Hewson balances job, aerial dance

Artist-in-residence coordinator adapts to above-ground performance

Kate Hewson really does float through the air with the greatest of ease.

“You either take to aerial dance right away or you don’t,” she says.

Hewson fell — not literally, we are happy to report — into the former category, and now engages in airs above the ground with Cycropia, Madison’s aerial dance company.

By day, she’s just been hired as the interdisciplinary artist-in-residence coordinator for the Arts Institute, and this semester is shepherding art critic/curator Michael Brenson through the logistical rigors of his residency here this fall. (See related story).

“It involves anything from making sure that he has an office and a phone number to putting up posters for his upcoming symposium,” says Hewson.

She is well-equipped to meet the needs of a stranger. She knows what it’s like to be new to a place, having immigrated to the United States from Johannesburg, South Africa, when she was 11, and also having lived in England and Belgium.

“Immigrating affects you — people who have grown up in Madison have no idea how much of an obstacle the weather is!” she says. “But seriously, I think immigrating has made me more adaptable than I would have been if I’d spent my whole life in Johannesburg.”

It took Hewson about six months to adapt to the dancing done above the ground with Cycropia. “I have a background in classical and modern dance, and that may have helped,” she says.

The troupe, in existence for 15 years, uses a number of apparatus to accomplish this, including an assortment of trapeze, a climbing harness, steel ladders, steel hoops, hand loops that fit around the dancer’s wrist, bungee cords and more.

Hewson says she favors both the steel apparatus and the traditional trapeze. The latter differs from the trapeze that circuses use in its distance from the ground. “Ours usually is not more than shoulder height,” she says. “The low-flying trapeze also can move in a circular path. There’s a good deal of spinning.”

There’s also a good deal of design motion emanating from Glitter Box Productions, Hewson’s free-lance Web business. Since 2001 she has consulted about cybermatters with such public and private organizations as Wisconsin Public Radio, the Wisconsin Assembly for Local Arts, Li-Chiao Ping Dance (Hewson also studied with the company), Home Savings Bank, Madison Youth Choirs, Whirligig Gallery, Cycropia and others.

Perhaps because she has lived in a variety of nations, perhaps because of the many organizations with which she has worked, perhaps because of who she is, Hewson finds the concept of community enormously important.

“It’s one of the things I like so much about being in Cycropia,” she says. “We’re a collective, which means that everyone has a chance to choreograph. We support one another in our creative visions and in our lives. I’ve been a member since 2000, and it’s become such a huge part of my life. I even have a trapeze in my back yard.”

Hewson is using that trapeze to prepare for the next Cycropia appearance, which will be in February at MATC’s Mitby Theater. “It’s an annual dance showcase for companies that don’t have a regular venue,” she says.

For those who enjoy planning even further ahead, Cycropia also gives a free outdoor performance every August at Orton Park.

“We turn the park into a stage by hanging our apparatus from the boughs of a huge oak tree,” she says.

Hewson says that her experiences as a performing artist and as a world traveler give her particular insight to help the Arts Institute’s artists-in-residence.

“I think I understand what they need and how to help them most effectively,” she says. “It’s the greatest job I could imagine having.”

Next to being on stage herself, of course.

“I want to keep dancing until I’m old and can’t dance any more!”

For more information about arts on the UW–Madison campus, visit http://www.arts.wisc.edu. The Arts Institute works to make the arts more visible and effective at UW–Madison.

For more information about Cycropia, visit: http://www.cycropia.org/.