Seattle dance organization CO- helps connect artists with audiences | Entertainment

Local dance organization CO- is dreaming up new ways to connect Seattle-based dancers and choreographers with audiences in the city. Its latest production, “Imaginary Observable,” a split-bill one-hour performance by Seattle dance veterans Leah Crosby and Alyza DelPan-Monley, opens Thursday at Georgetown’s Mini Mart City Park. 

The performance marks the first project from CO-‘s new coproduction model called CO-NDUIT, which bridges independent dancers and choreographers with opportunities and venues. The program serves as a balm to a problem facing a lot of artists today: how to get new, and often experimental, work out to audiences.

CO-NDUIT acts as a middle ground where previous CO- performers who have an idea for a show can come to the organization for assistance in making that idea become a reality, for a small producer fee equal to 40 hours of CO- staff time. Being an independent artist requires a lot of juggling — in addition to thinking and creating, one must also serve as their own admin assistant (finding venues, chasing down grants) as well as PR rep (posting on Instagram, entreating their online audiences to come through). CO-NDUIT is meant to help performers cut through the noise to focus on what matters: the work. 

“We act as a sort of channel between artists and venues so that we can help support the production in a way that feels like the artist has someone to lean on. They’re not self-producing completely,” said Maya Tacon, a CO- co-founder. “We handle the marketing, the design aspects for all the materials that go out, all the communication with the venues. We’re sort of a middleman.”

“It’s meant to be very open-ended and free-form in the sense that we want artists to come to us and ask for personalized support,” added CO- co-founder Emma Lawes. 

For dancers and choreographers like Crosby and DelPan-Monley — who have performed at previous CO- events — a program like CO-NDUIT is a boon to their practices, especially during a time when making art is as financially fraught as ever. 

“The huge hurdles to making work in this city is a tale as old as time — it’s very hard to pay rent and buy groceries here. It means that you have to do a lot of hustling,” said Crosby. “For bigger opportunities (in Seattle), people want to fly in someone with prestige from somewhere else. ”

Founded by Lawes and Tacon, CO- launched in 2021 during the thick of the pandemic, when stages were largely empty and dancers were itching to get back into their craft. As dancers themselves, the pair were eager to see new works out in the world and bring performers from different corners of the dance world together. So Lawes and Tacon’s approach was simple: leverage their shared love of spreadsheets and logistics to help artists coproduce wildly original performance pieces in environments outside traditional theaters. 

CO- started small with events in gallery spaces featuring a curated bill of dancers and performers. That eventually morphed into its popular CO-Performance and Party series, which features an hourlong show by a suite of performers with a disc jockey-hosted party afterward. Based on feedback from the community, CO- piecemealed together grants and raised money for CO-PRESENTS, a 40-hour rehearsal residency where dancers can develop a 30- to 40-minute work. In 2022, Lawes relocated to Los Angeles, and while CO- is still largely Seattle-focused, the organization is in the process of expanding its approach to support dancers in L.A. as well. 

“Imaginary Observable” is split between two 30-minute solo performances by Crosby and DelPan-Monley, who are frequent collaborators with one another. Back in 2021, the two created a socially distanced mixed-media exploration of hugs called “envelope: blueprints for unhad hugs.” While both of their performances at “Imaginary Observable” are distinctly separate artistic entities, a common element is that both artists enjoy interacting with non-dance elements in their shows. 

“Both of us are movement artists and we’re multimedia in the sense that we use whatever is around us to continue telling the story more,” said DelPan-Monley. “(Our work) is always embodied, but it might not look exclusively like dance and it might actually pull from shadow work, light work, sculpture, installation or sound.”

Crosby’s half of the show is “The Marine Iguana,” which examines the adaptive and maladaptive traits of the marine iguana, a type of sea lizard, as a way to understand human relationships, caregiving, loss and their own body. In addition to movement work, Crosby is using props like an overhead projector, bare light bulbs and document cameras to further flesh out the performance. 

DelPan-Monley’s half, “keepsake,” is a bit more ephemeral. Grappling with the nature of time and how we change from moment to moment, they liken the performance to describing the nature of a cloud and its constant cycle of change. A rehearsal clip of the performance shows DelPan-Monley surrounded by household items onstage, futzing with a paper chain, drinking out of a cup while looking in the mirror as a podcastlike recording plays in the background. Just passing time.  

“I’m looking for something to hold onto with time,” said DelPan-Monley. “(Time) is something that often creates a lot of stress and fear and anxiety in my body — it’s always moving and shifting. There’s this desire to just be in the timelessness of time, too, to feel durationally present.”