"Towards September", "Hush", "The Cinderella Principle"
Robert Moses' Kin
Novellus Theater
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco, CA
February 25, 2010
by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano, 2010
For his newest world premiere, the hour-long "The Cinderella Principle: Try These On, See if They Fit," choreographer Robert Moses assembled a first-rate cast and collaborators. He wanted to pay tribute to and celebrate the modern family which comes in shapes that fifty years ago would have been unthinkable. Single-parent, same-sex parents, multi-racial, blended families, a whole rainbow of people loves and raises children. "Cinderella" is a beautifully produced show whose emotional weight, however, is carried by the voices of actual parents, as assembled by playwright Anne Galjour, and eloquent musicians Todd Reynolds and Kid Beyond. Moses' choreography, beautiful and gorgeously danced as it is, doesn't enlarge "Cinderella's" thematic implications enough to carry the piece through its duration. Perhaps, he ran into Balanchine's "mother-in-law cannot be choreographed" dictum. The complexity of modern parenthood might not be either.
We hear about the 42-year old woman who wants a child and the one who thinks she might get a home in addition to semen, the anguish of a birth mother, the couple who adopts from China, and the man who is called a "fag" in front of his child. As recorded and presented live by Galjour, these sharply drawn vignettes show the rich panoply of this type of parenthood in which patience, anger, wit and joy are active ingredients to love. Moses weaves them into his choreography from his own perspective. Thankfully he avoids literalism. The fast-paced dances combine and recombine into situations dominated by turbulence and obstacles. That's what Moses seems to have gathered from those interviews. So perhaps it makes sense that robotically jerky sections, confrontations and rejections tend to overpower the more lyrical parts in which dancers support each other and "skate" in, one-by-one, suggesting perhaps a sea change of attitude. Still, the choreography often seems emotionally uni-dimensional.
Images do emerge, sometimes independently, sometimes connected to the text. The outstretched hand, the pointed finger become motives. Two embraced men speed-roll on the floor, integrate another and then exchange her for woman. Two parallel trios emphasize the lifts of the dancer in the middle. Nicholas Korkos dances a strong solo that could find a home in any of Moses' works. The fierce Natasha Johnson manages to look vulnerable when she walks over a shifting mountain of bodies and when Jeffrey Huang blows at her to keep her from entering a group. Katherine Wells, who later fashions a "baby" out of the clothes hanger she was left with in a fight with Amy Foley, opens the piece in a powerful, anguished duet. Her partner, the lanky Brendan Barthel, somehow, manages to look serene.
"Cinderella" needs a shaping hand that draws out a multi-hued yet stronger trajectory out of what now is too much of a collage of choreographic ideas. Erik Flatmo's set -- houses from which flutter rainbow-colored streamers and a grid of wire "babies" fashioned by the dancers -- is excellent; Violinist/composer Reynolds and Beat Boxer Beyond are powerful individually, even better together.
Two earlier works completed a program in which the dancers sometimes looked more captivating than the choreography. For "Towards September," Moses also fashioned what he called a "soundscape"--a collage with snippets of voices, bells, pop, jazz and western classical music that contributed fractured energy but not much else. On second viewing "September", though still diffuse, appeared more coherent than I remembered it from 2008. Starting upstage left, with one man blocking our view of some group activity, it is not clear whether he hems them in or protects them. One way or another, the dancers overwhelm the obstacle. As they spill out across the stage, they shape themselves into pumping and yanking duets and trios. They don't so much compete as they respond to a fierce common impulse, both athletic and elastic. Every once in a while "September's" pulsating energy receives a momentary respite by the relative calm of circles or diagonals. But this is dance that is driven. Eventually, the work curls back to the beginning and ends with a whimper.
Also from 2008 is "Hush" to Ralph Vaughan Williams' (badly misspelled in the program!) always-popular Violin Concerto, the super-nostalgic "The Lark Ascending." Moses rarely ventures into Western classical music -- though both Chopin and Bach come to mind -- and it's to his credit that he created a romantic duet without giving in to the score's Asian-inflected sappiness. Again beautifully performed by Barthel and Wells, there is a courtliness to his that matches her more spiky elegance. Facing each other, their intertwining arms are promises of things to come, but she only half sits on his offered leg after he swings her around. Their relationship thrives on patience. Often Barthel seems to just wait and see. A touch of the elbow looks erotic but full body contact -- he twirls her over his back -- is just what it is. At one point Barthel bows to her. It is so small you can hardly see it. But no wonder that she finally embraces him.
