New York Theatre Ballet
Danspace Project
St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery
New York, New York

March 14, 2019
REP Program: Scramble, The Elements of Style, The Seasons

Jerry Hochman

The venerable New York Theatre Ballet began its 40th Anniversary year with a program designed by company Founder and Artistic Director Diana Byer to be representative of the NYTB “family tree.” By presenting pieces choreographed by Merce Cunningham, Matthew Nash, and Sir Richard Alston (NYTB’s Resident Choreographer for the next two years), each of whom has contributed, directly or indirectly, to the company’s success over the years, Byer accomplished her goal. And the sense of “family” was augmented by the overarching presence of David Vaughan, Cunningham Company archivist (as well as dancer, author, and dance historian, among a host of other accomplishments), who died in 2017, and who was in large part NYTB’s Cunningham connection.

It takes a lot for a company, particularly one as understated as NYTB is, to be described as “venerable.” When I first became acquainted with it, a mere five or six years ago, I wrote that if NYTB didn’t exist, it would have to be invented. What the company does so well, based on many of its past programs, is to present dances that may have been overlooked by major companies, to provide a showcase for emerging choreographers, and to make ballet and contemporary dance accessible.

What it also does is make those dances it elects to perform look good – maybe better than they did originally. I’ve mentioned previously that, from what I’d seen of his work (and I don’t pretend to be an expert in it), I haven’t really liked Cunningham. I can understand the appeal to many of what he created, and appreciate his position in the dance pantheon, but what I’d seen was too dry, too distant, too conceptual, and not at all entertaining. It might be “pure dance,” but to my eyes what I consistently saw appeared ascetic and sterile. It took a 2015 NYTB revival of a Cunningham piece, Cross Currents, to show me things in Cunningham’s choreography I’d not previously observed, and to appreciate his work – at least more than I had previously.

New York Theatre Ballet dancers
Giulia Faria and Joshua Andino-Nieto
in Merce Cunningham’s “Scramble”
Photo by Julie Lemberger

Much of what I saw in Cross Currents I saw also in Scramble, the program’s opening piece, and one that Vaughan thought would be a good fit for NYTB. It is. These performances were dedicated specifically to Vaughan.

Perhaps it’s the time period – Cross Currents was created in 1964; Scramble in 1967. Maybe what I perceived as his orthodoxy was more relaxed during this period, or maybe what I’d previously seen was not representative. Regardless, the version of Scramble that was danced on the opening night of the three performance run at NYTB’s home stage was powerful – which is not a word I thought I’d ever use to describe a Cunningham piece – and brilliantly executed by NYTB’s eight dancer cast: Alexis Branagan, Joshua Andino-Nieto, Giulia Faria, Monica Lima, Dawn Gerling Milatin, Erez Milatin, Sean Stewart, and Amanda Treiber.

As originally conceived (and as described by Vaughan), Scramble’s contents were selected by chance from among eighteen short segments that Cunningham had choreographed. Twelve of the eighteen were the usual number performed, and the specific sections for each performance, and their order of presentation, would vary from program to program. At times the Cunningham dancers didn’t know what would be included in a given performance until several hours in advance, and had to … scramble.

The segments themselves vary by the specific movements involved and by the number of dancers per segment, but stylistically it all fits because the style is the same (it’s like changing the order of sentences in a paragraph) and because the music, Activities for Orchestra by Toshi Ichiyanagi, allows for a measure of variation from segment to segment. The musical segments (performed to a live recording) don’t suggest anything specific, and Cunningham’s movement suggests nothing specific either. You don’t “see” the music in the choreography; at most, the music provides a frame into which the choreography fits.

Like other Cunningham pieces I’ve seen, and regardless of the segments’ order of presentation, there’s no emotional involvement between the dancers in any particular segment or between the dancers and the audience. It’s all very detached. But what can be appreciated, particularly as presented, is the variety within the seeming absence of variety. One may not be able to isolate one segment from another all the time, but there are differences between them – some subtle; some obvious – that carry the movement far beyond being movement for movement’s sake. One may not like that there’s no apparent purpose to the dance beyond exploring the parameters of movement, but the segments that comprise Scramble share an economy of presentation and a simple purity that, if not compelling, is at least not boring.

And in some of these Scramble segments, there’s considerably more afoot than being “not boring.” Within the context of Cunningham’s style, Scramble brings something missing from other pieces I’ve seen: elements of surprise. The constant movement and generally rapid pace may appear choreographically simple, but within segments Cunningham augments an initial quality that might initially appear repetitious and … boring to watch, with others, cuts and pastes one set of movements into another, and has the dancers entering and exiting the stage area in different combinations in a process that, to an audience, looks unpredictable. And while there remains no emotional component, one or more of these segments include actual physical contact and partnering between the dancers as well as solo bravura execution – that make some segments or parts thereof exciting (another word I never thought I’d use to describe a Cunningham piece). The iciness I sense when viewing what I considered to be a typical Cunningham dance; the posing in points in space without awareness that several dancers may be in the same performing space at the same time, is not at all the prevalent ambiance here. Indeed, that there is some semblance of a prevalent ambiance here is thrilling.

