"The Old Man and the Famished Woman," "The Desires of Ghosts," "Upperline," "Found Objects," "Standing”
On Common Ground, Donlin Foreman/Jennifer Emerson
Tenri Cultural Center
New York, NY
November 1, 2009
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2009 by Martha Sherman
Performed in a bright gallery space without theater lighting, each of the six dance segments were introduced by Foreman and his company partner, Jennifer Emerson, and ended when Foreman said “Blackout.” The informality suited the recital.
Foreman, also a co-founder/director from 1993-2005 of the Buglisi/Foreman Dance group, is an accomplished and fluid dancer. Although confident in his solo, “For Love/Self Portrait with Ghosts,” his own rich experience was best demonstrated in his partnering of Emerson. They shared two duets, a 2008 work, “The Old Man and the Famished Woman” and the premiere of “Found Objects.” Their easy balance in open-bodied parallel moves was anchored in luxurious lifts. As Foreman cradled his partner in his right arm, his strength and ease allowed us to forget that the body had any weight at all.
In a fine duet performed by students Samantha Garvin and Michele Mariotti, “The Desire of Ghosts/For Expression,” similar moves and their own unique lifts were also well executed, but it took Foreman over 20 years to melt and meld into this movement: to evoke that sense of weightlessness in his partner, to flow seamlessly between rhythms. He and Emerson are focused on passing their knowledge to this next talented generation of dancers.
Foreman and Emerson’s partnership is grounded in a commitment to presenting work in collaboration with a single composer. Andrew Waggoner was their partner in this program. Waggoner’s emotive compositions included a cello solo, cello duets with piano and with violin, and a quintet sans cello. The stunning cellist Caroline Stinson, playing in all but one of the segments, was dynamic, moving from lyrical to mournful to energized even in these short musical segments. Her strong partnership with Waggoner, who plays the violin, was evident in their musical interlude, a violin and cello improvisation without the dancers. The live music, especially in this small space, was a gift. The dancers were lifted up by the music, and their first bows were not to the audience but to their musicians.
What we experienced was dance and music, but the underlying experience was of poetry – some sharp, some slight. The solos were emotional meditations; the duets framed differing balances between isolation and connection. In “Standing,” the only group work, Foreman created a non-linear architecture with seven bodies. In one segment, three female couples leaned against a wall, and as the seventh dancer traversed the stage, each of the couples moved with one woman’s head pushing against her partner’s chest, gentle heft and weight to their wave. At the closing pluck of cello strings, the seven bodies collapsed in a soft puff of sound and movement.
In his remarks introducing the student dancers, Foreman described the underlying ethic of On Common Ground as “utility, identity, and craft.” Utility isn’t the underlying purpose or meaning of dance, but it put this evening’s work in its creator’s perspective. The slight pieces, all lovely and well-danced, were not meant to shake the world, and they don’t. They were a medium for training these students, an evocation of Foreman and Emerson’s own identities in their art. Their tribute to Graham wasn’t to her legacy of risk and defiance but her musicality and craft.
copyright © 2009 by Martha Sherman
Photo: Donlin Foreman and Jennifer Emerson in "The Old Man and the Famished Woman," by Stephen Schreiber
