by Manuel Gonzales

Ellen Bartel is relatively new to Austin. She's lived in the Capitol City for three years. Originally from Long Island, she attended university in New York. Her body is lean and agile and her arms and legs are well and finely muscled. When she walks, she has an easy and relaxed gracefulness, and when she talks, her voice falls into a smooth cadence. She is a dancer. More specifically, she is a Creep.

Less than a month after she moved to Austin, she met and then began dancing for Andrea Ariel, and Ellen has danced with Andrea and her dance company for the three years she has lived in Austin. A year after she met Andrea, Andrea then introduced Ellen to Lisa Fairman, and shortly after, Ellen began to dance for Lisa and her company, Still Point Dance. A year and a half ago, Ellen decided that dancing in two companies and working part time wasn't enough, and so she started the improvisational dance group affectionately known as "The Creeps."

"My whole premise for forming The Creeps was based the fact that I am a choreographer at heart. But since I was so busy with two companies, I needed something to do on my own that took little to no money and little time. So I got this group, The Creeps, together. The rehearsal space is nine dollars an hour. I have no overhead, and the seven Creeps are volunteers, and it's improvisational. So I can put on a little improv show and still pay only nine dollars."

Who are The Creeps? The Creeps are seven individuals and Ellen Bartel who are part of an improvisational dance group whose concept deals with slow motion. Very slow motion. "We have nothing to do with elabroate movement. We are more concerned with producing energy. What it looks like is that no one's moving. I've seen how interesting it is to think that someone is standing still and then to look away for 15 seconds and turn back to see they've changed positions. 'When did they do that? I was just looking at him. He wasn't moving at all.' And this idea of constant energy moving through your body becomes a great image.

"And we go to parks and just do it. I have a very nice group of people that are open-minded enough to say 'Okay, we'll do it here.' We've performed on the Drag twice, right in the middle of the Renaissance Square. We're pretty normal people but suddenly we're doing these crazy things. One time we even freaked out the Drag kids." Since the formation of The Creeps, they've performed on the Drag, in parks around the downtown area, on campus, at the Laughing at the Sun found object art show, and for private parties, and most of the feedback they've received has compared them to moving statues.

When she was a small girl living in New York with her parents, Ellen once saw a homeless old man in the middle of a busy intersection slowly bend down to pick up a dime or a scrap of something. "Here's this weirdo wino guy and he just stops in the middle of the street, just bending over to get something, and that's the whole image in my head. Everybody just keeps rushing past this guy and he's in his own world and in his own frame of time and space, and that image has always stayed in my head."

She posted signs and advertisements across Austin in her first attempt to "creep." "I originally wanted to do The Creeps with one hundred people. A one-time thing. I wrote flyers and posted them saying, 'I want to do this. Join me.' I don't know what I was thinking. Four people called me. That was two summers ago. Now it has become a regular, monthly company. At first, I tried to rehearse with everyone once a month. I thought so many people would be into The Creeps that I would have to keep training new people, but it has ended up being the same seven people every time, and we don't need as much rehearsal because we can all do it now."

The Creeps rehearse at Dance Umbrella, and it is Dance Umbrella who is now sponsoring Ellen as she applies for a grant from the University of Texas at Austin for money to support her original 100 Creeps project. "I realize that I have to sound authentic. I can't just sound like some weirdo artist lost in her own world. I think with support from the school, I can better advertise and attract a hundred people. I wouldn't need a lot of money, really. Mainly support to advertise. And once I got my hundred people, I would need a gym to rehearse in, and I'd have to pay for that space. I wouldn't have to pay for a performance space because I would never put The Creeps on stage. It would get a little boring. Curtains open, Creeps, curtains close -- it's not that interesting. Part of the artistic expression of The Creeps is the juxtaposition of us moving really slow to people moving in regular time, so it wouldn't really work on stage. I called Auditorium Shores to find out what I would have to pay or what forms I might have to fill out to use the park, but they told me, 'No fees, just first come, first serve.' So it's all a matter of finding people willing to do this and follow my very simple rules, mainly to show up on time and to be there for all the rehearsals and the final performance."

As it is improvisational, Ellen directs her crew but does no real choreography for The Creeps. Outside of dancing with Andrea and Still Point Dance and The Creeps, and outside of working part time at Tesoros, to further satiate her need to choreograph, Ellen has directed and choreographed herself in as many as seven solo performances in the three years she has lived in Austin. At Lollapalooza, you could have seen her dancing on the third stage, dedicated to Austin music and spoken word and performance arts. "I saw an ad in the paper that there was going to be a third stage that said they were looking for anything, so I called them and put a dance duet in but it was more performance art, not a big production. The whole thing was terrible. First, they just called me and said, 'You're in,' click. And I was like, well, how do I get in? How do I get the other dancers in? It was a very small stage and I had to share it with bands and their equipment, the wires and speakers and monitors, and that made it hard. Dancing in 103 degree weather. It was very stressful. But we performed it again at Dance Umbrella and it went much better.

"As far as choreography goes, I think I'm going to stick to solos for a while. Just me and my own problems. Right now, I can't imagine dragging a bunch of dancers around with me and my process. I'm learning a lot. A choreographer, like a painter, creates an image and paints it with dancers. But a painter never has to argue with the colors he wants to use to make the picture. A choreographer has to talk to every single dancer and they each have different personalities. The choreographer has to find a way to communicate their ideal picture to seven different worlds, and you can only hope that the dancers are trained enough to just catch it and do it right, but they come in from work and they come in from divorce, from having a baby, from traffic, and they come in with all their baggage and you have two hours to start painting this picture with these people. It's amazing that it comes together. To appreciate how much is going on in the dancer's head: cramps, a bad ankle, bad knees, trying to produce this amazing picture they've been trained for. And then they're supposed to make it all look easy."