It’s not just coincidental that Resnick’s company will be dancing in proximity to so much painting and sculpture.
“I have always been inspired by visual art,” Resnick says. “I’m more accustomed to working with music, but having performed in galleries around here before – Zask twice, and ArtLife Gallery twice – it came to me that it would be interesting if there was a group of dancers that were ready to go – let’s say a gallery is doing an exhibit on Matisse; I would be able to do the research about the time, the music that was happening during that period, and then we’d come in as a trio or quartet of dancers and become the moving art off the wall. Exhibit specific. Not so abstractly that you can’t understand what it is, but relevant to the time that the art was created.”
This is just one of the directions that No Strings Attached is moving towards, and, so far, with a graceful stride.
Start, stop, start again
With a full scholarship in classical ballet, Lissa Resnick trained with the San Francisco Ballet and Joffrey Ballet schools, performed with San Francisco Ballet in their trainingship program, and participated with other companies – both classical- and contemporary-oriented – in the Bay Area.
“Then I had a somewhat long departure from the dance world,” Resnick says. “I went into a period of serious reading about myself.” She’d begun dance classes at the age of nine. “I moved away from home when I was 14 to train with San Francisco Ballet and perform with them. It was – I don’t want to use ‘cloistered’ – but it’s a very focused life, that of a young ballerina training with a company.
“I left the dance world completely for probably a decade, where I then got a college degree in exercise physiology, and then got my doctorate in physical therapy and started practicing that with children. Pediatrics. Meanwhile, [I was] learning more about life outside of just balletic, structured life.”
So what happened next? Resnick met a choreographer and decided to take a class with her.
“It was many, many years after my professional dancing. She was creating a new work and asked me to be a part of it, and so that was my reentry into the dance world. That was about five years ago.
“Fast-forward,” Resnick continues. “I worked as an independent freelance dancer with choreographers, continued my training… Fast-forward many years, and we moved here with my family – I have two children, ages four and seven – and we relocated (fromSan Francisco) toLos Angeles two years ago.”
Finding herself in a new environment didn’t suppress Resnick’s ambitions.
“With no connections within the dance world, I started No Strings Attached Dance Company because I felt I had work inside that needed to come out. So that’s where it was born. It was just a desire to self-produce my own work.”
Stringing it together
“It took me about a year to get acclimated and to find a place to rehearse and study,” Resnick says. “I started No Strings Dance Company about one year ago. Our first rehearsal as a group was technically Sept. 11, 2011.”
The ensemble’s inaugural public performance was last November at a Veterans Day show held in the Hermosa Beach Playhouse. Resnick’s producer,Alice Taylor, helped her to secure the engagement.
How did you find your dancers, and how many of them are there?
The question’s not as simple as it seems.
“They find me or I find them,” Resnick replies. “I don’t know. More practically speaking I suppose you could call it class-hopping. Many dancers class-hop, meaning we will take a class at the Edge Performing Arts Center inL.A., and then we’ll take classes at Dance Arts inHollywood, and classes inTorrance. And by doing that you keep your eyeballs open.
“As a choreographer,” she adds, “I look for classically-trained dancers who are still able to release in a more contemporary way. It’s a cold, beautiful image, but then release as well. That’s what I look for, and that’s what I find.”
Of the half-dozen dancers in her group, the majority of them live locally, in the South Bay.
Will all of your dancers be in both upcoming shows?
“No,” Resnick says. “Thus the name No Strings Attached. I wanted a group that can come and go artistically as they need to. I don’t really believe in always having the same dancers. Although it’s wonderful to have a core group, the reality right now is…” – that L.A.’s a great big city, with dance opportunities everywhere, and Resnick doesn’t want to restrain her dancers from exploring other options. Indeed, her company is aptly named.
Saturday night, Sunday afternoon
The Hermosa Beach Art Walk takes place this weekend, and No Strings Attached performs on the second day, Sunday, at noon and 3 p.m.
“We are presenting one new work in progress,” Resnick says. “It’s titled ‘En Plein Air: Dance Meets Canvas.’ It’s a collaboration with local visual artist Michael Lightsey. He does painting and visual art.
“What we’re doing, we’re exploring a dancer’s movement across canvas with paint. On the lawn, under the direction of the artist and myself, my dancers will create live for you a painting on the ground.”
This may conjure up visions of pretty girls leaving impressions of their bodies – breasts, thighs, derrieres – as they squirm like eels in a basket, but that isn’t the case this time.
“Primarily it will be feet,” Resnick explains, “because that’s what meets the ground the most.” One dancer will use her forearms in one segment, another uses her hands.
“Artistically, the direction is also to think about how might you paint with space in front of you as well; it’s not just the canvas on the lawn.” In short, she has told her dancers, it’s about the plein air [surrounding] you; what are you doing with that space?
“There’s a bit of a theatrical element to it,” Resnick continues. “There’s a prologue in which we watch this character emerge. We’re not sure [what we’re seeing]; what is he doing with that broom? And why is there a canvas 18-feet long? What’s happening?” And then the piece unravels, literally, from there.
“En Plein Air” will also be performed on Saturday evening at Peggy Zask’s gallery, but in deference to the artwork – “I wouldn’t want to splatter it,” Resnick says – paint won’t be used. No matter, the program will showcase virtually everything the company has achieved, and it complements the current exhibition, “Breaking Conventions: Art and Architecture.”
“It’s a sit-down event,” Resnick says, “and we’re going to present our repertoire that we’ve created over the last eight or nine months. When this opportunity came up with Peggy I jumped at it, because it’s such a beautiful backdrop. Who wouldn’t want to perform in a gallery, right?”
No Strings Attached, with dancers Ellen Bigelow, Margaret Hurley, Erica Lyn Pena, Cham Nou, and Lissa Resnick, presents “Dance in Situ” at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday at Zask Gallery, Promenade on the Peninsula, 550 Deep Valley Drive, Suite 151, Rolling Hills Estates. Doors open at 7. Tickets, $10; children free. Reception to follow. Call (310) 429-0973. No Strings Attached Dance Company performs “Ein Plein Air” at the Hermosa Beach Art Walk, located at Pier and Pacific Coast Highway, on Sunday at 12 noon and 3 p.m. (310) 374-0080 ER
