Fiddlers Also Dance

 

“Voices” – 8 Works

Glade Dance Collective

Dance Place 

Washington, DC

May 8, 2016

 

by George Jackson

© 2016 by George Jackson

 

Glade is a group mostly of women dancers. The one man featured was a guest artist - a musician who also moved. Choreography for all of the pieces was by the performers, separately or jointly.Their sense of what suits them is keen. One work featured just musicians playing a string quartet while seated, but their actions were so vivid that I count them as choreography too. 

 

The music played by the quartet, Nico Muhly’s “Diacritical Marks”, has an emphasis on melodic line more than on rhythmic pulse – despite its title. Yet accentuations do figure, particularly at the start and end of sections. The tonalities that predominate are slightly dour. With their music stands between them, the four players sat facing each other, not in closed formation but open in front to the audience. The two violinists (Alexa Cantalupo, Kaitlin Moreno) were barefoot. They and the violist (Troy Pryor) bowed on, sawed over, struck or fingered the strings of the instruments they held under their chins. Arm motion was emphatic and sometimes the players’ torsos swayed. The cellist (Erin Snedecor), whose large instrument doesn’t fit under the chin but stands on the floor in front of the legs, nodded frequently and vigorously in time to the music as she played or just listened. The sum of the quartet’s action was worth watching as, of course, was hearing the sound. 

 

Glade’s dance choreography features contrasts: casual motion vs. formal technique, standing up vs. lying down, soloists vs. group, dramatic development vs. sustaining a mood, moving in silence vs. dancing to sound. The two collaborative dances, “Am I There Yet?” and “District. Defined” were grab-bag constructs due to the contrasting actions and also the music by assorted composers. A set of questions tried to unify the first and photos of DC the second. Sylvana Christopher gave “The John Lee Ballet” shape by building a progression from the frolic of four nymphs to the intensity of a questioning solo for herself. It was done to the music of a single composer – Lee. 

 

“Worlds: A Memory” showed a relationship that was partly helpful and partly hindrance. Choreographed for Emilie Davignon and Elizabeth T. Barton by Shannon Dooling and  Lauren Fanslau, this dualistic theme turned up again later on the program. Lauren Borchard’s “Suite Violette / Sweet Violet” began formally and may have alluded to Martha Graham technique for the female bodies, but became fragmented. The musicians of “Diacritical Marks” were also deployed, except that Pryor played guitar and all four were used as bodies standing and moving about. “Spontaneous Emergence” by Dooling and Betsy Loikow, started with the contrast of an on-stage soloist and a chorus of three figures coming down the stairs through the audience. Two more women joined the dancers as did the string quartet players. That there was just one musical composition for this piece – Caroline Shaw’s “Valencia” – helped  give it cohesion. Also to a single piece of music – Tom Salvatori’s “Another Lullaby” -  Shauna Edson played with an expandable and collapsible sphere in her solo “Expand”, imitating the toy but adding lots of steps.    

 

The bodies of Glade’s dancers vary greatly. Apparently, so does extent and type of technical training, yet everyone performs capably. There is no bravura but much commitment. Using musicians as movers of interest is a real contribution. 

 

Photos by Robert Cannon