Tag: Modern Dance

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Keigwin & Co. and Battleworks at the Joyce This Week

 

With all kinds of deadlines looming, I have very little time to blog, but briefly want to point to two shows this week at the Joyce in Chelsea. I saw Larry Keigwin‘s Elements last night. Fuller review is forthcoming but for now I’ll say I always find Keigwin’s work to be quirky, humorous (at times light, at times a bit twisted), very original, fun, at times silly on the surface but carrying an inner depth, and ultimately humanistic. It’s definitely worth seeing his unique take on water, fire, earth, and air — I particularly liked the first and last evocations the best. It’s showing Wednesday and Friday, while Robert Battle’s company, Battleworks, shows on alternating nights (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday).

I haven’t yet seen Battleworks but have loved Battle’s choreography for Alvin Ailey, the short Unfold and the third section of Love Stories so am looking forward to it.

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Peep Show In Central Park

Saturday night I went to Central Park’s Summer Stage to see Israeli choreographer Nimrod Freed’s PEEPDANCE, performed by his new company, Tami Dance Company. The peep-show aspect ended up going along well with the little theme of my weekend, since I’d stayed up till all hours of the morning the night before finishing Charles Bock’s excellent BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN, a dark novel about the underside of “the fabulous Las Vegas.”

Anyway, I loved this show!

They had about six different tents / boxes/ cages — whatever you want to call them — set up on the west side of the field, each housing one dancer apiece, one cage — the most popular one — a couple, male and female. All dancers were clothed, dancing mainly modern-style dance but some more social dance, making various poses, some acting, a couple breaking the fourth wall and engaging with the “audience” — meaning, the sets of eyes looking in on them, but there was of course no actual stripping, unless you consider the shedding of an outer jacket or a monk-type figure taking off and on his hood or a a woman off and on her mask to be such.

But it really made you think about the voyeuristic nature of dance, how dance can be a kind of strip-tease just in its emphasis on the body, the voyeuristic nature of voyeurism in general, and the gendered aspect of all this. In an interview choreographer Freed said audience members would run back and forth between the various cages, but it didn’t matter; you got what you were supposed to get if you simply peered into one box, from various peepholes. After viewing the show twice (they ran it two times) and talking to people during and afterward, I disagree with him. I think what you get out of it depends on which box you look into, whether you look into more than one, and in which order.

I began with this box of the monk (although on looking at my pictures, he looks a bit grim-reaperish; and, now that I look at the picture, those peep holes kind of look like bullet holes, though I didn’t notice that during the performance). He was moving slowly, deliberately, kind of hauntingly, taking on and off his hood, albeit without really letting you see his head. I thought this was interesting, but was curious what was in the other cages, so moved on.

Second cage was a woman making various modern dance moves, contorting here, expanding there. I moved on to another to see a slightly more agitated woman thrashing about, at one point donning a mask. Another box held a woman moving more gracefully, another an older woman doing the same.

One thing I noticed about myself was, when I started peeking in on the first woman, I felt kind of ashamed, like this is perverted. Is this what it feels like to be a man at a real peep show, I wondered. Do they even get embarrassed by what they’re doing? I backed away from my peephole and looked at other people peering through the holes. One woman standing next to me caught my eye and gave a nervous laugh; maybe she felt the same way.

Anyway, by far my two favorite boxes, and the two I kept coming back to were one containing a young woman, speaking Russian, whose dance was the most performance-art-y, and one containing the couple.

Both of these kind of told a little story with their movement, there was variety in their performance. When I first peered in at the couple, they were flirting, or she was trying to flirt with him rather. Later, they fought, later they cuddled lovingly, at one point there was almost an S&M quality, as she hurled herself at his feet, he nearly stepping on her. At one point, she carried him like a baby. He was shirtless, wearing a black faux leather skort, she a black dance top and short bottoms.

What was interesting to me was when he began to play to the audience, making eye contact with the various peeping eyes.

He was very confrontational with people, and it really unnerved me. I backed away when his gaze caught mine. It was then I realized how freakish other people eyeballs peering through those holes looked. All eyes began kind of darting back and forth at each other, seeming to think the same thing, worried this guy was going to come after us. There was a kind of bonding of peepers. The woman in the box with him tried to keep him at bay, but he wouldn’t have it. He sneered at the eyeballs, clawed at us, thrashed himself into one sides, making the whole wobbly box sway precipitously.

