A lot has happened in the life of Oak Park dancer Tanya Wideman-Davis since the last time Wednesday Journal spoke to her.
Along with her husband, Thaddeus Davis, whom she married in 2001, the locally grown talent, who came up through the ranks of Stephanie Clemens’ Academy of Movement and Music, opened her own dance company-Wideman/Davis Dance-in New York at the end of 2005.
After leaving the Joffrey Ballet in 2001, Wideman-Davis, 32, returned to the Dance Theater of Harlem where she had previously preformed. She was named principal dancer there and met her husband. She also spent two seasons at Alonzo King’s Lines Contemporary Ballet (San Francisco) in 2002 and at the Spectrum Dance Theater (Seattle).
At the start of their marriage, Mr. Davis was teaching dance at the Alabama School of Fine Arts one semester of the year while Wideman-Davis danced in San Francisco, and their home was situated in New York. Whenever they got breaks, the couple found time to visit, either in San Francisco or Alabama.
“It was difficult,” Wideman-Davis admitted in a phone interview from her home in New York. “It’s really the business that we’re in. We travel so much, so we’re kind of used to it.”
The couple started their own dance company when the separation got to be too much. Now they live together, work together and see each other “pretty much 24/7.”
“I don’t think we could really see it any other way because we’re very close, we’re in the same profession, and we see things very similarly,” she said.
The couple premiered Wideman/Davis Dance in New York City, Feb. 9, with a piece called “The Bends of Life” at the Mary Lea Johnson Performing Arts Center of Calhoun School. “The Bends” is a reproduction of a shorter piece their company was commissioned to produce last year as part of an exhibit at Auburn University of the Gee’s Bend, Ala. quiltmakers. It’s a story set in the South about quilts, sharecropping and the Civil Rights Movement, set in the 1960s.
“The Bends” received a favorable review from the New York Times, which described it with words like “bold,” “distinctive,” and “beautiful.”
Wideman-Davis said she and her husband recently returned from Austin, Texas where they performed a full 16-minute version of the piece, which she said also received positive reviews from the local papers.
She has contemplated bringing “The Bends” to Oak Park and tried contacting the Oak Park Area Arts Council but hasn’t heard back.
“I’d love to show it to everyone [locally],” she said. “We’ve toured it so many places. We just haven’t had the opportunity to tour it in Chicago or Oak Park.”
Stephanie Clemens, who taught Wideman-Davis dancing, beginning when she was just 4. Clemens said she was very proud of her student’s success.
“She certainly was one of the most exciting young dancers I trained here,” Clemens said. “When Tanya was just four years old and her mother brought her, her mother sort of asked me for an assessment of what I thought of this skinny, long-legged little girl who had come into class, and she was blessed with really wonderful facility, even at that age.
“I told her mother, ‘Give me 10 years, and I’ll give you back a dancer,’ and I feel like I’ve kept my promise.”
Clemens also praised Wideman-Davis and her husband for staying original.
“They’re picking repertory that works for them, and they’re doing it in new and innovative ways,” she said. “They’re not trying to be imitative of other companies, and they have genuine talent.”
Single-minded focus also helps.
“Really, my whole life has been about dance,” Wideman-Davis said, “and now that I’m able to do my own thing, and to put my own vision on a creation, for me that’s why I’ve been studying and having a professional career for my whole life. Now is the opportunity that I can encompass everything I’ve learned all these years and put it on the stage for people to view.”
After accomplishing some of her goals and working with other artists she admires, Wideman-Davis believes she has reached a turning point in her career.
“Now it’s my turn to show my voice,” she said.