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A Taste of Two at the Kitchen

“Middle of Man,” “Hmmm…”
Justine Lynch/Melinda Ring
The Kitchen
New York, NY
April 24, 2009

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2009 by Leigh Witchel

Justine Lynch and Melinda Ring shared a program at The Kitchen and each was worth seeing.  Lynch was an integral part of Neil Greenberg’s work for several years; she’s also trained as an acupuncturist.  Her “Middle of Man.” inspired by her work as a healer, has a shamanistic feel; Lynch turned the plain black box of The Kitchen into a mysterious space inhabited by phantasms. A hooded woman in a short dress walked about carrying greenery.  Two women cloaked in black, stooped and huddling, thrashed off their cloaks and were naked except for bikini briefs.  They donned golden crowns attached to ropes.

Coppelia

Coppelia
New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York
April 28, 2009

by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2009 by Tom Phillips

"Coppelia" is one ballet that's probably safe from Disney culture. I can't imagine it being turned into an empty, treacly entertainment with a doll-like heroine who bats her eyelashes at the audience -- because it already has a doll-like heroine who bats her eyelashes at the audience, and she's a nasty girl. Especially in George Balanchine's masterful version of the tale, Swanilda is self-centered and cruel, and her lover Frantz is a village idiot who agrees to marry her only after she trashes the mannequin he's been pining after. Only through the magic of ballet can this unappealing pair be raised to a vision of the ideal, but it happens regularly in New York City Ballet's production, especially with Megan Fairchild and Joaquin de Luz as the young lovers.

Sweet Boys

"Maverick Strain," "Wonderboy"

The Joe Goode Performance Group

The Joyce Theater

New York, NY

April 24, 2009

by Lisa Rinehart

copyright  2009 by Lisa Rinehart

Joe Goode's newest piece, "Wonderboy," could be subtitled  "the fear to be queer," but that would ignore the work's appeal to anyone who's ever felt lonely and misunderstood -- and that would be most of us, right? 

Goode often draws from his own experiences of growing up gay in an intolerant world and has long created works piecing together text, song and expansive wrestling-like movement. But in "Wonderboy" Goode collaborates with renowned puppet maker, Basil Twist, and makes the play's central character a puppet. It's this choice that lets us connect our own vulnerabilities with the fears of a fragile boy who happens to be gay. 

Resembling an elfin prep-schooler, Wonderboy is animated by Goode's dancers in the Bunraku style -- meaning they are onstage and fully visible as they make Wonderboy move. 

But Goode pushes beyond traditional boundaries. The six dancers change roles continuously, shifting nimbly from speaking to puppeteering and even singing as Wonderboy tells his story. At one point, in an amazing display of dexterity and teamwork, he dances a jazzy duet with a human partner. This requires a fast and furious troika of dancers whipping around different little puppet parts to match the moves of Wonderboy's human partner.    

The text isn't as lithe as the puppetry. In fact, it's often florid, but it's one of theater's great mysteries that puppets can express heightened emotion and pathos without seeming maudlin. We can forgive Wonderboy's "I ache. I ache for the beauty of the world" as he watches from the safety of his window. And coming from a puppet discovering love, the phrase "can this really be happening... I never thought I'd really touch you," somehow plays more sweet than sappy. By the time the dancers lift Wonderboy up on thin rods and float him out into the house, it's like watching the first tender shoots of spring unfold into the cool air. We hope for his survival as though it is our own and perhaps, metaphorically it is.

The delicacy of "Wonderboy" is preceded by the campy humor of "Maverick Strain," Goode's deconstruction of Arthur Miller's screenplay for "The Misfits." Dressed like Roy Rogers in a fringed shirt and chaps bushy enough to hide a jumbo-sized can of baked beans, Goode serenades us with some expertly paced cowboy tunes. In between the musical numbers six dancers do gender bending bits that pit ballsy women against dreamy fay men. John Wayne is mentioned and allusions are made to the sexual orientation of Montgomery Clift, but other than enjoying the irony of cowboys trying to out macho one another in tight hot pants and sequins, I didn't really get it. To his credit, Goode edits the material tightly and it never gets boring.

Goode has a knack for punctuating text with witty movement including cantilevered lifts and surprising body positions that use arms like legs. "A woman's gotta be strong when she stops bein' purdy" ends with an abrupt foot flex from two women flipped upside down as though they're bicycling on a ceiling. "They were both ready to be apologetic" is said with a downward tilted head while forming a soft sideways "O" with the arms. Goode finds his groove in these small moments.

