Less Is More

“Furniture Suite,” “Pas de Detour,” “Small Stages”
Cornfield Dance
University Settlement House Speyer Hall
New York, NY
September 30, 2014

by Martha Sherman
copyright © 2014 by Martha Sherman

For the opening of her 25th anniversary season, Ellen Cornfield didn’t need much space, much set, or much hoopla. Her small company of excellent dancers moved to graceful and distinct choreography, adding just enough humor to make it feel like a genuine celebration. Cornfield, who learned her trade with Merce Cunningham, paid tribute to his discipline and energy in her choreography, but she humanized the work with tender underlying jokes and human expression, triggering connections among the dancers as characters in vaguely told stories.

Photo: Maggie Cloud (background,) Cori Kresge in “Furniture Suite.” Photo © Steven Schreiver

In “Furniture Suite,” Maggie Cloud and Cori Kresge danced a crisp duet, moving in and out of parallel turns and elegant high leg lifts. Cornfield added idiosyncratic muscle movements like a hip twitch that lifted a leg even higher from its socket and then dropped back. The dancers’ bodies moved from springy jumps into these small collapses – a crumbling shoulder or neck movement – then clicked back to balance and parallel. Their hands were fluttering accents, palms hiding their faces as they sliced forward and back.

A few folding chairs and small round tables were the simple set, moved by the dancers when they were needed. Sometimes, the chairs provided a resting spot for one dancer, as the other took a solo turn; they also became a base for paired upper body dances of scooping arms and craned necks. The tables were miniature platforms, allowing the dancers to slide their bodies across the surface, or slip legs or arms through the base, a wooden partner for a dancer’s shifting torso. The furniture not only subtly let them change the dynamic of their movement, but also created a channel for gentle humor, as the dancers became more animal-like, and a touch competitive.

The third partner in the piece was Andreas Brade’s score, electronic and melodic sounds laced with a clatter of present participles -- “realizing,” “compromising,” “exercising” – in an ongoing stream. Cloud and Kresge (who also hummed part of the score in one of her solos) propelled their bodies with the rolling sounds and words.

The second work, “Pas de Detour,” was the most spare of the little-ornamented evening, and was described as a work in progress. Pierre Guilbault and Joshua Tuason danced the opening duet, a powerful combination of parallel movements that claimed the entire floor, where they seemed to levitate instead of just leaping. In their duets, the men used each other as levers, grasping wrists and shifting their weight to magnify each others movements. Their third partner, Kresge, moved in a subtle wave, each muscle moving independently, as her male partners shot like bullets of movement around her.

In a trio near the piece’s close, the men tossed Kresge between them, then lifted her, arms held wide and her legs a sharp line downward. Not an unfamiliar lift, here the image seemed especially Christ-like, as church bells tolled in the score, and the men appeared to be acolytes. The three flew out of the space, leaping through a door that opened at the edge of the hall, in a surprising close.

“Small Stages” offered the most developed storyline, though it was open for interpretation. In this final piece, a trio of dancers -- Kresge, Guilbault, and Dylan Crossman-- were joined by a pair of characters, Cornfield with a charming Arnold Margolin. The small stages of the title were both the compact 6’ x 6’ platform on which much of the dance happened, and the small stages in the lives of the five characters, who performed, flirted, and competed with movement, and sometimes hummed their own internal dialogue in a quirky score that mixed sounds and chirps with internal thoughts made audible.

The trio of dancers slipped around and among each other on the tiny platform, Kresge in the center of a not-quite-love triangle. Within their small space, the men leapt, then caught and tossed Kresge, while also carving out distinct, separate individual movements. Scenes of dance on the platform intertwined with scenes of the coolly elegant Cornfield and Margolin, who sat at a small table and chairs. They read a New York Times, competing with each other like a mature couple, one establishing dominance only to have the other manage to avoid capitulating.

Kresge and Crossman danced from flirtation to more serious connection, looking as if they might have been the older couple in an earlier time. Guilbault competed with Crossman, too, but he clearly lost, and his dreamy solo at the other side of the platform was danced on another small stage, this one made of two folding chairs. Facial expressions – a fleeting smile, an exasperated look – gave hints of storylines to each pair and player. Though the stories were imprecise, the dancers weren’t. Crossman’s solos, especially, filled the small stage with leaps, body shifts and turns, bringing him to the platform corners in perfect balance, never over the edge.

The three pieces worked well as a sampling to honor this milestone anniversary. Kresge’s dancing in each work drew a physical connection that highlighted her own embrace of Cornfield’s movement vocabulary, especially the sharp lines of leg and arm lifts, the quirky hip joint shifts, and birdlike fluttering of wrists and hands; her warm smile punctuated the dance, as if channeling Cornfield herself. The other link that pulled the three works into a unified whole was Brade’s almost conversational accompaniment, in a partnership of score and choreography that deepened both.

Photos
Top: Pierre Guilbault, Cori Kresge, Joshua Tuason in “Pas de Detour.” Photo © Steven Schreiver
Bottom: Dylan Crossman, Cori Kresge in “Small Stages.” Photo © Steven Schreiver

copyright © 2014 by Martha Sherman