Evolution: A jazz and hip-hop production

The upcoming full-length jazz production from Patti Rutland Jazz Company has nothing to do with Charles Darwin, but it has everything to do with evolving.

“I never really knew this was going to cause a controversy,” company president and artistic director, Patti Rutland-Simpson said. “I’ve had people point blank ask me if I’m a Christian.”

When she tells those people she is indeed a Christian, they question why she would do a production about evolution — the name of the dance company’s latest production. She has to explain that evolution in this sense is not a reference to Darwin’s theory of how life evolved from common ancestors through the process of natural selection. It is, she tells them, about how people can change.

“Darwin doesn’t own that word, first of all,” Rutland-Simpson said. “It’s the evolution of us as dancers, choreographers and human beings.”

“Evolution” will be performed at Dothan’s Cultural Arts Center June 7 through 9. After that, the dance company heads to New York City to perform “Evolution” at the Ailey Citigroup Theater, home of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

The Patti Rutland Jazz Company’s New York premiere is being sponsored by Moet and Chandon Champagne and Godiva Chocolates. Eleven of the company’s 16 dancers will travel to New York.

“Evolution” is as much about how the dancers have evolved as it as about how the company itself has evolved.

“There’s nothing that goes on with us on stage that doesn’t have meaning,” Rutland-
Simpson said. “It’s all very heart-driven.”

The contemporary jazz and hip-hop company goes back to 1989 when it was based at the Oz Performing Arts Center in Dothan. When Rutland-Simpson retired from studio dance, the studio-based company ceased. It was resurrected in 2005 when Rutland-Simpson and dancer Vince Vidal Johnson joined forces for the Jazz Dance World Congress.

The company has since become a 501(c)3 organization, providing $60,000 in dance scholarships this year to children who might never be exposed to the art form otherwise.

Next year, Rutland-Simpson hopes to actually pay some of the company’s dancers and take those dancers into local schools and for them to work with community theater groups. Profits from shows will pay the dancers’ salaries while donations continue to go to outreach.

Matt Martine, 20, of Coco Beach, Fla., and Shane Carrigan, 19, of Panama City Beach, Fla., said they think “Evolution” will be the company’s best show to date. The two young dancers said the production and the New York premiere are a chance to be a part of the company’s latest milestone.

The individual dance numbers, they said, carry a lot of meaning for the dancers.

“Nothing is face value for us,” Carrigan said.