The completely excellent cast was Felipe Barrueto-Cabello, Melecio Estrella, Jessica Swanson, Andrew Ward, Patricia West and Alexander Zendzian. They are also credited as co-creators of "Wonderboy."

Photo: Wonderboy, full cast by Laura Morton

Opening Night Feast

"Concerto Barocco", "Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux", "La Valse", "Symphony in Three Movements"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
April 28, 2009

by Mary Cargill
copyright © 2009 by Mary Cargill

The New York City Ballet opened it Spring season in grand style with four Balanchine ballets, including some of his absolute best.  Ballet doesn't come any better than the opening "Concerto Barocco", with its everchanging, always new choreographic patterns.  Wendy Whelan with the dignified and elegant Albert Evans danced the central pas de deux.  Whelan has refined her dancing down to the absolute--there seems to be nothing between her, the music, and the choreography.  She combined a sculptural way of moving with a sense of, not weightlessness, but of not actually touching the floor, and danced like a piece of luminous taffy.  Ellen Bar made her debut as the second violin, and danced with an intriguing passion, but seemed very aware of the audience, at times displaying the steps rather than losing herself in them. 

Fusion from Fission

San Francisco Ballet
Program VIII
“Fusion,” “Russian Seasons,” Double Evil”
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco, CA
April 28, 2009

by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano, 2009

Three well-performed works, which attempted to house contradictory elements under one roof, closed this year’s San Francisco Ballet Season. Not surprisingly, these essays in co-habitation yielded different perspectives. The three ballets also made up the most contemporary SFB repertory program in quite some time. Yuri Possokhov’s “Fusion” and Jorma Elo’s “Double Evil” were part of last year’s 75th Anniversary New Works commissions; Alexei Ratmansky choreographed “Russian Seasons” for New York City Ballet’s 2006 Diamond Project.  Interestingly, all three choreographers also worked with music drawn from disparate sources.

Precious Gemstones

San Francisco Ballet
Program VII
“Jewels”
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco, CA
April 26, 2009

by Rita Felciano
Copyright © Rita Felciano, 2009

There is little question that watching a master choreographer put a new work on stage, is the most desirable way to see it. Encountering it later, however, keeps the eye (and heart) from being clouded by that first edenic experience. San Francisco Ballet premiered Balanchine’s “Jewels” in 2002; that was thirty-five years after its birth. I don’t know what that first experience in 1967 must have been like. But as staged by Elyse Bourne, and additionally coached by Violette Verdy, Mimi Paul and Suzanne Farrell, SFB interpreted “Jewels” as beautifully as you would want.

The Barnard Project

Dances by Nora Chipmaure, Nicholas Leichter, Susan Rethorst, and Morgan Thorson
Dance Theater Workshop
New York, NY
April 24, 2009

by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2009 by Kathleen O’Connell

Collaboration is as much about process as product. Now in its fourth year, The Barnard Project is a collaboration between Dance Theater Workshop and Barnard’s Dance Department. Emerging and established choreographers create new work on the college’s dance students, which is then presented in a short run of performances in DTW’s Bessie Schönberg Theater. Not every work featured in this year’s program was ready to cross over into active repertory, but the dances showed that the process had been fruitful. 

Creativity & Compromise

Kylian's "Petite Morte" & "Sinfonietta", Zuska's "D.M.J."
Narodni divadlo balet (Czech National Theater Ballet from Prague)
Harman Hall
Washington, DC
April 25, 2009

by George Jackson
copyright 2009 by GJ

Fusing ballet and modern dance is creativity at its utmost according to a portion of today's public. I see it as difficult to do without blunting ballet's elegance and purging modern movement of strength and grit. Jiri Kylian, currently the best known of Czech choreographers, has made yards of fused dancing. There's nothing especially Czech about it. His output resembles the compromised movement that became fashionable globally during the 1950s and '60s. Other perpetrators included America's John Butler and Glen Tetley. At its best, this type of balletomodern has a smooth, sculptural fluidity that lends itself to acrobatic duets. Often, though, these one-on-one encounters lack variety and I, at least, soon grow tired of the blend. Earlier experiments in fusion had included countercurrents to the dominant flow dynamic. Examples of interest are Leonide Massine's pair of acrobats in the 1917 "Parade" and the duets in David Lichine's 1946 "Cain and Abel", but (except for Alvin Ailey) quite a few choreographers who came to prominence after World War 2  forgot to look back and as a result we have works such as the three on this program.

