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Ballet meets street dance at the Annenberg with ‘Empirical Quotient’

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A scene from 'Empirical Quotient.' Photo by Michael Slobodian.
A scene from 'Empirical Quotient.' Photo by Michael Slobodian.

On April 16, Montreal-based RUBBERBANDance Group will perform its local premiere of Victor Quijada’s most recent work, Empirical Quotient, at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.

Artistic director Quijada’s 70-minute work will feature six dancers trained in the RUBBERBANDance method — a movement vocabulary they’ve been developing for over ten years. Quijada tells BSR he enjoys mixing influences that allow him to fuse ballet, hip-hop, and other contemporary forms, creating an athletically robust, theatrically driven, and technically precise choreographic language.

“The innovative physicality of this fusion allows me to continue to investigate how street dance can be successfully filtered into a contemporary aesthetic,” he says.

He confesses that Empirical Quotient is one of his more successful ballets owing to the fact that it was the first ballet he ever choreographed in which he didn’t dance — a longtime goal for him.

In setting the scene for the show, Quijada explains that the ballet deals with human emotion and experiences. He’s interested in exploring how the roles we play in life change: from power to submission, from vulnerability to invincibility, from acceptance to rejection. The work reveals vignettes of ensembles, duets, and solos that are set to a score and atmospheric lighting by longtime collaborators Jasper Gahunia and Yan Lee Chan.

“People are figuring out how to effectively fuse street dance with nontraditional contemporary forms and that is very exciting,” Quijada says.

In 2014, Empirical Quotient won Dance Magazine’s award for Best New Choreography. The effective blend of classical ballet, street dance, and contemporary forms is what makes RUBBERBANDance Group so successful, and Empirical Quotient promises to display the formula that makes Quijada’s works so compelling.

Asked what he would like the audience to take away from Empirical Quotient, he replies, “I want the audience to be moved. I want them to be blown away. I want them leaving the theatre shaking their heads.”

RUBBERBANDance Group's Empirical Quotient is coming to the Annenberg Center, 3680 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, on April 16-18 ($20-$50). For tickets or more information, visit the Annenberg online or call 215-898-3900.

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