Former Hubbard Street dancer Benjamin Holliday Wardell plowed through an “existential questioning period” a few years ago that, among other things, sparked his departure in September 2011 from the internationally known company he’d joined roughly four years earlier. He was 29.
Though he became a Lucky Plush performer shortly thereafter, Wardell was also asking himself the perennial dancer’s question: “What am I going to do when I stop dancing?” The query was a bit premature, but Wardell was in fact wondering, he says, “What else am I equally passionate about, and talented at in a way that I can start honing now?”
He had no real answers, no solid plan and little experience with choreography. Wardell wasn’t even sure he wanted to stay in dance. But he knew one thing: He wanted to mine the untapped potential of male-male duets. So he asked Michel Rodriguez Cintra (then with Hedwig Dances) to join him in creating and performing an evening-length dance-theater work whose movement would be cobbled together from short duets commissioned from 12 respected local choreographers.
Though Wardell considered “The Nexus Project” of November 2013 a one-off, it “went far better than I ever expected,” he says. “It was just this delightful, interesting process, working with all these different people and having this relationship with another performer unlike anything I’d ever experienced.”
He realized then that “Nexus Project” wasn’t a title or the name of a company — it was a process for creating duets, remixing choreography by multiple artists. Last January, Wardell began calling his producing organization the Cambrians, and he and Cintra performed a second, reworked “Nexus Project.”
Now, Friday through June 28 at Preston Bradley Center, the Cambrians present a third such show: “The Nexus Project With Autumn and Jamy,” created and performed by former Giordano dancer-choreographer Autumn Eckman and former Hubbard Streeter Jamy Meek, using choreography by nine local artists.
Eckman and Meek “very much own this show,” says Wardell, though he provided input. Calling it “a farce,” he adds that “they’re two of the funniest people I’ve ever known. They both have these crazy little stories of things that have happened to them,” which they tell to each other and the audience, layering that verbal discourse over the movement and the “character arc” of a short story about ballroom dance.
“Autumn and Jamy” runs in repertory with a full-length version of “Clover,” whose earliest iteration was performed in February. Created more conventionally, “Clover” features choreography by Melinda Jean Myers, in collaboration with performers Wardell and Cintra, and more “in-depth stories” than those in “Autumn and Jamy.”
Given all the “Nexus Project” manifestations, dance fans might be forgiven for feeling a bit confused. But a few principles tie the Cambrians’ evolving identity together.
For one thing, Wardell is fascinated by the phenomenon of “group intelligence.” He was surprised and pleased, he says, to discover “a crazy efficiency” in the multiple-choreographer approach: “It was really, really quick compared to a lot of other processes — just the number of pieces made in such a short time, for a relatively small amount of money, while still paying everyone.”
He adds that it’s “a rare thing for a choreographer to go into a studio, make stuff with really capable performers, and not have to worry about getting reviewed — just have genuine playtime.” Farming out the choreography also frees Wardell and the other Cambrians to focus on “the content of the show: the stories, the structure, the venue, the packaging of the moment.”
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And the moment is extremely important. Wardell calls himself “a highly improvisational person who believes strongly in the power of authentic moments as they occur.” The “Nexus Project” process, he says, plunges everyone “into an ever-changing, rule-based situation — though the rules get broken all the time. What I’m interested in is … not really trial-and-error, but a bit of riskiness.
“One of the deepest problems we have in dance is that we think we have to be perfect all the time,” Wardell adds. “Everything has to go right because we’re working with such scarce resources, we’re scared to make mistakes.
“I’m trying to present scenarios where the audience is primed to think things won’t always go fantastically — glossily, flawlessly. But there’s enough variety that audiences will get swallowed up by the experience as it happens.”
So far, so good on that. Stay tuned, however.
Molzahn is a freelance critic.
The Cambrians
When: Friday 7:30 p.m., Saturday 3 and 7:30 p.m., Sunday 5 p.m. through June 28
Where: Preston Bradley Center, Mason Hall, 941 W. Lawrence Ave.
Tickets: Pay-what-you-can at thecambrians.eventbrite.com