At 620: An innovative new dance experience from Project Alchemy

Jones

When he’s not moving, Alex Jones tends to be thinking about a universal question: What is dance?

The choreographer-in-residence at thestudio@620, Jones is also the founder and director of Project Alchemy, one of the moving parts inside St. Petersburg’s small-but-fierce modern dance community.

For the group’s Momentum Choreographers show at thestudio, which opened a four-day run Thursday night, Jones and dancers Mads Waterman, Renee Williams and April Newcity had to think outside a box already restricted by Covid.

They began by considering their potential audience: “If you’re going to display a dance film on a wall, what’s going to make us want to come to a space and see it, as opposed to something we can livestream on thestudio@620 site?” Jones recalls. “We started talking about installations, and what can an installation be?

“And where can you project these things? And what is the experience and the atmosphere that you’re trying to add?”

Photo: Josh Ball

Momentum Choreographers Showcase: A Body(less) Dance Exhibit is a walk-through installation, with masks and social distancing required. It is constructed as a maze connecting three rooms, and the performances are via wall projections, video screens and QR codes that allow for interaction through cell phones.

“I don’t want to give too much away, but looking at all three of these exhibits, they’re all offering something that you can’t get by just being at home,” says Jones. “Like you do have to actually come in and experience each one of these.

“Some of them are super-interactive, some of them are super-peaceful, some give you the sense of confinement – what is it like to be stuck in one spot?”

The walk-through experience, he explains, takes approximately 30 minutes – you’re allowed to linger – and reserved times are suggested, so he and his staff can keep everyone as separated as possible.

“It’s a bodyless dance exhibit, in the meaning that the choreographers and the performers are not in the space,” says Jones. “However, that doesn’t mean that there’s not dance still happening – obviously, because the projection is dance.

“But the way in which you transverse the space, and the different rooms, is also dance. Your body in the space, moving, whether it’s reacting to the prompts, or it’s reacting to the installations, or it’s just standing … because stillness can still be dance. You are now the dancing body in the space.”

Info and reservations here.