A & E

Stretching the envelope isn't enough for Dance Alloy Theater's Beth Corning. Her company's mantra these days is "Breaking the Fourth Wall" -- the one between performers and audiences.

Four performances of "Black/White Dancing in the Red" starting Friday night at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater in East Liberty are part of the company's new orientation. Seating in the wings alongside the performers, in addition to traditional seating in front of the performers, is another aspect of the new focus.

"Breaking the Fourth Wall" is about communication, both artistically and in marketing.

Supported by the R.K. Mellon and Heinz Foundations, Penn PAT and an anonymous donor, the marketing aspects were completed this fall with elements such as a new logo and Web site.

The pairing of the two pieces of "Black/White Dancing in the Red" is particularly stimulating. David Shimotakahara's "Open Seating" and artistic director Corning's "At Once There Was a House" were created in 2003 for his Cleveland dance company Groundworks.

"I love this evening with these two works. They're very surreal," Corning says. Shimotakahara's piece is "so architectural. It is indeed within a 20-by-20 foot square and kept there. In itself it is claustrophobic, but you don't feel it until you realize you've been kept in this box for half an hour."

Her piece is, she says, is the flip side -- unyielding spill-over-the-edge colors, which she compared to asking her 8-year-old daughter to clean up her room. Everything has its place, but nothing stays there.

"Everything keeps falling out at you. It's cumulative," Corning says. Her show is called "Dancing in the Red," she says, because in either a strict structure or a life with some chaos, "no matter what we do, there's always a deficit somewhere. It's all about how we manage it."

Dance Alloy Theater is a repertoire company in which the idea "is to get the performers to grow into, to embody the work. I've always stretched works to accommodate each dancer. Each dancer and her body personality brings something different."

Dance Alloy may be dancing in the red, but kept its books in the black for 2005-'06 season.

"That doesn't mean every day isn't a challenge," she says. "But we're getting stronger and working in the right direction.

"We'll be better off when everyone understands that nonprofits -- across the board -- are about serving the community and are supported by the community. We've turned into a society that thinks we're all deserving and deserve it for nothing. And we work hard to buy TVs and iPods and other things that isolate us. Nonprofits, from a certain mental-health perspective, are a good investment," she concludes, with a healthy laugh.

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