Dancer and Choreographer Beth Elkins

(photo: Rose Mattrey)

Why you should know who she is:

In the 13 years that Buffalo has been her home, Beth Elkins has danced lead parts with every major dance company in town, most often and most notably with Pick of the Crop and Negia Ballet Artists. She is also a partner with architect Brad Wales in Allen Street’s Gallery 164 and in the newly created Nimbus Dance, whose debut production, Story of a Girl, has played to full houses at the gallery the past two weekends. (See the review on page 18.) Story of a Girl—which features dancers Jennifer Golonka, Melanie Aceto and Kerry Ann Ring; narrator Theresa Baker; and video by Brad Wales and Brian Milbrand—is the first full-length piece Elkins has choreographed.

Her background:

Elkins, who also teaches Pilates at Gallery 164, started in Syracuse at the Center of Ballet and Dance Art. “Just as a young girl, like so many young girls do,” she says. “But I kept going, kept going, until I was taking 10, 12 classes a week by the time I was a senior in high school.” She went on to apprentice at the Milwaukee Ballet for a few years and then, like many young dancers, hit the audition circuit, taking jobs where they came. After stops in Columbus, Ohio and Toronto, she came to Buffalo to dance with a company that almost immediately folded. Fortunately, both for Elkins and for Buffalo, Sergei Neglia and Heidi Halt had just opened their dance company and school in the city, and Elkins found a perfect fit. “That was lucky,” she says. “And I loved Buffalo, so it was easy to stay here. So then I danced with a number of companies, mostly Pick of the Crop and Neglia.” Elkins also led Chautauqua Institution’s Dance Department for four years.

How were Nimbus Dance and it first production were born?

“I knew for a number of years that I wanted to do something, but I felt that I had so much going on in my life with having Valerie [Elkins’ and Wales’ four-year-old daughter] and running the gallery, that I knew I could never sit down and focus on one crystal clear piece. So Brad told me, ‘Why don’t you make it a story of a girl, and it can be as chaotic as you want it to be? Because you’re all moms, you’re all women, you’re all working, you’re all concerned about what’s happening politically. Just be that.’ And that’s what it is.

“The company is, I guess, Brad and I and whoever we invite to work with us—and hopefully we continue to get similarly talented people. I was very lucky. Everybody contributed to a great degree. I’m not necessarily the girl in Story of a Girl; we’re all sort of the girl, it’s an amalgamation of all our experiences and all of our stories.”

There are lots of elements to Story of a Girl—music, spoken word, video—and even the dance itself seems eclectic. How do you assemble a vocabulary for apiece like this?

“Most of it is ballet choreography, so we use that, but there’s also a lot of slang involved, especially with modern dancers. Sound effects are another good one. Making a sound that sounds like the movement that you want. But we use ballet terms, stuff that we’ve all grown up with.”

What happens next with Story of a Girl? It’s ending its run this weekend.

“It’s possible that we’ll do it again. I’m not sure I want to do it again right away in another city or another venue. I’m interested in continuing to do other work in spaces like this.”

So you have plans for future pieces?

“I have been and am now even more interested in choreographing to the rhythm of spoken word—not so much acting out what’s being said but reacting to the cadence and flow of people’s voices. It was especially nice working with Theresa Baker because she has such a charming quality to her presentation. I’d like to do stuff with that; I’d like to create a rhythm of words being repeated by the dancers. I like hearing the dancers speak. I think it works in this space, where it wouldn’t work in a much bigger space.”

“I also want to keep dealing with current subject matter. I have an idea where some of the audience could call the dancers on their cell phones. I don’t know what would happen next, but I think it would be funny. We also have an idea that we could do a performance on our roof that could be viewed from the roofs of other buildings nearby. Everyone would have opera glasses.”

Upcoming projects:

On May 20 and 21, Elkins will be one dancer in a trio performing a new piece by New York-based choreographer Jessica Lang at the Flickinger Center at the Nichols School. The piece was commissioned by Pick of the Crop’s Elaine Gardener. The trio will also perform one of Gardener’s pieces, Yield to the Current of Song. And in June Elkins will dance in another of Gardener’s pieces, this time at Hallwalls at the Church.