Lights, dresses and all that jazz

A dozen dancers stomp, swing and roll to the rhythms of Ray Charles, their muscles flexing against dazzling suits and pink lights.

The floor, laid on top of the existing concrete theater stage to facilitate barefoot modern dance, bounces as they leap into the air and land with panache.

It's an artistic creation that resulted from many heads joining together, trying to sculpt a singular vision.

Dance Kaleidoscope's "Ray & Ella," playing at the Indiana Repertory Theatre OneAmerica Stage today through Sunday, explores a match made in heaven, but there are more creatively joined forces here besides Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald.

An inside look at the months-long process of developing "Ray & Ella" shows several creative minds behind this production, all with an integral role in delivering the final product.

Dancers, a costume designer, a guest choreographer and a lighting designer collaborated with Dance Kaleidoscope founder and director David Hochoy to turn the music of two great singers into something altogether different — a mishmash of sights, sounds and vibrations.

Nick Owen, guest choreographer

It's a cold afternoon in February, and dancers pile into the center of the rehearsal room floor. Their lithe bodies are strewn against one another in casual poses, some using others as human benches.

When the music starts, for a moment nothing happens. Then one dancer's foot starts to tap. His leg jiggles. Soon his knees are shaking to the beat.

The rest of the group looks at him as if to say, "What in the world are you doing?" And he can only shrug. He puts his hand on his leg as if to quell the movement, but all that appears to do is make his whole body gyrate in ecstatic motion. Soon all 12 bodies are writhing, snapping, jumping, swinging and rolling in rhythm.

This is Nick Owens' interpretation of how dance was invented. It makes a case that the art form's origin is an undeniable and spontaneous reaction to the sounds around us, and that you can spread it like a virus. He does this with a combination of modern, jazz and hip-hop dance styles to the music of Charles and Fitzgerald.

Guy Clark, costume designer

Guy Clark's schedule is packed. He has a whiteboard filled with appointments hung up near the entrance to the Indiana Repertory Theatre costume shop, where he's the manager. Twelve dancers, 12 fittings, 12 sets of costumes for acts one and two. Clark, who can glance at the cut and fabric of a nightgown and tell you which Marilyn Monroe movie it's inspired by, has a fab pink dress for dancer Caitlin Negron today. She offers a few suggestions for the neckline, then smiles when Clark proclaims he wants a "Sabrina" look — all Audrey Hepburn, 1954, Paris.

"Think boys and girls at a 1950s country club," he says.

David Hochoy, choreographer and company director

Meanwhile, Hochoy and Owens are hard at work. Two weeks before the first show and they still haven't come up with all the choreography. "It takes time," Hochoy says.

Working a breakneck pace, the company can set a minute of dance in about an hour. Martha Graham, Hochoy's teacher and the founder of modern dance, took one whole year, working four hours a day, to choreograph "The Rite of Spring," he says.

Hochoy snaps his fingers and his dancers begin to run through a stirring segment one more time. It's almost there. "Cry Me a River" blares in the rehearsal room as Jillian Godwin, the most senior dancer who is in her 12th season with Dance Kaleidoscope, takes center stage. She twists her face in an expression of heartbreak — and does the same thing with her body. "There" just got a little bit closer.

Laura Glover, lighting designer

At the final week of rehearsal, just a few miles downtown at the IRT, Laura Glover is wearing sunglasses on a pitch dark stage. As Dance Kaleidoscope's lightning designer, she is responsible for treating the dancers "like sculptures," meaning she is going to hit their bodies with brights blue beams at hard angles in order to accentuate muscle.

Beth Nuzum, the IRT's master electrician, stares down at an iPod Touch with a red bunny protector. She presses a button, and low side-lights turn on in a bright flash. "Upstage, just a little," Glover says. "OK, good, a little more, you got it. Lock it."

Glover is completing what she knows about Hochoy and Owens' choreography, Clark's costumes and each individual dancer's interpretation of movement and music. In some scenes the lights will be simple, "utilitarian," as she puts it, but at other times you will notice how beautiful the bodies look swathed in pink and blue. Glover smiles as she thinks about that very vague, yet very important term: artistic collaboration.

"That's the magic to it, really, is figuring where that comes from," she says. "It's where all those roads come together and meet. And I'm the last person to have that say."

Wei-Huan Chen can be reached at (317) 444-6249 or on Twitter at @weihuanchen.

If you go

What: "Ray & Ella" by Dance Kaleidoscope

When: March 26-29

Where: Indiana Repertory Theatre, 140 W. Washington St.

How much: $30