8 p.m. Sept. 20, Velma V. Morrison Center, 2201 Cesar Chavez Lane, Boise. $23.50, $39 and $49.50. Select-a-Seat. $10 discounts for seniors, ages 18 and younger and any college student with ID.
For John Michael Schert of the Trey McIntyre Project, dancing on concrete is a new thing. So Wednesday he traded in his ballet slippers for gym shoes and hit the pavement, more specifically, the patio behind the Student Union Building at Boise State University.
The short solo by choreographer Trey McIntyre was to music by the Violent Femmes, "the soundtrack of my troubled youth," McIntyre quipped.
The event, called Flash Dance, was organized by a group of students from a marketing class who took on the Trey McIntyre Project to fulfill an assignment, but found themselves captivated by dance.
They created a new kind of communication to get the word out about the company and its upcoming fall performance, said Nicki Degirmenci, one of six BSU students who called themselves Atomic Public Relations for the assignment.
"We've figured out a bunch of different ways to get the word out, especially to the college crowd. We've chalked the sidewalks, put stickers on coffee cup lids, sent out e-mail flashes on MySpace and Facebook - ways we know we like to get our information," she said.
The Trey McIntyre Project took up residence in Boise in February and is planning its first concert in its official hometown in September. The performance will inaugurate the 25th year of the Velma V. Morrison Center and the company's first year in Boise.
The company is creating a relationship with the Boise community by holding intimate, behind-the-scenes sessions with supporters and doing events like this one.
It all comes down to how we communicate about the arts.
The Trey McIntyre Project has been wired into new technology and communication for some time now. McIntyre regularly sends out podcasts, communicates through e-mail and takes opportunities like this mini-performance very seriously, Schert said.
"Trey didn't create a silly solo because it's outside on a college campus or in a parking lot," he said. It's a serious work that may be part of a larger piece the company will perform in September.
Schert repeated the piece at First Thursday's Modern Art event at the Modern Hotel. The solo is about violence, but not in a physical sense, McIntyre said.
"It manifests in so many horrible ways. We don't want to look at anger as something valid and important," he said. "The music is also so in the moment. When the Violent Femmes' first self-titled album came out, it was so important to me. But the band never achieved anything greater. When you know something is for the moment, the awareness of that is so amazing and horrible at the same time."
So the undercurrent of the piece echoes the ephemeral quality of the performance itself. That speaks to the changing nature of art in the world, and in Boise, Schert said.
"If we called ourselves a ballet company, which we are, that limits what we want to do," he said. "If we only reserved what we do for the big stage, we're going to miss something. That's why we're called a project. What we do is always evolving."
Dana Oland: 377-6442
