It’s a fact most of us never consider—anyone can dance just about anywhere.
The Columbus Modern Dance Company (CoMo Dance) will do just that in LoCoMotion 2025, a bus tour of performances of dance works by seven contemporary choreographers in five different Columbus venues where dance isn’t usually on the menu.
The dance bus tour begins Sunday, Nov. 2 at 2 p.m. in the Main Library, Downtown Columbus. From there, audience members will travel by bus to experience performances in the East Market, the Lincoln Theatre, the National Veterans Memorial and Museum and the Grange Insurance Audubon Center, before returning to Main Library.
Though the tour focuses on dance, it also gives audience members an opportunity to experience some of Columbus’ cultural venues in a unique way.
“A lot of what we think about is, how do we surprise and delight people with taking them to unexpected places and then also put dance in spaces that complements the spaces that we’re taking them to?” said CoMo Dance Co-Founder and Artistic Director Laura Comana Puscas.
LoCoMotion 2025 continues the tradition of the company’s LoCoMotion 2022 dance bus tour. That event had been inspired by Locality 2012, a multivenue Columbus dance event created to celebrate the city’s 2012 bicentennial year. Puscas danced in Locality 2012 and brought the idea to CoMo Dance.
LoCoMotion 2025 will begin in the main library’s large second floor space with a performance of Falling In and Out of Time by dancer and choreographer Olivia Wang. Currently a fourth-year student at New York’s Juilliard School, Wang created the piece while completing an Emerging Choreographers’ Residency with CoMo Dance in July.
The work explores relationships and the fluidity of time, treating the library as a space that contains much more than books.
"The LoComotion performance in the Columbus Library will hopefully allow the audience to re-experience the library as an immersive space that holds time, rich history, and artistic imagination," Wang said
Audience members will then board the bus for the historic East Market to experience works by Austin-based choreographer Leo Briggs and CoMo Dance member Aliya Myers.
The company will perform Briggs’ Adoring Public to the George Michael song “Outside” in the Switch Yard at the East Market. Inside the market, The Landing—noted for the cozy feel of its wooden rafters and angled ceiling—will be the backdrop for Myers’ new work for CoMo Dance.
“(Myers’) piece is very fast and very intimate, so it’s in this wooden, dark aesthetic at the East Market indoor location,” Puscas said.
Then to the Lincoln Theatre for Impetus Madeline Kendall Schreiber, a resident dancer and choreographer with Pittsburgh’s Texture Contemporary Ballet. The work explores the theme of being stuck and breaking free and, Schreiber says, is set to a score full of “playful, jazz-inspired moments.”
“The music and movement are going to be in harmony with the Lincoln Theatre where the work will be presented—in its vibrant design and architecture as well as its connection to jazz,” Schreiber said.
The tour’s centerpiece will take place at the National Veterans Memorial and Museum, with two works that explore veterans’ experience.
CoMo Dance Co-Founder Kelsey Morozow Burbrink’s Valkyrie, named after the women in Norse mythology tasked with carrying fallen soldiers to Valhalla, and Everett’s Peace by Roman Baca, artistic director of the New York City-based Exit12 Dance Company. The latter is informed by Baca’s experience as a veteran of the Iraq War.
Both works will be danced among the images in the museum’s exhibition “Full Metal Jacket Diary.” The exhibition features photographs taken by actor Matthew Modine while filming the Stanley Kubrick Vietnam War film Full Metal Jacket.
At the tour’s final performance stop, the Grange Insurance Audubon Center, the dancers will explore human responses to feeling confined in Slovakian choreographer Lenka Mičincová’s new work Limits.
“I deal with the feelings that arise when we are limited or restricted by someone or something, and how we then try to break out of these boundaries,” Mičincová said.
Puscas says the Audubon Center’s ample space is idea for Mičincová’s athletic choreography.
“We’ve got this beautiful open space with glass windows that face the city and really tall ceilings,” Puscas said. “That’s perfect for all the jumping and throwing and lifting that happens in Mičincová’s piece.”
Beyond the many performance venues and dance works, LoCoMotion 2025 is also likely to have at least two different audiences—those taking the tour to see dance, and those who just happen to be at the venues and will be surprised when the dancing starts.
“There’s something fun about bringing dance unexpectedly to people who are already at some of these spaces,” Puscas said. “That’s always part of CoMo’s mission, is to bring dance to the public that would not seek out a concert, just bring dance to them.”
Columbus Modern Dance Company’s LoCoMotion 2025 will take place Sunday, Nov. 2 at 2 p.m., starting and ending at the Main Library, Downtown Columbus.
