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Jo Kreiter's New Works

"Grace and Delia Are Gone"
Flyaway Productions
Fort Mason Center for the Arts and Culture
San Francisco, CA
Sept. 22, 201

by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano, 2016

Aerial dance, or apparatus-based dance as Jo Kreiter calls it for her twenty-year old Flyaway Productions, has earned its place with the Bay Area dance theater scene. Unlike her more recent out-door works on the sides and roofs of city buildings, “Grace and Delia Are Gone”-- an hour long contemplation about violence against women -- was performed in the small scale surroundings of and outside the old Firehouse at the Fort Mason Center at the edge of the Bay. There was an intimacy and individualized expressiveness to "Grace" that sometimes is difficult to communicate in more large-scale works. Kreiter’s dancers may still evoke a frisson when they slide head down a wall or swing into void as far as a rope will take them. But there is more to her work. An outspoken feminist with social concerns that particularly impact women, Kreiter is a dance theater maker whose choreography gives us images of physically strong and fearless women whether their stories talk about poverty, discrimination or abuse. In the end you believe that they will survive.

Laura Elaine Ellis and Sonsherée Giles in "Grace and Delia Are Gone." Photo: Austin Forbord Rapt Productions

 

The Burden of the Brand

New York City Ballet
Fall Gala
“For Clara,” “The Dreamers,” “ten in seven,” “Unframed,” “Bal de Couture”
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
September 20, 2016

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2016 by Leigh Witchel

New York City Ballet's fall gala was different, only the same. The annual event featured new com-missions by choreo-graphers paired off with fashion designers, and finally, two of the four new works were choreo- graphed by women. For decades, the company has seemed tone-deaf to issues of both gender and race, so that any move towards diversity goes beyond refreshing to relief. All the new works were consistent, in good ways and not-so-good ones. No ballet fouled out, but none batted it out of the park either.

Indiana Woodward in “For Clara.” Photo © Paul Kolnik.

From the Womb – A World

 

“Errand Into The Maze”, “Dark Meadow (Suite)”,

“Woodland”, “Lamentation” & 3 Variations,

“Diversion of Angels”

Martha Graham Dance Company

Alden Theatre

McLean, Virginia 

September 24, 2016

 

by George Jackson

© 2016 by George Jackson

 

It was a balanced bill but inevitably a woman’s world that the Graham’s artistic director, Janet Eilber, presented. Four dances were by Martha Graham and one each by Pontus Lidberg, Azsure Barton, Richard Move and Sonya Tayeh. Graham’s group works were made in the mid-1940s when she had entered her 50s. Sexuality is at their core, although differently slanted. In “Maze” (1947), it is a fearsome thing to be conquered. In “Meadow” (1946), sex gives some satisfaction and holds promise despite dark doubts. In “Diversion” (1948), sex is transformed into love and Graham choreographed a paean to it. A compositional device she used in the first two – the alternation of staccato motion and flow – doesn’t appear in “Diversion”. Instead, differences among the diverse aspects of love are shown by distinct pacing, phrasing, costuming. There is the statuesque, often almost still, white-clad figure of pristine love. Tension and intense release are attributes of the sensualist, whose attire is a burning red. Impetuous, immature love flits about, launches and lands lightly, and sports a canary’s colors. All, of course, are female figures. What about Graham’s men?

 

Martha Graham Dance Company in Graham’s “Diversion of Angels”. Photo by Costas.  

 

The People's Voice

West Wave Dance Festival
Mixed Programs
Z Space
San Francisco, CA
September 15 and 19, 2016

by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano 2016

After a close to two decades run, West Wave Dance Festival closed in 2012. Joe Landini, whose SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts had a successful track record of supporting and presenting choreographers, resurrected the Festival the following year. He also changed gears by delegating curating responsibilities to choreographers with very different perspectives. Among them was Amy Seiwert who invited -- a first for the Festival -- ballet colleagues. For West Wave's twenty-fifth anniversary this year, Landini sent out a general call for choreographer suggestions; twenty-five emerged from eighty-seven nominations. The winners had to follow but one stipulation: you must present a world premiere. On the basis of two programs of the five programs seen, the judgment is still out on whether the vox populi fared much worse than other ways of assembling mixed bills. Some creations clearly suffered from good intentions over artistic competence. But West Wave also offered opportunities to new or, at least lesser known voices.

Photo: Yashie Kateada and Julie-Ann Gambino, Photo credit: Julie Gambino

Neo-Adagio

"Mockingbird", "Chamber", "Stagioni"
Stuart Loungway's Terra Firma Dance Theatre
Dance Place
Washington, DC  September 17, 2016

by George Jackson

©copyright 2016 by George Jackson

 

During intermission, between Stuart Loungway's two shorter pieces and his Vivaldi "Stagioni", a newcomer to America asked whether the work we'd seen so far would be called"neo-classical". I replied  that, rather, "neo-romantic" came to mind. In both "Mockingbird" and "Chamber", Loungway seemed about to tell an emotional tale, although the story lines remained hidden. After the evening's final curtain, my postscript comment was that "neo-classical" seems to fit "Stagioni" best. Ballet was used in all three pieces, but in the last Loungway played prominently with form.  

 

Photo: Stuart Loungway's Terra Firma Dance Theatre dances Loungway's "Stagioni."

 

Realities Abound

"ARA Ritual I: Waterways"
Dohee Lee
CounterPulse
San Francisco, CA
Sept. 8. 2016

by Rita Felciano
Copyright © Rita Felciano 2016

One of the pleasures of watching live performance is the suspension of disbelief where you voluntarily give up the distinction between reality and the artifice in front of you. Another delight is watching the inherent tension between the material and the performer’s skill. At its best a performance can open glances into an intangible commonality that binds us together more closely than the stick-and-bones of the every day. The Ancient Greece understood that theater was an essential ingredient to its democracy. Dohee Lee’s “ARA Ritual I: Waterways” stretches the whole spectrum of these possibilities. The Korean-born artist trained in music, dance and theater but also immersed herself shamanistic practices. The current work, the second of a trilogy, is inspired by Ara, the divinity whose tears create the water ways on earth; human tears also rise up to become the stars in the Milky Way. While only seventy minutes, “ARA’s” six sections, each highly individualized and for the most part superbly realized, wove these threads into a multi-textured fabric that was as gossamer as it was sturdy. The work finally convinced me that it is possible to participate in a ritual without being a believer. The first work of this trilogy was "Mago" (danceviewtimes Nov. 20, 2014)

Dancer: Dohee Lee, photographer Pak Han

Too Much of a Good Thing?

"Mozart Dances"
Mark Morris Dance Group
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
August 24, 2016

By Carol Pardo
© copyright 2016 by Carol Pardo

Mozart and Morris: the standard bearer of music's classical era meets (arguably) the most classicizing choreographer of his generation. The combination must have seemed inevitable when, in 2006, the Mostly Mozart Festival commissioned a work to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth. The result, "Mozart Dances," not seen in New York in nearly a decade, has been revived to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Mostly Mozart Festival itself.