INTERVIEW: Kinesis Project dance theatre to perform on 1885 sailing ship

Although it made its living as a full-rigged cargo sailing ship, the 1885 Wavertree is finding new life with a New York City dance company. On July 20, 27 and 30, Kinesis Project dance theatre will perform Secrets and Seawalls on the massive vessel, which is docked at the South Street Seaport Museum in downtown Manhattan. Audiences should expect not only a unique tour of the ship but also some cutting-edge, site-specific choreography.

These are two worlds coming together for one unforgettable evening.

Secrets and Seawalls is the passion project of Melissa Riker, choreographer and artistic director of Kinesis Project dance theatre. To create the piece, which has been performed in other locations, she worked with architect Lee H. Skolnick, all the while focusing on vulnerability, power and how each are revealed.

“The site that we are performing on is breathtaking,” Riker said in a recent phone interview. “The ship Wavertree is a historic ship that is the last wrought-iron ship of its kind, and the restoration of it has been amazing attention to detail. So before even experiencing a dance, there is an experience of a one-of-a-kind vessel that has seen so much of the world, and then the next step of what they get to experience is a dance performance that happens all throughout this ship. When we make work, we don’t choose a space that looks like a stage. We take over a space and make the entire space our stage and our space, so the audience will get to move through the ship and watch the dance happen.”

The dance will not only be performed on the main deck either. It will explore the nooks and crannies of the vessel, always keeping in mind that central focus of vulnerability and power. Even the Wavertree’s history is focused on this two-pronged thesis. It is a ship built to withstand the ravages of the sea, so it exudes power. And yet when it sailed the open waters in the late 19th century, it also was vulnerable to the elements.

Secrets and Seawalls, interestingly, did not begin with this ship. Its foundation goes back a few years.

“I started working on Secrets and Seawalls in 2013 in response to Hurricane Sandy in New York City,” Riker said. “I live very far uptown, so I felt very separated from what was happening to the rest of the city and to the Jersey Shore. But the thing that kept moving through my head was that when Sept. 11 happened, I knew people that were on a task force wondering about New York’s seawalls, and whether or not there had been fractures in the seawalls and what that could mean if there ever was a storm of consequence. So as this storm of extreme consequence was hitting our city, that was all I could think about. And then as the months went [by], I just kept those sorts of thoughts.”

The thoughts about New York City’s seawalls eventually formed into questions that were “big enough” to require some artistic answers. That’s when Riker started thinking choreographically.

“So in 2013, I started building the piece,” she said. “In 2015, we premiered the piece in the Rockaways on the beach and in these beautifully broken buildings. The piece has had four or five sites that it has existed in. … The way the Kinesis Project creates work is we make these large works that can live in spaces where the structure of the dance and the themes of the dance stay true, but that we spend enough time in a site where it becomes something that could have been invented for that site.”

Riker was highly collaborative during the rehearsal process with the four dancers in the cast. She would come in with questions that the entire company collectively answered through movement. She may have started the conversation, but it was up to the performers to finish it.

“I’m very, very interested in what each individual body has to tell,” she said. “The dancers are generating and inventing, and then we’re taking that together and morphing it into a duet that never existed, or taking a duet and turning it into a solo. It is very much about the human beings in the room. It would be nowhere near as fun if I was in the room by myself just making movement and then asking people to learn that for me.”

Riker said she believes Secrets and Seawalls is the best piece to show off what the Kinesis Project dance theatre is able to accomplish. Plus, the themes surrounding Hurricane Sandy, safety and weather continue to persist.

“It’s something that is a dance theater experience and then also becomes a very intimate experience, and whatever the site is that the piece gets placed into, it really extenuates that site,” she said. “I also think that part of the reason that it keeps happening is that the themes of what the work is about is something that is very current, even though specifically Hurricane Sandy happened so long ago.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Secrets and Seawalls, from the Kinesis Project dance theatre, will be performed July 20, 27 and 30 atop the Wavertree at the South Street Seaport Museum. Click here for more information and tickets.