DanceAspen’s ‘Ember Glow’ honors Aspen’s history and community

DanceAspen’s “Ember Glow” is like a love note, created to celebrate Aspen’s history and its community, through music and dance.

It all began when the Wheeler Opera House commissioned DanceAspen artist and choreographer Matthew Gilmore to choreograph a work to honor the venue’s rich history and capture the spirit of the Aspen landmark. Gilmore decided to portray regrowth, based on the Wheeler burning down in 1912 and rebuilding. The theme of resilience sets the tone for the entire evening of “Ember Glow.”

The commission is fitting, in that DanceAspen — formed by members of the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet performing company, which disbanded after the pandemic — debuted at the Wheeler Opera House in 2021.

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“It signifies a phoenix rising from the ashes, which is kind of how the company started. The Wheeler also has a vibrant story of becoming something and then burning down and then regaining its glory,” said Laurel Winton, DanceAspen founder and executive director.

To further celebrate local creativity, Aspen artist Andy Millner designed the set for the piece. One of the company’s dancers, Kaya Wolsey, collaborated with Susan Roemer to fashion the costumes, which are inspired by Edwardian-era men’s undergarments and reimagined through a contemporary lens that challenges traditional gender boundaries.

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“The piece is creatively choreographed and beautifully danced,” said Mike Harrington, Wheeler’s executive director, who had a chance to see the company rehearse it. “It is a wonderful tribute to the history — and future  — of the Wheeler Opera House. The premiere this February will be a moment the community of Aspen will not want to miss.” 

In “Alpine,” another piece DanceAspen will premiere, Chicago-based guest choreographer Noelle Kayser delves into the physical limits of the human body.

“The work explores human ambition and its evolution, from our ancestors’ drive to scale, sail, and build in communion with nature, to modern technological innovations that pull us deeper into our minds and further from the natural world,” Kayser said. “It considers ambition through the lens of being a dance artist — the mental and physical rigor and stamina demanded by the craft. Ultimately, the work reflects on human’s incessant desire for ‘more’ and its impact on our relationship with the environment, each other, and ourselves.”

In-house dancer and choreographer Jonah Delgado presents his first main-stage piece, called “Love All.” Delgado and Meredith Harrill dance the duet, which employs a tennis match as a metaphor for love, conveying how relationships involve give and take and how finding your rhythm in the game, as well as in life, becomes cathartic.

“It signifies the building and breaking down of relationships — that kind of back-and-forth that we all go through,” Winton said.

New York City-based guest choreographer Gabrielle Lamb’s piece reflects the struggles of navigating the world, developing relationships, and seeing where they go.

“It’s kind of the next step in our identity as a company, in building this art that’s really impactful for people and relatable to this community as an athletically-driven group of people who have a rich history,” Winton said.

As dancers drift and recoalesce, the work becomes a meditation “on cycles of resilience: How systems collapse, how relationships fracture, and how broken pieces retain the memory of their wholeness,” Lamb said.

Last Election Day helped inspire the piece; her creative residency in Aspen began on Nov. 5.

“The following morning, I swept up my own broken pieces and returned to the studio to explore the idea of metamorphosis — a never-ending process of falling apart and finding ourselves again,” she said. “The DanceAspen artists have a remarkable capacity to embody both classical form and contemporary articulation. Their moments of pointe technique reveal an architecture of possibility. These dancers balance on the edge between control and imminent collapse. Each point of contact becomes an instant of potential: Rigorous, mathematical, yet always on the verge of dissolving into something entirely new.”

In addition to the four premieres, “Ember Glow” presents one of Gilmore’s pieces called “Begin Again,” choreographed for the company’s first show at the Wheeler.

“It was arising from the ashes — we were kind of jumping off a cliff there into the unknown, building the company, so it just all ties together,” Winton said.

Through themes of loss, rebuilding, and resiliency, “Ember Glow” vibrantly and evocatively retells Aspen’s history, Winton said.

“(It’s) a program crafted for anyone who takes pride in calling themselves an Aspenite,” she said. “We’re hoping to represent Aspenites, the kind of fire that most Aspenites have when it comes to overcoming obstacles and pushing yourself and having that identity of being really proud from where you come from.”