Flannery Gregg was at dance rehearsal. When she bent backward and her partner held her up, she looked right up at the Byzantine-style rotunda at the Los Angeles City Hall, where three government workers were taking a break from their day, looking down and watching them practice.
She couldn’t help but crack a smile.
Gregg, who graduated last summer from UCLA’s world arts and cultures department, is a dancer in “Governing Bodies,” a site-specific dance performance by the Collage Dance Theatre that celebrates the company’s 25th anniversary.
“Governing Bodies” opens at the historic City Hall Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with two additional performances on Nov. 13 at 4 p.m. and 9 p.m.
The performance touches on issues of what the body can do in a normally unconventional space for body movement, according to Gregg.
“While we’re practicing, we’re seeing people walking through and doing their business. We get our inspiration from pedestrians as well as abstract movement from the architecture,” she said.
The performance will take the audience through all parts of the historic building, beginning at the rotunda, passing through long hallways into the City Council Chambers, which includes a half circle of chairs and pews, and eventually arriving outside on the courtly Spring Street steps.
Artistic director and choreographer Heidi Duckler founded the Collage Dance Theatre while studying dance and pursuing her master’s degree at UCLA.
“I was very interested in popular culture and objects in daily life, and the intersection between daily life and performance,” Duckler said.
“It occurred to me that it’ll be interesting to … take dance out of the studio and into real life situations. So that’s how it started,” she said.
The company decided that the appropriate place to celebrate its 25th anniversary was at the iconic City Hall, located in the heart of Los Angeles.
Duckler approached Councilwoman Jan Perry, a longtime supporter of the company and agreed on the idea. The company even has a promotional video on YouTube in which Perry makes a cameo.
“The costumes are a kind of a uniformity of the (government workers’) culture, but at the same time, the piece is really about the individual and the humanity behind that,” Duckler said.
According to Duckler, a site-specific performance is one that really takes the environment as the inspiration and content for the work.
The piece is not rehearsed in a studio and then transferred to a stage but rather created in the very performance space. That’s why the company has been rehearsing at City Hall, even during the building’s work hours.
While UCLA alumna Eva Wilder is not performing in “Governing Bodies,” she has been a dancer at the Collage Dance Theatre for the past three years.
Working on site-specific performances with the company has helped her mature and open up as a performer and dancer, Wilder said.
She said site-specific performances are more challenging and demanding but also more rewarding.
“It really asks a lot of the dancer to be really focused and willing to explore your own physicality as a dancer, to really be also much more in-depth in terms of what are your own ideas and concept,” Wilder said.
Wilder said she believes the level of activity on the audience’s part makes the dance a lot more accessible for them.
Someone who isn’t a dancer may not always “get” the performance, but they can relate to the environment. And when they follow the dancers’ shift from space to space, they are able to see more of a story.
“Whether or not we are asking the audience to take part, it’s just the nature of the work,” Wilder said.
“Governing Bodies” will also bring in other local artists from the L.A. community to perform flamenco, West African and even break dancing.
“It’s been such a wonderful honor to work with so many talented artists in so many fields of dance, to come together in performance,” Duckler said.
“I think it speaks to the process of art making … and I hope that there can be more experiences like that, where artists gather and create work and celebrate significant accomplishments,” she said.