Arena Dances explores notions of erasure at St. Paul's Union Depot

When Mathew Janczewski brings his "Erased Steps" to St. Paul's Union Depot, he will showcase the intimate side of the historic train station with vaulted ceilings and Tennessee pink marble floors.

That's because the choreographer, who is the founder and artistic director of Arena Dances, is putting the audience members in the center of the transit hub's cavernous waiting area, with the show taking place around them for the site-specific performance.

"It's such a beautiful space," said the 53-year-old Janczewski. "But it's also choreographically super challenging because it is such a big space."

He works with 15 dancers, whose relationships become clear throughout the course of the abstract piece that will be performed to an original score by Minneapolis-based percussionist and composer Zack Baltich.

Baltich, too, has done quite a bit of site-specific work himself. In 2017, he recorded sounds from caves, in empty grain silos and abandoned train tunnels for a project called "Cavernous." Three years later, he spent five weeks in a 400,000-square-foot paper mill, creating a piece for solo percussion and electronics called "Afraid of the Dark Now."

He said the Union Depot is in line with what he thinks about performance spaces. "I play mostly percussion instruments, which lend themselves really well to big, spacious, echoey spaces," he said.

To create the score, Baltich, 31, drew inspiration from Janczewski's imagery and choreographed videos in combination with the sonic qualities of the space itself. Baltich conducted some reverb tests at the train station to check if the sound will translate for percussion instruments like a marimba mixed in with synthesizer.

Baltich also had to think about how to navigate Union Depot's space, which has a significant echo. At times he employs droning sounds that reverberate widely, and at others, he lets silence fill the space in a different way, filling the room with an absence of sound.

For Janczewski, an early inspiration for "Erased Steps" came in 2013 when he saw Eve Sussman's "The Rape of the Sabine Women." The movie has a scene shot in Berlin's Tempelhof airport where men in early 1960s suits move through the terminal, their shoes clicking and echoing as they walk.

Janczewski was struck by the way the filmmaker incorporated the sound of the footsteps as a key component in the scene. He filed away the memory in his head. When he stopped by Union Depot, it all came back to him.

The station's polished stone floor, like the one in "Sabine," makes an echoing sound when walked on. He was also struck by how a train hub, like an airport, is the site for a stream of passengers.

It's also where he got the title for the work. Union Depot got him thinking about its history, how the original tracks were laid down by slaves, immigrants and prisoners, and young men who left off to war from there.

Dwindling ridership forced the depot to close in 1971. It sat for years before a major renovation timed with Metro Transit's Green Line light rail saw it reopen in 2012.

As he developed the piece, Janczewski spent more time at the station.

"As I was hanging out at Union Depot, just taking it all in, it became very clear to me that it is a space that is shelter for people struggling with housing," he said. "I started thinking about the idea of erased steps, and how we try not to see them."

For his "Erased Steps," which premieres Thursday, Janczewski explores notions of erasure, from not truly seeing people who struggle to the societal norms that strip away creativity and difference.

Janczewski draws on his own personal experience of growing up in the small town of Round Lake, Ill., and trying to suppress his homosexuality.

The abstract work begins with a voiceover of T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," a poem about urban alienation in the wake of World War I.

"It's got a misty kind of vibe to it," Janczewski describes the section of dance. "You're sensing these ghosts or spirits in the space as we do it."

From there, the piece moves from depicting a world of highly refined societal perfection to a looser abandonment of restriction. And the 15 dancers will switch from black formal shoes to sneakers.

This isn't Arena Dances' first performance that takes place outside of the context of a traditional theater. The company has performed at the American Swedish Institute as well as the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. For Janczewski, site-specific shows offer an opportunity to shake up performance expectations.

"It shifts the perspective of where dance can happen and what dance is, and how one views it," he said.

When: 8 p.m. Thu. & Fri., Union Depot, 214 4th St. E., St. Paul