Azriel LaMarca and Trina Spiller
Azriel LaMarca (L) and Trina Spiller (R), co-founders of the Dance Because Festival.
Gearing up for this month’s Dance Because Festival—the one and only dance-based festival in Nevada County—we sat down with collaborators and fellow artists Azriel LaMarca and Trina Spiller, the driving force behind the scenes of this exciting new festival in celebration of all things dance.
The two met seven years ago, shortly after Spiller moved to Nevada City, at a dance class led by LaMarca. Through this connection and mutual inspiration the collaboration leading to Dance Because was born.
“We want to bring people together to connect in this human way, in the moving body—so important now with so much happening in a virtual space. It’s really going to be a celebration! We want to encourage folks to try something new – it will be a welcoming space for teens and adults to stretch and move in a new way. So, what if you don’t get all the steps right?! That’s really not what it’s about. We’re here for the joy of it, or for the chance to work something out through moving your body in specific ways. And then when you come see the performance, you’ll see the result of many, many hours of rehearsal and the intention to create something vital and fresh. We can’t wait to share all of this with the community.”
Their experiences and what led them to dance have been unique, parallel yet complimentary. LaMarca began taking ballet lessons when she was 4 years old and danced throughout elementary and high school
“I would say I didn’t really land into my dancing until my last couple years of college. That was when I met Mel Wong, dance professor at UC Santa Cruz. He had danced with Merce Cunningham and had his own company in New York. His way of making dances was so different than anything I’d experienced before. He choreographed as if he was making a painting—moving colors around—and the effect was magnificent.”
Spiller didn’t start studying dance technique until she was 21.
“I danced all the time up until that age, when I started dancing in a small modern/theater dance company in college. it was the most engaged and excited I had been in my life up until then. My soul was so alive! The choreographer was constantly creating new, weird & crazy-out-there pieces and we would perform everywhere we could. It was an amazing time, and I really came into the joy and passion of performance. Later, I studied in a professional dance training program in Toronto, Canada called the Toronto Dance Theater. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life because I was dancing with girls that had been taking ballet since they were 5 years old! I persevered because I have always loved the discipline of technique even though I really had to work to get that technique.”
One of our favorite questions to ask artists is about process, and both LaMarca and Spiller have personal and incredibly human responses. We would expect nothing less from artists whose primary form of expression is through movement, becoming aware of and being in the body.
LaMarca shares “I’ve been studying expressive arts therapy with the Tamalpa Institute for the past two years and so I’m currently inspired by a creative process that bridges life and art. I think we are always bringing our life material to our creativity but lately I’ve been allowing myself to explore that more – to develop movement that expresses what I’m feeling in my life rather than shying away from that and just focusing on technique. I’m also learning how to keep dancing while getting older. There’s a different sensibility in the body, and I find it both challenging and motivating.”
Again, in a complimentary and somewhat parallel fashion Spiller shares about her own creative process.
“It is both incredibly joyful and incredibly painful. It's like a slow excavation of figuring out what story wants to come out of me mixed with instant discoveries and breakthroughs. In the piece I am making for the upcoming show, it's been a mix of me coming with choreography and teaching it to them (the dancers) with me asking them to improvise something and watching what comes out of them and turning that into choreography. I get really inspired when I walk my dog and put on music—often I will get an idea on the trail and then in rehearsal, I'll ask them to try something and then have them do it over and over with slight variations until I see something that ignites in me or makes me laugh or makes me feel something.”
This story originally appeared in the June 1st, 2024 edition of the GVNC Culture Connection newsletter.
