal zag of performance: The always-intriguing Exit Dance Theatre will be collaborating with father-and-son duo Doc Zig and Benny Z, otherwise known as Jim and Benny Zanfagna, who will be joined by local aces Roger Ebacher and Mike Gruen — yes, the same lineup as "Father & Son Playing for Small Change,” Zig and Z's debut EP —  in an evening of dance and music to benefit the modern dance company. Fontaine Dubus, Erin Foley, Wendy Hamel, Nicole Duquette and a special guest or two (nope, not telling) will perform new choreography, including a dance set to the duo's single "Run, Run." Played live, of course. From there the band will finish out the night, kicking out its crazy mix of sounds that someone said is Americana realized through a filter of reggae and jazz, or the other way around. Yeah, that would be me. The show takes place at 7:30p.m. Aug. 20 at the Tannery, at the Dance Place's Studio II Black Box. Cost you $10. Cheap date. You can check out the video for "Run Run" here and look up Exit here.

Exit Dance Theatre rises again

Funny thing is that when Fontaine Dollas Dubus takes the stage for a performance of “On the Third Day,” her new piece for Exit Dance Theatre, you might not even notice her, because you’ll be looking in the wrong place because she won’t be one of the dancers — not in this piece, at least. She’ll be in the chorus, one of 17 voices in the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Choir, lead by Don Argyrople, while nine dancers perform in front of her. Kind of a strange place for a dancer and choreographer to be, right? Um, yeah, if you look at it that way. Dubus doesn’t.

Yes, she’s a dancer and choreographer.Yes, she’s been performing with a modern dance company for more than two decades. And, yes, she’s also the owner of a Newburyport dance studio. But Exit has always been about more than “just” dance. Just look at the name — Exit Dance Theatre, spelled the fancy French way. It’s always related dance to theater and drama, and approached dance as more than movement, as a way of telling a story.

And Dubus, while primarily a dancer and choreographer, also studies acting and has sung all her life — in choirs, in schools. She recently returned to the Annunciation choir, after a long absence. She long ago found inspiration in how the old Slavonic texts mixed with the music, “which, to me, are the sound of old Europe,” she says, “All of my life I imagined movement with this music.” And this week, it all comes together.

The piece will include parts of five hymns rooted in Russian and Byzantine hymns, drawing musical pictures of lost, ancient times. It will premiere this weekend during “Sound Moves,” the new Exit program. Much, if not all of the lyrical content will likely be lost on the audience, but not the feeling.

But “On the Third Day” the is not the only choreography set to live music in “Sound Moves.” Byfield cellist Kristen Miller will provide the musical backdrop, with three original pieces for a trio choreographed and danced by Dubus, Susan Atwood, and Sarah George.

And it’s not the only surprise in the production. Gordon Pryzbyla will premiere a new experimental film, truly turning the “Sound Moves” into a multimedia event. And Dubus and recently returned Exit co-founder Stephen Haley, who is also suddenly all over the local scene, directing “The Agawam” at the Firehouse, “Waiting for Godot” at Wentworth and as a Theater in the Open fundraiser and currently working on a new production of Ionesco’s “The Bald Soprano,” will team up together for the first time in a duet — “Bloodstone,” which examines the relationships of obligation, love and abandonment.

Erin Foley brings back an extended verion of ReRot, which was inspired by Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and its references to human existence as perceived through the philosophy of Nietzsche. The new piece continues the exploration of mortality and timelessness.


JUST THE FACTS, MAN: Exit Dance Theatre will perform “Sound Moves” at 8 p.m. May 14 and 15 at the Firehouse, 1 Market Square. Tickets are $18, $16 for members of the Society for the Development of the Arts and Humanities and $14 for seniors and students. For more information, log on to firehouse.org or call 978.462.7336.

JUST THE FOLKS, MAN: Performers in Exit Dance Theatre's Sound Moves show include: Susan Atwood, Darlene Doyle, Fontaine Dubus, Nicole Duquette, Erin Foley, Sarah George, Wendy Hamel, Stephen Haley, Jennifer Steeves, Edward Speck, Tricia Walsh. Also performing will be Don Argyrople and the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Choir and Byfield cellist Kristen Miller.

Enter Exit: A new view of holidays past

Nostalgia may be death, culturally, but it is also one of the things that, for better or worse, connects us, and there is probably no better example of this than the predictable, theatrical free-fall during the “holiday season,” when everything comes to a complete standstill and we relive our childhoods, and pass them on to the next generation, with the tiresome, but irresistibly uplifting classics of the season — the seemingly endless productions, for example, of ”A Christmas Carol” (which we read somewhere is being staged by a half-dozen companies within a sleigh ride of Newburyport) and “The Nutcracker,” the irresistible 800-pound gorilla of the season. Complaining only makes you look like a Grinch, an association we have finally come to terms with. And, besides, this is what people really want — something warm, comfortable, familiar. But one company has managed to find a way to, so to speak, eat the fruitcake and have it, too — combining the warm, fuzzy nostalgic core of the holiday zeitgeist with a hip, modern outlook. That would be Exit Dance Theatre, a modern dance company founded more than two decades ago, whose style is deeply rooted in theater techniques, improvisation and collaboration.

This weekend, the troupe doing all that — and more — in its show “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” a monster collaboration that brings together members of Exit and Joppa Jazz Dance Company, as well as unaffiliated dance students who answered an open audition call, as well as local singer-songwriter Kate Redgate, who will emcee the show — a total of over 60 performers in all. The show grew out of Exit's “Nutbuster,” an original, modern and amped-up version of “The Nutcracker,” which played to rave reviews for the past two years. In “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” the idea is the same, but the choreography by Fontaine Dubus, Erin Foley, Sarah George, Pam Smith, Jen Steeves and Cheryl Schwind is new. Each “day” is told through movement, bringing a new approach to the traditional song. And it’s “a mixed bag of styles,” says Dubus, one of Exit's founding members — and not necessarily your idea of traditional Christmas atmospherics, with music by Rusted Root, which manages to mix Dead-like psychedelia with African and Middle Eastern rhythms, and Gilbert Bacaud, known as “Monsieur 100000 Volts” for his energetic performances (for the French hens a-laying day, natch). But the company, while presenting new approaches to the original song, has connected it to the past — to the nostalgia and the magic of our collective youth with Redgate, who will sing the original song and — be forewarned — lead the audience in a sing-along between dance pieces.

Of course, the philosophical question becomes, what happens if Exit's “Twelve Days” becomes an ingrained part of the holiday fabric in Newburyport? Will future generations of blogging Grinches gripe about it?

Let's call it a question for another generation.

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: Exit Dance Theatre presents “The Twelve Days of Christmas” through Dec. 6.The show features choreography by Fontaine Dubus, Erin Foley, Sarah George, Pam Smith, Jen Steeves and Cheryl Schwind. Kate Redgate will emcee. Tickets are $16, $15 for members of the Society for the Development of the Arts and Humanities, and $12 for students and seniors. For more information, call 978-462-7336 or log onto the Firehouse web. Photo is courtesy of Brent Mitchell.