This event was scheduled June 1-2, 2024.
The San Luis Obispo Movement Arts Center (SLOMAC) presents the world premiere of a multimedia contemporary dance piece created by local artists Maartje Hermans, Brook Munro, and Richard Fusillo on June 1 and 2 at the Harold J. Miossi Cultural and Performing Arts Center at Cuesta College.
OUTSIDE/IN profiles the inner and outer lives of dancers ages 5 to 18 inspired by places that have special meaning to them. It’s the first collaboration between choreographer Hermans, composer Munro, and photographer Fusillo.
Hermans brought performers to several Central Coast locations to dance while Munro recorded the sounds of them interacting with the natural environment, and Fusillo photographed their movements. Munro then manipulated and integrated the sounds he gathered into original music.
“In nature, the dancers created a vocabulary of movement to use on stage,” Hermans says. “The work brings the dancers outside and the audience inside their world of play, imagination, and creativity.”
During the performance, while the dancers move to Munro’s music, Fusillo’s photos are projected at a grand scale—a spectacularly original experience that captures the beauty of movement, the joy of childhood, and the work of three artists at the top of their game.
Also on the program: the acclaimed piece Shoreline from choreographer Ryan Lawrence, which premiered last summer in collaboration with Festival Mozaic and features Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring; classical and contemporary pieces featured at Icon Dance Awards in Los Angeles; and guest artists from the Paso Robles Dance Collective.
SLOMAC is a conservatory-style dance studio founded by Maartje Hermans and Ryan Lawrence to foster the same lifelong appreciation of dance that they experienced first as students at top-level conservatories like Het National Ballet Academy of the Netherlands and The Juilliard School, and later as in-demand professional dancers.