The Trey McIntyre Project

2 December 2010, Boise

If you haven't heard of the Trey McIntyre Project you either know as little about modern dance as the rest of us, or don't live in Boise. The dance company moved here from San Francisco a couple years back and besides bringing a boatload of talent to the area, their spirit of community and creative camaraderie has galvanized the arts scene here. And having seen them perform I can say they made a modern dance lover out of someone who had appreciated it the way a linebacker might appreciate hearing a bird call in the trees at the edge of the field during a break in tackling drills. Which is to say, I haven't paid much attention to dance over the years, but on one viewing its beauty sang deeply into me. Nothing touches it, except perhaps jazz or opera. Like those arts, modern dance combines the physical with the meta-physical, within a rhythm or field that is at once predetermined and spontaneous, stage-set and otherworldly. A friend of mine, the writer Robert Mailer Anderson, once described opera as glass blowing while walking a tightrope. Well these guys are doing something just as impressive, not with their voices but with their springing dashing contorting bodies, and so you might say they're skipping rope over hot-blown glass, making Murano-like patterns in the molten air around them. Again though, for folks around here, better than their feats on stage are their contributions to the community, on scales both large and philosophical, and small and personal as a drink at the bar. In fact we were at a bar downtown when Trey said to me: I love Boise. You have to put up with some small town stuff, but there are great people doing great things here, and you don't have to put up with the big city crap. Besides, the big city crap is always there when you want it.

So TMP puts on an annual art show called 9+1, in which invited artists working in a range of mediums —from film, to oils, to installations—come up with a project inspired by the dance company. There are nine dancers, and Trey, the choreographer, is the plus one. Anna photographed the dancers as they practiced a Basque-inspired piece called Aranza. By slowing the camera's shutter speed and obscuring the focus, she produced a batch of photographs that were darkly blurred with ethereal orbs of colored light. She then made realistic paintings of the photos. The result, with their glossy dark backdrops, are what you might call Dutch still-lifes with light. Ribbons of movement caught in the moment, a twirl, a blur, captured and held closely to view, still and potent and vibrating, revealing the dancers for what they are, light and energy, which is to say spirit. The paintings are meditative works. By viewing them they put you in a serene state of mind. Your function follows their form. And in that second of release, suspended in the air between worlds of thought and hassle and ambition, you become a dancer yourself.

The 9+1 opening was a kick, too, to say the least. Held at their studios in one of the old warehouses by the river, the show was bisected into two rooms, one a traditional gallery space, the other, deemed the lowbrow room, more like a carnival setting. You could sip wine and ponder in the former, or swill beer and yak it up in the latter. One of the hits of the lowbrow room was an installation piece by Amy Westover and Jennifer Wood. Their elaborate Dance-O-Matic human-vending-machine took your money gladly and gave you back something to remember, a keepsake of dancer trading cards or a jolt of spontaneous human-mechanical interaction, depending on your fancy. The DIY boutique Bricolage set up a whimsical shop, where you could browse or buy artwork of theirs and others, notably the precociously insightful color-crayon portraits of each dancer done by a certain five-year-old by the name of Soren. It was a hell of a fun night. And judging by the number of pieces that sold, both locally and elsewhere, the event was a pecuniary success as well. But like a dazzling performance on stage, you had to see it in person to truly know, and remember, the brilliance of the moment.