Capital Records Live!, a multimedia concert series, returns with the debut of Dark Blue Sea, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 3. at the GE Theatre at Proctors.
Nadine Medina, owner of the Troy Dance Factory, explains that this project has been evolving as a collaborative effort since last fall when she was leading a dance class.
Medina facilitated and led a Local Musician Choreography Dance Class as part of her dance studio, Troy Dance Factory. In an interview with Nippertown, Medina explains that she was teaching a class that helped bring local musicians to the dancers who could share their vision of their own music and then see it represented through choreography.
The Sea The Sea, an upstate New York indie-folk duo, agreed to work with the class, and brought in a piece that really spoke to a recent assault Medina had experienced three weeks prior. Medina described this as a horrifying, very traumatizing event that she shared with her dancers, and they used the music to represent her experience.
That initial process had Medina thinking. “I wanted to figure out how to do it on stage, and wasn’t really sure of the next steps,” she explained. But she spoke about her idea with Mira Costa from The Sea The Sea, and Mira was supportive.
Medina humbly admits she wasn’t certain of what, if anything, would come of her idea about combining local music, choreography, and video on stage.
When Girl Blue artist Arielle O’Keefe joined to represent “Lolita” in her spring Local Musician Choreography dance class, Medina casually mentioned her idea. And O’Keefe generously processed her ideas with her even further, even offering to lend her music to the concept of a full stage live production that tells a story through music, video, and dance.
Medina then connected with Dark Honey, and as their ideas took off, Medina reflects “it was super exciting! I don’t think any of us realized the amount of work it would take, though,” she laughed.
Medina credits Costa’s theatrical background with lighting and staging, as well as O’Keefe’s creative questioning and thinking through of concepts, with the joint project being brought to fruition. She also humbly admits that the story, while deeply personal, relied upon Jamie Spaulding at Chromoscope Pictures to help create a stronger arc.
The outcome is uniquely personal and unprecedented in our area. With Dark Blue Sea, Capital Records Live! ventures into new territory, bringing movement and film to the fore alongside stage performances by Dark Honey and Eddie Award-winners Girl Blue and The Sea The Sea.
Dark Blue Sea is a three-act narrative dance performance based on interpretations of a single phrase—“Together, I lost myself with you.” It follows the story of a couple who shared a deep bond, but is a bond that the female partner dissolves with tremendous heart ache. Act II represents how lost one can be after losing a partner, even by choice, before finding peace again in Act III.
The idea that it is possible to lose oneself both within and without another person is the deeply personal message Medina wanted to share. She herself has had that experience.
The Gloversville native grew up dancing in her local studio, coming to dance at age 7, “a bit later than most,” she noted. Medina left the area to go to college, and travelled as well to Michigan and Tennessee before returning home to work in her field of Engineering.
But she longed to dance, and took classes along the way to keep herself connected to movement. She often had felt she wasn’t as good as others, and reflected on how this impacted her confidence in creating this project.
“I had shared with my aunt that I wanted to start a dance studio, and I knew I didn’t have as much training as other people did who had done this before me. I told her I had so much to learn,” Medina recalls.
“And then what she said has really stuck with me. My aunt asked me why I felt others were more deserving than I was. She pointed out that if I wait until I know everything, I will never do anything.”
Medina knows about love and loss. She ended a long term relationship and also struggled with her identity after that break up. “This production is really about what happens when you walk away, the heavy lifting you have to do to figure out who you are, untethered to another,” Medina explains.
The concept of loss—loss of love, of faith, of self—is one explored through all mediums of art. Singers sing about it, writers write about it, painters paint about it. Without loss, and, to a greater extent, the overcoming of loss, some of the most powerful pieces of art would cease to exist.
Combining the abstraction of dance with the raw power of live music and stunning multimedia visuals, Synergia offers its viewers the opportunity to experience and explore loss in a new, completely unique way.
Joining Artistic Director/Choreographer Medina on State Street will be lead dancers Dellon Moy and Haley Wyant, as well as Amanda Blount, Olga Bogdanova, Kat Eberhardt, Kelly Jeanmaire and Leigh Schroder.
Tickets for Capital Records Live! Dark Blue Sea, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 3, are available at the Box Office at Proctors, 432 State Street, Schenectady; by phone at 518.346.6204; and online at proctors.org.
Dark Blue Sea will also be performed October 4th at 8 pm at Helsinki Hudson, and again October 11th at 7 pm at Cohoes Music Hall.
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