Tag: Akhnaten

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KEIGWIN + COMPANY'S CAPTIVATING "RUNAWAY"

Here are some photos of Keigwin + Company’s recent season at the Joyce in Chelsea. Above is Larry Keigwin’s absolutely stunning Runaway, which I loved, and below is his Bird Watching, which had its premiere at the start of the season. All photos by Christopher Duggan.

My friend and I were blown away by Runaway. It began with a woman onstage wearing a 60s-style dress and a huge bouffant hairdo, checking herself in a mirror held by two male tecchies. The program had advertised that there was to be a “scene change” between the former piece and this one, and it was soon made clear this “scene change” was part of the performance. As stage guys ripped up the floor matting and the back wall drop and laid new ones, this woman primped and posed in the handheld mirror, while men came onstage dressed in briefs, and began climbing into their black suits.

At one point a half-dressed woman ran across the stage, followed by a half-dressed man, running the other way. It was funny; everyone cracked up.

Then, the lights went down, and as the high-energy music (Jonathan Melville Pratt’s Thirteen) began to pump, several men dressed in suits began to walk quickly  across stage. The woman with the bouffant hairdo began to dance, her body making sharp angular movements. Soon several woman dressed like her joined the men, walking back and forth across the stage.As the music grew faster, the walking became more urgent, at times turning into a run, a sprint even. Then they began walking into the audience, using the aisles like catwalks.

Soon, they were joined by men who were dressed only in black briefs and women in colored underwear and bras, their hairdos also ratted beehives. The stage was aflutter with people walking or running back and forth, some stopping to dance in the middle, mimicking the first woman’s sharp angular movement. Throughout the whole, everyone had these straight-ahead stares, like zombies. Their walks meant business but their stares were vacant. It was like runaways on a runway. Very cool and not a dull moment! My friend, an emerging choreographer, was so inspired!

James Wolcott, equally fascinated and calling Runaway “what Nine should have been”, wrote about the piece here, and Oberon here. And you can see part of the action in their promo video, which I embedded in my earlier post, here.

Bird Watching was interesting though it didn’t sustain my attention the way Runaway did. It was more lyrical, set to classical music (Hayden’s Symphony No. 6 in D Major). I liked but didn’t love it I think mainly because I couldn’t tell the extent to which it was kind of riffing on certain classical motifs and meant as a funny commentary on them, and the extent to which it was meant to be taken seriously and on its own. Everyone — men included — were dressed in white tops and black tutus, and at one point I could see some movement patterns very similar to Swan Lake‘s White Swan pdd — performed by the men. It wasn’t so funny, though, as it was pretty, which was perhaps the point: that anyone can do anything without it being some kind of statement. I feel like I need to see it again though, and concentrate harder!

Also on the program were Mattress Suite, which I really liked. It was comprised of six vignettes, all involving a mattress, each set to different music and danced by a different set of characters. The story was the progress of a relationship: woman (the brilliant Nicole Wolcott) dancing around in her wedding dress elated and excited but slightly apprehensive, man (Keigwin, who, as a dancer, is often very funny, always charming) in his tux looking excited and lustful but a bit worried, then they’re together on the mattress, then they fight and she lifts the mattress erecting it between them like a barrier, she leaves, he has a fling — with two guys — the mattress getting a bit cramped there toward the end, and then she returns and is alone, struggling with her aloneness on the mattress. It’s by turns humorous, cute, sad, bittersweet. What I love about Keigwin is that his choreography is evocative of human behavior without being obvious or unoriginal. His movement is evocative but original and clever, in other words. And there’s plenty of room for the dancers to act their own drama.

And opening was the high-energy Caffeinated, from 2007, set to Philip Glass’s percussive Akhnaten, which I’ve seen before and is always fun.

But Runaway really blew me away. If you ever get the chance to see it, or his Bolero, or his lamentation in honor of Martha Graham, or anything by him really, go! Their Joyce season was short and is now over, but they’re always around.

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ALVIN AILEY II: THE EXTERNAL KNOT

 

 

I don’t have much time to write– this week is beyond crazy, but last week I went back for more Alvin Ailey II (Ailey’s studio company) to see their program of repertory favorites, my favorite of which was Troy Powell’s The External Knot. See a video of excerpts from that here.

What I found intriguing about this piece was Mr. Powell’s use of music. He set the dance mainly to Philip Glass (with some Robert Schumann thrown in), to sections of In the Upper Room and Glass Pieces (the section from the latter was from Akhnaten, that fun, bouncy, drum-laden section). I’d only ever seen set to that music Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room and Jerome Robbins’ Glass Pieces, and I’d only ever seen Balanchine ballets to Schumann, so it was interesting to me to see how another choreographer visualized the music.

The External Knot is the story of this young man who seeks individuality, to set himself apart from the crowd and go off on his own. But there is a certain loneliness in doing that. But then, being a conformist is not very challenging and there ends up being a certain loneliness in being part of a group as well. The movement, along with the Upper Room and Schumann music conveyed that well. Upper Room is one of my favorite pieces — both the dance and the music alone — particularly that middle section where the piano keys sound like raindrops — it’s somehow simultaneously peaceful yet sad. I always envision this solitary person stuck in a cell — either a prison or a mental institution. Then, towards the end, the orchestral music swells and there’s a choral part indicating there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and I then think of the confined person as on a journey toward that light. I’ve often wondered when listening to the music where in the world Tharp got her ideas for the dance, because I don’t see any of that unsettling isolation and confinement in her ballet. But then, that is part of the fun of Tharp — you can often get the unexpected. And then Balanchine has used Schumann to convey madness. But here, that music perfectly suited the theme as the young man dances on his own, kicking up and out, jumping, lunging, reaching, doing a lengthy painful-looking shoulder stand, his legs bent awkwardly in the air, his legs slowly spreading into an arc, then a full split, his body finally rolling over onto to the ground, while the group dances on in the background — either moving in sync as an ensemble, or fragmenting into duos or trios, all movement seeming to express a longing for something.

At one point, the man is very indecisive: he can’t figure out whether to lead, follow, or leave the group. The group follows him, he looks over his shoulder as if to ensure they’re there, then they turn and leave him behind. He seems upset, he follows them, as if to harken them back. When they turn again and come at him, he turns back around, goes on hurredly forward whether they’re behind him or not.

And then in the last section, instead of using the choral music from Upper Room, Powell switches to the exciting,  rhythmic Akhnaten, where the dancers perform expansive movements in the background — large bends forward from the waist, big, far-reaching port de bras, while the man jumps, twists and turns up front, seemingly more upbeat, at peace with himself whether he is one with the group or not.