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“Listening to Her Own Beat”

Liss Fain Dance

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco, CA
August 27, 2009 

by Rita Felciano
Copyright © Rita Felciano, 2009

 

There is a lot of be said to for watching Liss Fain’s  choreography though hers is anything but a protean imagination. Fain’s palette is restricted, grays and blacks, etchings not paintings. Her dancers move beautifully but if they move us at all, they do so from a distance. Almost always the choreography proceeds at an even pace with little sense of urgency or hesitation. You watch these dances with your brain but your heart never skips a beat. Still to see acute intelligence at work and so consistently realized has its own rewards, particularly if it is placed into Matthew Antaky’s elegant visual and lighting designs.

Mostly Mysterious Mark

"Visitation," "Empire Garden," "V"

Mark Morris Dance Group

Rose Theater

New York, NY

August 19, 2009

by Lisa Rinehart
copyright © 2009 by Lisa Rinehart

Commissioned by Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, Mark Morris'  two New York premiers, "Visitation" and "Empire Garden," are pleasantly puzzling. With the help of a nice little pick-up group -- Emanuel Ax on piano, Yo-Yo Ma on cello and Colin Jacobsen on violin -- Morris wrangles thorny numbers by Beethoven and Ives into dances that feel freer and less musically literal than some of his more recent works. They renew our curiosity about how Morris' mind works. And coming from a dance maker who can craft seamless movement with eyes covered and ears plugged, a little ambiguity is refreshing.    

Tulsa Ballet

“Elite Syncopations,” “Por Vos Muero,” and “This Is Your Life”
Tulsa Ballet
Joyce Theater
New York, NY
June 25, 2009

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

On paper, the program for Tulsa Ballet’s return to New York after an absence of more than two decades must have seemed an ideal showcase for the company’s versatility and seriousness of purpose. There were ballets by noted chorographers—one to display the dancers’ classical technique, another their fluency in the idiom of contemporary European dance—topped off with the New York premiere of a recent commission. There was variety in the music, décor, and costumes. There was even a latent theme: social dance refracted through the prism of ballet.

Alas, the whole was less than the sum of the parts. The problem wasn’t the dancers; they’re talented, committed, and engaging and it’s easy to see why they’ve garnered the kind of community support that makes both touring and new commissions possible. The problem lay in the dances: they all promised more than they delivered.

An Eye for Line and Volume

Serge Diaghilev & His World: Ballets Russes 1909 - 1929
Foyer, Performing Arts Reading Room
James Madison Building
The Library of Congress
Washington, DC
June 4 to October 10, 2009

by George Jackson
copyright 2009 by GJ

There's much to ponder in this modest addition to the year's many exhibits on the centennial of the Ballet Russe. For those not familiar with the Library of Congress let me say that its holdings are large but lumpy. Special collections which have come into the LoC's possession make it incredibly rich on certain topics but on related ones this institution may leave you as undernourished as the smallest branch of a remote public library. Unlike that branch, moreover, the LoC doesn't routinely participate in interlibrary exchange. Still, discoveries can be made in both the special collections and regular stacks - such as unpublished dance scores by name composers and historic information on ballet that appeared for some reason in a railroad magazine (perhaps the editor was a fan). From not precisely these yet from similar sources, Elizabeth Aldrich - this exhibit's organizer and the LoC's Curator of Dance - has put together a compact overview of Diaghilev's dance enterprise that throws light on the importance of balletic line and volumetric groupings in the Ballet Russe. 

Italian Appreciation Night

“Four Seasons,” “Cantata”

Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal

Jacob’s Pillow Dance, Ted Shawn Theatre

Becket, MA

July 30, 2009

By Martha Sherman

Copyright © 2009 by Martha Sherman

A French Canadian company, dancing in the woods of the Berkshires, offered an evening of work from Italian choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti from the most classical and familiar Vivaldi to the folk music and traditions performed live by the Gruppo Musicale Assurd. The evening promised more diversity, though, than it delivered.

Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal presents work from the classical full-length repertory but is more slanted to contemporary choreographers. In both works presented at Jacob’s Pillow, Bigonzetti called on the dancers’ ballet discipline and strength but used similar sharp angular movements, including elbows, squats, and rigidly shaped lifts. He also took advantage of every body part; rarely were dancers lifted by arms or torsos, but Bigonzetti instead used hips, backs, thighs as both lever and anchor.