Tag: Dance

In June, I had the opportunity to see four short works from a week long festival of contemporary choreographers called Women/Create!  One of the pieces was a short selection from You Took a Part of Me by Karole Armitage.  The full version is being performed this week at New York Live Arts.  This dance is both visually and intellectually interesting as it embraces the world of Japanese Noh theater.

Originating in the 14th century and still being performed today, Noh is often based on traditional literature.  You Took a Part of Me references the 15th century play Nonomiya.  This work was derived from an 11th century story by Murasaki Shikibu.  She wrote of The Tale of Genji, considered to be the world’s first novel.  In this particular segment, the ghost of one of Prince Genji’s lovers returns to the world of the living.

In order to present this dance, Ms. Armitage uses a stage which is evocative of traditional Noh theater.  The stage is square with a narrow bridge.  Thin strips of light illuminate the stage border.  Above, rather than a typical wooden roof structure, another series of lights suggest a ceiling.  The symbolic reverence for the sanctity of this type of theater is respected and sets a melancholy, pensive and analytical mood.

Mugen Noh is a play which features a ghost or spirit.  Time is often depicted as non-linear.  Action can pass between two or more time frames from moment to moment, including flashbacks.  In the original story, the ghost of Lady Rokujō indulges herself in her memory of parting from Genji at Nonomiya shrine.  She dances gracefully and sadly.

The elegant Megumi Eda portrays the Ghost who begins the performance attached to her Double (Sierra French) by interconnecting hair.  Movement is slow and deliberate.  They eventually separate.  The Ghost is then reconnected to her Lover (Cristian Laverde-Koenig).  A series of serious and playful connectivity follow.  At one moment, she comfortably rests on his back.

Later, the Double arrives and dances with the Lover while the Ghost sits, quietly thoughtful.  Is she obsessing on her sadness?  Her jealousy?  Her gaze may signify a searching memory from the afterlife.  I felt her weighing life’s regrets in an obsessively psychological study of the suffering contained in her soul.

The hallmarks of Noh drama are erotic entanglements, unresolved attachments and a search for harmony.  Ms. Armitage’s choreography evokes all of these elements in precise, slow moving connections and disconnections between the dancers.  A minimalistic and very effective score by composer Reiko Yamada punctuates the movements but still provides ample quiet reflection.

A Koken (Alonso Guzman) is a stage attendant in Noh theater who typically dresses in black and functions only to assist the performers.  Everything feels very calculated yet the storytelling is decidedly shadowy.  Has her spirit come to terms with her memories?  Three of us saw this piece (two of whom were Broadway dancers) and we enjoyed proffering our opinions afterward.

Megumi Eda, Sierra French and Cristian Laverde-Koenig are all wonderful dancers to watch.  The development of character, especially through their facial expressions and eyes, greatly enhances the somberly reflective atmosphere created.  This dance is measured in its pacing.  A meditation for a woman revisiting love’s complications with all of its tangles and knots.

Karole Armitage decided to name her piece after a Bob Dylan song.  Two lines beautifully sum up the feelings expressed through this dance.  “Maybe in the next life I’ll be able to hear myself think.”  A Noh sentiment for sure.  And perhaps this summation is most instructive: “I try to get closer but I’m still a million miles from you.”

You Took a Part of Me is being performed at New York Live Arts through October 26, 2019.

www.newyorklivearts.org

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/womencreate

Seven women choreographers and their companies share resources and collaborate for this one week festival of dance.  Each performance of Women/Create! contains four selections.  In addition to experiencing the enjoyment of varied works and styles, the choreographers spoke to the audience after the first piece ended.  Jennifer Muller set the tone for the evening with “I truly believe that movement is a language which can speak and heal the world.”

Jacqulyn Buglisi (Buglisi Dance Theatre) choreographed Moss Anthology: Variation #5.  Part of its two year Moss project, the dance is inspired by the writings of SUNY professor Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi biologist and poet.  The imagery projected began with the roots of trees which are “like sentient beings,” as Ms. Buglisi later commented.  Rocks and cracks in the earth appear on screen and her dancers start bonding together, their movement incorporating interwoven hands and arms.  The land turns to fire.  The dance takes us through earth’s cycle of renewal.  The mushroom image and the final movements encapsulate the spiritual rebirth of the forest floor.

