Janusphere is creating new work, with new dancers, and preparing for upcoming performances at the Newport Dance Festival in Newport, RI. JDC director, Darion Smith and collaborating artistic colleagues, are embarking on new projects. We look forward to sharing more about these artists and collaborations in our next blog.
Check out photos and our video below featuring images from Smith’s inspiring nature walks and rehearsal excerpts from Unfurl (2021).
“Unfurl came from a need to explore during a very depressing time. I was taking walks out in the forest and became impressed with the patterns of change that the seasons influence. There’s tons of beauty and a kind of magic happening all the time in nature. Those moments in nature rub off on me and enter my creative process.
One of those moments involved the weekly ritual of passing by a series of frozen puddles on one of my walking paths. When winter’s freeze finally softened its grip on the landscape, the defrosted puddles turned into uniquely perfect reflection pools. When you looked into one you could see an inverted and slightly altered version of the world. You could also see through to the bottom, where the foliage, twigs, and earth from this dimension were laying, quietly. It became an otherworldly vista. Of course, in time it would all evaporate.
Fast forward into the near future and the entire process repeats itself. It might seem less interesting to some but during those moments, a spark went off inside. I started to wonder about the power to reflect and what a reflection meant to a person who was wondering how to make sense of a changed world that continues changing rapidly and radically.
This is certainly one part of nature that spoke to me at a time in my life when I became open enough and was able to listen. With me looking inward and witnessing others around me experiencing similar reflective moments, I decided to embrace what I saw and less of how I felt. In retrospection, it could have been a way of choosing what to process through creation but without making a conscious choice of it, initially.” -Darion Smith
See us perform Unfurl live at the Newport Dance Festival in Newport, RI July 22 & 23 at 7:00pm.
Alison Bartels, Ariarna Murphy, and Jacob Rice are the latest dancers to join Janusphere Dance Company!
Find out more about these incredible artists by visiting our Dancers page.