Gritty, compelling, eccentric and vivid all melded together barely begin to describe Drop Your Art, an upcoming performance that leaps outside the box in multiple dimensions.
Presented by the new Base Movement Theatre for three shows Thursday, Friday and Saturday at the Inside Out Gallery, Drop Your Art could be subtitled Drop Your Preconceptions.
The compilation of space, movement and sound projected onto the gallery's walls in a continuous 16-mm loop breaks new artistic ground. The multiple old-fashioned projectors are actually part of the show, displaying different sequences of the film's vignettes simultaneously. Still photographs taken by Stephen Dillon of Windborne Photographic Studios and Cory Blackmer will line the walls of the gallery.
"It's definitely new, I've never seen this done before,” said Megan Mertaugh, the co-founder of Base Movement Theatre, of the multimedia exploration.
Throughout the loop, Mertaugh and Grace Blackmer, co-founder of the theater and the other artistic energy behind Drop Your Art, present ideas, convey moods and challenge watchers with dance like few have seen it before. Their first collaboration, the two creatives sparked on each other and found the resulting show much larger than initially conceived.
"It's almost a mix between a gallery show and an installation show, more along the lines of an installation show,” said Blackmer, who has a degree in dance with a minor in film from Columbia College in Chicago and has danced in New York City.
Drawn to the human aspects of dance, Mertaugh wanted to remove intimidation from a dance performance. Believing that audience members should be more than passive viewers, she set Drop Your Art in a gallery. This way, people are out of their chairs and can walk through and interpret the show at their own pace.
"I find dance is a very intimidating art form,” said Mertaugh, a 2001 Central High School graduate who has bachelor's degrees in English and dance arts from the University of Michigan. "We don't really read each other's body language in our society that much so when you go in and sit in on a performance it's really hard to communicate with an audience that's not used to interpreting how body's moving.”
Intrigued by space as both a noun and a verb, Mertaugh's vision is to prompt viewers to a greater awareness to the space they inhabit. She hopes that the dances and their unusual presentation will draw awareness to the environment, both on a planetary scale and in a viewer's immediate surroundings.
She and Blackmer carefully selected settings for the vignettes, six of which are at the Grand Traverse Commons or in the former Traverse City State Hospital. These settings have long captivated and inspired Mertaugh, luring in to express in movement what she found there.
"Originally I wanted to do a play within those spaces but the liability is so high,” said Mertaugh. "So maybe if I can do work in the spaces, record it and bring it outside the buildings so the audience can see it, maybe that will work.”
The recording happened thanks to Rich Brauer, Blackmer's dad, who was quickly caught up in the project's scope and vision. It was Brauer, scion of cutting edge video technology, who suggested the 16 mm film format shot at six frames per second that give the show its gritty feel.
"Megan and grace are amazing people,” said Brauer. "It's a wonderful thing, especially in a community like this where both of them have been out and about all over the country and we're lucky enough that they're bringing it all back here.”
Base Movement Theatre's Drop Your Art show will be held this Thursday, Friday and Saturday, August 16-18, from 7-10 p.m. at the Inside Out Gallery, 211 Garland Street. Tickets for Thursday and Friday's event are $5 while Saturday's Gala featuring drinks and hors d'oeuvres will cost $20. For more information, see the website www.myspace.com/basemovement.