Checkered Armitage

"Mechanics of the Dance Machine"
Armitage Gone! Dance                           
New York Live arts
New York, NY
January 31, 2013

By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2012 by Martha Sherman

For a work inspired by fractal geometry and Walsh functions - ideas that beg to be looked up - Karole Armitage’s “Mechanics of the Dance Machine” is pretty tame. Showing off the lineage of her Balanchine and Cunningham training, Armitage mixed classical moves, Bach, and pointe work with modern movement, music, and costuming, and added changing checkerboard lighting, yet failed to evoke geometric mysteries – and was less innovative that its hype suggested. What she did capture well, as she has often done, were the many guises and angles of relationships, as pairs of dancers levered on and off of each other and through space in well-disciplined form.

 
As originally planned, the work would have invited audience members to wander in pathways among the dancers, watching their movements from different angles. In a brief curtain speech, Armitage alerted expectant viewers that, instead, she was satisfied that the intimacy of the Live Arts stage and seating would offer much the same view. From the seats, though, the only angles we saw were the ones ahead of us. Although a disappointment, it was hard to imagine how the audience would have fit alongside the fifteen dancers arrayed from wall to wall, sometimes dancing beyond the light poles.

The lighting, by Clifton Taylor, provided some visual geometry in shifting squares and bands of red, black, and white. A thin border of red light framed the opening scene, a non-symmetrical arrangement of six dancers. It was one of the most satisfying images of the piece, a mix of crisp classical poses and turns with equally modern shrugs and intertwined poses. Some of the women were en pointe, some were not, a mix that Armitage uses well to create imbalances between partners or to shift the women’s footwork and movements.

The dancers also shifted their balance by leaning against each others’ shoulders, or used momentum to roll over each others’ shoulders and backs. The leveraging of weight allowed even the smallest women to be the partner. In several large group scenes, there were four mixed pairs and two pairs of women dancers – the themes of intimacy and relationship were androgynous, the sexuality of the dance wasn’t limited by gender.

As the work opened, Armitage founding member Megumi Eda, in her last season with the company, emerged from the group, lifting first a foot, then a leg, her angled body and limbs among the most graceful geometry of the program.  Around her, several other dancers moved in and out of pairings; often the men were on their backs, holding or balancing partners on their upraised legs, as if in counterbalance to the arabesques. Tiny, athletic Masayo Yamaguchi threw a leg back in an arabesque that folded over her back, at 120º angle. The otherwise elegant port de bras of the dancers often ended with wriggling, impatient fingers.

Most of the dancers got some exposure in duets that were interspersed with larger group scenes. Former New York City Ballet principal Charles Askegard, in a duet with a sassy Emily Wagner, was a princely partner, his strong long legs traversing the checkerboard squares of the stage. It looked so easy for him that he seemed underused in the duet, and didn’t appear in many group scenes. Like a gaggle of fans, five female dancers sat in exaggerated poses along a vertical boundary of the checkered lights, a reminder that we were watching the star guest. Another guest dancer, Cristian Laverde König, was more effectively used both as a strong duet partner, and in a muscular solo.

The music, by DJ and composer Gabriel Prokofiev (yes, the grandson of Sergei) included excerpts from his “Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra” interspersed with a little Bach. Too much of the score coughed, hiccupped, or screeched to be a good fit for “metaphors of intimacy,” but it suited the sexy scenes, and mirrored the harsh edges that the dancers created with their body geometry.

The best scenes were those that filled the stage with the energy of all fifteen bodies in motion. Just as Armitage had determined, the relationships of so many limbs and backs, all in strong, disciplined form, could not have been appreciated from anywhere but right out front where we sat. The individual strength of the dancers supported the most obvious geometric achievement of the piece: a whole greater than the sum of its parts. But that’s not the mechanics of the dance machine; it’s the magic.

copyright © 2012 by Martha Sherman

Photos by Yi-Chun Wu

Top:  Abbey Roesner, Cristian Laverde König in "Mechanics of the Dance Machine"
Bottom: Members of Armitage Gone! Dance in “Mechanics of the Dance Machine”