Sound and Smoke at Center Stage Theater

Selah Dance Collective presents a dance concert at Center Stage Theater in Santa Barbara. Artistic Director Meredith Ventura’s work Sound and Smoke is an interdisciplinary exploration of early modern dance and its intersections with the mythical decadence of Weimar-era cabaret. The evening-length performance features dancers from her company, Selah Dance Collective, undergraduate students from UC Santa Barbara, and other community members – boasting a cast that includes pre-professional and professional dancers from throughout California and guest dancers hailing from Nashville, Birmingham, and New York. 

Sound and Smoke grew out of Ventura’s choreography for an installation at L'ahah Association in Paris, France, in July 2022. In collaboration with the exhibit “Homeshaping/Homeshaking: Modern Odysseys,” the work performed in Paris has developed into a more extensive investigation of “dancing death” and the staging of women’s deaths in theatrical representation, often written or directed by men, within the context of modern dance history. In its first iteration, which premiered at the Hatlen Theater on the UC Santa Barbara campus this past April, to great acclaim, with a reviewer stating: “Ventura’s work in Sound and Smoke is poignant, deeply researched across the span of history, and intricately choreographed, ultimately creating an exciting, unnerving, and thought-provoking experience.”
 

Sound and Smoke blends popular culture and music with references to historical, literary, and avant-garde figures, a reflection of Ventura’s style of choreography that pulls from many sources. For this process, Ventura collaborated with dramaturg Cassie Archer, a fellow graduate student at UC Santa Barbara.