“Bring it Home” Dance Concert Aug. 2-4

August 1, 2019, 1:13 PM HST

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Adaptations Dance Theater presents its fourth annual Bring it Home contemporary dance concert on Aug. 2 to 4 at Seabury Hall’s ‘A‘ali‘ikūhonua Creative Arts Center.

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Bring it Home is ADT’s summer residency and performance series that celebrates the professional artistry created from and thriving within Maui’s dance community. Each year, ADT invites a cast of local and guest artists — all with ties to Maui — to create original dance works on-island to be shared with Maui audiences at the culmination of the one-month Bring it Home process.

“Bring it Home offers such a rare opportunity to work with and perform alongside dancers who played an important role in shaping who I am today and inspired my lasting love for dance.” said Madi McGain, a first-time guest artist who graduated from Seabury Hall and is now a freelance artist based out of New York City.

“In a lot of ways, it’s very introspective and poetic to be back in the studio with those who share in the unique experience of being raised on Maui, while also bringing new life experiences from the variety of paths we’ve taken in our adult lives. Bring it Home’s commitment to fostering this valuable connection to where we came from allows us to pay respect to the place and community that made us who we are and for that I am incredibly grateful.”

“I feel so inspired by the people I get to create with here,” says ADT Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director Hallie Hunt. “These dancers contribute and show up for the work as a group more than anyone I have worked for. I am literally bursting with excitement before Bring it Home starts to see what the dancers will do with the movement; stuff starts sparking and it’s watching magic happen in the room.”

Bring it Home reflects ADT’s mission to create a professional home for contemporary dance on Maui. The month-long artist residency provides the space, time, and compensation to have these artists collaborate and create together, thereby building a bridge for the exchange of contemporary dance to occur between Maui, the US mainland, and beyond.

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In a move to further foster this rich engagement of artistic expression on-island, Bring it Home 2019 has invited a guest company to take part in the program for the first time. Renowned company FLOCK of Chicago will participate as a featured choreographer and performer, creating an original work on the ADT company, and performing a piece themselves from their repertoire.

“Bring it Home is the annual gathering of our dance family, a collective of like-minded individuals who wish to provide an authentic, relatable dance theater experience for our community,” said Hunt. “While we weren’t necessarily looking to host a guest company this year, the opportunity to invite FLOCK to join Bring it Home came about in such an organic and fluid way, and we knew working with them would be a professional experience our dancers would highly value. FLOCK’s philosophy of establishing an environment of mutual respect and openness in the studio connects with ADT deeply, and we felt safe and excited to welcome them into our Bring it Home family.”

FLOCK was co-founded in 2017 by Florian Lochner and Alice Klock, who met during their mutual time as dancers and choreographers for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. The duo co-choreograph and perform, teach as a team, and produce shows in the US and Germany. It is the goal of FLOCK to create work that is rooted in subtlety, kindness, and belief in the beauty of being human.

“We heard about ADT through social media and really appreciated the concept of the Bring it Home concert, as it really aligns with the FLOCK philosophy,” said Lochner and Klock. “We are thrilled to be participating in this year’s concert and are so happy to share what we have to offer with the artists of ADT and the audiences on Maui.”

They continued, “We hope that people will feel through our work that dance is for everyone. We love for audiences to come in with an open mind and to enjoy applying their own creativity to what they perceive, creating their own interpretations and stories within the experience we offer.”

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Bring it Home will present the world premieres of four distinct dance works in total. In addition to the pieces choreographed by FLOCK, ADT’s resident choreographers Amelia Couture and Hallie Hunt will also present original works, incorporating the largest Bring it Home cast ever of five guest artists and 13 resident dancers, seven of whom are participating in Bring it Home for the first time.

Resident dancer Julia Cost who was born and raised on Maui joins the company for her inaugural Bring it Home. Like most of her dancer peers, Cost left the island after high school to earn her BA and MFA in Dance in Southern California. Upon graduation, she settled in the Bay Area to pursue her dance collective Nine Shards.

“I was creating new work through choreographic residencies on a group of Bay Area dancers until I hit a wall in 2014. In a city so over-saturated and crowded, I lost sight of what I wanted to say with dance.” Cost said.

She made the decision to leave dance and focus on her work as a freelance visual artist. She moved back to Maui in 2018, and on a whim attended that year’s Bring it Home performance to support old friends.

“As I sat in the audience I had the stunning realization this is the best dance I had seen in a long time. And to see this on my home island, a place we had been told we needed to leave if we ever wanted to pursue dance professionally— I was blown away. I found myself blurting out, ‘I want to dance again’ to Co-Artistic Directors Hallie and Amelia in the lobby after the show.”

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Over the past year, Cost has continued to engage with ADT through its master classes, then auditioned to become a part of the Bring it Home 2019 cast this past spring.

“I have been living an experience that was certainly not an option in my wildest dreams when I was growing up here; I am thrilled that I can train and perform as a professional dancer on Maui. ADT is creating a dance culture that is smart, rigorous, and deeply healthy. This is a combination I have not found in my experiences other places, and I think this is possible because it is built on Maui. I feel I have found what I was always looking for by coming home.”

To encourage as much of the Maui community to come experience the culmination of the Bring it Home process, ADT has added a Sunday night show to their performance weekend and will honor a student price of $15 at all three shows for students of all ages — valid ID required for those 14 years and older.

Hunt reflects, “Contemporary dance is a performance art that is meant to be experienced live, when you can feel the power and heat radiating off the stage, see the sweat dripping from the physical exertion, hearing feet and bodies connecting with the floor or each other. This is why it is important to see it live so audience members can share the experience with their friends and family.”

Showtimes for Bring it Home are Friday and Saturday, Aug. 2 and 3 at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, August 4 at 6:30 p.m. Adult/General Admission is $30; student tickets (with proof of ID) are $15. Audiences are welcome to stay for a Q&A session with members of the Bring it Home cast at the conclusion of each performance.

Tickets for Bring it Home and information on all ADT programs can be found online.