Music One / Dance - Less Than One

Chamber Dance Project
“dare to feel”
The Ailey Citigroup Theater
New York, NY
December 6, 2007

By Lisa Rinehart

Copyright 2007 by Lisa Rinehart

Diane Coburn Bruning, Artistic Director of the Chamber Dance Project, has some good ideas. Keeping a dance company small (six to eight dancers) so that musicians can be included in the permanent roster is a good idea. Including engaging musical selections without dance is an equally good idea. Presenting work created mostly by fledgling, in house choreographers may not be the best idea. This is because Bruning’s flagrantly titled “dare to feel” program feels more like an evening of enjoyable music than an engaging dance concert. Even excellent live music cannot compensate for adequate choreography.

The program begins promisingly enough with a witty introduction by John Wright, a vocal artist with an arsenal of hip-hop rhythms. He barks out that there will be "no buns, no tights, and no tutus" because this is "not your grandma's dance project." Fair enough. Unfortunately, there are point shoes, and Victor Quijada's 2004 "i said no but you forgot," set to Concertos 11& 12 from Vivaldi’s L’Estro Armonico, struggles to combine juicy hip-hop moves with the not so pliant clomps of women strapped into nineteenth century footwear. Anthony Bryant and Ramon Thielen are terrific with Quijada's quicksilver street vernacular of rubbery knees, but ballet trained Anitra Nurnberger, Lynda Sing and Emily Wagner can't get past nice girl posturing in zipper laden skate pants that barely allow them to move. The three women toy with a lone man in a fun quartet showing Quijada’s knack for unexpected shifts of weight, but as is often the case with choreographers less than familiar with ballet technique, he’s unable to transfer that liveliness to dancers en pointe.

Mathew Prescott’s “Consume,” however, is wholly uninteresting -- en pointe, or otherwise. Dancer Indre Vengris Rockefeller shares the stage with cellist Andrey Tchekazov, but that’s as far as the symbiosis goes between Prescott’s clunky steps and the beauty of Ligeti’s Cello Sonata. Tall and slender, Rockefeller is unable to add depth to Prescott’s banal choreography and ends up looking elegantly awkward.

An excerpt from Adam Hougland’s “Stand Nine” is conceptually the evening’s most adventurous offering. Set to a commissioned score by Justine Fang Chen, four dancers barge in on four musicians and relocate chairs, music stands and sheet music with blithe authority. The musicians follow patterns created by the dancers; standing and reading their music laid out in lines on the floor, or traipsing behind the dancers in a Fellini-esque parade of string instruments. It’s a cute idea, and a nice shake up of preconceptions about who should be where in a dance performance.

Bruning includes two of her own works on the program, “dark parade,” set to a commissioned score by Giovanni Spinelli, and “Water,” set to Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello. “dark parade” is a lament of sorts, and Bruning pulls refined performances from her dancers, whereas “Water” is far too literally conceived. Prescott and Laura Feig stand, fetching as a perfume ad, in front of a large Lucite tray of, yes, you guessed it, water. In case the title and the baby pool aren’t enough, however, the duet begins with Prescott leaning over Feig’s shoulder and delicately dribbling water from his mouth down over her front. Yuk. After this, it’s impossible to take the rest of the duet seriously, and it’s only a matter of time before the glistening Feig lays herself gamely in the water like a glam dishrag.

Odd as it may seem, in a program packed with dance, it’s the music that finally delivers the goods. Russell Peck’s delightful Don’t Tread on Me or My String Quartet, and the Allegro from Borodin’s String Quartet No. 2, are both thoroughly satisfying. Perhaps Bruning should take a cue from Christopher C. Lee, the company’s Principal Musician, and presumably the one responsible for the chamber music selections, and cull choreographers from a wider range of choices. Intimate is lovely, but insular can be dangerous.

Copyright 2007 by Lisa Rinehart

Photo:
Matthew Prescott and Indre Vengris Rockefeller by Eduardo Patino