Austin Downtown Arts Magazine
Dance
The Creeps
by Manuel Gonzales
Ellen Bartel is relatively new to Austin. She's lived in
the Capitol City for three years. Originally from Long Island,
she attended university in New York. Her body is lean and
agile and her arms and legs are well and finely muscled. When
she walks, she has an easy and relaxed gracefulness, and when
she talks, her voice falls into a smooth cadence. She is a
dancer. More specifically, she is a Creep.
Less than a month after she moved to Austin, she met and
then began dancing for Andrea Ariel, and Ellen has danced
with Andrea and her dance company for the three years she
has lived in Austin. A year after she met Andrea, Andrea then
introduced Ellen to Lisa Fairman, and shortly after, Ellen
began to dance for Lisa and her company, Still Point Dance.
A year and a half ago, Ellen decided that dancing in two companies
and working part time wasn't enough, and so she started the
improvisational dance group affectionately known as "The
Creeps."
"My whole premise for forming The Creeps was based the
fact that I am a choreographer at heart. But since I was so
busy with two companies, I needed something to do on my own
that took little to no money and little time. So I got this
group, The Creeps, together. The rehearsal space is nine dollars
an hour. I have no overhead, and the seven Creeps are volunteers,
and it's improvisational. So I can put on a little improv
show and still pay only nine dollars."
Who are The Creeps? The Creeps are seven individuals and
Ellen Bartel who are part of an improvisational dance group
whose concept deals with slow motion. Very slow motion. "We
have nothing to do with elabroate movement. We are more concerned
with producing energy. What it looks like is that no one's
moving. I've seen how interesting it is to think that someone
is standing still and then to look away for 15 seconds and
turn back to see they've changed positions. 'When did they
do that? I was just looking at him. He wasn't moving at all.'
And this idea of constant energy moving through your body
becomes a great image.
"And we go to parks and just do it. I have a very nice
group of people that are open-minded enough to say 'Okay,
we'll do it here.' We've performed on the Drag twice, right
in the middle of the Renaissance Square. We're pretty normal
people but suddenly we're doing these crazy things. One time
we even freaked out the Drag kids." Since the formation
of The Creeps, they've performed on the Drag, in parks around
the downtown area, on campus, at the Laughing at the Sun found
object art show, and for private parties, and most of the
feedback they've received has compared them to moving statues.
Back to Top
When she was a small girl living in New York with her parents,
Ellen once saw a homeless old man in the middle of a busy
intersection slowly bend down to pick up a dime or a scrap
of something. "Here's this weirdo wino guy and he just
stops in the middle of the street, just bending over to get
something, and that's the whole image in my head. Everybody
just keeps rushing past this guy and he's in his own world
and in his own frame of time and space, and that image has
always stayed in my head."
She posted signs and advertisements across Austin in her
first attempt to "creep." "I originally wanted
to do The Creeps with one hundred people. A one-time thing.
I wrote flyers and posted them saying, 'I want to do this.
Join me.' I don't know what I was thinking. Four people called
me. That was two summers ago. Now it has become a regular,
monthly company. At first, I tried to rehearse with everyone
once a month. I thought so many people would be into The Creeps
that I would have to keep training new people, but it has
ended up being the same seven people every time, and we don't
need as much rehearsal because we can all do it now."
The Creeps rehearse at Dance Umbrella, and it is Dance Umbrella
who is now sponsoring Ellen as she applies for a grant from
the University of Texas at Austin for money to support her
original 100 Creeps project. "I realize that I have to
sound authentic. I can't just sound like some weirdo artist
lost in her own world. I think with support from the school,
I can better advertise and attract a hundred people. I wouldn't
need a lot of money, really. Mainly support to advertise.
And once I got my hundred people, I would need a gym to rehearse
in, and I'd have to pay for that space. I wouldn't have to
pay for a performance space because I would never put The
Creeps on stage. It would get a little boring. Curtains open,
Creeps, curtains close -- it's not that interesting. Part
of the artistic expression of The Creeps is the juxtaposition
of us moving really slow to people moving in regular time,
so it wouldn't really work on stage. I called Auditorium Shores
to find out what I would have to pay or what forms I might
have to fill out to use the park, but they told me, 'No fees,
just first come, first serve.' So it's all a matter of finding
people willing to do this and follow my very simple rules,
mainly to show up on time and to be there for all the rehearsals
and the final performance."
As it is improvisational, Ellen directs her crew but does
no real choreography for The Creeps. Outside of dancing with
Andrea and Still Point Dance and The Creeps, and outside of
working part time at Tesoros, to further satiate her need
to choreograph, Ellen has directed and choreographed herself
in as many as seven solo performances in the three years she
has lived in Austin. At Lollapalooza, you could have seen
her dancing on the third stage, dedicated to Austin music
and spoken word and performance arts. "I saw an ad in
the paper that there was going to be a third stage that said
they were looking for anything, so I called them and put a
dance duet in but it was more performance art, not a big production.
The whole thing was terrible. First, they just called me and
said, 'You're in,' click. And I was like, well, how do I get
in? How do I get the other dancers in? It was a very small
stage and I had to share it with bands and their equipment,
the wires and speakers and monitors, and that made it hard.
Dancing in 103 degree weather. It was very stressful. But
we performed it again at Dance Umbrella and it went much better.
"As far as choreography goes, I think I'm going to stick
to solos for a while. Just me and my own problems. Right now,
I can't imagine dragging a bunch of dancers around with me
and my process. I'm learning a lot. A choreographer, like
a painter, creates an image and paints it with dancers. But
a painter never has to argue with the colors he wants to use
to make the picture. A choreographer has to talk to every
single dancer and they each have different personalities.
The choreographer has to find a way to communicate their ideal
picture to seven different worlds, and you can only hope that
the dancers are trained enough to just catch it and do it
right, but they come in from work and they come in from divorce,
from having a baby, from traffic, and they come in with all
their baggage and you have two hours to start painting this
picture with these people. It's amazing that it comes together.
To appreciate how much is going on in the dancer's head: cramps,
a bad ankle, bad knees, trying to produce this amazing picture
they've been trained for. And then they're supposed to make
it all look easy."
Back to Top
|