Dianne Vapnek is clearly a force to be reckoned with, a woman with purpose and drive. For the past 20 years, she’s directed those qualities — along with considerable warmth, generosity, artistic passion, and playfulness — to fostering and promoting contemporary dance: first as founder and executive director of SUMMERDANCE Santa Barbara, and now as founder, executive director, and artistic director of DANCEworks.
Vapnek and I met for coffee recently at Handlebar Coffee Roasters, just a block away from the Lobero Theatre, where DANCEworks will hold its first event of 2015 on Sunday, April 19, at 5 p.m. This will be New York City–based choreographer Adam Barruch’s premiere visit to Santa Barbara as the artist chosen for this year’s month-long residency at the Lobero Theatre. Although the residency itself won’t take place until the end of August, Barruch will be in town with his duet partner, Chelsea Bonosky, to dance excerpts from his recent work, Belladonna (see a clip of their hypnotic performance at adambarruch.com/videos). Following the presentation, Barruch will talk with audience members about the process of translating a narrative work into movement.
In a phone interview, Barruch told me that Belladonna is his first foray into narrative work. “It’s based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story ‘Rappaccini’s Daughter.’ I wanted to bring that work in particular, and to talk about the process with donors and deconstruct the piece a little bit, to show how I went about translating a narrative to physical theater.”