(left to right: Ashley Bouder, Antonio Carmena, Russell Janzen)

All photos of Ashley Bouder, Antonio Carmena and Russell Janzen by Matthew Murphy.

Review by Michael Northrop

Avi Scher & Dancers debuted the dynamic new piece “Touch” at the 2009 Contemporary Dance Festival at Manhattan Movement & Arts Center Saturday. The music, Aphex Twin’s “Blue Calx” performed by Alarm Will Sound, fit right in on a mixed bill that ranged from quieter balletic moments from the host company, Thang Dao Dance, to some entertaining, Pilobol-esque body-stacking from Phoenix Project Dance Theater.

That was it for fitting in, though. Everything else about “Touch” stood out, starting with the dancers. New York City Ballet corps member Russell Janzen, soloist Antonio Carmena, and principal Ashley Bouder were tremendous, and the choreography made the most of the trio’s athleticism. This was not a timid exploration of the stage. Whenever there was a question (a half step, a reach), the answer was yes (continue, embrace).

Janzen and Carmena came out shirtless in bike shorts. Aesthetically, this highlighted the physicality of the piece, which included some exceptional lifts. (Psychologically, it just made every guy in the audience feel like a toneless dumpazoid—or perhaps I project? In either case, it was a big hit with the row of teen girls behind me.)

Bouder, dressed in black, was marvelous. She reminded me of that great line, that great scene, from Geoffrey Rush’s Oscar-winning 1996 movie Shine: “Boldness of attack.” In the movie, Rush, as a brilliant pianist, has to be prodded to it. On Saturday, Bouder was committed to it from the start. Her pointework was precise but bristling with power.

Anyone who saw Scher’s work at the City Center Studios in June or the Ailey Citigroup Theater in September knows that he has a real flair for physical, crowd-pleasing pieces set to contemporary music. This fierce, fresh piece manages to both fit right in with that and, again, stand out.

Photo by Matthew Murphy, of Avi Scher & Dancers when they performed recently up at Jacob’s Pillow. Choreographer and artistic director Scher is at the front of the group. All photos are taken by Matt Murphy and used with his permission. See more of his photos of Avi’s company here and here.

On Sunday, I went to Studio 5 in City Center to see the first full program by young choreographer Avichai Scher. I’d seen Scher’s work before, at one of the 92 Street Y’s Friday dance hours, and was very impressed, so I was excited to attend this program in the intimate Studio 5 space. I love the small space — you’re so close to the dancers, you can really see every little detail. I was also excited because Scher, who studied at the School of American Ballet (the school associated with New York City Ballet), uses a lot of NYCB dancers, and I’m still kind of missing them from the season ending two weeks ago!

I really loved the program. There were five pieces, four of which were choreographed by Scher, who I think is a very talented up and coming choreographer. His work is playful, humorous, lyrical, touching, and always meaningful and evocative.

First on the program was Last Dance, a ballet he choreographed in memory of Jenn Jansma, a 21-year-old ballerina with the Carolina Ballet who passed away of cancer. So horribly sad. The dance was really beautiful, very lyrical, with lots of wispy, flying, birdlike movements. There were eight dancers altogether here but Abi Stafford danced the lead, who I imagined to be Jansma, young and innocent, at the end, heavenbound. Abi, is, if you don’t know, a principal dancer with NYCB, and she gave such a touching performance. She is really such a compelling dancer, especially when you see her up close like this. She makes everything so real and personal.

I mean, you feel like you’re going through everything with her, if that makes sense. She is really starting to impress me lately. I’ve always noticed her superior dance ability, but I think she is beginning to come into her own artistically as well. There was also a really sweet duet between her and David Prottas in this piece. He is also a standout dancer with NYCB.

Second on the program was Aquilarco, a duet from 1999, choreographed by Val Caniparoli, danced by Scher himself and Racheal Prince. Originally danced by San Francisco Ballet, this was a really cute piece — like a balletic Flamenco, very flirty and playful with lots of original movement and intricate partnering.

