"We Give Ourselves Away at Every Moment: An EVENT for Merce"
Jon Kinzel, Susan Marshall, Lucinda Childs, Faye Driscoll, Bill T. Jones
River to River Festival
Rockefeller Park, Battery Park City
New York, NY
July 26, 2010
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman
He must have been smiling up there. On a perfect summer evening, after a month of painful heat, five distinguished and compelling choreographers created works to celebrate Merce Cunningham on the first anniversary after his death. An appreciative audience watched, lounging in Rockefeller Park around a large white stage ringed by the New York skyline and a perfect Hudson River dusk.
Continue reading "A Year Ago Today" »
“One,” “Déjà vu,” “Rhapsody
Fantaisie,” “L'effleuré,”
“Both,” “Change Me”
Jacoby & Pronk
Doris Duke Theater
Jacob’s Pillow Dance
Festival 2010
Becket, MA.
July 22, 2010
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman
This season’s Jacob’s Pillow poster image is a good proxy for the Drew & Jacoby program at the Doris Duke Theater. That picture shows Drew Jacoby and Rubinald Pronk in a dramatic, muscular pose, crisply linked and looking directly at the viewer. They don’t smile, and they don’t waver.
Continue reading "Poster Children" »
“Twelve Ton Rose,” “Foray Forêt, “You can see us,” “L’Amour au théâtre”
Trisha Brown Dance Company
Sosnoff Theater
The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
July 8, 2010
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman
The swirl and balance of Trisha Brown’s elegant, familiar choreography is suited to the flow and swirl of Frank Gehry’s silvery roofed Fisher Center at Bard College. These cool works were tonic on the evening that the East Coast’s heat wave finally broke.
Continue reading "Unseen Forces " »
“Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies”
John Jasperse Company
Joyce Theater
New York, NY
June 16, 2010
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman
Of the choices in his title, “Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies,” it is the whimsy of “Wishful Thinking” that best captures John Jasperse’s intricate, funny, and welcoming choreography. That, and “Truth.”
Continue reading "It’s Not All Black and White" »
“Halō”
Lauri Stallings and gloATL
DUO Theatre
New York, NY
June 10, 2010
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman
There is no in or out in Lauri Stallings’ “Halō;” there is no separation between up and down, between beginnings and ends, between light and darkness, melody and rhythm. The dancers even attempt to erase the line between us and them. The expressed goal of the collaborative group gloATL is to bridge the gap between artists and audience; happily, that last isn't entirely successful, since these dancers are too special to mesh entirely with the crowd. This is a work without boundaries, filled with glorious dance. The price they paid was occasional confusion, but the audience was completely engaged.
Continue reading "Dialectic of Dance" »
“Gobbledygook,” “Hen’s Teeth”
Christopher Williams
Dance New Amsterdam
New York, NY
June 4, 2010
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman
Christopher Williams is a wildly creative guy – a striking dancer, a sensitive puppeteer, an idiosyncratic choreographer, and, it turns out, a player of the troubadour harp as well. One of his dancers, Ursula Eagley describes how she loves “being back in his magical, historical imagination.” So do I. It’s a bit messy in this evening of myth and ghosts, but as he swings his dancers from nakedness to feathers, and his vocalists from guttural Japanese to tightly harmonic requiem, Williams is never less than engaging.
Continue reading "Magic and Gobbledygook" »
“Trellis”
BigManArts Abrons Arts Center
New York, NY
April 22, 2010
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman
Lawrence Goldhuber runs against time. In “Trellis,” his new work at Abrons Arts Center, he and the dancers of BigManArts did a lot of jogging, but little traveling, as the dancers moved toward places or connections just beyond reach. The jogging steps served as engines, moving the many short vignettes (and a few longer scenes) framed by blackouts that propelled the piece forward. It was a work of simple images and music, filled with solitary yearning, but punctuated with humor and moments of joy.
Continue reading "A Jog, A Skip, and a Jump " »
“Offering,” “2Parts Whole,” “Bird Stick Lady or Self Portrait, Sperryville,” “Interview/Innerview”
Deborah Wanner Dance
Chen Dance Center
New York, NY
April 15, 2010
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman
Deborah Wanner delivers what she believes. Wanner, who has danced and collaborated for over 20 years with a wide range of choreographers in downtown New York dance venues, is also a dance professor, videographer, and certified Feldenkrais practitioner. She’s a generous choreographer whose focus on relationship and transformation are built right into her process. Along with four expressive dancers, she opened the newly refurbished Chen Dance Center with the ambiguously titled “Close,” suggesting both intimacy and the opposite of openness.
Continue reading "The Paradox of Close " »
“Panorama”
Paige Martin
Danspace Project
New York, NY
April 10, 2010
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman
Dance constituted only a small percentage of the almost two-and-a-half hour “Panorama,” Paige Martin’s contribution to Platform 2010: Back to New York City, curated by Juliette Mapp for Danspace. The work offered a three-part evening, including a short outdoor prelude, a lingering party punctuated by brief naked performances, and a second lingering segment, a blast in the dark introduced by a mini-lecture. The long interludes were more boring than challenging by the time we dribbled out, but Martin had delivered panoramas of sexually charged movement and used the evening to make a strong, if not convincing, statement about the responsibility of an audience for its own amusement.
Continue reading "Leaving Us in the Dark" »
“No Time to Fly"
Deborah Hay
Danspace Project
New York, NY
March 27, 2010
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman
There is no beginning or end to dance, veteran choreographer and dancer Deborah Hay reminds us. As the sellout crowd milled in the lit cavern of Danspace, she quietly entered and began to move. This almost-70 year-old icon of American dance moved with the ease and certainty of a dancer who continues to bend her body to her will. Late in the dance, from a prone position, she lifted her left leg, slightly. As we watched, it rose. And rose. And rose, to an impressive 120 degree angle. Then she rested her forearm on the floor, cheek resting on her upraised hand, and hung out in that position as the audience giggled in the wonder of a body so attuned and still so able.
Continue reading "On Subtle Wings" »