At one point, he even began climbing over the side. I ran away!

A woman who arrived late saw all the people standing at the couple’s tent, and walked over. The first thing she saw when she peeped in was him throwing his waist right into the side she was on, near her peep-hole. She backed away quickly, frightened. “I don’t think I like this!” she said to me. I told her not to worry, and to go look in some of the others; they weren’t so nuts!

What was interesting to me though was that he was the only dancer / ‘stripper’ to be so confrontational, to get so angry at the peepers. In fact the only other person to break the fourth wall and acknowledge our presence was the Russian woman.

But she wasn’t confrontational, and definitely not angry; instead she was by turns submissive, playful, humiliated. Here she is pointing jokingly out at a viewer. When someone stuck their camera lens through their peephole to photograph her, she puckered up and posed, then began laughing, at first cracking herself up, then her laugh turning into a cry, a wail, like she was a poor imprisoned animal. She threw herself on the ground, only to get up, brush herself off, and dance.

Then, she walked around the perimeter of her cage, asking in Russian for money, “Pojalsta, pojalsta, dollar,” she’d cry out, holding up a finger. At one point someone gave her one. She thanked him, put it in her mouth, and chewed.

She took it out and tried to give it back to the man who gave it to her, who wouldn’t take it. No one would. No one wanted a chewed spit-laden dollar bill! I thought how hilarious it would be if a real stripper did such a thing.

Then she tried to do what she considered a “sexy dance” — though she was so innocent, it, pretty hilariously, wasn’t strip-tease-like at all. She kept talking throughout, in Russian, which I didn’t understand, but, from the tone of her voice and the questioning look on her face, it seemed like she was asking us if we liked what we saw.

I just found it interesting that the man, the only man (besides the monk guy), was the only one who kind of violently acted out against being “peeped on.”

It was a great turnout. Here they all are onstage for a bow.

I met up with Evan there, who took some great photos and posted her own thoughts here. Also, the Winger’s Deborah Friedes wrote about seeing the show in Israel, here.

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Go See Carolyn Dorfman Dance Co. at DTW!

I don’t have much time to write, but just quickly want to say, if you’re in New York go see Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company‘s The Legacy Project: Echoes tomorrow, Thursday, night at Dance Theater Workshop, in Chelsea! It was only on for two nights and tonight was opening night, so tomorrow’s it, unfortunately, but this is one of the best performances I think I’ve ever seen at DTW. It’s a perfect blend of modern dance, singing (by the mesmerizing Bente Kahan, to a live band), and acting, with spoken word. It deals with the Eastern European Jewish experience, exploring immigration, history, culture, there’s an emotional and stylistic range, a real structure and movement to the piece, which runs about 1 1/2 hours. It’s by turns moving, thoughtful, funny, cutely sexy, haunting, tragic. If you’re in NY, do try to go; it’s well worth the $25!

Thanks to Philip for one again bringing me to something I ended up really enjoying.

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Alvin Ailey on PBS This Sunday, and Giselle at ABT Tomorrow

 

Beyond the Steps, a documentary about Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater focusing on their recent world tours and move to their new, beautiful home in NYC, is scheduled to air on New York’s local PBS station, Channel 13, this Sunday at noon. Hopefully, it’ll show in other areas too; check your local listings.

 

Also, I saw ABT‘s production of Giselle earlier this week, and just haven’t had time to write about it yet. I saw the Julie Kent / Ethan Stiefel / Michele Wiles cast, which was fine. I loved Julie, liked Ethan, and am becoming increasingly impressed with Michele. More about that very soon! But in the meantime, tomorrow (Saturday, the 12th) is the last day for this very emotional, very dramatic, and at times very beautiful ballet. It also happens to be the last day of ABT’s Met season, horribly. Matinee cast is Irina Dvorovenko in the lead, Maxim Beloserkovsky as her would-be suitor, and the always astonishing Veronika Part as the queen of the Wilis, and evening cast is the same one I saw. I hate this day each year…

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Cedar Lake’s So So Spring Program, More Robbins at NYCB, and Why Everyone Should Be Like Tyler

I spent all day at a literary magazine fair downtown (and bought 27 lit magazines — all at $2 a piece, which is a huge discount from their normal prices). So lots of reading to do! They have this fair every year and it’s a great opportunity to get acquainted with some of the new little magazines, and re-acquainted with the old. It’s organized by CLMP. Saturday they had a series of readings, which I had wanted to go to, but I really wanted to see the New York City Ballet program and then my plans afterward were thwarted by the crazy storm.

