The Rochester City Ballet, a krumping university professor and ensemble musicians will gather this weekend for a unique festival. Vision of Sound, which pairs local composers and choreographers to perform new work together, returns for four shows of eclectic music and dance February 19-22.
The shows will be staged at four local schools, including SUNY Brockport, Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, Rochester Institute of Technology and Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva — one performance at each. The first evening at Brockport is symbolic: a return to Vision of Sound’s roots to celebrate its 20th anniversary.
Alaina Olivieri, the co-artistic director and a dancer, said the fest has always highlighted the diversity of talent in Western and Central New York.
“The performers across the board are all from this area, and I think it’s really important to emphasize that,” she said. “There’s a lot of great talent everywhere, even in little towns around New York. So I think it’s cool to emphasize that we’re all homegrown or living here currently.”
Alaina’s role finds her pairing the composers with the choreographers; this year there are seven of each. But Vision of Sound can be hard to quantify, perhaps even overwhelming to describe. It’s produced in partnership with the four colleges as well as the Society for New Music, a contemporary classical group in Syracuse. The festival spans 50 performers across three artistic mediums in a program blending music, dance and digital media.
This might be a good thing. As co-artistic director Mark Olivieri said, it creates many entry points.
“The music is just all over the map. The choreography is all over the map,” he said. “I think audiences like that because there’s a little bit of something for everyone. No one’s leaving there going, ‘oh, I just didn’t see a piece that really resonated with me.'”
Mark currently teaches music at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, though he spent a decade as the composer in residence at SUNY Brockport’s dance department. During his time at Brockport, the department had two marimbas. When it came time to plan this year’s program, he found out that’s no longer the case.
So he made a quick call to the fine arts department: “I said, ‘hey, we have this concert. Could we steal one from you for the day?'”
An artistic director’s job is never done. But the performers make it easy, Alaina said, and despite being a multidisciplinary event taking place at venues in several different geographic locations across Central New York and the Finger Lakes, Vision of Sound always finds a way.
“Of course, there’s, ‘we need an extension cord’ and ‘grab a music stand’ and ‘how does this light thing work?'” she said. “But ultimately, all the performers just want to perform.”
This is why the new crop of talent is exciting and important for Alaina to note. She must pay attention to which compositions make the most sense for ballet or krump or modern dance movement and pair accordingly. Almost all of the choreographers have some affiliation with Brockport, a way to hearken back to the festival’s origin.
“When you see a concert of one particular dance company, you often see the same movement rhetoric from piece to piece to piece, and here you’re going to not have that happen at all,” Alaina said. “Every piece is going to be entirely different movement, and that’s exciting.”
It’s a lot of work. It always is. The Olivieris have already begun planning next year’s festival because that’s how long it takes to bring Vision of Sound to life.
But it’s always worth it, they said. Not least of all because in the end, the performers get paid. During a time of tightening belts and defunding arts organizations, that alone feels like a win.
“We pay dancers now. We pay choreographers. We pay musicians. That’s important,” Mark said. “It’s important to find money, especially now in a culture where money for the arts is quite scarce. Being able to do that is no small task.”
The Vision of Sound festival begins Thurday, Feb. 19 with a 7:30 p.m. performance at SUNY Brockport’s Hartwell Dance Theater and runs through Sundaywith one performance each at Onondaga Community College (Feb. 20), RIT (Feb. 21) and Hobart and William Smith (Feb. 22). More info and tickets here.
