When Ariel Dance Theatre Artistic Director Andrea Ariel & collaborators started brain storming ideas for the show The Grand Theory of EVERYTHING BETWEEN, some of the reference points were string theory, aliens, back holes, theories of conscious creation, quantum mechanics, parallel universes, multiple realities, ripple effects, aliens as well as science fiction writing, movies and television.

Dancers Steve Ochoa, Jude Hickey, Adriene Mishler, Andrea Ariel, Stephanie Chavez, Amy Myers, Scott Roskilly, Claire Augustine and musicians Peter Stopchinski, Hen3ry Q Vines, Chuck Fisher, Leah Nelson and Thomas Echols perform in Ariel Dance Theatre's Everything Between.  Photos by Caroline Mowry.

The production design by Natalie George and K. Eliot Haynes used the white side of the dance marley to create vibrant projections on the floor.   The side walls were painted black.   A white ledge was built 14” up from the floor along those walls.  That ledge allowed dancers to perch on them or use them to get around to the stage in back.

The band Dissonant Romantics - assembled for this production by composer Peter Stopchinski - was placed on an upstage platform.  Behind the Dissonant Romantics was a white scrim, which allowed for shadow silhouette performances and one genuinely surprising and unique theatrical moment.

Costume designer Kari Perkins created white dance performance clothes with a “skirt” that can be pulled up and raised overhead to create another vertical rectangular projection surface.   The band wore white with neutral colors and was kept out of the projections.

2 projectors from the Rude Mechs inventory were used.  One placed above the audience and another projecting back from upstage.  Both were focused down at the floor.  Each projector had an individual patch assigned to it in Figure53’s QLab running on a Mac Pro with dual ATI5770 video cards.

The projections on the floor and midway up the dancers integrated tightly with Natalie George’s lights creating a design that portrayed what the energy and spaces in between and around us might look like.  This understated production design complimented the movement and music performances as the primary expression of all the ideas that were the original inspirations for the show.

A lightning storm time lapse outside The Off-Center after a performance of Ariel Dance Theatre's Everything Between featuring music composed by Peter Stopchinski and performed by Dissonant Romantics for the show.  Used by permission of the composer.