Tidal - a dance piece about water ... or a dance piece about influence and connection, inevitability and change

Tidal is a dance piece that emerged from a want to collaborate with really good artists: Helen Scholtz - photographer, Jessica Ardis - poet, Charles Halka - composer.

Scholtz's images of water often look like abstract paintings. She captures texture, light, and movement in the natural world, creating images that awaken the senses and peak curiosity. Jessica's poetry is blunt, succinct and somehow feels simple. There is an immediate relation, or an understanding of her work. She seems to mine our personal thoughts and feelings with her poetry, finding the words we can't. Halka records sounds from the world and uses these sounds as the instruments in his work. For Tidal he uses recordings of the rushing water of the Nooksack River, the trickle of streams fed by melting snow at Heather Meadows, or the pouring rain in his backyard. The score is an orchestration of these natural sounds, at times heavily manipulated, to create the original sound score.

Eighteen dancers, ages 19-79, and Pam Kuntz dove into Scholtz's photography and Ardis' poetry. Memories and sensations filled their process as metaphors unfolded and the piece took shape. They created numerous "movement portraits" offering glimpses into how we live in our world - who we are, how we relate, and what our actions or reactions may mean. Some feel human, some feel environmental, some float perfectly between the two…the resistance and persistence of water carving a path and shaping our landscape lives inside the dynamic of human relations and interactions, the rhythm of tides and the unfolding of change through repetition over time exists in the human body.

Tidal is created by Jessica Ardis, Alona Christman, Cara Congelli, Tracy Dahlstedt, Vanessa Daines, Rebecca deGraw, Shoshanah Epstein, Dudley Evenson, Charles Halka, Karen Kao, Pam Kuntz, Susan Marriott, Samantha Martin, Marissa Moeri, Lucy Morse, Katy Mullen, Helen Scholtz, Angela Sebastian, and Cindy Whiston (Annie Molsberry, Bailey Kager, and Joyce Harvey-Morgan early contributors)