“Wonderbound's mission is to use dance to deepen humankind's common bond," Ammon says. "We fulfill our mission through stories, because I've discovered that storytelling fosters empathy. Even if there are people who have different backgrounds, as humans we're kind of hardwired to be able to connect to other people and their narratives."
Ammon and his wife and creative partner, Dawn Fay, moved to Denver in 2007 and transformed a small ballet company in the suburbs — formerly called Ballet Nouveau Colorado — into a world-renowned institution for collaboration. Rather than stage traditional ballet productions such as The Nutcracker or Swan Lake, Ammon and Fay focused on developing new work.
Their commitment to experimentation shook up the Denver arts scene and attracted a diverse range of local talent to the organization. Wonderbound has collaborated with groups including Central City Opera, the Colorado Symphony, Curious Theatre Company and Lighthouse Writers Workshop, as well as individual creatives such as composer Ofer Ben-Amots, visual artist and photographer Eric Robert Dallimore, costumer Rachael Kras and many more.
"Working with local artists has always been fundamental to us," Ammon says. "Pre-pandemic, we did all live music and lots of collaborations with all these local musicians and artists of all types. And then, when the pandemic hit in 2020, we had to make changes to ensure we could keep everyone employed."
To protect its employees, Wonderbound made the decision to reduce the number of people involved in each project. Ammon notes that cost and health concerns meant that dancers and Wonderbound staff members had to operate in a bubble in order to keep the organization afloat.
"I know the pandemic has been so hard on so many artists in the Denver community, as everywhere," Ammon says. "And, unfortunately, we've seen a lot of artists give up their work or move to other places to pursue it in more affordable realities. I hope as we transition out of the pandemic, our community can double down on making sure Denver is a place where people can live creatively and be able to support themselves doing that.”
Wonderbound's Emily Poli and Nathan Mariano in Garrett Ammon’s Reckoning at The Red Herring Tavern
Courtesy of Garrett Ammon
While Wonderbound's latest project, Reckoning at the Red Herring Tavern, does not include live musicians, it is an original work created by Ammon, showcasing folk chamber music by local legend Tom Hagerman of DeVotchKa. The dance production is fifty minutes and stages multiple performances a day during its run from Thursday, March 2, through Sunday, March 12, at Wonderbound's temporary location (3865 Grape Street, Unit #2).
"Reckoning at the Red Herring Tavern came about because we had to do a little rearranging of the season due to our permanent facilities being under renovation," Ammon says. "The process has been going well, but we ran into some supply-chain issues that caused things to be delayed."
The company was scheduled to present Clay Rose and Ammon's production of The Sandman with live music by the Gasoline Lollipops in March, but were forced to push the show back to May because its current space is too small to accommodate a performance of that scale. Without a show for its March slot, Ammon was forced to pivot and create a one-act performance the group could do twice a night in Wonderbound's smaller space.
"I had to quickly find something else to do," Ammon recalls. "Sometimes that's not a bad thing. During the pandemic, we really learned to move fast and lean into our creativity. Over the holiday break, I was trying to figure out what to do, and I listened to some of Tom Hagerman's previous albums, Idle Creatures and The Breakfast Playground, and they just really captured me. The textures and emotions were very present for me, and I knew I was on to something when I started to see characters and narratives come together."
Ammon envisioned a narrative centered on a soldier returning home from war with a new wife and baby. However, the audience quickly realizes his family didn't know about his new unit, and find out the soldier left behind a young woman. The whole time he was gone, she had been waiting for him while working at his family's business, the Red Herring Tavern.
"I like to create these characters who care deeply about each other but have all the messiness of humanity bound up in them,” Ammon says. "We're not in a specific place, though it could probably be somewhere in Europe. We're not in a specific time, but it could probably be somewhere in the ’40s. And we see the family's expectation of how life was supposed to be when their son returned home get completely disrupted."
The unexpected event upends the characters' lives and leads to more family secrets being revealed. "I don't want to give a lot of it away because it is a red herring, but there are unshared things within the family, and we come to find out the son — without knowing it — is a product of his lineage," Ammon says. "He wasn't even aware that his choices were perhaps a little bit pre-determined by the way that his family functions."
The narrative was built around Hagerman's music, which Ammon says he gravitates to because of the artist's ability to fuse classical and folk sounds together. Wonderbound worked with Hagerman back in 2015 on its production The Seven Deadly Sins, so when Ammon called the musician to discuss the current project, he was reaching out as a trusted collaborator.
"Tom's aesthetics and ideas are always deeply inspiring to me," Ammon says. "The entire work is built out of music from those albums. I called Tom and asked, ‘Hey, would it be okay if I did this?’ And he was completely down. His music, especially the songs from those two albums, is heavily rooted in European folk music. It has an Appalachian feel with classical underpinnings. These folk traditions of our common humanity are always sitting there underneath and really spark something in me.”
The music complements the company's dance style, which, although it is rooted in classical ballet, diverts from the dance form's traditions — in which all the movement lifts upward — by returning dancers to the earth. Ammon also weaves in folk dancing as well as elements of modern dance inspired by jazz and hip-hop.
Wonderbound's Damien Patterson and Nathan Mariano in Garrett Ammon’s Reckoning at the Red Herring Tavern.
Courtesy of Garrett Ammon
"What I love is the process of discovery," Ammon says. "I have a rough idea of the story, but a lot of times that narrative is still kind of open to change as we move through it. Sometimes, as the dancers start to infuse their understanding and knowledge into that narrative, we discover things about those characters that we didn't know, and that influences the entire outcome of the work.”
Ammon is excited to share the project with audiences and hopes Reckoning at the Red Herring Tavern takes them on an emotional journey that inspires them to see the world a little bit differently.
"We invite people who all have different life experiences to this show, which zooms in on the messiness of humanity," Ammon says. "I think that messiness is kind of fundamental to dance, and it's just fun. Dance began as a social art form around campfires, so I think we are always trying to reach back to that feeling as we reach toward the future."
Reckoning at the Red Herring Tavern, Thursday, March 2, through March 12; various times, Wonderbound Studios, 3865 Grape Street, Unit #2. Find tickets, starting at $65, and more information at wonderbound.com.