Next was a fun piece, just recently created by Scher, called Our Love’s Defense. It’s a duet, performed by Melissa Hough (a new principal at Boston Ballet) and NYCB’s Christian Tworzyanski. The music, by Jason Mraz, reminded me of ragtime, and the dance was about two lovers fighting and making up. They wore wrist supports that kind of resembled wrestling gloves and the movement in places looked a bit boxing-like, but playfully so. Toward the end, the dance became seductive, and they eventually ripped off their outer clothing, stripping down to their underwear, before embracing. Very sweet dance!

Next was a world premiere, No Matter What, for six dancers. The music, by Aphex Twin and Adam Lewis, was kind of new-agey and reminiscient of waves, as was the movement. It was interesting — it looked at times like the dancers were inside of invisible boxes, trying to work their way out. But the movement was more fluid than robot-like. At times, the dancers looked like creatures, with very fluid, waving limbs. This was the only dance that wasn’t on pointe. There were lots of interesting, Balanchine-like pattern changes among the dancers; at the end, they all stood in a huddle, looking up toward the light, as if they’d finally found their way out of whatever might have been imprisoning them.

Finally, we saw Mirrors, a work still in progress. It was my favorite! It involved seven dancers, and they were all mesmerizing. They would by turns, dance freely, playfully, then look as if they were catching themselves in a mirror, checking themselves, sometimes pleased but often not. Dena Abergel from NYCB did a tremendous acting job with this. She really blew me away. As did Abi again. At the end, it seems like the two are two sides of the same person. They turn in a circle, each her back toward the other, one seemingly content, the other not, one with her hands to her face, covering her eyes, the other her arms spread out.

My favorite part of this piece though was a gorgeous duet between NYCB principal Jared Angle and the wonderfully willowy, rather bewitching at times, Alexsandra Meijer, a principal with San Jose Ballet. There were some lovely lifts, beautiful partnering, and one movement theme was his repeatedly covering her eyes with his hands, preventing her from looking, presumably at herself in a mirror. She reminded me a bit of Janie Taylor, really mesmerizing with loose, sometimes spidery limbs. And Jared is so gallant and such the perfect male partner, and such an excellent dancer. You can really see that up close. You can tell why he’s a principal; everything he does is perfection.

Anyway, I can’t wait to see more of this dance; I can’t wait until it’s finished. And I can’t wait to see more of Avi’s work in general.

(photo of Ethan Stiefel by Richard Calmes, from NYTimes)

Last night the Guggenheim Museum’s Works and Process event centered on Ethan Stiefel’s new dean-ship of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (which is both a high school and now a university as well). Stiefel is of course a famous ABT principal, star of both Center Stage movies, and ran the summer program Stiefel and Students / Stiefel and Stars, out on Martha’s Vineyard, which my friend Alyssa and I went to a couple of years ago. It was hosted by blogger / dance writer and photographer (and former ABT dancer and NC School of the Arts alum) Matt Murphy, and also included choreographer Larry Keigwin (artistic director of Keigwin + Company), who was the recipient of the school’s first residency under Stiefel.

It was a fun evening. Discussion centered around Ethan’s decision to take on the position, in light of the fact that he’s still dancing (he’d had several surgeries on both knees, knew he wanted to do something like this at some point but stressed about when was proper time to do it), his new schedule (now waking at 6:30 — as opposed to 11 am when he use to wake as a dancer — to take class, then teach a couple of classes, then do all manner of administrative / financial / directorial things – -not easy tasks in light of current economic crisis, and still try to find time for his own rehearsals), and just generally his teaching and directorial aesthetics (he’d come up with eight “initiatives” to instill a culture and sense of identity in the school, the last of which Matt read — which was to encourage students to be inspired by both art and life.) Gia Kourlas has a good article in the Times that summarizes all of this as well.

