Dance - Like a Bridge ...

There’s a point in any crossing where you’re neither where you came from nor where you’re going. It’s that moment of transition that fuels the fusion of dance and video that debuts at the Beam on March 19.

“I grew up in the desert and bridges were not a part of my life,” says Nicole Livieratos of Gardenhouse Dance Company. But on a recent trip to Brussels, Livieratos fell in love with Belgium’s bridges. “The idea of traversing air or water is a gorgeous idea to me.”

Livieratos, who’s known for her avant-garde dances involving choreographed lawn mowers and, more recently, a potato, will premiere her video dance short “Bridges,” directed by Doug Hall. It’s the third video dance piece choreographed by Livieratos and the first that feels like she’s arrived at that suspended place between the boundaries of dance and film. (The other two films, “Glimpse” and “Looking,” also will be screened at the event.)

The film features Emory University dance professor Anna Leo running, stomping, crawling, stumbling, skipping and dragging herself across bridges, streets, staircases and streams in a study of the manner and shape of our transitions. Children and seniors walking around Leo suggest relationships that bridge generations.

In the water sequences, Leo references the movement of ducks and otherwise does her dancer’s best - despite her bright blue, layered costumes - to seem like she somehow surreally belongs in the streams and in the forests she inhabits. These scenes recall the impressionist montages in Paul Cox’s The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky, one of the finer fusions of dance and film.

When she began the project, Livieratos said she thought the bridges “would have a stronger sensibility of where you start and where you end.” But instead, she found, “It’s predominantly about the crossing.”

thomas.bell@creativeloafing.com

Gardenhouse Dance Company presents the premiere of “Bridges” and two other short films March 19 at The Beam, 750 Glenwood Ave. 5, 7 and 9 p.m. $5 suggested donation. 404-373-4520. www.gardenhousedance.org.??