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OREGON DAYS OF CULTURE
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www.oregondaysofculture.org
| Portland Tribune & Community Newspapers |
September 26 - 28, 2012
By Saundra Sorenson
Pamplin Media Group
If you see about 150 Portlanders taking
part in an energetic line dance on a Sunday in
Pioneer Square, rest assured— it’s not a flash
mob. It’s “LeGrandContinental,” a communi-
ty-basedmodern dance performance that has
offered Portlanders of every
age and background the
chance to take to one of the
city’s most public of stages.
And the gathering isn’t hap-
penstance.
“Every single one of these
people auditioned,” says Paul
King, co-founder of White
Bird Dance, which organized
and is presenting Le Grand
Continental. “None of them is
a professional dancer.”
The performers come from
all over the city, and in some
cases, are from as far away as Salem. What
they have in common is a desire to partici-
pate in community-based dance — and to
commit to 10 weeks of rehearsal.
But you could also say they were brought
together by a grant from theOregonCultural
Trust.
The OCT gave away nearly $300,000 to or-
ganizations in the Portland metro area over
the past year. Recipients have included inde-
pendent publishing houses, the Portland Op-
era and a literary festival, among others. The
common thread among grant recipients is
that the organizations all promote the arts
and humanities, often in ways that foster
community engagement, as White Bird
Dance has chosen to with its latest produc-
tion. Thismerited the company a $5,000 grant
that will support three separate productions,
with “Le Grand Continental” being the first.
The 30-minute routine is expertly choreo-
graphed and split into seven separate parts.
What might first seem like a spontaneous
crowd eruption is, in fact, a show that has
been performed three times before, inMexico
City, New York City and Philadelphia. The
piece was created by Montreal-based chore-
ographer Sylvain Émard and has been de-
scribed as a “contemporary re-imagining of a
traditional festival line-dance” — one that
hearkens back to an older culture where
neighbors would gather to revel in the center
of town.
Polishing a 150-member routine hasn’t
been an easy process. For 10weeks, the danc-
ers have attended Tuesday and Thursday
rehearsals at the Portland Expo Center. In
between, they were encouraged to rehearse
each of the seven movements of the show at
home using a video link that led them
through the choreography guided by beat
counts or music.
Every other week, rehearsal assistants
have offeredmovement clinics
for dancers who want extra
practice.
“It’s become a huge family,”
King says, adding that the Ex-
po Center has been generous
in donating time and space.
Portland Center for the Per-
formingArts also stepped in to
help with the auditions, which
sawmore than 250members of
the community try for a spot in
the troupe.
In the end, it wasn’t exclu-
sion that cut the cast down to
around 150 people, King says — it was the
time commitment that made some would-be
dancers drop out.
“LeGrandContinental” is one of three pro-
grams that White Bird Dance plans to pres-
ent with the help of the OCT grant. On Oct.
13, White Bird Dance will bring the Trisha
Brown Dance Company — the namesake of
its famed modernist choreographer — to
Portland for a single performance. On Feb. 19
of next year, White Bird will host New Zea-
land’s Black Grace troupe, featuring Samoan
and Maori dancers. The performances show-
case both the physically demanding and sto-
rytelling aspects of the dancers’ heritage.
“It will be the first timewe’ve ever brought
them,” King says of Black Grace. “It’s our
educational community engagement project
in the Portland Public School System.We hire
teachers to create a curriculum for each of
the dance companies once a year, and this
year it’s based around indigenous people of
the world.” After students learn about native
New Zealand culture, they’ll be invited to
watch the group perform live.
Now in its 15th year, White Bird Dance
hosts a dozen visiting dance companies an-
nually. To mark this landmark anniversary,
King says, White Bird wanted to celebrate
Portland’s diversity — and engage its unique
citizens.
The dancers who came out and stuck with
the rehearsals are neighbors and, in some
cases, family: There’s a mother and her
9-year-old daughter, an aunt and her 11-year-
old nephew, and a mother, father and their
two daughters performing side by side.
“As part of the plan, the message was that
we were reaching out to encourage people to
audition,” King says. “We wanted to go into
every segment of the community. We were
encouraging everyone to push this to as di-
verse a population as we could.”
Two free performances of “Le Grand Con-
tinental” will take place at Pioneer Court-
house Square on Sunday, Sept. 30, at 2 p.m.
and 4 p.m. The public is invited to attend. For
more information about White Bird Dance,
visit whitebird.org.
An Oregon Cultural Trust grant to White Bird Dance
is bringing Portland’s amateur performers together
“every single one
of these people
auditioned. none
of them is a
professional
dancer.”
— Paul King, co-founder
of White Bird Dance
5.092612
in the town square
DANCING
More than 150 dancers from around Portland will
participate in “Le Grand Continental” on Sept. 30 in
Pioneer Courthouse Square, with performances at 2
p.m. and 4 p.m.
PHoto Courtesy of WHite Bird danCe