Anyway, my busy day is one of the reasons I’m behind on my dance writing. I don’t know how Philip keeps up so well, but damn am I jealous!

Friday night I went to Cedar Lake, finally, to see their spring season. I was invited to their opening night, along with all the other dance bloggers, but couldn’t go. So, they nicely extended their invitation for later in the season, which is, unfortunately, now over. But they’re having another installation coming up soon…

Anyway, I brought a friend with me (for once; I usually go alone, feeling the need to be alone with the art, to have my own personal connection with it — I know, I’m weird…), and maybe it’s because I was so worried about her not liking it (since she doesn’t often see dance) or maybe it’s just all the excellent reviews the bloggers gave the program (which I linked to here) that completely skyrocketed my expectations, but I have to be honest and say I was a bit underwhelmed.

(go here for some really good photos of the program taken by Alison at the DANCING PERFECTLY FREE blog)

First on was LASTING IMPRINT by Nicolo Fonte. This was one of my favorites of the night. There wasn’t a clear linear narrative here, but I still felt like there was something intense going on. At first the dancers thrashed about the stage making angular poses in pure silence. Suddenly, the lights went blood red and music began, a striking score by Steve Reich, and the ensemble dancing became more angular, more fierce, bursting into various patterns. Soon Jason Kittelberger (a striking dancer who sometimes has a rather sinister look to him) began a duet with Jessica Coleman Scott. The duet isn’t romantic, but is gentle at points, then turns a bit more fierce. At one point, Kittelberger appears to be dripping with sweat. I thought, poor guy, he’s really working hard, sweating up a storm. Then, I realized it was white paint he’d somehow covertly splashed on himself. When he returns to her and they dance more together, she eventually becomes covered with the paint as well. It ends on a more gentle but unsettled note, as far as I can remember. It was emotionally compelling and visually striking at points, but I’m not sure I found it very memorable.

The second piece was ANNONCIATION which all of my fellow bloggers went so nuts over I kept telling my friend, don’t worry, you’ll like the second one; everyone so far has LOVED it. Of course you should never say that to anyone, including yourself. It was a duet for two women by Angelin Preljocaj, supposedly a hot trendy Euro choreographer. Apparently it’s supposed to depict the Virgin Mary being consumed by the Holy Spirit, but I found it rather more violent than that. Jessica Lee Keller danced the part of Mary, and Acacia Schachte the Spirit. This couldn’t have been more perfectly cast: Keller has the most innocent-looking face; she looks a lot like a young Audrey Hepburn. Schachte on the other hand looks like the actress who played Nurse Ratchett in the film version of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST. You take one look at these two and you just know something untoward is about to happen. Keller sat on a bench enjoying her sunny day; soon Schachte appeared, approached her, Keller unable to see her but sensing a presence. The women dance together, at times the duet taking on what appear to be sexual overtones (at one point, Schachte even lodges her thumb forcefully into Keller’s mouth), and at the end, Schachte leaves and Keller looks up to the light, a blessed smile covering her face. I thought it was all too one note, and to be honest, found it a bit pretentious choreography-wise. But I thought the women were breathtakingly amazing dancers. Schachte has a very powerful angularity that can send chills down your spine and Keller has so much strength and energy in that tiny body. She makes beautiful shapes and she really knows how to use her innocent-looking face to full effect.

One thing about Cedar Lake is that they have a great group of dancers who all have different dance strengths and looks, that can be played off of each other to compelling effect. I would kind of liked to have seen Keller dance the duet from the first piece with Kittelberger.