A world premiere, The Theory of Color was choreographed by Jennifer Muller (Jennifer Muller/The Works).  A visual and auditory treat, lighting bathes the stage in a particular color.  Text is spoken to contextualize the power and attributes of red, blue, dark purple, green and yellow.  The dance and words act in combination to bring color to life.  “Red is for rage.. red is for roses…. Is it cool passion or the violence of love.”  The poetry is truly gorgeous, layering a mental image and definite mood onto the dancer’s movements. “The sea is so vast.  The sky so wide.  As wide and as vast as the whirlpool in your blue eyes.”  The yellow section was particularly memorable, ending breathlessly with “finally, I hear the faint sounds of spring.  Finally, I hear the welcome songs of canaries and bees.”

You Took a Part of Me was choreographed by Karole Armitage (Armitage Gone! Dance).  This dance was excerpted from a longer piece which will premiere this fall.  Inspired by the 15th Century Noh play, Nonomiya, this story involves erotic entanglements and psychosexual tensions in the style of traditional Japanese Ghost Noh Theater.  In the splendidly sensuous section Memory Duet, Megumi Eda and Cristian Laverde-Koenig show the power of dance when elegant and precise movements are presented in unison with equally mesmerizing character development and strong wordless acting.  A full production in October will include a traditional wooden Noh stage on loan from the Japan Society.  I will be there.

Fun and frivolity concluded the evening’s program.  Snap Crackle Pop was choreographed by Carolyn Dorfman and Renée Jaworski (PILOBOLUS Co-Artistic Director).  This work is a unique collaboration which will tour for two years as part of carolyndorfmandance before joining the repertoire of PILOBOLUS.  The dance exuberantly celebrated and mocked television commercials from long ago.  The romanticism sold by cigarette companies was a hilarious tangle of pleasurable addiction.  Kennedy, described as “a man who’s old enough to know but young enough to do” is assassinated, effectively shutting down the misguided joyful era.  The imagery in our heads from all of the information that pours inside our brains seemed to be represented by the dancers as neurons.  This particular work was a crowd pleasing dance filled with some vividly powerful structural movements.

Women/Create! is both mentally interesting and visually stimulating.  The evening is a wonderfully relaxed and exciting way to see different artists sharing their style of dance.  Pay heed to the instruction spoken in The Theory of Color:  “Green for Go in traffic lights the world over.”

www.newyorklivearts.org

www.buglisidance.org

www.jmtw.org

www.armitagegonedance.org

www.carolyndorfman.dance

For their 38th season, Elisa Monte Dance has established a new partnership with the Flea Theater.  Itinerant companies receive in house administrative support and access to further their reach.  Elisa Monte made her professional debut dancing with Agnes De Mille.  Her career propelled her to become a principal dancer for Martha Graham, Lar Lubovitch, Pilobolus and others.  Since 1979 she choreographed more than 50 works.

Tiffany Rea-Fisher was a principal dancer in this company beginning in 2004.  Three years ago she was named Artistic Director.  Four pieces were presented in this season’s program.  Ms. Rea-Fischer choreographed three of them and the other was from the company’s repertoire.  The dances are all contemporary and highlight the company’s signature style defined as “daring, intense and passionate” while being “classical and highly athletic.”

JoVanna Parks started the evening in a solo piece excerpted from a 2017 work entitled The Best-Self Project.  Accompanied by a recorded conversation, societal issues are examined through words while dance is interrupting the theories.  The cycles of menstruation and the moon.  The Pope announcing that gay marriage is as big a threat to the world as the destruction of the rain forest.  Unless we move to a feminine system of government, we don’t stand a chance.  Ms. Parks was expressive and engaging in a piece that seemed to embrace conflict.  As we were mentally processing the commentary on our social climate, we were also distracted by abstract dance.

Dreamtime premiered in 1986 and was my favorite dance of the evening.  David van Tieghem’s score and Ms. Monte’s choreography celebrate Austrialian Aboriginal rituals.  The movement consisted of patterns combining and diverging, yet always with a feeling of harmony and balance with the whole team.  I purchased an Aboriginal artist painting on a trip down under in 2017.  It is similarly filled with patterns which are a visual representation of the storytelling their people used to convey knowledge of land.  When I considered the dance and the art together, the spiritual connectivity enriched the experience for me.

