danceviewtimes

Onslaught

"Mix"
Campanhia de Danca Deborah Colker
Eisenhower Theater
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
October 28, 2010

by George Jackson
copyright 2010 by George Jackson

It may be being ungrateful for for all the drill and discipline, for the diversity of dance styles and dramatic topics, for the undeniable professionalism of production values and cleverness of concept that have gone into Deborah Colker's "Mix", but my response is disappointment. I still don't know what sort of choreographer Colker is, and this is the third time I've seen her work. Is she an artist or an exploiter? Shown first in "Mix" after the curtains open is a pair of images, one of each sex naked as in Eden, projected big onto screens. Not attractive or unattractive, neither contemporary or historic, with pedestrian rather than dancer bodies, this Adam and Eve are remarkable only for their nakedness. Colker neither dresses them nor dissects them. Having shown them, she lets them be and shifts our attention. Enter the dancers.

Unconsoled

“Les Inconsolės”
Alain Buffard
Dance Theater Workshop
October 21, 2010

By Carol Pardo
Copyright ©2010 by Carol Pardo

 
Alain Buffard’s “Les Inconsolės (The Unconsoled)” begins with a deep voice reciting Goethe’s “Der Erlkönig” in the velvet-lined darkness of Dance Theater Workshop. Buffard is a French choreographer inspired by several Americans including Alwin Nikolais, Trisha Brown and Anna Halprin. His works explore the body explicitly and the range of the human condition, from light to dark. “Les Inconsolės” is on the dark side. Menace, mystery, eroticism, and violence fill the air. As the light level shifts from opaque to murky, human limbs—hardly identifiable as such—test the open space like drugged vermin in search of food, only to be sucked back behind the curtains that surround the stage. Twenty minutes pass before those limbs arrive at center stage. (“Les Inconsolės” is an hour long.) The accomplishment is heroic. Standing up is an afterthought.

Top to Bottom

"Anna Karenina"
Manassas Ballet Theatre
Merchant Hall
Hylton Performing Arts Center
Manassas, Virginia
October 24, 2010 at 3 PM

by George Jackson
copyright 2010 by George Jackson

A new opera house within view of the Blue Ridge Mountains has just been launched as a site for ballet. The building itself was mentioned before in an architectural preview*. This weekend's initial performances were by a local company having links to Soviet dance traditions. Shown was an ambitious program-filling dramatic work to music played by a symphony orchestra. Two report cards are called for - one for the theater as venue and another for the performance, which was a premiere.

Portrait of the Artist as a Sino Sleuth

"Charlie Chan and the Mystery of Love", "Island"
Dana Tai Soon Burgess & Company
Dance Place
Washington, DC
October 22, 2010

by George Jackson
copyright 2010 by George Jackson

Portly, more sessile than mobile, the fictional detective Charlie Chan is as unlikely a character as ever  chosen for a work of dance. Yet he and the lad who is his admirer and imitator become plausible presences in Dana Tai Soon Burgess' latest premiere. Much of the dancing done by the cast's several women and two men is designed for their arms. Floating and reaching, arms stretch away from the bodies to which they are attached. Hand holds are richly varied. Overall, the movement surges, sweeps and has stops reminiscent of 1930s ballrooms. Chan himself doesn't actually dance, being kept on screen as Hollywood showed him, but Ricardo Alvarez as his live admirer bears him enough resemblance that the spring in his step comes as a surprise. We see the character Alvarez portrays explore body contact, fall in love, experience the death of love, and then puzzle detective-like how that could have happened. The death, a murder, remains a mystery unsolved. Charlie Chan, Alvarez and even author-choreographer Burgess give us no clue. I think it is because this case has a missing witness. 

The Sisyphean Struggle

“How Can You Stay In The House All Day And Not Go Anywhere?”
Ralph Lemon
BAM Harvey Theater
Brooklyn, NY
October 14, 2010

By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman

It’s a good question. Ralph Lemon, who choreographed and created this piece in honor of Walter Carter, described Carter as a man who never just “stayed in the house,” and never paused in the work of living. In 2004, Lemon met Carter, a Mississippi sharecropper born in 1907, while he was creating his last performance piece, “Come home, Charley Patton.” Their relationship continued, including making the film of the current work; Carter died in March 2010 in his 103^rd year. This work is framed by questions no less momentous than life and death, and Lemon, a dancer/choreographer/ writer/performance artist has found many paths to explore the struggle, including film, dance, and video.

Popular – Fall for Dance Program 4

“Megalopolis,” “Soleá,” “AfterLight Part 1,” “RHYTHMDOME”
Keigwin+Company – Juilliard Dance/Corella Ballet/Russell Maliphant Company/Jason Samuels Smith & Friends
City Center
New York, NY
October 6, 2010

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2010 by Leigh Witchel

As important as it is, the relentless populism of Fall for Dance can be exhausting.  The festival programs a lot of dance that requires a minimum of mental commitment to watch; it’s surprising and refreshing to see substantial choreography.