Keigwin joined Matt and Ethan for the last quarter or so of the panel, and he spoke about his residency, how he’d choreographed a new work both on the students and his own company simultaneously, what it was like to work with students, and what it was like to be out of NY. I’d never heard him speak before and he’s very personable, fun, and chatty with a good sense of humor (which doesn’t surprise me — his work is largely humorous and accessible as well). He talked about the company being beyond thrilled with the washing machines and the cooking space (if you don’t get out of New York much, this kind of surprise happens!) and so enjoyed performing a lot of domestic activities. He was cute! And Ethan was his usual self — his completely understated, deadpan style of talking oozing with sexiness and manly charm. Before introducing one of his students’ performances — of the Four Cygnets in Swan Lake – he explained the girls wouldn’t have the swans’ usual hairpieces: “We got a lot going on and … we just didn’t get that done in time,” he said with a smile and a shrug. Somehow the way he said it just gave everyone the giggles, which, honestly, often happens when the man speaks.

Anyway, we saw Tangled Tango, a modern piece by Dianne Markham, a contemporary choreographer at the school, the pas de deux and coda from Le Corsaire, which Ethan staged, the Four Cygnets from Swan Lake staged by Nina Danilova, and August Bournonville’s The Jockey Dance, also staged by Ethan.

Finally, we ended with Keigwin’s Natural Selection (a modern piece), which totally blew me away. The Keigwin was based on Darwin, survival of the fittest and all that, and was so stunning, filled with very difficult partnering, lifts, students crawling around on the floor, clawing at the ground and each other, lashing out, really having at each other. (So, not quite his usual humorous piece) A guy crawled around with a girl wrapped around him, underneath him. At one point, it slowed, several dancers huddled around each other in a group, each kind of resting, momentarily, putting his / her ear to the back in front of them, perhaps comforting the other, perhaps trying to determine whether his / her heart was still beating, lungs still rising, to determine whether they’d “won”. Then a girl came rushing at them, climbed right over the huddle and jumped right onto the wall in back of them. Someone crawled after her and pushed her back to the ground. Keigwin’s signature move then ensued: a group of male dancers lifted her and she bent sideways, and ran alongside the back wall. The audience was wowed. But more importantly, I think, it was such a wonderful piece for students. I mean, what better way to teach them partnering, how to work with each other, how to be dramatic, how to make the meaning of a work come alive. I loved it!

(other dancers performing that move, photographer unknown, image taken from MySpace, here)

My other favorites were: the Four Cygnets — whoa, that was PERFECTLY done! Those girls — Tessa Blackman, Maya Joslow, Amy Saunder, and Lauren Sherwood — should be so proud of themselves; and Le Corsaire — but of course I’m a sucker for that kind of bravura dancing. I was really afraid, holding my breath the whole time with that one — I mean that stage is soooo small for all that leaping and those insanely high lifts. The two dancers — Claire Kretzschmar and Kristopher Nobles (who looked like a young Gillian Murphy and Jose Carreno respectively!) did splendidly on their own. I couldn’t help but giggle during Nobles’s huge, stage-encompassing leaps and Kretzschmar’s beautiful continuous fouettes and the gorgeously high lifts — all wonderfully executed — except because of said miniscule stage, her hand almost took a light out on one such spectacular lift. There was a tiny bit of fumbling on some of the partnering — the assisted pirouettes and the promenade, but I was actually glad for the audience to understand how insanely hard those things are. People think that’s the easy stuff — and the lifts are the hard parts — but the assisted pirouettes and promenades, when the girl is totally off her center of gravity and the guy has to help keep her centered, are some of the hardest aspects of partnering. Now maybe Met orchestra peeps will not be so confused when the young dance students in family circle go wild for Marcelo the great’s ten bizillion one-handed turns with Julie Kent

Here’s a video of the Four Cygnets, here’s some classic Corsaire (they didn’t do all of this insanity, but you get the idea), and here is The Jockey Dance (it was performed last night by two boys, Devin Sweet and Shane Urton).

The Jockey Dance was fun too — one of those dances that looks deceptively easy, but you can tell is really hard, with all the bouncing jumps, playful competitiveness– using a whip no less, and fast footwork.

Gillian Murphy (ABT prima ballerina, Ethan’s girlfriend, and NC School of the Arts alum) was there too. Poor thing had to sit in the critics’ section! Luckily Sir Alastair was not there… The program repeats tonight, but is sold out.