Having its world premiere, And Then They Were was the most vigorously athletic work on display.  A couple performed standing 180 degree leg splits.  The choreography was impressive for showcasing a talented troupe performing much of this dance en pointe.  I did not understand how these movements represented “a reaction to the turbulent nature of the world” but the feats were well executed.

The fourth and final piece was a work-in-progress.  H.E.R. will have its premiere in 2020 as part of the Harlem Renaissance Centennial.  H.E.R. pays homage to three black, queer writers from the 1920’s. These ladies gave voice to the underrepresented and advocated for suffrage and civil rights.  The dance was an ebullient celebration using sounds and styles from that era.  Even a little Charleston was thrown into the mix. The period costumes and group dance were energetically staged and a crowd pleaser.  As the dance develops, it will be interesting to see how the three inspirational women are brought forth.

This spring 2019 program is my first visit to the Elisa Monte Dance company.  I am a theater critic who does not pretend to be expert in dance criticism.  From my seat as a fan, I found this company and their production enjoyable and nicely varied.  Recommended especially for those who might want to experience an accessible and professional introduction to contemporary dance.

www.elisamontedance.org

Founded in 2000, Ballet Boyz is a British company specializing in modern dance.  They are known for their extensive stage and television work and have performed in New York before. Young Men is the piece that I saw at the Joyce Theater this week.  This particular dance was first choreographed by Iván Pèrez in 2014.  Two years later, the company made a wordless feature length film innovatively incorporating dance into its storytelling (see link to the film’s trailer below).  The current show is a hybrid of the two:  scenes from the film and selections of live movement.  A group of young men under supreme stress while facing the horrors of World War I is the subject matter.

The film opens in a chapel with two women praying.  The older woman may be the mother of a soldier who is sitting beside his wife.  Then the story quickly turns to scenes of war and dying. There is a segment on basic training.  The film’s athleticism bursts forward as the dancers recreate the scene three dimensionally.  The process of dying is a dramatically rendered layback followed by a slump to the floor.  The move is performed and repeated signifying the extensive deaths faced by these young men.

The film is quite beautiful and gritty at the same time. The bunker scene is particularly arresting for both its storytelling and its depiction of the mental stress and anguish written on the soldier’s faces.  Always visually fascinating, the production occasionally gets bogged down a bit in its storytelling and deliberately repetitive movement.  The score, composed by Keaton Henson, is lush and harshly gorgeous, very well suited to the material.

Ballet Boyz is impressive for using a tumbling and angular modern dance choreography to spotlight the physical danger and emotional crisis confronted by men at war.  The inherent alluring appeal of this dance seemed somewhat at odds with the brutal nature of the subject matter.  As a result, Young Men occasionally straddles a fine line between condemnation and commemoration.

One of the soldiers returns home at the end, however, with a physically agonizing case of PTSD.  The serious and lasting effects of war coalescence in a scene with joyful reunion mixed with terrifying sadness.  The seven men and two women on stage are very talented performers.  Some throw their bodies to the ground and the thumping sound is jarringly intense.  Accompanying them is a unique film which incorporates dance-like artistry into a very grim story.  Ballet Boyz scores high on originality and artistic merit.

www.joyce.org

www.youngmenmovie.com

On March 30, 1958, Alvin Ailey and a group of young, black modern dancers perform for the first time as members of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at New York’s 92nd Street Y.  Sixty years later, the company has performed in front of an estimated 25 million people in 48 states and 71 countries.  Ailey II was founded in 1974 as a second company.  It’s mission is to merge the spirit of the country’s best young dancers with the passion and creativity of today’s outstanding emerging choreographers.

From this year’s tour, I caught the final performance of the all new program which was presented at the Ailey Citigroup Theater.  The three pieces were Road to One, Touch & Agree and Breaking Point, choreographed by Darrell Grand Moultrie, Juel D. Lane and Renee I. McDonald.  I am not a dance expert but what I saw from my seat was remarkable.  Feats of athleticism combined with rhythmic grace.  Varied musical choices punctuated with dramatic lighting.  A truly impressive assemblage of talent.  An excellent choice if you want to give dance a try.  Ailey II showcases dance that feels approachable, massively energetic, elegant, jaw-droppingly physical and hugely entertaining.  Next stop on this tour is Kansas City.

www.alvinailey.org