FRINGE FESTIVAL: Winter Park

If you head to the Fringe Festival, you’ll be treated to Orlando performers in plays full of musical numbers, dancing and intricate choreography. This will be the first Fringe, however, that has a production where dancers perform in a swimming pool with a singer atop a swan floatie.​

The Voci Dance modern dance company will be putting on a production of AQUAdance, a water ballet, for the first time at this year’s Fringe Festival. The six-person production, which will be held at a private residence about a mile from the Fringe Beer Tent, stems from Voci Dance Artistic Director Genevieve Bernard’s love of the “aqua-musical” films of the 1950s, where dancers perform elaborate choreography all from the water. 

Bernard, a dancer and choreographer, had the idea for quite some time. After injuring her knees 10 years ago, she began taking water ballet and aerobics classes for exercise. 

“The whole time (during lessons), I was thinking, ‘Oh if I could put these ladies into patterns and make them move around,’” she said. “The whole time I was thinking as a choreographer, I’ve always wanted to do something like that. I love retro things and vintage things, I like old things. It’s sort of this weird marriage of all the things I like.”

Flamingo Duet

Katherine Fabian, a Winter Park local, has been performing numbers with Voci Dancers for nine years. But this is the first time she has had a musical duet with a plastic flamingo. 

“It’s really fun,” Fabian said. “It’s more performance art, because it’s not just dance. We try to not take ourselves too seriously. We had a preview performance recently, and there were moments that we didn’t think were going to be funny, but the audience found some humor in it. We’ve been trying to pull those moments out and make it a really fun experience.”

Fabian and the group have practiced two to three times a week — sometimes with the help of a synchronized swimming coach — at Bernard’s house since late March. A factor the dancers had to endure was the springtime chill during pool rehearsals. Fabian said they often rehearsed for 20 to 30 minutes in the water and then hop out for an hour to warm up.

“You definitely have to be comfortable with yourself performing,” she said. “You can’t be afraid to interact with the audience, and (you) really connect with your fellow performers to make sure you’re getting the story or the feeling across.” 

Although injuries she sustained in college prevented Fabian from being a full-time dancer — she now works as a managing director at the Orlando Ballet — she still finds time to perform in Voci Dance productions. 

“I like the working environment with Genevieve and the other dancers,” Fabian said. “It’s fun to work in that way — you get to perform things that you enjoy and had a hand in helping to craft.

“Genevieve doesn’t just give you movement and say, ‘Do it,’” she said. “She lets it kind of evolve with input from the dancers.”

The Heroes Exemplifying Mediocrity

Freelance writer Jodi Renee Thomas is speaking from the heart with her Fringe play about a league of hard-drinking, chain-smoking superheroes in a world that no longer needs them. 

“T.H.E.M.” — “The Heroes Exemplifying Mediocrity” — is the Winter Park local’s first production for Fringe. The story centers around a group of washed-up superheroes who, after vanquishing all of the city’s villains back in their hey day, now sit around and wait to feel useful again. Thomas said it’s a story that tackles aging and the feeling of invalidity that comes with it. 

“I try really hard to be in charge and not cry during rehearsal, because I remember how it felt (writing the story),” Thomas said. “The story is not only about aging, it’s also about the people who surround you that get you through life. This strange group of people found each other. … And that’s what they have to live for.”

Although the play’s seven characters are larger-than-life superhumans with names such as Feministic the Tramp, the story itself come from a personal place. Thomas suffered from a serious case of pancreatitis that left her hospitalized last year. She spent more than a month on bedrest and wrote the short story as a way to capture the thoughts racing in her head. When she learned Winter Park’s Breakthrough Theater was looking for entries for Fringe, she converted the story into a play.

Thomas is not working the production alone. She recruited her child Xoe, who identifies as non-binary, to be part of the show as an assistant director. Xoe also doubles as PanBam, a character Jodi based on her 17-year-old teenager when she originally wrote the story. 

“I hope people think it’s funny, first and foremost, because I tried to cover some really dark subjects with a bit of humor,” Thomas said. “But I also hope it makes them go home and call their best friend and say ‘Hey, I’m real glad you’re in my life.’”

AQUAdance 

by Voci Dance

WHEN: 9 p.m. May 20; 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. May 24; 9 and 11 p.m. May 25; and 8 and 10 p.m. May 26

WHERE: 1314 Chichester St., Orlando

TICKETS: $12

LENGTH: 50 minutes

“T.H.E.M.” by Professional Party Girl Productions

WHEN: 7 p.m. May 21 and 23; and 11:35 p.m. May 26

WHERE: Breakthrough Theatre,

421 W Fairbanks Ave, Winter Park 

LENGTH: 60 minutes