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A preview by Gwen Gray How does a performing arts organization tackle the heaviest, most existential topics of our times, do them justice, and entertain and delight audiences along the way? 3rd Law Dance/Theater seems to have the recipe. They layer the deepest level of reflection, observation and meaning into the choreography, music, set, costumes, […]

A preview by Gwen Gray For the first time in over two years, Boulder’s preeminent contemporary dance company, 3rd Law Dance/Theater, returns to the Dairy Arts Center stage, and it’s set to be a transformative reunion for the company, collaborators and audiences. The show, titled “For Example,” will take place April 22–24, 2022. It’s fair […]

A review by Gwen Gray, with photos by Heather Gray/Gray Area Dance Over the years, 3rd Law Dance/Theater has become known for navigating on-stage obstacles. They’ve glided across a stage filled with bouncing ping-pong balls, held handstands atop typewriters, and woven themselves in and out of a collection of cardboard boxes and towers of metal cubes. But those were self-imposed creative challenges.  This year, 3rd Law, like virtually all performing arts groups, had to face the impossibilities imposed upon them by the pandemic. Yet in characteristic […]

A review by Gwen Gray To hear it told by 3rd Law Dance/Theater’s artistic co-directors Katie Elliott and Paul Fowler, the company’s latest production, “Singularity,” was inherited. That’s because 3rd Law’s late cofounder Jimmy LaVita had already begun to assemble the research for the troupe’s next creation before his death — examining artificial intelligence (AI) […]

A review by Marc Shulgold  In their spoken introduction, Tom Morgan and Nancy Smith welcomed their audience to the Dairy Arts Center by cutely alternating words and phrases in explaining the collaboration of his Ars Nova Singers and her all-women Frequent Flyers aerial dance troupe. Most of what they actually said became lost in the […]

A review by Gwen Gray What would it feel like to hear a poem of your own creating rise up, take flight and fill your ears with angelic voices through the force of an entire choir? You had only to look at Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s tear-streaked face Saturday evening to get an idea. As the […]

A review by Gwen Gray The crowd at the Dairy Arts Center quiets. A young man appears on stage, barefooted, a headset microphone at his lips and a smartphone in his hand. He begins a monosyllabic a cappella chant, which expands into a rich, rhythmic hymn as he digitally loops and chains his own vocals […]

A review by Gwen Gray In a bold, big-budget move (tested by a giant snowstorm that required an entire weekend of performances be rescheduled), Ars Nova Singers’s recent concert, “Out of This World: A Choral Odyssey,” launched the already adventurous choral company into a new universe. Or more accurately, countless galaxies — those projected inside […]