Dance-Climb fusion project moves to Boulder | Boulder Weekly

By Elizabeth Miller

Maybe you know AscenDance from the television show America’s Got Talent. Or maybe from their 2009 appearance at Boulder’s Aerial Dance Festival. Or maybe you’re getting to know them as a new neighbor on Arapahoe Avenue. The AscenDance Project moves an art form into a sports arena by blending dance and climbing — the dancers cling to holds on a climbing wall while executing their choreography. And its founder and artistic director, Isabel Von Rittberg, has officially moved to Boulder, bringing the AscenDance company to a new studio here.

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Gordon Graham
Workout of the week: Dance Climb Fusion with The AscenDance Project | Daily Camera

By Liz Moskow

Dance Climb Fusion Class with The AscenDance Project

Instructor: Isabel von Rittberg, artistic director and innovator of The AscenDance Project grew up in Wuppertal, Germany. Inspired by Pina Bausch, one of the world's foremost authorities on modern dance, Isabel began dancing at a young age. But dance didn't entirely satisfy her need to express herself. Possessing the spirit of a dancer and the soul of a climber, Isabel was driven to create the AscenDance project, where she could integrate the two separate but complementary parts of herself. In 2006, Isabel started AscenDance in California's Bay Area; in November of 2011, she moved her brainchild to Boulder.

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Gordon Graham
The Vision of Ascendance | Dead Point Magazine
 

by Anthony Lapomardo

Climbing integrates technical prowess and physical conditioning. An arcing wall is the playground in which climbers chose to perform their medium upon.  Isabel Von Rittberg (a dancer & climber by heart) envisioned a new use for the climbing medium that involved an arcing wall, but this one was constructed by a climber for a new form of self-expression, dance.

Vision:
Isabel envisioned her latest project that is currently enveloping her life and channeling her psyche as she left the Virgin River Gorge.  From the windows of her van she mournfully eyed the walls from the rear view as the tape deck filled the cab with music it was at that moment that her vision solidified itself. She would combine two elements she believed touched everyone (climbing & music).

Season:
Upon her return to the Bay Area she found a small loft and began to construct a wall.  With the help of the Bay Area community she hauled all the needed supplies to her loft and constructed her first "dance floor".  After the wall was constructed a well placed ad at local gyms sparked the interest in several climbers who would begin their training with Isabel.  They would be climbing with an entirely new emphasis, not to top out, but to sustain movement that would excite and inspire.

Training:
Climbing and dancing share numerous similarities, all of Isabel's dancers are in actuality real climbers.  Every choreographed move is based on an actual climbing move, but with Isabel's embellishment, the moves allow the crowd to visually enjoy the display of power and grace. An extended drop-knee, an overly arcing bat-hang, and even the most simple of moves are produced with passion, design with intent.

Redpoint Burn:
After months of preparation which included building a wall, finding a talented and dedicated group of climbers/dancers Isabel began to exhibit dozens of shows, the first in 2006 at the Red Rock Rendezvous. Isabel debuted a small sampling, which was followed up by shows at Touchstone Climbing Gyms, and then her groups largest show premiered in San Francisco's Union Square as a piece for the San Francisco Arts Festival. From there the group toured relentlessly throughout the Bay Area all the way to Boulder, Colorado to showcase their piece at the Aerial Dance Festival.

Media Following:
Isabel's vision and showcases has earned her rave reviews.  She has successfully combined two distinct forms of physical expression into a single, fluid formation that amplifies the beauty of climbing and extends the possibilities of the sport to a new level.

Aesthetically, this show builds upon the subtle beauty that is exhibited each time a climber chooses to shoe up and attempt a burn on their latest project. But, Isabel's vision has amplified the intrinsic beauty of the sport of climbing and created a sublime performance that will continue to inspire those who have never attempted to scale a single wall.

 

 
Gordon Graham
The Reviews Archive | World Dance Reviews
 

Donald K. Atwood MFA, Ph.D.

