Sameness

Kyoko Ruch’s “Erospace” and “”When Snails Collide”

Kennedy Center 2017 Local Dance Commissions

Millennium Stage North

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Washington, DC

September 28, 2017

 

by George Jackson

© 2017 by George Jackson

 

Ranging over varied dance terrain, Kyoko Ruch’s choreography gives the viewer no wild ride. In “Erospace”, a persistent female soloist balances barefoot on a leg and then ambulates on all four limbs, stretches  balletically and goes on to crouch in a callisthenic way against the video of an operator’s hand working plugs on an an electronic soundboard. The soloist keeps twisting, bending, unspooling fairly busily, projecting effort and endurance but investing her diverse motions with a uniform dynamic.

 

Photo: Kyoko Ruch’s "Eurospace." Photo courtesy of the Kennedy Center.  

 

 

Ruch establishes no further contrast than that of the video vs. the dancer. The sound, and presumably the operator’s hand, belong to Scanner (the stage name of Robin Rimbaud, from Britain). The dancer is Delphina Parenti, whom I’d like to see in a lively solo. Snail-like in “Collide”, a piece for 6 dancers, is only the glint of the silvery costumes designed by Ruch. Rather, this work resembles the Halloween skits performed by college fraternities, only not as raunchy. The choreography tries to caricature a pair of student pranksters, a prim schoolmarm and her favorite pupil, a hefty man who lip-syncs and dervish turns, plus a guy in drag as a chorine. After bouts of show-off that become quite  repetitious, everyone seems ready to play tennis yet, instead, there’s a coy strip scene. Like all Millennium Stage presentations, Ruch’s lasted from 6 PM to 7 PM. What a wasted hour.