Have you ever seen improvised dance? Sure, you’ve heard jazz and other improvised music, including skillful classical keyboardists doing a now-uncommon Baroque thing. But most of the dance we see is either tightly choreographed, or aimless boogieing.
Enter the Karavan Dance Studio, whose Project Band will be putting on a showcase of improvised dancing along with live musicians this coming Sunday, October 4. (In an era beset with prerecorded music, what a blessing to have real musicians and dancers interacting.)
The middle-eastern-inflected program goes from noon to 9 p.m., and it’s free to the public, so you can pop in and out. Of special interest is the 3 p.m. slot, which features Viatorum, the East-meets-West brainchild of San Antonio composer Ethan Wickman.
Wickman showed up at TPR to play the oud (that cousin of the lute), along with guitarist Berk Agar. Karavan’s chief, Karen Adkisson, joined to talk more about dance, improv, and what it’s like to be, as far as we know, the only studio in America doing this. Wickman and Agar join in to discuss the music itself, some of which dates from 1700s Ottoman Empire.
Says Wickman, “There were many Europeans in Istanbul at this time,” leading to a multicultural musical style, enriching the music world from both sides.
According to Adkisson, “For about the last ten years, our focus has been on teaching dancers to improvise to live music. It allows us as American dancers, who are embracing the dance that comes from another side of the world, the opportunity to blend our own personalities and movement styles in.”
A nine-hour dance feast, free of charge, at the Doubletree Hotel in downtown San Antonio (502 W. Durango).
