Here’s to the Women

Women in Dance at the 92nd Street Y: History in the Making

92nd St. Y Harkness Dance Center 

New York, NY

December 12, 2009

by Martha Sherman

Copyright © 2009 by Martha Sherman

The grace and presence of the choreographers being honored in the 92nd St. Y’s “Women in Dance” Festival was a tonic on a cold winter weekend. The three day festival included 26 performances choreographed by Jewish women. Each day’s program honored a woman, including Anna Sokolow, Pearl Lang, at this performance, the late Amy Sue Rosen. The long afternoon offered excerpts of dances by eight artists as well a 1999 film of one of Rosen’s works. Although the work on film was paler than the live performances, it was complete, and in that way, the most satisfying. The unifying theme of the afternoon was the women themselves Each had her own voice to share, and the energies and images were as varied as the women.

The Harkness Dance Center at the Y is celebrating 75 years of support for contemporary dance.  Buttenweiser Hall has no bells or whistles. There were no lights (other than the on/off of the overhead chandeliers) and in one segment the sound system failed. A choreographer plugged her iPod into the speakers to provide her piece’s soundtrack. This program didn’t need bells and whistles; it was a simple and impressive sampling of what a group of creative women choreographers have accomplished.

A highlight of the afternoon were two segments from Naomi Haas Goldberg’s beautifully humane “Fanfare,” a piece shown last summer as part of the Sitelines Festival, with dozens of diverse dancers and set in the expanse of the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. There, it played amidst the rush of commuters in the setting of the New York Harbor. This excerpt couldn’t match the energy and multi-faceted wonder of the full piece, but the two selections danced on the simple boxy stage floor of the Buttenwieser Hall embraced some of the best of the work. Goldberg Haas opened in a solo, with her long arms stretching to sky and earth; powerful strokes scooping up experience as the trumpet fanfare of the title gathered volume and energy. In the second part of the excerpt, four dancers emerged joyously running toward and away from us, filling space in movement up, down, and around, pushing the air with their arms and bodies. Dancer Betty Williams, white-haired and giving the illusion of fragility, joined the quartet as a soft horn solo invited her slowly in. Her four partners became curving, shifting support as they bore her on their shoulders then wound her around their arms and legs, so that her body and her dance never touched the ground. They kept us glancing heavenward, until they gently cradled her in closing. 

Like Haas Goldberg, Andrea Miller’s “Snow” focused on the relationships and strengths of a group of women. Miller’s four dancers moved in a diamond shape around the stage to the powerful beat of Arabic music. The political overtones of Middle Eastern conflict  were reflected in its energy, and in the struggle as individual dancers moved out then were pulled back by the gravity of the group.

Stefanie Nelson’s reflection on women in relationship was a duet with her live violinist Regina Sadowski. A diagonal line across the stage invisibly linked Nelson’s movement with Sadowski’s playing. Their expressive hands and small motions interconnected in a complex tight geography. The two mirrored each other, the violinist’s bowing matching and leading the dancer. Finally, they came together, the dancer enfolded in the music, but in the arms, bow and instrument of the musician, and the violinist in the dancer’s embrace. 

Amy Sue Rosen and Derek Bernstein’s film of Rosen’s work, “One Magnificent Gesture” captured a gentle commedia del’ arte piece, four players in flowing white Pierrot-inspired wear, moving in and out of relationship and pratfall. Commedia also emerged in new ways in other excerpts. “ZsaZsaLand” by jill sigman/thinkdance was brightly framed in rushing klezmer music, DJ’d by joro de boro. Sigman and her two brightly clad partners, Toby Billowitz and Donna Costello were a different commedia. They dashed frantically around the stage, in a circle dance accompanied by the clattering coins sewn on their costumers. The women moved in and out of wriggling trios with Billowitz, the strongman of this quick, satiric, and sometimes dark circus. 

In a segment from Neta Pulvermacher’s intriguing “Fold MCEP,” the dancers used wide rolls of white paper as sets, soundtrack, and protection. Two dancers framed the space with runways of unfurled paper that they later crunched into a soundtrack, wrapping the paper around their bodies. The dancers, in costumes that barely covered their skin, moved between solos and wrestling combinations. Their exposure was reflected in the raw emotion of the music, including Pulvermacher’s own impressive vocal interpretations and a commissioned score by Alon Nechushtan.

 

Several of the pieces were trios. In “Procedural: Due, Tre,” Leslie Satin partnered in flowing parallels with David Botana. Claudia Brazzale moved in and out of the dance as the imbalancing third in their trio, and was the fluent speaker of the accompanying Italian texts. Margot Mink Colbert’s “Going,” which opened the program, transitioned from “Alone” to “Together” – a solo of long balletic arms and sweeping moves to a duet in jazzy casual rhythms. Risa Jaraslow closed the program with a final trio, the apt segment “Girls Girls Girls,” accompanied by Bob Dylan’s lilting “Red River Shore.” Like Goldberg Haas’s earlier mesmerizing and accomplished solo, Jaraslow’s immersion in her movement form is singular. Her body, older than the “girls” of the title, inhabits this motion, and she reveled in the soft curves and scoops, the rhythmic stride that brought her across the stage. As her dancers, Elise Knudson and Rachel Lehrer, partnered chest to chest and forearm to forearm, Jaraslow was their active coach, the model who these young dancers could learn from. The poignant closing work was an apt metaphor for the vision of the festival. 

copyright © 2009 by Martha Sherman

Top photo: M. Lindsay Smith, Jamie Graham, Betty Williams

 and Jill Frere and Betty by Julie Lemberger

Middle photo: Andrea Miller, Francesca Romo in “Snow" by Ayala Gazit

Bottom photo: Amy Sue Rosen