The third piece was SUNDAY, AGAIN by Norwegian choreographer Jo Stromgren. I liked but didn’t love this one. Like the first, I thought it had bits that were really funny and mesmerizingly danced, but as a whole I felt it didn’t gel. The women are dressed in short white dresses that look like tennis garb and the men in preppy white pants and t-shirts. This piece makes full use of the ensemble, which, with this company I think I prefer to duets. The score is upbeat and fast and the dancers keep pace; every once in a while they break into a brisk walk and simply stomp across stage, and at points a man drags a badmitton net along the back of the stage, back and forth. Soon, the theme becomes the finding of badmitton balls in unusual places. A woman sits on a chair, looking like she is shyly trying to avoid attention. Men playfully tease her, trying to get her to dance. But she steadfastly remains seated. Soon, the sound of popping bubbles overtake the stage, as dancers click their tongues against the sides of their mouths. Soon, she begins to blow a bubble, very slowly. When she spits out an entire badmitton ball, it’s hilarious. I couldn’t figure out where that whole ball, its wings and all, were hiding in her tiny mouth. Later, another woman sits on the ground and another female dancer approaches her and tries to make friends. At first it’s playful, then turns more violent as the one woman forcefully begins grabbing into the sitting woman’s crotch. It’s kind of upsetting and you don’t really know what to make of it. When woman 2 eventually finds a badmitton ball tucked deep inside woman 1’s underwear, you’re relieved it was something so innocent after all. Later, the female dancers leap at the men, jumping on them as the men yell back like referees judging their efforts. I’m not entirely sure what to make of this but it kind of reminded me of the way that partner dancing can be like a sport, the way the woman sometimes uses the man as a kind of human jungle gym, the athletics involved in getting into a difficult lift. It made me laugh. But these moments didn’t really congeal into a compelling whole, to me… I dunno, maybe I just needed to see it again…

 

My friend was grateful that I asked her to go, said she was always happy to know what’s out there and always has a good time viewing art, but said she thought she just had too short of an attention span for things like this. I began wondering if I suffered from the same short attention span, since I had the same general reaction as she, far from that of my fellow bloggers.

But then I went to New York City Ballet on Saturday afternoon and realized I don’t have a short attention span at all; there’s just a real difference between the choreographers of the past and present. The program was one of the all-Robbins ones they’re showing as part of their Jerome Robbins celebration. Three of the four ballets on the program were pretty simple lacking a really dramatic plot line or huge virtuostic dancing, but were somehow nevertheless mesmerizing.

The first, 2&3 PART INVENTIONS, which Robbins choreographed for students, and set to Bach, was story-less but kept your attention with its variety of movement in which nothing becomes repetitive, original steps and partnering, and a structure with a discernable theme (though one about nothing more than young dance students playing around). The girls sometimes look like they’re running in slow motion across the floor, away from the boys; later they appear to tiptoe across. The boys humorously jump up and down smacking their thighs. A boy carries a girl off, her arms hugging her legs as she folds herself up into a little ball, about to roll over his forearm. Two boys walking parallel to each other pick up a girl and carry her between them, her legs continuing to move in the air, like she is playfully fighting them.

 

The second piece, SUITE OF DANCES is a four-part solo Robbins originally made for Baryshnikov (it was danced here by a guest dancer from the Paris Opera Ballet, Nicolas le Riche) meant simply to convey one dancer’s interaction with music. A cellist (Ann Kim) sets up her instrument onstage and the ballet consists of a kind of dialog she has with le Riche. He takes position on the floor, her eyes follow him, he nods for her to begin, every so often each looking at the other, eyes making contact, smiling, like they have a silent pact. The four music pieces vary in speed and style, from soft and lyrical to fast paced with lots of staccato notes and accompanying intricate footwork and quick, nimble jumps, and in the end, le Riche nearly collapses at the cellist’s ridiculously speedy tempo. He tries to keep up, but finally, he shrugs at the audience, and does his own thing, at his own pace. I liked le Riche but don’t know if he had the charisma to pull off such a solo; I would really like to see Baryshnikov on tape dancing the ballet.

Third was IN MEMORY OF…, a very sad ballet to music by Alban Berg, dealing with Berg’s misery on learning of the death of his friend’s daughter. The dance conveys first a portrait of the girl, then her illness and death, and finally her transportation into the spirit world. The first section was bittersweet as Jared Angle picked up tiny Wendy Whelan (with her vulnerability, the perfect ballerina to dance the part of the girl) and cradled her in his arms, rocking her back and forth in a fish position. The most emotionally jarring section for me, though, was the second, when large Charles Askegard becomes aggressive and somewhat violent, stepping back and forth over Wendy as she lay on the ground, scooping her up and trying to shake her out of something, later lifting her in a t-position, so she almost looks like she is on a cross. In the end the two men carry her off in a poetic, heaven-bound lift.

