Bow and Sparrow

Nov. 8, 2009

Bow & Sparrow
An ‘urban fairy tale’ of high-flying dancers

Pat Stinson 11/9/09

Like an arrow sailing toward a bull’s-eye, or a songbird heading to its migratory home, Northern Michigan native Alayna Stroud has always known the path she would travel. The co-artistic director of Bow & Sparrow, a San Francisco aerial dance company, will share her life-long love of movement and adventure when she returns to Traverse City with members of her ensemble for the Michigan premiere of “NeverAfter” at InsideOut Gallery, this Thursday and Friday, Nov. 12-13.
“I am truly delighted to have this opportunity to share my art for the first time with my family and friends,” said Stroud, who took dance classes and attended junior high in Traverse City, followed by a year of high school at Interlochen Arts Academy. “Many people that I’ve known all my life have never seen me perform, and I feel lucky to share my passion with them.”
Blending the arts with entertainment, “NeverAfter” is described as an urban fairy tale for grown-ups. It stars “Alison,” an adult Alice in Wonderland, who is looking for Mr. Right, despite being too busy to date. A comedic dating mishap takes her down a rabbit hole to another world, “where people levitate, everything moves rhythmically, and everyone is simply mad.”
The performance combines circus-inspired acrobatics and modern dance with music, theater, rhythmic tap, comedy, and improv. Stroud calls it “theater with a cocktail party atmosphere.” Audience members are invited to chat between works, follow dancers as they perform around the room, and enjoy a dance party after the performance.

INTERACTIVE PERFORMANCE
“It’s an old-school format, different than most dance and theater shows,” Stroud said. “We do a lot of clubs, halls and bars, where the audience and performers are all in the same space together. It’s interactive, and I craft my performance on the experience I would want to have.”
Dancers display their strength and skill on the trapeze, inside a Cyr wheel (a rolling metal hoop controlled by the dancer within), and with slings, ropes, and one-of-a-kind aerial apparatus they’ve created.
“We train by doing it over and over,” Stroud said, referring to her creative partner and fellow aerial dancer, Kate Law. “I teach a lot and do yoga and Pilates,” Stroud continued, adding that upper body strength and discipline are essential for acrobatics. “We’re both certified yoga instructors. It informs how we teach (aerial dance).”
According to Stroud, the two were both thrill-seeking kids. Stroud satisfied her need for adventure by climbing trees and riding horses while growing up on a dairy farm in Marion, a farming community southeast of Cadillac. Law, who hails from Utah, found excitement in snowboarding. Both enrolled in ballet at an early age, but Stroud had a special reason: a serious cardio-respiratory condition that caused her heart to race, her skin to turn blue, and her small body to faint from lack of oxygen during exertion. A specialist prescribed strengthening exercises, so Stroud’s mother, Christine Blackledge of Traverse City, signed her up for ballet.

DANCING CONSTANTLY
Blackledge said her daughter took to dance immediately and did whatever was necessary to attend classes, even saying once: “Dancing is breathing to me, Mom.”
“Alayna danced constantly,” Blackledge said, laughing at the recollection. “If you went to put money in the meter, she would be dancing and performing somersaults on the sidewalk. Anytime we took photographs, she would pose like a dancer. She was more focused as a young girl than most adults.”
“She had this passion for it,” said Lisa Bredahl, Stroud’s first ballet teacher and the current director of the Kalamazoo School of Music and Dance. “She loved doing it and really seemed to thrive at it.” Bredahl was so impressed by the determined youngster that she named her daughter after her.
A high school scholarship took Stroud to North Carolina School for the Arts. She later moved to San Francisco, where she danced in various companies and studied with pioneering dancer Terry Sendgraff, who taught her to “visualize ideas.”
“She danced ’til she was in her 70s,” Stroud said of her mentor, who founded Fly By Nite, the country’s first trapeze dance troupe for women. In her dances, Sendgraff combined circus tricks with dancing, using aerial apparatus she created.
Despite her excitement with Sendgraff’s “whole new dance scene,” Stroud returned to the arts school in North Carolina to earn her BFA, then traveled to Costa Rica before settling again in San Francisco. At 30, she said she’s considered “middle-aged” for a dancer and regularly receives massage and acupuncture. When a shoulder injury forced her into a six-month leave, she took acting and improvisation classes from Zoe Galvez, now a member of Bow & Sparrow.
“I had never used my voice,” said the dancer, known for performing 100-foot-high aerial feats, without a net. “I was terrified
of that.”
Everyone in the show dances and sings or dances and acts, (other collaborators are Chris Libby and Julianne Harper), and movements
on the ground and in the air are improvisa-tional. Stroud said that playing, while taking risks and making choices, are concepts that work well together.
“Art in San Francisco is about World Peace, Women’s Rights…” she explained. “A lot of what this company has been about is creating entertainment that’s fun, what we would go see, a break that takes you to another place…not the doldrums of hard reality.”
Advance tickets for the 8 p.m. show are $15: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/86450, or $20 at the door. To sign up for workshops on aerial dance (no experience necessary), rhythmic tap or theater improv, visit
www.bowandsparrow.org.