Performing arts groups, with their abstract ambitions and delicately choreographed shows, are not usually compared to refugees.
But anyone inside the arts sphere will tell you that fighting for survival in that underfunded world is as gritty as it gets.
“I felt like a bit of a vagabond,” said Kim Robards, whose 23-year-old Denver dance company has relocated six times in the past four years.
“We were pushed out of two spaces. The one we thought was going to be built out wasn’t, and when we went back to our old home, we had printing fumes coming into the space. So our board met, and we said, ‘We either have to find a permanent home or we can’t keep doing this.’ “
Luckily for Robards, one was just around the corner.
In January the company began moving into its new home at 1387 S. Sante Fe Drive, a 24,000-square-foot industrial space connected to Foothills Lighting & Supply that was ready for use without any significant renovation work.
Kim Robards Dance will celebrate that space Friday and Saturday with performances of its season-ending show, “Not Quite Vertical.” The work, parts of which premiered last November, includes the new, evolving piece “Unstruck Sound,” set to Beethoven’s intimidating Symphony No. 9.
Watching the company rehearse earlier this week, it was clear that the wide, airy environs — acquired with the help of a $15,000 matching grant from the Gates Family Foundation — were an asset to Robard’s bustling choreography.
“Scales,” the first piece in “Not Quite Vertical,” presents swirling shapes and bursts of symmetry, while “Agony of the Leaf” (inspired by Robards’ trip to Beijing’s Booking Dance Festival during the 2008 Olympics) unfurls from composer Tan Dun’s deep, undulating strings, balancing forward motion with dramatic, martial poses and echoes of Eastern spiritualism.
Topped off by the grandiose “Unstruck Sound,” the show as a whole is a breathless piece that acts as both reflection and interpretation. And with more than 20 dancers on stage at times (including 10 company members and a few guests and incoming students), it’s also a marvel of coordination.
“Seeing all these young people and the talent that they have, you know that modern dance will go on,” said Denver dance pioneer Darlene Hand ler, 70, who still teaches at Greenwood Village’s Curtis Arts & Humanities Center.
Handler, who met Robards in 1986 (the year before Robards started her own company) should know. She won the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2004 and has watched Robards evolve from a freshly minted dance graduate student to a respected local choreographer and instructor who has garnered recent praise from the New York Times and others.
Finding a home has been a constant challenge, but Robards feels an innate sense of stability in the new space.
“Sometimes I think back about the Colorado Ballet,” said Robards, who has often taught for the company. “It was a small company in a basement studio on Colfax at about year 20, and we’re at year 23. So they turned a corner, and I’m hoping we can too.”
Robards’ 24,000-square-foot space on Santa Fe has its advantages in that respect. She already shares it with Denver ensemble company the Paragon Theatre and McTeggart Irish Dance. She’s also looking for two to three more arts organizations (a photography studio, music ensemble) to set up shop.
Additional tenants would help with the rent burden, although Robards already has an advocate in landlord David Nestor — one of the original Scientific and Cultural Facilities District board members who began distributing tax-funded money to arts organizations in the seven-county metro area in 1989.
As the space’s main tenant, Robards five-year lease was granted with the understanding it would be held for a minimum of 10 years.
“And my desire is to be here until I retire, and hopefully when I do, it’ll be built up enough and established enough as a landmark that it can be turned over to someone else,” she said.
“Modern dance was founded because it was an art form where they wanted to throw off their shoes and feel their feet and get rooted to the earth. And we needed to re-root, or it wasn’t going to continue.”
John Wenzel: 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com
KIM ROBARDS DANCE PRESENTS “NOT QUITE VERTICAL.”
Modern dance. 1387 S. Santa Fe Drive. Friday-Saturday. 8 p.m. $15-$20. 303-825-4847 or