Larry Keigwin’s work for the Juilliard dancers, “Megalopolis,” though large-scale, was populist in the least demanding way. He used the natural club kid tendencies of the Juilliard students to turn Steve Reich into a discotheque soundtrack.

Deadly Sins

"Carmen", "Combate", "Don Quixote Grand Pas"
Ballet Concierto
Tribeca Performing Arts Center
New York, NY
October 15, 2010

by Mary Cargill

copyright © 2010 by Mary Cargill

The program danced by the Argentine company founded by the former Royal Ballet dancer Inaki Urlezaga included lust ("Carmen"), violence ("Combate"), and old-fashioned show-offs ("Don Quixote"); not morally uplifting, perhaps, but certainly riveting.  It will come as no surprise to New Yorkers familiar with the Latin American explosion in companies like ABT that this small company was full of fine dancers with warm and gracious performing styles.  The character of Carmen, though, is not really warm and gracious; this version was choreographed by Alberto Alonso for the Russian dynamo Maya Plisetskaya, using a suite written by her husband Rodion Shchedrin using themes from the opera.  The choreography is expressionistic, emphasizing the emotions more than the plot (and eliminating the Michaela character, surely one of the most extraneous people in all opera and substituting a figure in a black leotard called Destiny).  Eliana Figueroa as Carmen had a leggy charm, but her air of eager innocence, while appealing, was a bit fresh-faced for the doomed gypsy.  Urlezaga, however, as Don Jose, gave a rich and subtle performance, showing the gradual disintegration of Carmen's victim from the proud soldier, to the tempted man fighting his feelings, and finally to the weak and helpless murderer.  His anguished solo, as he tried to keep his honor, was a haunting display of weakness expressed through movement; he used his body to illustrate his every thought just by tilting his head or relaxing his shoulders.  His stunned stillness as he sat by Carmen's dead body was far more moving than any amount of mimed wailing, and this was an unforgettable performance.

Eerie Unity

“TOBARI: As if in an Inexhaustible Flux”
Sankai Juku
The Joyce Theater
New York, NY
October 6, 2010

By Martha Sherman

Copyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman

It’s not the chalk-white faces that make the work so haunting. The Butoh-based choreography of Ushio Amagatsu uses the traditions of the iconoclastic Japanese dance form to slow us down and demand our concentration, and at least a bit of our subconscious. “TOBARI,” a work created for Sankai Juku in 2008, is danced to a background of soft strings and woodwinds, a mix of Eastern and Western sounds. We were lulled throughout, but this is no gentle dance. Its energy is offered without the benefit of jumps, lifts, or speed; instead it focuses on the power of silence and intensity; an evocative adagio. The couple next to me slept through much of the performance, and they were probably not alone. Strict attentiveness is not easy (especially with our fast-paced expectations,) but there were no shortcuts to experiencing Sankai Juku; you had to just watch.

A Compound, Not a House

"How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?
Cross Performance
Yerb Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco, CA
October 8, 2010

by Rita Felciano
Copyright © Rita Felciano, 2010

Ralph Lemon's "How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?" is a tour de force that explodes theatrical conventions about structure, time, space and -- not incidentally -- says something about the human condition. The work's very ambition seems to doom it to failure. The fact that it didn't reveals a goodly amount about Lemon as a thinker and crafter of a set of interlocking pieces whose totality may make you dive into a part of your being into which most of us rarely rarely dare to go.

Autumn Bounty

Velocity DC Dance Festival
Harman Hall
Washington, DC
October 9, 2010 at 2 PM and 8 PM 

by George Jackson
copyright 2010 by George Jackson

After last week's dance awards and these fall festival performances in Washington, I'm in awe of the variety of things choreographers can do with bodies - sensing, thinking, moving bodies. The body as Liz Lerman uses it in "Still Crossing" is conscious of itself, responds to other bodies and aggregates communally as needs are felt. George Balanchine in "Tzigane" has the body serve its temperaments, flexing and stretching relentlessly towards a climax. In "Khaybet", the black veil which Dana Tai Soon Burgess has thrown over his dancer's head pulls down on her body, adding immeasurable weight which she tries to resist. Bodies in Paul Taylor's "Esplanade", like in Lerman's dance, respond and aggregate but seem bemused (those Leonardo DaVinci stances and smiles) as their awareness expands. Helanius J. Wilkins' "Heist" figure is poised for survival in a wild world and Erica Rebollar's body in "The Lights" is attuned to an e-world. Fifteen dances were spread over Velocity's two programs and while not all of them spoke to me equally, each was distinctly different.