Question

Paul Taylor's "Last Look" & 2 Solos
"Dance is the Answer" KickOff
4th Floor Studio
The Music Center at Strathmore
North Bethesda, Maryland
April 23, 2009

by George Jackson
copyright 2009 by GJ

Why take that last look? Because you must. Knowing beforehand what there is to be seen makes no difference. All that is awful is scrutinized again to be sure nothing has changed. But how reliable is that sallow gaze? Does the mirror distort? To stand still and peer is an act of self violence. Twitch, muscle, twitch! Touching another's flesh triggers paroxysms galore.

The horrible, sorry humanity of "Last Look" infects viewers. There's no hope from the start, although there's certainty that all spasms, every stumble, each fall is deserved somehow. People remember Paul Taylor's 1985 dance when they themselves sicken. 

In Regard of Flight Distance

“Celui Qui Regarde”, “Flight Distance”, “The gentleness was in her hands”, “Adventures in a Foreign Land”

Helen Simoneau

Joyce Soho

New York, NY

April 17, 2009

By Martha Sherman

Copyright © 2009 by Martha Sherman

We finally got a glimpse of Helen Simoneau halfway through her evening of work at the Joyce Soho. A French-Canadian, she is a small, fine-featured woman who crafts her disciplined, athletic movements on her own body. Simoneau and several of her dancers trained together at the North Carolina School of the Arts (NCSA). Their movement suggests a shared history, although Simoneau did not dance with them. All are strong, clean dancers, and Simoneau inhabits her movement most powerfully among them. But it is her group choreography, not the solos, that tells the more interesting stories. 

Three of the pieces in this program were premieres, including her solo (“The gentleness was in her hands”) that is destined for the upcoming Athens International Dance Festival. Much of this program still looked like work in progress -- a young choreographer exploring several directions, across several aspects of relationship. One of the premieres, “Flight Distance” was defined in the artist’s note in the program as “a term used for the distance that an individual will place between itself and another … [varying] from person to person and from species to species.” It was a useful term for anchoring the other group pieces as well,  even though the way the dancers evoked distance was inconsistent; some movement and interconnections unique and striking, some more repetitive and less effective.

The opening tableau of “Flight Distance” was an asymmetrical pose of five dancers, a preview of the satisfying unpredictability of many of the movements and connections of the piece. The dancers progressed through different levels of intersection as they explored distance, pairing, interweaving, and eventually, collision and conflict. Simoneau used the broad Joyce Soho stage for long diagonals, and then moved to smaller structured spaces created by lighting designer Carrie Wood, whose light squares framed confining spaces on stage. The most memorable image was of four women dancing in a gently interlocked quartet, winding around each other, close and layered.

The strongest segments of the program were its opening and closing. “Celui Qui Regarde” was set to a Baudelaire poem and had a finished quality that the three premieres had not yet achieved. Three dancers, Gena Mann, Catherine Miller, and Adrienne Westwood, emerged in dramatic black and red cape-like skirts (this piece’s costumes were designed by Renee Jurz and Lisa Weller). The sweep of their individual movements and the skirts was mesmerizing, and the dancers’ fingers, hands, and exposed backs added beautiful detail to the larger movement. After moving through a series of architectural triangles, the dancers balanced between a soft duet of intersections, and clean interspersed solos. In a satisfying finale, the dancers’ skirts, like matadors’ capes, swirled through the air. 

The closing piece, “Adventures in a Foreign Land” was the most interesting, and the least finished, piece of the evening. The stage was bare as it had been throughout the evening, except for the lighting sources (in this case, the soft Apple logo glow of the laptop used by sound designer Jonathon Melville Pratt). To the electric soundtrack, the dancers entered creeping across the stage with buttocks high, and later moving through the space prone, in backstroke. The four dancers soon became one interconnected human structure, literally climbing the walls and each other, joining the soundtrack with their own pops and slurps, venturing to every corner of the stage. When the dancers ended, the audience wasn’t ready to let go; the dance didn’t seem quite done.

Simoneau codes her choreography like an athlete with a soft exterior, a fist inside a glove. Her pieces have underpinnings of yoga poses, push-ups, leg kicks, animal movements. Even the subtler movements like pointing or stretching are forceful. Simoneau’s tendency toward repetition or symmetry became clichéd, as if there came a point in the choreography where she got fatigued. The early asymmetry and curiosity of “Flight Distance” eventually gave way to an escalating level of collision; by the end of the piece, the movement conflict became predictable. Despite the repetition, the discipline and strength of the dancers were striking and effective. Her next steps will tell us more.

copyright © 2009 by Martha Sherman

Photo: Helen Simoneau by Brad Harris