My favorite of the night was the last, GLASS PIECES, full of energy, very urban and contemporary, and set to fun, variegated Philip Glass music, always a feast for the ears. Completely story-less (making it an odd favorite for me), this ballet is all about using dance to make music visual. The dancers run, walk, stomp, strut, jog in slow motion, jog in place somehow making slowly advancing progress, back and forth across the stage in brightly colored dance wear that somehow looks like it could be street wear as well.

 

I noticed when sets of dancers jogged in place that Tyler Angle, about whom I just waxed poetic (or maybe not so poetic 🙂 ) was one of them. As he did so, he looked at his partner, the female dancer jogging next to him. He regarded her not as if he was in competition with her, but more like he was trying to figure out what she was going to do, where she wanted to go, so he could perhaps follow. Whatever his intentions toward her were, they were there and he pulled me into the ballet with them, made me want to watch him. There were three sets of dancers and he was the only one who did anything other than look blankly forward. This is why I like Tyler Angle. I remember now I noticed he did something similar in THE FOUR SEASONS when he and a couple of other men were doing jumps in place. He looked at them, each one in turn, smiling. But they stared straight forward, refusing to have an exchange with him — or not so much refusing as not even acknowledging his effort. Tyler brings character to the dance, so that he and the dancers around him aren’t merely inanimate brush strokes on a still painting, or simple musical notes come to life, but actual characters. He brings life, the human element, to the dance, in other words. And it’s kind of funny that everyone around him resists taking his cue. Stop resisting, people!

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Exhausted!

I know I will be bored out of my mind come August, but right now with ABT and NYCB in season, the Judson Movement Research Festival underway, Alvin Ailey’s decision to have a week at Brooklyn Academy of Music in celebration of their 50th anniversary year, and the start of So You Think You Can Dance, I’m throughly exhausted! Why does everything have to happen at once?

After the fiasco of Tuesday afternoon, I spent a wonderful night at NYCBallet — one of the best I’ve had. The program was “Here and Now” and centered on the newest works on the company’s rep, a kind of celebration of the 21st Century in ballet thus far. My main reason for going was the premier of a new ballet by Alexei Ratmansky, but the whole evening was magical, likely in part because I sat up front, very close to the stage, my favorite little perch 🙂

I really liked the new Ratmansky, titled “Concerto DSCH,” and set to music by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, whose scores Ratmansky often uses. To be honest, I wish I could see a new work, especially an abstract one, a few times before writing about it, because, as I realized upon re-viewing “Oltremare” here and “Unfold” at Alvin Ailey, you miss so much the first time around just trying to take it all in. You need repeated viewings to get things right and to get a fuller sense of the work. That’s why film critics see the films they review three, four, and five times. But that’s not possible with dance because each performance is so expensive to produce. Anyway, as I feel like I should always say upon seeing a new piece, these are my first impressions but they may well change completely or become more nuanced on repeated viewings.

The musical score Ratmansky used here was very upbeat and lively and, made in 1957 for Shostakovich’s young son, Maxim, “displays the composer’s optimist energy after the repressions of the Stalinist era,” as the program notes say. The optimism and lightness was very evident, as there didn’t seem to be a downbeat turn the whole way through — either in the dance or the music. The dancers are all dressed in what appear to be 19th Century-style bathing suits, and they kind of frolic with each other on what I imagine to be a beach. There’s a corps who kind of chooses a main dancer to follow, cutely mimicking his or her every move. One threesome — danced by the always brimming over with virtuosity Ashley Bouder, one of my NYCB favorites Joaquin De Luz (one of the few who manages to combine spectacular athleticism with artistry), and the charismatic Gonzalo Garcia — is particularly playful as the dancers literally bounce off of each other, each lifting and tossing one another — including Ashley who did quite well getting the much larger and muscly Garcia off the ground. Soon, a slightly softer, slower section ensues, including a sweet duet by the in-love Wendy Whelan and Benjamin Millepied. The threesome return, each trying to outdo the other in a competition-like series of bravura, jump- and turn-heavy solos. And, after another couple of duets by the lovers, the whole thing, all characters included, comes to a happy climax, ending with this crazy, hilarious, almost statue-like lift by the threesome at the front of the stage, Joaquin on top of the other two, holding a finger up in the air, as if to say either “wait a minute” or, as Philip interpreted, “I’m number one.” In all, the ballet’s not tremendously profound but it is great fun and brings home how exciting sheer kinetic energy and virtuosity can be. It kind of reminded me of Jorma Elo’s “Slice to Sharp” made on the company earlier, but with more of a story-line. I definitely want to see it again.

