Flightless "Sail"

Jeremy Nelson
“Sail” and “Mean Piece”
Danspace Project
St. Marks In-the-Bowery
New York, NY
March 14, 2008

By Tom Phillips
Copyright 2008 by Tom Phillips 

I’ve never been to New Zealand, but it sounds like a cool place to be: windswept islands at the end of the earth, lightly inhabited by traditional Maori tribes and British and Scottish expatriates, songbirds, flightless birds, and sheep.   Jeremy Nelson’s new piece “Sail” is inspired by impressions of his childhood in New Zealand, and it’s full of interesting elements, combined in clever ways.  But it didn’t quite translate into an inspiring experience for non-Kiwis.   

The piece begins with a set of four dancers performing a looping, circling figure with a  kick in it, reminiscent of the English ritual morris dance.  They’re dressed in a motley assortment of Scottish plaids, loosely tied to resemble tribal clothing.   Three women and two men – including Nelson himself –  weave in and out of a constantly shifting formation, running, turning, falling and rolling, often to the sounds of bird calls, wind chimes or ship’s bells, amid nautical-looking sets and props.  At one point there is a struggle between a colonial-looking Francis A. Stansky and a tribal-looking Omagbitse Omagbemi.  They somersault over each other in close contact, in what could be a reference to the historic power struggle between Brits and Maoris.  All of it may mean a great deal to the choreographer, but the experience remained remote for the rest of us.  He showed us bits and pieces, but they didn’t evoke a time or place, real or imaginary.   

“Sail” was the second half of the program.   In the opener, “Mean Piece” from 2006 , Nelson uses basically the same vocabulary of vigorous movement in a more disciplined way, to much greater effect.   Here the formalism of the movements has a point;  it’s an acting-out of human relationships in a mean-spirited environment, where competition and coercion are mitigated by forms and rules, but not by any softness of spirit. 

“Mean Piece” is full of powerful images, starting with a backdrop that looks like a giant  loom, reminiscent of Blake’s “satanic mills.”  Against a sound score of industrial rhythms, six dancers race each other around the floor, and contend with each other in pairs and small groups, rolling, pushing and pulling as in a rough form of contact improvisation.   Toward the end there’s a titanic tussle between Lawrence Cassella and Jennifer Felton, leaning side-to-side on one leg each, battling to see who can put his or her free foot over the other’s.   The contests are inconclusive, but performed with a deadly intensity, as if this is all that matters.   As the dancers near exhaustion, a cello sneaks into the sound score, and later a lone cricket.   But art and nature seem to have little place in this human arena.  Unlike the inconclusive drift of “Sail,” “Mean Piece” creates a world and draws us in.  It’s danced with commitment by three men and three women, with special intensity and focus from Casella, who hits the floor like a break-dancer, and extraordinary facility from Omagbemi, who can play the upper body against the lower in polyrhythmic patterns unknown to most dancers.   Also, Rebecca Serell made us feel her determination as she steadily ran herself into the ground, and Stansky had a fascinating way of stumbling around with unclear purpose but great conviction.   

Jeremy Nelson has a distinctive choreographic style, fierce performers, and dance-savvy musical collaborators in Pavel Zustiak (“Mean Piece”) and David Watson (“Sail”).   But “Sail” is probably headed for an early sunset. 

Copyright 2008 by Tom Phillips

Photograph by John Cyn