New Dances: Edition 2011
Peter Jay Sharp Theater
New York, NY
December 15, 2011
By Carol Pardo
Copyright ©2011 by Carol Pardo
Process was the point of the annual New Dances performances. New Dances exists to bring together professional choreographers and the students of the Julliard School’s Dance Division, one choreographer to a class, with every student taking part. This year’s choreographers were Monica Bill Barnes, Alex Ketley, Pam Tanowitz and Alexander Ekman. The result? Four large scale works, enlivened by the earnestness and stamina of youth, in which the group outflanked the individual, and the students illustrated their own trajectory, from first year to fourth.
The program opened with Monica Bill Barnes’ "The way it feels" danced by the newest recruits, the twenty-six members of the Class of 2015. For little more than fifteen minutes, Barnes had the dancers, now taking the first steps toward their professional selves, look back at their adolescent selves, circa last June. The setting was pure old time senior prom: the music Janis Joplin and Otis Redding—forty year old pop. The vocabulary followed suit. Under a disco ball and against a wall of tinsel, dancers in wedge formations ebbed on and off stage, surging forward but pulling back at the last minute, like lemmings with a change of heart, leaving couples in their wake. Alliances were forged and affections engaged, fleetingly. Six months on, it is hard to believe that anyone was ever that innocent. The costumes (by Fritz Masten) reiterate the transition from carefree Then to working day Now. The men wear shirts and ties over turquoise or scarlet running shorts, the women similarly colored sports bras over knee-length gray skirts. "The way it feels" is colorful, bouncy, full of toe-tappin’ rhythms, energy and optimism.
Sophomore slump arrives with Alex Ketley’s "Radiant Ocean (of Proud Vanishing Beauty)" for the sophomores. The twenty-six dancers, are trapped, hemmed in by a row of chairs that rings the stage. This group is diffuse, all but atomized; communal surges of freshman energy are a thing of the past. Color has been banned; both palette and tone are black, black, black. Live music is overwhelmed by a current-day sound collage. It’s like watching a community of remote-controlled drones. One dancer (not always the same performer, and not always at center stage) draws the eye. Is this the outsider in the crowd or a sect leader laying down the law to his flock, or just some academic authority figure? Even when seated in orderly fashion around the edges of the stage, no one looked around, like subway riders packed in cheek by jowl who refuse to make eye contact.
"Fortune" was choreographed by Pam Tanowitz "in collaboration with the performers." With that credit, the dancers (class of 2013) are growing up. The piece is intricate, introverted refined like a solitary watchmaker intent on the view through his loupe, traits shared with its eponymous score by Charles Wuorinen. Such fine focus leaves the spectator out of the loop. The intent of "Fortune" remained elusive. Only when clumps of dancers acted as impediments to be overcome by others who stroll around the stage did "Fortune" bloom beyond the footlights. These challenges weren’t Everest-like, more like a miniature golf course, but they were presented and solved with delicacy. A witty leitmotif pervaded "Fortune": the orans gesture brought in and down with fists clenched, moves from the sanctuary to the boxing ring. Only one aspect of the piece came across loud and clear. Put day-glo salmon and red costumes against an acid apple green cyclorama and the result is optical indigestion.
Alexander Ekman, whose "Episode 31" was commissioned for the senior class, has made his mark mostly in Europe, though his work "Hubbub" was presented in New York last year. Ekman’s intentions are admirable. He wants to push these student dancers beyond their comfort zone to be the best they can be. The piece began with the stage machinery being set up in full view of the audience. Then a screen dropped down and we were treated to rehearsal footage with commentary by the performers, including a few stabs at the meaning of the work. This gave way to a fast-paced color short as the dancers got out of the studio and took their steps on the road, actually to Central Park and the New York City subways. They romp around like kids on a snow day.Then it’s back to the theater, the all but professional life and 3-D. One dancer inexorably paced around the dark stage, his gaze focused so far inward that he didn’t react to the curtains’ multiple descents. The rest shifted floor cloths (dark on one side, white on the other), strutted, clapped and yelled. They gave it their all and were, presumably, kicked out of their comfort zone.But "Episode 31" leaves two caveats in its wake. First, make sure that the film—lively, colorful and short—doesn’t overshadow the dance. Second: the school of Forsythe has a lot to answer for.
