Very Spacial People: Jane Franklin Dance

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IT'S SOMETIMES hard to snap out of the daily routine. Too often it's only when something beyond our control intervenes in our lives that we change course.

That's the conundrum explored in "Incidence," the Jane Franklin Dance company's multimedia dance performance at the Mead Theatre Lab at Flashpoint through Dec. 14.

The experimental work, a collaboration between the Arlington-based dance troupe and local sculpture and sound artists Howard Connelly and Gina Biver, builds from an evolving script that can never be performed the same way twice.

The performance centers on a life-size, movable art apparatus that serves as the catalyst for the dancers' movements. The sculpture inadvertently directs the dancers depending on how they interact with it and affect its position within the space.

"The challenge for the performers is to stop what they're in the middle of doing and go into something else -- kind of like everyday life!" Franklin says.

In exploring chance occurrences and performers' reactions to them, "Incidence" seeks insight into the nature of what makes us tick.

For Franklin, getting there requires nuance. "I work somewhere in between extremely loose improvisation and somewhat detailed choreography," she says, adding that "Incidence" makes the best of both worlds in that way.

It's not clear whether the company will interact with the audience as well -- Franklin is known for that sort of thing. "We'll just have to see how it goes after the first couple of performances ... if that comes into play," she says.

» Flashpoint's Mead Theatre Lab, 916 G St. NW; through Dec. 14, $15; 866-811-4111. (Gallery Pl-Chinatown).

Written by Express contributor Johnathan Rickman
Photo courtesy Flashpoint