The world premiere of Come Home is a maritime-inspired contemporary dance performance exploring community, emotion, and the idea of returning home through movement and music. Presented by The Chase Brock Experience at Catskill Mountain Foundation’s Orpheum Performing Arts Center, the work blends modern dance, theater, and folk traditions into a theatrical storytelling experience.
The Fire Island Dance Festival. Photo by Matthew Murphy, James Koroni, Michael Hsu Rosen
Come Home Dance Performance and Maritime Themes
Chase Brock is the master and commander of dance as The Chase Brock Experience sails onto the stage of Catskill Mountain Foundation’s Orpheum Performing Arts Center in Tannersville, New York on Saturday, April 4 at 7:00 pm. Presented in partnership with Works & Process at the Guggenheim, the World Premiere of Come Home is the culmination of work reflecting the call and courage of the sea, drawing in the audience and celebrating what it means to come home.
The work takes us on a voyage with an original score by composer Eric Dietz and the music of old sea shanties, the music that might have been sung around a campfire or heard as a child. Watching a group of people on stage, practicing being good to each other, being in a community with each other in a beautiful way, Come Home seeks to illuminate the audience in a new way, creating depth or dramatic value to these songs. The music, which can be simultaneously fun, ancient and new, or emotionally cathartic, carries us away for a short time and allows us to continue that journey afterwards.
For many of us, the sea is alluring and vast, compelling us to explore new adventures. Come Home desires to move us through the turbulence and serenity of the undulating stormy seas and the transformative emotional states of coming home. There is joy and exhilaration on the open water, danger and fear at the height of storms, and gratitude and relief mixed with gladness upon returning to shore. The Chase Brock Experience tells this dramatic maritime story through the choreography of dance.
Chase Brock Choreography and Contemporary Dance Theater Style
Chase Brock, whose choreography was recently seen in the cult-hit musical Be More Chill on Broadway, started dancing at the age of six. Now at 42, he says that his relationship with dance in its many forms has been the longest relationship of his life. Come Home is the 35th dance that he has made for his company. Working in modern dance, as well as theater, ballet, opera and television, Brock finds dance so deeply human and innate. Everybody knows dance, because it is movement. The Chase Brock Experience has enjoyed a 19-year journey breaking down that barrier. People who think they don’t understand dance think that they need to know something more to know about it. Audiences are invited in and everybody’s welcome. Incorporating different kinds of dance, Come Home has modern dance movement, tap dance movement, all sorts of folk dance movement, and ballet. Brock loves to blur those boundaries, starting with his early training, and he has been that kind of dance maker for as long as he can remember.
When asked about his creative process in conceptualizing Come Home, Brock said that he loves an empty room with dancers. Come Home started with old English songs acting as the motor. Without any preparation in terms of dance vocabulary, the company began making. This is what Brock says generates the most alive dance in the most immediate and urgent-feeling work. The process avoids preplanning, asking questions throughout the process like, “ What if you did this?” or “What if you did it facing this way?” Having shown up every day to try again over the course of 19 years, the company has a well-oiled way of working together.
Regional Arts Community and Orpheum Performing Arts Center Events
The performance of Come Home in Tannersville is the world premiere, and there has been only one of the other thirty-five dances choreographed and performed by The Chase Brock Experience that have premiered outside of New York City. Brock is thrilled by this, because there’s something so special about our communities and our regional audiences that is unlike New York City. Being somewhere more focused, where a performance is a big event, the community shows up. The company meets those people face to face, in the lobby and in the theater, and also when they’re having dinner and buying their groceries. They love that!
Residencies have been part of The Chase Brock Experience from the beginning. The company has had three experiences at Catskill Mountain Foundation, returning every eight or nine years to Tannersville and Hunter. “It feels like one of our homes away from home,” Brock enthused. In addition, Come Home has the most partners of any work the company has ever made. That’s a testament to the arts community in America and the nonprofit arts world. It’s a perfect example of how we come together to make something brand new where there was nothing.
Company History and Audience Experience
When Chase Brock first started his company, some of the dancers thought it would be funny to write The Chase Brock Experience as their company name on the whiteboard outside their over-scheduled studio. They all thought it was silly, but eventually they had enough material to produce a first concert, which they named, “The Chase Brock Experience.” Nineteen years later, they are still trying to create an experience for the audience, knowing that the name is sort of tongue in cheek. Come Home is fun, includes many different elements and dance forms, and speaks to the audience in many different ways. The Chase Brock Experience is undoubtedly making good on its name.
See the world premiere of Come Home by The Chase Brock Experience at the Orpheum Performing Arts Center, 6050 Main Street, Tannersville on Saturday, April 4 at 7:00 pm. Tickets are available at catskillmtn.org.
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