If you build it, they will come: That’s the hope of many dance artists. But choreographer/entrepreneur Nick Pupillo has proved especially adept at making his wish come true.
“I always knew I wanted my own company,” Pupillo says. “That was my No. 1 dream, my passion.” But in a grand feat of deferred gratification, he built a school first. And they did indeed come.
Establishing the Visceral Dance Center in 2007 enabled Pupillo to launch Visceral Dance Chicago (the company) six years later at an unusually high artistic and commercial level. Last November, Visceral debuted at the 1,500-seat Harris with a benefit performance, following up with a full program there last spring.
Friday and Saturday, the troupe returns to the Harris with six dances (also performed last month at Skokie’s North Shore Center for the Performing Arts). Four are new, among them the company premiere of “Duet Mabul,” by world-renowned Ohad Naharin, and local favorite Harrison McEldowney’s lighthearted “Cool Love HD.”
Located at the forbidding intersection of Elston, Western and Diversey Avenues in a building that previously housed a fabric wholesaler, the Dance Center has become a dance mecca. Its three beautiful studios are both rented out and home to some 60 youth and adult classes a week.
“I used that business model to support the company,” Pupillo says. “We have a space to rehearse in. We have an audience base, a community, from that Visceral brand.” The school is the company’s biggest contributor, a fact appreciated these penurious days by foundations and private donors. “More people want to be involved,” says Pupillo, “because there’s something behind the company to help support it.”
Artistic associate Cheryl Mann is another boon. When she left Hubbard Street as a dancer in 2007, she began building her photography business in earnest; since then, she’s shot many local troupes, including Visceral. Gradually, though, she realized how much she missed being in the studio as a participant, not a bystander.
The two pint-sized factors in that epiphany were Mann’s young children. “I realized that I could be more of a whole person for my kids if I could bring dance back into my life,” she says. “I want my kids to grow up in this loving, positive, open, creative atmosphere. They run around, the dancers play with them. I get emotional every time I see that.”
Mann’s motherly instincts, 20 years’ experience and arts connections are huge assets for Visceral, Pupillo says. She wangled two of the four upcoming premieres and contributed to a third.
It was Mann, an occasional Naharin repetiteur, who approached the Israeli choreographer for the rights to “Duet Mabul,” which she calls a “superbly simple, honest, beyond beautiful piece.” She also referred Pupillo to up-and-coming Nashville choreographer Banning Bouldin, whose new dance-theater septet, “Souvenir,” moves from reality to memory and back again. Pupillo describes her style as “150 percent of everything you can possibly do.”
His new solo, “My Realm,” is accompanied by on-stage cellist Desiree Miller, whom Mann introduced to Pupillo. Miller’s almost violent playing (“I’m classically trained,” she says, “but I also want to smack the strings”) is the perfect match for Pupillo’s impassioned choreography.
“I think ‘My Realm’ is a way of bringing the audience into our process as artists,” he says. “As a cellist, a choreographer, a dancer, we all have a similar passion, and nothing can get in the way of that.”
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Former Ailey II dancer Paige Fraser — one inspiration for “My Realm” — performs it Friday, and former Joffrey dancer Aaron Rogers on Saturday. “Souvenir” likewise features a different cast each night. In fact this mom-and-pop outfit aims to provide as much stage time as possible to all 14 exceptional dancers, the glue that holds the troupe’s eclectic repertoire together.
“Cheryl and I are committed to the dancers having individual voices,” says Pupillo. “But we need to get them to perform more, to tour. They work so hard to be onstage, to learn new works — we’re ready.”
ALSO WORTH NOTING
Dance Theatre of Harlem: The resurrection of this African-American ballet troupe, now directed by former DTH dancer Virginia Johnson, includes a return to the Auditorium for the first time in 16 years, with works by resident choreographer Robert Garland (one set to Poulenc, the other to Aretha Franklin and James Brown) and Ulysses Dove’s 1993 “Dancing on the Front Porch of Heaven.” 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday at Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress Pkwy.; $30-$95 at 800-982-2787 or auditoriumtheatre.org
Visceral Dance Chicago
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday
Where: Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph St.
Tickets: $25-$75 at 773-334-7777 or harristheaterchicago.org