Storybook Steps

"The Lonely Bucket" dance show was named to sound like the title of a children's book.

The hour-long show features vignettes between each dance piece, like dance commercials interrupting a dance show.

"One of the vignettes is 'The A's of Modern Dance,'" dancer and choreographer Rosamond Stewart said. "It's all the various things positive and maybe annoying about modern dance, and it's very playful and almost like Sesame Street - light and playful."

"The Lonely Bucket" runs Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m. at Albuquerque Academy's Simms Auditorium. "The Lonely Bucket Show" is a storybook-style performance that has the spirit of a fairy tale.

"There's a really wide range," Stewart said. "Some of them are about relationships and very intimate. And some of them are just dance and don't have a point. And some are just kind of silly."

Stewart and Dana Ten Broeck, who helped choreograph the show, became friends at the age of 10.

"Dana and I have been thinking about the piece for almost six months now," Stewart said. "Only since about six weeks ago did we start incorporating the dances and all of the music. Most modern dance performances take on a serious side, but with Dana and I being the goofy people that we are, we have tried to include more humor in our show. It is an amazing collaborative effort."

Sixteen dancers are scheduled to appear in the performance. Eight of them have already participated in pieces with Stewart and Ten Broeck, and the other eight make up the Academy Dance Troupe from the school. Five other dancers perform the vignettes.

"In all of my past choreographic experiences, I usually have an idea that I try to put in a student show," Stewart said. "This time the whole production is ours. It has been rough choreographing this show, but I think we are both happy with the final product."

Having started out their dancing careers in ballet, Stewart and Ten Broeck started shifting their focus to modern dance when they discovered how much fun they could have while choreographing. While Stewart studied statistics at UNM and worked intensively with its dance program, Ten Broeck moved to Salt Lake City and studied modern dance at the University of Utah. Now that Ten Broeck is back in Albuquerque, the two have been putting all of their ideas and experience together to create their own shows.

"During my senior year of college I did one show at an outdoor arts performance called Terra Animas," Ten Broeck said. "After graduating in 2007, I came back to Albuquerque and started working with the VSA North Fourth Art Center as an AmeriCorps volunteer. I now teach modern dance."

Ten Broeck says she likes dancing and choreographing for different reasons.

"Choreographing is great because there is definitely less pressure," she said. "With dancing, you have to control your body and your nervousness. It is definitely more competitive than choreographing as well. Choreographing, however, brings out the intellectual side of dance. It is also a great opportunity to work with other people."

Patricia Dickinson, director of Dance Theatre Southwest (the theater where Stewart and Ten Broeck started doing most of their choreographic work together), was the first to encourage the duo to start working on their own show.

"She actually encouraged us to start our own company, but we decided just to make a show," Ten Broeck said. "Because we aren't students anymore, we would have had to rent studio space for our show. It was Patricia who offered it to us for free."

Stewart and Ten Broeck are planning to take a trip to Argentina after they finish with "The Lonely Bucket."

"We are volunteering to work on a farm there," Stewart said. "Our room and board is all paid for, so we are excited about that. We feel that traveling to new places is the best way to learn new things."