Also on the program was Peter Martins’s “River of Light,” 10 years old and the oldest of these ballets, which I’d never seen before. I found it fantastically weird, with three pairs of dancers, each pair comprised of one male one female, all in simple solid-colored unitards, one couple in red, one in white, and one in black. The dancers made various geometric-looking shapes with each other, performing very difficult-looking lifts (one of the dancers fell at one point, but didn’t seem to be hurt). The dancers put so much energy into the piece, regardless of the geometric focus, there was a kind of passionate abandon to it as well. The score was composed by Charles Wuorinen (who was the youngest composer to have won the Pulitzer), and Martins choreographed the ballet for him 10 years ago as a 60th birthday present. Wuorinen returned this year, now his 70th birthday, to conduct the piece, which was really cool. Sweet tribute.

 

I realized throughout the night I am really beginning to like Sterling Hyltin. She was in the Martins as well as Wheeldon’s “Rococo Variations,” which I’d seen before and wrote about earlier, here. Sitting so up close you can really focus on the dancers, and I realized how perfect her form always is. Even if her back leg isn’t up as high in an arabesque as the other dancer who often shared the stage with her Tuesday night (Sara Mearns), her lines are perfectly clear, and she has so much energy combined with fluidity. Her arms are so graceful. It’s not always about who can lift their leg the highest. And her feet are really beautiful — I forgot what it’s called (but know it has a name; one of my teachers told me), but she has turned-out ankles that give her legs so much gorgeous shaping. What is that called?…

Anyway, I also appreciated this time around the intricate patterned footwork in “Rococo Variations,” which I think I’d overlooked the first time I saw it. It’s a sweet ballet for two couples but it has a lot of variation in the steps that is, as the woman sitting next to me remarked, dizzyingly engrossing.

Finally, Oltremare, which premiered last season and which I wrote about here grew on me. This modern-style ballet contains some of the most difficult lifts I think I’ve ever seen, and the dancers perform them brilliantly. And talk about raw emotion and angst. The dancers perfectly convey the experience of leaving one’s country and becoming an immigrant in another. It makes me think of the beginning of Middlesex, when all the main characters are boarding the ship to flee the burning of Smyrna and come to the new world, with all of the horror of what they’d just experienced, sadness and anger at being displaced, and fear and trepidation for what the future will bring. I still think Oltremare is a tiny bit too one-note, and the mid-section still stood out to me as awkward and somewhat cartoonish where they’re all folk dancing, but so fast and furiously that it looks like they’re on Speed. But I also realized on this viewing that Bigonzetti may have wanted it this way; that he was trying to convey that they’re all trying so very hard to keep their pasts, their culture, that they’re trying so hard to be happy about this new life, that they’re on overdrive. I liked Maria Kowroski much better this time. I love the way she used her legs like tentacles to keep her partner at bay. Those legs never end — she’s like a spider!

 

And last night I went to see Alvin Ailey at BAM. They’re not normally in season — and it was really odd seeing them in the midst of all the ballets! — but they’re having a special week in Brooklyn in honor of their 50th Anniversary celebrations going on all throughout the year.

 

I’d seen all the works on the program before: Twyla Tharp’s very 80’s hugely energetic, crazy lift-heavy “Golden Section”; Robert Battle’s beautifully haunting, otherworldly “Unfold” which, as I said, really grew on me even more (here’s a short video excerpt); Camille A. Brown’s cute, humorous “The Groove to Nobody’s Business” which makes me giggle (and whose first part reminds me of Fat Albert) more each time I see it; and of course the classic “Revelations” which I can’t count how many times I’ve seen but seem to see something new every time.

