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A Good Start Gets Swamped

"A Solo in Nine Parts," "I.N.K.," "Aria," "From Foreign Lands and People"
Jessica Lang Dance
Joyce Theater
New York, NY
August 13, 2013

By Carol Pardo
Copyright ©2013 by Carol Pardo

Jessica Lang Dance, the final company to present its view of the future development of ballet under the aegis of the Joyce Theater’s Ballet v6.0, has been around only since 2012. But founder/choreographer Jessica Lang has already created 75 works in this century. She’s learned the importance of variety. In an hour and a half including intermission (no one piece was longer than twenty minutes), each work had its own look and sound: a Baroque concerto, a modern soundscape, vocal music and 19th century piano pieces played live. Lang always gave her audience something to see and to hear. And she led from strength.

Sock Hop

"Monster," “Flower Festival,” “The Sofa”
Whim W’Him
Joyce Theater
New York, NY
August 13, 2013

By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2013 by Martha Sherman

Whim W’him is a young, Seattle-based troupe of talented dancers led by artistic director and choreographer, Olivier Wevers. But it doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. The cutesy name, the sock-footed choreography, and the half of the Joyce show done in slapstick humor, suggests that they’re in it for the fun. The other half, with heavy imagery and grimacing facial expressions, suggests exactly the opposite. All of the dancers showed fine ballet training; but the ingredients didn’t add up to the promise of the parts.

Only Connect

"The Impulse Wants Company", "Epistasis"
BalletCollective
Joyce Theater
New York, New York
August 14, 2013

by Mary Cargill
copyright © 2013 by Mary Cargill

Ballet 6.0, for those who are counting, is a mini-festival of small, ballet-inspired companies.  BalletCollective (founded in 2010 by New York City Ballet dancer Troy Schumacher as Satellite Ballet and Collective), it their own words "assembles artists, poets, composers, choreographers, and designers to collaborate as equals".  This Diaghilevian idea includes seven supremely talented current and former New York City Ballet dancers, live music, and, at least at the Joyce, no scenery.  Instead, the backstage brick wall was illuminated to reflect the various moods, alternatively gloomy and glowing.   The opening number, the obliquely titled "The Impulse Wants Company" originated, again according to the publicity, in a poem by Cynthia Zarin, the resident writer.  The poem is a conglomeration of images--to quote a phrase at random--"seesaw.  The green world white and blue, salt-stripped--too big, sky too far, the sweet air" and so on for two pages.  This verbal meandering is easy to make fun of, and it didn't seem to have much to do with the actual performance, but its youthful winsomeness (I have no idea how old the poet is, but it certainly reads like adolescent enthusiasm) seems to underpin the work.