AscenDance Project Dazzles Boulder and 2009 Aerial Dance Festival Boulder, Colorado's Eleventh Annual Aerial Dance Festival (ADF) presented Oakland California's AscenDance Project in what turned out to be two concerts in the University of Colorado/Boulder's Charlotte York Irey Theater on Friday evening August 14th, 2009. The second concert resulted when it was realized that in a two week residency at ADF Ascendance Project had already captured more than a sell out audience. Festival Director Nancy Smith and AscenDance Founder/Artistic Director, Isabel Von Rittberg opted for a second show to accommodate an overflow crowd. Both audiences were thoroughly entranced with over an hour of non-stop performance that varied from adagio to explosions.

AscenDance Project performs on a huge climbing wall. That portable wall is twelve feet high and twenty four feet wide, and includes one-hundred-fifty climbing inserts, with the entire center third of the wall being an overhang set in slopes varying from about 20 to 30 degrees. It's been tried before. But not like this. Von Rittberg sees that surface as a vertical dance floor, and for it she and her dancers have developed an entirely new dance vocabulary. Not flips and tricks, and not watch-us-climb-to-music, AscenDance Project provides an art form in and of itself. That art form, because of where it is performed, we call "dance." In reality, Von Rittberg refuses to be labeled in any way by contemporary or classical dance descriptions or phrasing. Yes, you may see something you can call an arabesque, or an attitude leg, but that is your terminology - not AscenDance's. What Ascendance does do is deeply rooted in the rock climbing expertise of the dancers, in the music they choose, the way they use that music, movement invention, the amazing physical capabilities of the performers, and their and Von Rittberg's obviously extensive sense of performance, performance life, and using all of that to define a new form of performance.

The concert opened with a student showing of a work developed on them by Von Rittberg and Ryan Gaunt in just two weeks of ADF classes. The students were amazing, the work well crafted, well performed, and best described as "stunning." But, the real "stunning" was yet to come. Within four minutes of the end of that student showing Von Rittberg walked to the down left part of the wall (performers right as they face the audience) and began an adagio solo that moved slowly into all of the wall. As well chosen music selections moved non-stop five other dancers joined. Other solos, ensembles, duets - some in unison, some with canons, some with partnering - moved along and over the wall. At times movement choices brought audience gasps, at times they were subdued in an inherent beauty set in slowness. Often they took on many or all of the aspects of the music, at other times they ignored any or all of those aspects. The concert slowly built to a climax embodied in a long duet by Von Rittberg and Gaunt. That duet used the entire wall and exquisite partnering by Gaunt, in which he provided his strength and flexibility to Von Rittberg in ways that rivaled any classical pas de deux you have seen or imagined. The music moved to Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings," and one could not help wondering how the dancers would cope with all the expectations that music establishes - especially the one high note. Von Rittberg did not try. Instead, before that note, Gaunt, hanging from the top of the wall slowly lowered Von Rittberg's extended body to the floor; she lowered her arms, the music stopped, and the audience exploded onto its feet.

Von Rittberg has already taken this performance modality well beyond "gimmick." Instead she is in the midst of defining an art form and all the vocabulary therein. She has, in fact, created a choreographer's dream. Who could not watch this performance and not imagine what can be done with that wall and what she has invented? But beware - it is not for the faint at heart. Von Rittberg has not only invented an art form and a beginning vocabulary for it, but that art form requires incredibly strong performers to make it happen. Von Rittberg and Gaunt are well served by not only their strength and flexibility, but long lean torsos and amazingly long limbs. The torsos and limbs may not be absolutely required, but the strength and flexibility is. As is a sense of performance and a deep understanding of music - some of which comes from Von Rittberg's family including her brother, Marcus, some of whose music she used.

The ADF has already booked Ascendance Project to teach and perform in the 2010 Aerial Dance Festival. Plan now to see them.

© Copyright World Dance Reviews 2009

 
Gordon Graham