 

I also love listening to the audience react, and, as I said in a comment on my previous post about audience interactions, the audience here was vocal throughout the entire thing. They clapped and shouted “yeah!” not only during moments when dancers performed an amazing feat — like the jetes in Sinner Man and Alicia Graf’s beautiful turning develope in Fix Me Jesus — but just at the start of a section with which they were familiar, when the dancers at times hadn’t even appeared on stage yet. They were just cheering because they knew what was coming and had seen it before and been moved. The audience overall seemed so into the dancing. They cheered and hooted wildly after every piece and gave a standing ovation at the end. The company is only in NY through the end of the week, so if you’re here and want to see this or the other program — which includes a revival of “Masekela Language,” Mr. Ailey’s work about apartheid, go here for tickets. Or, for more info about the dances, call 212-514-0010 and press the appropriate buttons.

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Go See TAKE!

 

For anyone in New York, if you have no plans tonight (Saturday), go see TAKE Dance Company at Columbia University’s Miller Theater. Philip invited me to go last night and I was honestly feeling a bit “danced out” having gone to the ballet for the past couple nights and then spending a lot of time writing about NYCB and DWTS and all, but decided to go anyway, and I’m so glad I did. I LOVED it!

TAKE is a small modern dance company founded by former Paul Taylor dancer Takehiro Ueyama, who choreographs most of their work. The evening consists of five pieces which all vary greatly in style, and is about two hours long total, and the theater is small and intimate so you get an “up close” look at dance, which I find always brings me closer to the art.

“Looking for Water” and “One”, which bookend the night, are very poetic pieces, at times rather haunting. The latter reminded me a bit of the book-into-films “The Sheltering Sky” and “The English Patient” the way the dancers, dressed in sand-colored tops and pants, evoked a vast, Sahara-like terrain, at times partnering to make shapes resembling endless hills and dunes that one can only run around and around, never finding the end, and at times, bending down and mourning each other’s motionless bodies, then looking prayerfully toward the skies. Combined with the music, which ranged from classical Bach, to contemporary World music, to Samuel Barber’s famous “Adagio For Strings” (which will be familiar if you’ve seen an epic movie) reminded me of a foreigner lost in an exotic land, losing a loved one, unable to find home. It was beautifully bewildering.

 

The middle three pieces were “Love Stories”, a series of duets performed by the mesmerizing Nana Tsuda and Kile Hotchkiss, shifting between emotional states — soft and loving, struggling for attention, angry and betrayed, then realizing there’s only so much one can know about the other; “Huella” a short, lyrical solo choreographed by Asun Noales to Bach and performed beautifully by Mr. Ueyama himself; and “Linked,” one of my favorites, which looked very Paul Taylor-y and was for the most part high spirited and super charged with dancers in regular street clothes running about the stage, doing quick pirouettes and intricate footwork to a fast, fun beat that sounded Brazilian-inspired to me.

Dancers who stood out the most to me were the aforementioned Tsuda, the enchanting Amy Young who blew me away in “One,” the versatile Elise Drew who looked like she’d be at home doing African or Latin or virtually any kind of dance, and James Samson, a great, expansive, Paul Taylor-y mover who really fills up the space around him (and who’s cute to boot :)) Their pictures are below.

Also, Andy LeBeau, longtime and well-known Paul Taylor dancer (now retired from that company) performed in “Linked” as well. Fun to see a familiar face again (although to be honest, I haven’t seen P.T. perform much live, so I guess he’s mainly familiar to me through magazine and newspaper articles and this great docu).

Anyway, general Admission tickets are only $25 ($15 for students). It’s a great value for a wonderful evening of dance.

Here’s Philip’s review. Thanks again, Philip!

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Akram Khan’s "Bahok"

 

Last night Ariel and I went to see “Bahok” choreographed by Akram Khan and performed by his company along with the National Ballet of China, at City Center. I’d never seen any of Khan’s work before and was intrigued by Apollinaire’s post reviewing his other program “Zero Degrees,” which I think might have been more to my liking. I felt “Bahok,” his newer piece was conceptually contrived, but the movement was stunning. Ariel liked it, but I kind of wished he’d have told the whole story through movement, leaving out all the rather cliched spoken word.

“Bahok,” the program notes state, is a Bengali word for “carrier,” and the dance is meant to “explore the ways in which the body carries national identity and a sense of ‘belonging.'” All from different cultures and dance traditions, the eight dancers spend the hour and fifteen minute dance interacting with, misunderstanding, and trying, at times desperately, to connect with one another.

