AMARANTH DANCE DEBUTS

At the end of November, Amaranth, a new dance company directed by VCU dance faculty member Scott Putnam, lands at VCU's Grace Street Theater with its new production, Experiment in White. (Details: EXPERIMENT IN WHITE. 8:00pm. November 30, December 1, December 2. Grace Street Theater, 934 West Grace Street. Tickets $20. Call 804-828-2020. Tickets on sale two weeks before.) Putnam's new production is quite a stretch, from several directions:

Futurism, Fauvism, and Cubism interlace within the six pieces of Experiment in White. "Other Side of Shadow," a 16-minute work for ten dancers, investigates space and time as perceived by the theory of relativity and as inspired by Fauvism. Inspired by Cubism, “Sacrament of Mouth and Soul,” a 11-minute duet, relates the sacred acts between two people and the validity of love in any relationship. “Within Three” stands as a spiritual investigation of particle physics and the simultaneous presentation of particle pockets as the search for an answer to all of life and its beginnings. “Angle of Incidence” presents the way in which light enters the eye and affects the imagery that the brain receives. "Everlasting Now," a 10-minute duet, examines the language of love inside the parallel mathematical language of modern physics. This work’s visual inspiration comes from the ideas and philosophies of Futurism. Finally, “Transcending Chronology” poses a three-dimensional visual analysis of string theory’s philosophy on space/time, the idea of warping and bending time, and the existence of multi-dimensions.

The last piece features quite a crowd -- a choreographer, 24 dancers, a composer, videographer and lighting designer.