2009 DanceNOW[NYC] Festival
Dance Theater Workshop
New York, NY
September 12, 2009
by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2009 by Leigh Witchel
The fall dance season in New York City begins this year with a series of Festivals. DanceNOW has been around fifteen years and the experience shows; it’s cleanly presented and efficient with a clear artistic slant. “Find your new artistic crush” is the festival’s tagline and that’s what the programs try to do: show ten short dances and get you out the door in about ninety minutes. It’s speed-dating for dancegoers.
The closing program Saturday night slanted towards humor. The evening opened with the impish The Comedy Trio Happy Hour performing a peekaboo strip in white terrycloth bathrobes. Tossing their boxers into the audience and luring a hapless woman from the audience, they flashed her (after making her cover her eyes.) A brief funny number, they seemed to vanish almost as they started.
Jimmy Everett, a talented, kinetic dancer, followed with a tiny excerpt of “Zoom” by Zvi Gotheiner. Downtown veteran David Dorfman performed the solo from “Lightbulb Theory.” Time has made the solo, about aging and loss, even more poignant than at its premiere in 2004.
At the end of a summer of losses including Merce Cunningham and Pina Bausch, John Heginbotham’s deadpan announcement during his “Dance Now” that he “would not be here tonight” had people shifting uncomfortably in their seats as well as laughing nervously. After that his dry, neurotic humor won out as he, Brandon Cournay and Billy Smith, wearing short sleeved shirts and tighty-whities, cascaded through the minutiae of a dancer’s day.
Daniel Gwirtman’s solo “Breaking” opened the second half of the show with live music by drummer Shawn Baltazar and saxophonist Roxy Coss. Claire Porter/PORTABLES skewered broadcast news and its need for a never-ending flow of sensational threats. As each member of the quartet took turns newscasting while being manipulated or mauled, breaking developments about an Unknown Man crossing a space that turned out to be A Room unfolded.
Maura Nguyen Donohue/inmixedcompany took on the familiar rejection of gender roles and added a twist - the very pregnant Peggy Cheng, her belly exposed as she danced. Doug Elkins made a welcome appearance with a tantalizingly short excerpt from his two decades old “The Patrooka Variations.” Even off top form Elkins is still a formidable dancer but two minutes isn’t enough. He needs to get back in the ring and do more. Earlier in the program, Fritha Pengelly showed an excerpt from a female quartet. She worked with Elkins and you could see it the influence as the women boxed and did b-boy moves.
The most complete and riveting solo of the evening was the last, Monica Bill Barnes in “here we are.” Conjuring an imaginary lover or a failed affair, Barnes had the magnetism to stand up to Nina Simone’s magical rendition of “Wild is the Wind.”
If most of the works were too brief to get a sense of their real quality, the excerpts were well-chosen for sustaining interest. Nothing outstayed its welcome and you came out knowing who you might want to ask out for a second date.
copyright © 2009 by Leigh Witchel
Photos by Steven Schreiber:
Top: Claire Porter, Bill McKinley, Jennifer Katz, and Jim Martin in “Breaking News”
Bottom: Monica Bill Barnes in “here we are”
