With the midday heat pressing against the studio windows, nine dancers powered through a grueling workout — with astonishing grace.
The Rosin Box Project (TRBP) invited two guest choreographers to create works for its "Debuts" program. Contemporary ballet as a format spans the spectrum between ballet and modern dance — some pieces are performed in pointe shoes, others are more free. For TRBP, such a spectrum allows for a range of power, precision, emotion, theatrics and creativity in each performance.
While each work in "Debuts" demands elite athleticism and artistry, one piece even involves shopping carts.
Choreographer Ching Ching Wong's dance, "The Shelf Life, Episode 3," is about a futuristic supermarket love story.
"Imagine if you could control every memory that's ever occurred in your life and you could wield it. You could almost call them to action at your will, get rid of the ones you never want to see, bring forward the ones that you love," she said.
The full-cast dance explores time, loss and memory, following two main characters — Zac and Andie — along with several surreal, dreamlike iterations of each.
"I love this concept of digging into memories that have or have not occurred. This nostalgia for things that have yet to happen and nostalgia for things that are so far away you can't grasp them anymore," she said.
It's wild and speculative — but also personal.
"I've written a script and I've created characters and I've put lights on shopping carts. I've made a theater of it. But maybe at the nugget it's just me grappling with my own fear. My own anxieties," Wong said.
Also on the program is international choreographer Garrett Smith, whose new work continues his ongoing trench coat series.
"The coat for this piece represents maybe like a shield or a layer socially. Sometimes in certain groupings, we are different people than we are in other places," Smith said.
The piece is full of power and contrasts the strength of its dancers with a smattering of interwoven duets that evoke a sort of yearning dreaminess.
Founding director Carly Topazio also premieres new choreography in the show. While most companies present only one new dance in a program, or a few each year, The Rosin Box is staging three in one night.
"It's crazy hard, yes," Topazio said.
Still, she said the company thrives on the exhilaration and the creative expression that comes with collaborating with choreographers and performing a dance for the first time.
"There's something electric about creating new work rather than restaging something on our bodies that was created on different bodies — there's definitely like an identity there too," she said.
The Rosin Box Project's first performance was in 2018, and the company became a nonprofit in 2020. Topazio said she wanted more — beyond what traditional ballet could provide her.
"I felt that there was more that I had to contribute to and more that I wanted to say in the whole artistic process," Topazio said. "As much as I love classical ballets, most of them don't speak to the present day."
She began dancing as a child, while her parents enrolled their kids in as many activities as possible to see what might stick.
"(Dance) just kind of became something I couldn't do without. It became just like a part of me. I don't want to say almost like an addiction but almost, you know? Myself, my mood, everything, my emotional state definitely changes when I don't get to dance," she said.
Topazio's piece in the show is called "New Topazio," and it abstractly explores the idea of living within a construct.
"Whether that be social norms, or inherited norms or beliefs — it's just natural, it's second nature almost," Topazio said.
She's equally as compelled to continue running a dance company, despite what local arts leaders note is a relentlessly bleak situation for performing arts nonprofits.
"It's not great right now. As many arts organizations are trying to figure out the current economic landscape, we're no different. Funding cuts on every level is extremely difficult. It's hard not to take it personally — things like filling seats," Topazio said. "We didn't think it would rock our patrons as much."
As they adjust and navigate changing arts economics, Topazio is focusing on the good — and reaffirming the need for companies like hers, for audiences and creatives alike.
"It's become like a haven, I think, for a lot of the artists and it's become a home. Being able to provide that — I'm not a mother but it definitely is like this maternal instinct that comes out in me. And being able to see that is probably the most rewarding thing, seeing someone find their people or find their community, and then just push forward, want more for themselves, want to push their own boundaries," Topazio said. "I'm endlessly inspired by the people that I work with, not just the company members, but also our teaching artists and everyone that is connected to this organization. I think there's so much passion that there's a big part of me that's like: Well, it can't stop."