The characters are all caught in what appears to be a train station, their trains all delayed indefinitely. Throughout, various words flash over the arrivals / departures screen, including “earth,” “air,” “fire,” “water,” “phone home,” “rescheduled,” “delayed,” etc. Oftentimes the letter and number combinations are just gibberish (at least to me). At the beginning a Chinese woman sweetly tries to befriend her neighbor, a white woman, who soon scares her away by telling a story, her voice escalating in desperation, about how she awoke from a rainstorm unable to figure out where in the world she was. She spends much of the rest of the dance crying out that she doesn’t know where home is for her, her desperate shrieks alienating just about everyone.

At another point a woman and man appear to be having a conversation with a customs agent who seems to want to confiscate one or both of their bags — it’s not clear whose, nor is the reason why.

At another point a woman falls asleep onto the man sitting next to her. He can’t seem to wake her up and shake her off, so he gets up carries her around the stage, she like a rag doll hanging onto him, not letting him go. It’s funny — and a physically amazing feat — but grows silly after a while… until they start to dance. He stands with his back to the audience. Her legs are wrapped around his head, only her feet visible to us. Suddenly, they both begin making movements with their arms, holding them out, waving them, palms flat and upward, then palms down. The way she is attached to him, her arms are down by his ankles, making him look like a many-tentacled creature.

I found the movement far more brilliant than the speaking. The dancer playing the woman desperate to find her home, the brilliant Eulalia Ayguade Farro, expresses her inner turmoil through movement more compellingly than I think I’ve ever seen such emotion expressed. She took my breath away as she threw herself to the floor, propped herself up into a handstand, spun on her head, jumped, crouched, ran, all the time contorting her body in various novel ways to express her pain.

Another favorite part is shown in the picture above, when a Chinese woman, Meng Ning-Ning, decides to entertain herself and her companions while they await their never-ending delays, by ballet dancing. She dances beautifully and her newfound friends recognize this, as, tourist-like, they snap pictures of her. Another girl tries to join her, emulating her, following her patterns. Soon, an Indian man, Saju Hari, passes by and Meng throws herself into his arms, taking him on as a partner. He has no idea what he’s doing but he gamely tries to do as she wishes, catching her, spinning her, walking her around in a ballerina promenade. It’s hilarious watching this exquisite ballerina be partnered by a seemingly regular guy. Suddenly he wants to show her what he’s got, his dance style. The music changes, he stands in front of her and makes a shape, legs spread, in a deep lunge, very martial-arts-looking but with an Indian flair. In its sharp contrast with her delicate, feathery movement style, it’s jarringly beautiful, which to me is ultimately the point.

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Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet’s "Glassy Essence"

Last night Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet invited dance bloggers to a preview of their new installation, which means you, the patron, walk around the area watching the dancers. Cedar Lake’s large garage space in Chelsea is ideal for this kind of dance, which takes place in various parts of the around and choose what to focus on, although, for the most part, there’s only one dance taking place at once so the choreographer has already kind of led you to home in on a particular aspect of the performance. This is a contrast to the company’s last installation piece, in which there was a great deal going on at once, and you had to choose what to watch. The dancers make good, full use the space and will interact a bit with the patrons, weaving in and around you during the performance. It’s nice because you can get pretty close to the dancers, so, unlike sitting in the balcony or a high ring at a huge opera house, you have a more close, personal connection to the dance. Plus, the music is very percussive and rhythmic and makes you want to dance yourself! It’s a very interesting experience, and unlike typical concert dance.

Tickets are $10 and the 45-minute performance runs April 24-26 and May 1-3 with performances at 8 and 9 each night. Go here for more information, as well as some cool videos of the piece.

It’s nice of Cedar Lake to do this — host these little parties for bloggers. I wish other companies would do the same, or at least have a little social after the performance where you can stand around with a glass of wine chatting with your friends about what you just saw. A few of us went out afterward and we were talking about how dance is inherently social; the way most performances are structured, you have very little time to chat with your companions. Intermissions are short — just long enough to go to the bathroom — and then everything shuts down right after the last curtain call. But it prolongs and enriches your dance experience to be able to talk about the performance. Anyway, thank you to Cedar Lake for a nice show and a good time 🙂

By the way, here’s Tony Schultz from the Winger, sporting a great new hairstyle! I’m always ribbing him about how different he looks from his Winger headshot. Hehehe, people don’t even recognize him in public!

For more detailed write-ups of the evening, see Philip‘s and Evan‘s blogs.