Tere Mathern practices by herself at Conduit Dance studio in Portland in 2010.
If Conduit Dance’s origin story is humble, its reach has been hugely
In what was then a Portland dance-arts vacuum, co-founders Linda K.
Johnson and Mary Oslund launched the center in 1995 with the goal of creating a
training, rehearsal and performance space. Conduit’s evolution through artistic
collective (four additional choreographers joined the start-up) to non-profit
has shaped the landscape of contemporary dance in Portland, training dancers,
commissioning local artists, launching companies and careers.
Saturday’s benefit performance, “Just 17 Birthday Bash,” at the
downtown Pythian Building showcased Conduit’s diversity, profoundly
demonstrating its history and the caliber of its artistry. Johnson, in an oral
chronology accompanied by shedding layers of clothing, traced Conduit’s
trajectory far beyond the region and into the history of modern dance in
America. Weaving together names, dates and movements of Conduit performances
past, Johnson danced the touchstones and nicely honored the late Keith V.
Goodman, a beloved community builder and one of Conduit’s original six core
Joining Johnson onstage in “Three Solos, Together,” core artist Gregg
Bielemeier and executive director Tere Mathern sliced through the space with the
dance vocabulary that defines them as distinctively as their fingerprints –
Bielemeier’s impish intelligence, Mathern’s geometry in motion.
So too with “Olsund + Co/Dance Excerpts,” a seamless reconstruction of
prior Oslund works performed by Margretta Hansen, Michelle Rogers and Jim
McGinn, fantastically-trained dancers whose bodies recall the slash and grace of
works they’ve performed on numerous stages over the years.
Josie Moseley’s deeply affecting tribute to Oslund, “Flying over
emptiness,” is a stunning work of film and dance and friendship, a response to
illness and the loss of mobility and an almost primal decoding of artistry and
expression in movement.
Oslund’s impeccable gestures, captured in close-up as
she’s seated on a chair, are the very soul of the dance.
More to savor on this evening: McGinn’s recent “Jamb,” capturing the damp
claustrophobia of a mine shaft in three dancers’ precision tempos; an excerpt
from Suniti Dernovsek’s forthcoming “This is how we Disappear," with impressive
visual design by David Stein; Keyon Gaskin’s liquid performance of a Catherine
Egan solo; and a trio of big-haired lounge-singer poseurs in Danielle Ross’s
“For Tourists” that, improbably, winds up being poignant.
~ Catherine Thomas