Art in Movement

Headwaters Dance Co’s “Montana Suite” Showcases Outsiders’ Interpretations

By Marley McKenna, 2-15-07

New York choreographer John Jasperse took audiences to a bleak interpretation of the Montana Hi-line last week.

The piece, performed during the Headwaters Dance Company’s concert at the Missoula Children’s Theatre last week, is the second part of an ambitious four-year project for the company called the “Montana Suite.” The project brings nationally-known choreographers to Montana where they spend 10 days in a specific region and then create pieces based on their impressions of the places.

Last Spring, choreographer Jane Comfort spent time in the Boulder Batholith region and created part one of the suite with that landscape as the inspiration.

Jasperse choreographed his work based on his impression of the Montana Hi-line, starting in Browning and ending in Fort Peck, through a ten-day experience interacting with the land, the people, and the area’s sense of space. 

Amy Ragsdale, founder of Headwaters Dance Company says it is important to “bring in an outside point of view to see what they really see.”

The entire concert showcased last week included seven dances, five composed by outside artists and two by Ragsdale in cooperation with the dancers of her company. The company itself is an annual selection of six individuals, all of whom happen to be women this year.

Ragsdale, who has traveled and lived in many parts of the world says she aims to truly say something through dance. To that end, she says, “I choose dancers very carefully.” She says they must be both physically exceptional and they must contribute interesting ideas to the dances and the company as a whole. “Are they thoughtful?” is one of the questions she says she always asks herself before committing a dancer to the company.

This content-based dance brought itself to the stage at last weekend’s concert in each of the seven dances. Ragsdale says she always strives to, “make work that I care about and that is accessible.”

Jasperse’s Part II of “Montana Suite” stood out as the most haunting work. An outsider’s perspective became a new look into Montana, a place the audience calls home. The dance is desolate and melancholy, using imagery and sounds of the railroad, the land, and the survivors who remain a part of the Hi-line. 

The sound score for the piece was composed by Hi-line native Phillip Aaberg, who created an aural backdrop with actual recordings of the railroad, children playing and a parade procession in a Hi-line town.

The audience members talked among themselves as the piece ended, giving mixed and generally discomforted responses. One audience member said, “I find it deeply disturbing. I’ve been dancing for fifty years and I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s so down.”

The dance evoked a struggle socially, economically, and relationally. Struggle pushed forward as the ultimate message of the dance.  The dancers’ faces throughout the entire piece are hallow and vacant.  They seem to be barely alive, performing the piece with some deep resignation to the notion that life is simply survival.  While Jasperse says there is a specific beauty to this, the resonating feeling is of deep desperation.  Unsettling and exhausting, the work certainly brings a much darker view to what most Montanans see as peaceful sweeping farms and small towns of the Hi-line.

Jasperse says, “There’s something very lunar about this part of the country. Something very harsh.”

The show as a whole aims to shake normalcy of dance, and perhaps even go past the mainstream of modern dance. From political statements to personal struggle, Headwaters Dance Company takes on the great goal of moving past art for art’s sake into a space where dance becomes dialogue.

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