Dancer Lindsay Browning is feeling ‘Blue’

Lindsay Browning performs “Blue.”
Credit: Alan Kloc

It’s been a brutal month for cyclists, something choreographer Lindsay Browning knows all too well. As a professional dancer/yoga teacher/photographer/costume designer, she logs about 14 miles a day between gigs, in the wind, rain and month-long snowpocalypse.

So who can blame her if she’s feeling a tinge blue this month?

Browning’s latest dance/performance art piece, “Blue” — performed with local electronic composer Marlo Reynolds – is an exploration of her struggles with various shades of melancholy. A Group Motion company member, Browning is an experienced performer and choreographer. But this show will highlight her design background as well. She’s been hard at work for months creating costumes and set pieces to complement her dance.

“I can’t help but put all of these things on stage: props, music, storytelling, large-scale costumes,” she says. “On some level it’s not a choice; they’re all a part of what I do and who I am. By making pieces like this, I’m actually trying to figure out why I’m fascinated by all of these art forms.”

Amongst Browning’s influences are choreographer Susan Rethorst — known for reforming everyday movements into expressive dance — and, perhaps not surprisingly, the melancholy-ist of all writers, Samuel Beckett. “Blue” even features an entire dance sequence interpreting Beckett’s play, “Act Without Words I.”

“I don’t want to give the impression that this is going to be a downer. There’s a lot of lightness and connection,” Browning says. “But there is a feeling of blue that’s present, because it is present in life. We all have it. And it can be a beautiful part of life. I heard somewhere once that there are two kinds of choreographers: people that make dance from dance history, and people that make dance from life. For better or worse, I’m definitely the latter.”

‘Blue’
Created and performed by Lindsay Browning
Painted Bride Art Center
230 Vine St.
Feb. 19 and 20, 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. both nights
Free, 215-925-9914
www.paintedbride.org