Lexington, KY - Kate Hadfield had just finished a Thanksgiving potluck with her friends Courtney Guidry, Brooke Thomas, Cara Terry and Erica Maryman last November when the conversation turned to a very familiar subject for the women: dance. A longtime dancer and choreographer, Hadfield shared with these particular friends, all of whom she had danced with at some point in her career, a common frustration -- the lack of local contemporary dance options had left them creatively stifled for years.
"There is a ton of ballet (locally), but there isn't really much outside of that," she said. "You can go and see 'The Nutcracker' and 'Giselle' and 'Sleeping Beauty' every year, but everyone's seen those."
Hadfield, 25, has been dancing since she was a little girl; she started teaching dance at age 14 and choreographing at 19, while dancing for the University of Kentucky Dance Ensemble, and has won more than a dozen choreography awards during her career.
"I finally said, 'I'm so sick of us not performing and not performing the way we want -- we can make this happen,'" Hadfield said, recalling this particular conversation last November. "All we have to do is just decide that we're going to do it.'"
What the girls ultimately decided to do was form a contemporary dance company that would provide an outlet for an art form that has been neglected in Lexington; the first performance by the group, called Movement Continuum, will take place Nov. 4 -
5 at the Downtown Arts Center. The performance, called "Flaming Youth," is based in the 1920s, and fuses contemporary music (White Stripes, Flying Lotus, modern composer Max Richter) with No. 1 hits from the 1920s; the dance styles represented are also a blend of new and old. Routines have been choreographed by the company's dancers and a couple of guest choreographers, and the performance was funded by private donations along with an Art Meets Activism Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women.
The performance reflects issues surrounding women's liberation, feminism and a still-existing disparity in societal standards regarding gender.
"The whole point of the show is to raise awareness about the similarities between a time period that was 90 years ago and where we are now as women," said Hadfield, who studied gender and women's studies at the University of Kentucky.
As for taking on such a massive professional and creative undertaking, with four of her closest female friends? Hadfield says she knew she was getting into something huge - and has invariably been faced with a number of unforeseen details and road bumps - but that she wouldn't trade it for anything.
"Any time you have best friends working together in a business situation, it's tough," she said. "But the thing is, we are so close, so any time something comes up, we're able to quash things as they come."
"We know that we're working toward something so much bigger than any of us could have accomplished individually," she added.
Hadfield took some time out of her busy schedule to answer a few questions. For more information on Movement Continuum, visit www.kentuckymovement.com.
Whom are some choreographers/dancers that you admire?
Everything comes back to Bob Fosse for me. The first time I saw "Cabaret," I was so blown away, I didn't think about anything else for weeks. In my opinion, no one's come close to his talent or visions as a choreographer.
What is it about dance that is so appealing to you?
Dance is an art form that pulls together music, the beauty of visual artistry, athletics and the creative mind. Lexington needs to see that. Find a 2-year-old, put on some music, and see what they do - one of our initial instincts as humans is to move whenever we hear music, or to respond with physical movement whenever we can't find the words to describe how we feel. Some emotions are simply too big, too dense, too intricate and tangled to be able to be narrowed down to a few choice words. I think that is why dance is so appealing to me ... your body wants to move and be used.
What can people expect to see in your upcoming performance "Flaming Youth," and in your future performances?
People can expect to see honest, raw, human emotion. They can expect to see athleticism and aesthetics intertwined with one another. They can expect to see us having the time of our lives. But, mainly they can expect to see a story and world unfold that will challenge them and their perceptions of our current state in America. That's what I hope to accomplish through all of our shows. I want people to be transported into another world that is not only entertaining to them, but also spurs their brain into dialogue.
What would you like to say to local artists who are frustrated that their preferred art form may not be as well represented in Lexington as they would like it to be?
I would just say to keep moving. Keep creating. If the reason you wake up in the morning is to create, then you can't stop doing it regardless of how disgruntled or frustrated you might become. ... Your time might not be now to be noticed, but you will have a time, and even if you're affecting one person with your art then you are making a difference.