LEBANON — The Rebecca Lawrence Gallery at AVA Gallery and Art Center looks like a cross between an arts space and a dance studio.
Paintings of choreographed patterns made with loose brush strokes and sketches of costume ideas are tacked to the wall next to a completed garment: A mustard-colored shirt with neon-yellow sleeves.
More costumes hang around the corner, in the Clifford B. West Gallery, along with a half-dozen blue ropes and several foam rectangles wrapped in silver foil leaning against the wall.
The pieces are part of a group exhibition titled “Novel Formats: On-Site,” one of three shows that opened at AVA last Friday.
But they’ll also take on a new life in the coming weeks in two improvisational dance pieces that are part of “Novel Formats,” a seven-part dance cycle from Windsor choreographer Rachel Bernsen and her collaborators.
One of Bernsen’s aspirations for the series is to undo the delineations between dance, music and visual art, so AVA seems like a natural setting to perform the cycle’s fifth and sixth installments.
“In the most powerful work, those things are kind of beautifully merged and often in the service of a story,” Bernsen said. “But because this is abstract work, I want those things all to be equally engaging and equally mysterious. Or equally exciting.”
Novel Formats 1-3 have all been ensemble pieces, so for 5 and 6, Bernsen wanted to create a “release from large-scale work,” she said.
“For a Time,” “Novel Formats” No. 5, will take the form of a duet between Bernsen and one of her collaborators, the musician and interdisciplinary artist Jean Carla Rodea, who splits her time between Brooklyn and San Francisco.
The piece is improvised, but what happens in the performance is built on friendship and months of developing “loose frameworks” that guide the dancers’ movements, Bernsen said.
“We’ve really been exploring our relationship,” she said.
Over the course of developing “For a Time,” Bernsen and her collaborators replaced white metal tables with the foil-covered panels and blue ropes that hang in the gallery and that were made by White River Junction theater designer and cartoonist Noah Mease.
“You are Here, Change, Change, Change,” “Novel Formats” No. 6, meanwhile is designed as a solo piece, and the garments that hang from gallery walls, made by Megan Craig, an artist and associate professor of art and philosophy at Stony Brook University, will become an extension of the performance, Bernsen said.
Video art also plays a part in “Novel Formats On-Site,” including “My Material Nature,” in which shots of Bernsen removing pieces of brightly colored clothing are interspersed with clips of similar garments floating down a sun-kissed stream.
The piece walks a similar line between improvisation and choreography, as in Bernsen’s dances. The scene has been set, the camera positioned just-so, but where the garments end up in the frame, what shape they take in the trickling stream, is a matter of chance.
The relationship between mediums — and between art and spectator — continued to dissolve in “Beholder + Interlace,” a video-sculpture by Chico Eastridge, technical director and producer at JAM (Junction Arts and Media), who filmed past performances of “Novel Formats.”
A pair of papier mache eyelids mounted on two pale blue pieces of wood resemble flower petals. Below the eyes stands a pedestal with a black mask nestled into the structure’s hollow top. Rest your head in the mask and your eyes will appear in the screens behind the papier mache lids, becoming one with the artwork.
“Novel Formats” is not the only time AVA has served as a performance site in recent years. In 2023, dancer and choreographer Ellen Smith Ahern staged “Vulture Sister Song,” an ensemble piece billed as a modern fairy tale about the fluid relationship between humans and the natural world.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Ahern performed a solo work, which spectators were invited to watch through the gallery’s windows to comply with social distancing rules.
After staging “Novel Formats” No. 4, which is intended to be a large ensemble piece, and No. 7, a kind of reflection on the rest of the installments, Bernsen hopes to perform the project in full, “almost like an opera cycle,” she said.
In a way, the two other shows that opened at AVA on Friday are engaged in a kind of dance with each other, as well. Exhibited in adjoining gallery spaces, they both explore the capabilities of the human hand, Samantha Eckert, AVA’s exhibition manager, said.
Juni Van Dyke’s “These Beautiful Hands: A Tribute to Our Elders” treats the hand as a kind of dignified portrait.
An installation titled “Gifts” comprises 46 plaster casts of hands arranged in two long rows. They’re drawn from Van Dyke’s experiences making art with senior citizens. A sheet of handmade paper hanging below each casting bears an excerpt from an anonymous conversation with the hand model.
“We had a small farm and struggled in the usual way with farming. No wonder I have these hands! Poetry in all that struggle,” reads an excerpt below a large hand crosshatched with wrinkles.
Hanging next to “Gifts” were several charcoal drawings Van Dyke made while holding her mother’s hand. In them, two shadowy figures emerge from behind a wash of pale blue, as if engaged in their own kind of dance.
The capabilities of the human hand show up in the craftsmanship of the carved wooden animals and woodblock prints in Eva Sturm-Gross’ debut solo exhibition “Beasts of Eden.” Symbols and myths from the Jewish canon are portrayed by animals of the Upper Valley, where Sturm-Gross grew up.
A waxy scroll unfurls from a blood-red cow. A beaked woman looks down to behold a winged creature blooming from her feet. A half-bird, half-man nestles in the stomach of a long angular fish. They are characters in a state of metamorphosis, heading to meet some mysterious destiny.
“Novel Formats On-Site,” “Beasts of Eden,” and “These Beautiful Hands: A Tribute to Our Elders” are on view at AVA Gallery and Art Center through Feb. 14.
Performances of “For a Time” are scheduled for 7 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 23 and Saturday, Jan. 24. Performances of “You are Here, Change, Change, Change” are set for 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 6 and Saturday, Feb. 7. To learn more and to purchase tickets ($25), go to avagallery.org.
Also at AVA
Rachel Bernsen’s spouse Taylor Ho Bynum, director of Dartmouth College’s Coast Jazz Orchestra, will lead a Spontaneous Sound Orchestra workshop for people ages 7 and up from 11:30 to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 31. Registration is $20.
Bernsen will lead a workshop on spontaneous dance for adults ages 18 and up from 2 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 31. Registration is $25 and can be done on AVA’s website.
“all the colors humans have not yet named,” a group exhibition that explores the power of color across mediums, is on view in the Linda Roesch Visual Arts Gallery through Feb. 28. The show is free and open to the public.
Memento mori
On the coattails of its final production as a theater company, following over 50 years in the Upper Valley, Revels North’s costumes, props and memorabilia will be for sale from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Jan. 24 at the theater’s home base at 2 Mascoma St., Suite 3, in Lebanon, for those who would like to take a piece of the theater home with them.
Four seasons in winter
Upper Valley Baroque will perform Antonio Vivaldi’s famed group of concertos “The Four Seasons,” at Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph at 3 p.m. this Saturday. For tickets ($25-$55) and more information, go to uppervalleybaroque.org.
As of Wednesday, a handful of tickets still remained for the same performance at Lebanon Opera House at 3 p.m. on Sunday. To purchase tickets and learn more, go to lebanonoperahouse.org or call 603-448-0400.