New York Theatre Ballet dancers
Sean Stewart and Dawn Gierling Milatin
in Matthew Nash’s
“The Elements of Style”
Photo by Julie Lemberger

This sense of variety is amplified by the costumes, with each of the eight dancers assigned a particular color, and the set – a series of “banners” of varying widths, lengths, and color combinations that are bound to the tops of support poles, giving them the look of footrace finishing line markers – from time to time are moved to varying positions during the course of the dance for no apparent reason than, maybe, to signify the end of one segment and the beginning of another. The sets and costumes were originally designed by Frank Stella, and reconstructed here, respectively, by Will Viera and company member Carmella Lauer.

Although each of the eight NYTB dancers executed superbly, three had moments that made them stand out more than others: Lima and Faria, neither of whom I recall seeing with the company previously, and Erez Milatin, all imbued their roles with a sense of the individual that I’d not previously seen in a Cunningham piece, and Milatin, an Israeli émigré who joined the company last year after several highly reviewed (by me) seasons with Gelsey Kirkland Ballet, visibly injected qualities of animation and individual accomplishment into Cunningham’s choreography that made him stand out. Simply put, he had an intensity, the precision, and the buoyancy to make Cunningham’s choreography, grounded as it may be, fly.

New York Theatre Ballet dancers
(l-r) Dawn Gierling Milatin, Sean Stewart,
and Amanda Treiber in Matthew Nash’s
“The Elements of Style”
Photo by Julie Lemberger

You’ve got to love a piece choreographed to seven of the Rules set forth in Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style – or at least be inclined to overlook its flaws. With tongue only partly in cheek (writing style is serious stuff), Matthew Nash, a frequent choreographic contributor to NYTB over the years, created the music, as well as the choreography, to seven of Strunk and White’s stylistic principles. Created in 1981 for a NYTB program at the Riverside Dance Festival, it’s a little unfocused, and not nearly as concise as Strunk and White, but it’s fun.

Each of Nash’s Rule visualizations includes some examples from Elements, and these examples form the bulk of the choreography, which is supposed to provide visual commentary to the Rules and Examples. I confess that at times I couldn’t see any connection between the choreography and the principles being expressed, but I also confess that just seeing a dance that celebrates writing principles I grew up with, some of which I defend in the face of serious threat to life and limb (Rule 1: “Form the Possessive Singular of Nouns by Adding Apostrophe S” – even when the singular noun ends in “s”), and some of which I can’t help but ignore (Rule 6” “Omit Needless Words”) proved irresistible. If nothing else (and there’s a lot “else”), Nash’s effort impresses with its audacity to even attempt to convert writing style rules into a piece of dance theater. Elements is many things, but it’s not Shakespeare.

Treiber carried the laboring acting oar, portraying a multitude of put-upon characters weighted down, or effectively impaled, by rule breakers, while Dawn Milatin overcame a tendency to look bland, and fortified her genteel ante-bellum-ish character with vivacity and coquettish charm. Stewart’s characters were more difficult to define – mostly they were comic foils – but he handled the assignment well. And Guest Artist Dirk Lombard delivered the narrative (which, commendably, was provided to the audience in a program insert) crisply, giving the piece an added touch of class – and he handled his dancing assignment with aplomb.

New York Theatre Ballet dancer
Dawn Gierling Milatin
in Sir Richard Alston’s “The Seasons”
Photo by Julie Lemberger

The program’s final component, Alston’s The Seasons, was a bit disappointing, but not through any choreographic fault. With that title, I anticipated something more lighthearted (something more akin to Jerome Robbins’s The Four Seasons), and having seen other Alston pieces, I didn’t expect one as obviously Cunningham inspired.

But not all is lost – instead of seasonal set pieces, Alston and the music (John Cage’s 1947 eponymous piece) provide a continuous flow and an appropriate sense of circularity to the subject, including not just the seasons themselves (expressed in solos, duets, and groups of varying composition), but also transitions in between. Andino-Nieto was a dominant Winter, Faria and Stewart a lively Spring, Branagan and Erez Milatin a sultry summer, and Andino-Nieto, Treiber, Steward, and Faria danced a fresh Autumn, with Dawn Milatin, a group of women, and a group of men providing the inter-season preludes. And as in reality, there’s considerable overlap – characters representative of one of the seasons will linger into the next, or briefly join another season’s representatives. Even though the movement quality is less engaging than I’d have liked, there’s no denying that seeing Winter portrayed primarily in powerful, outstretched poses (by Andino-Nieto), and seemingly to be present even when he’s no longer in command, has particular impact in the context of this year’s winter that won’t die.

Like The Seasons, the program flowed seamlessly from one piece to the next with the inclusion of live instrumental “Interludes.” In the first, Music Director Michael Scales on piano, and Guest Artist Ron Wasserman on bass, delivered an appropriately jazzy and finely executed performance of Duke Ellington’s Pitter Patter Panther, Take 1 (composed in 1940). [Scales and Wasserman also provided live accompaniment for The Elements of Style, and Scales alone accompanied The Seasons.] In the second Interlude, Scales performance of Henry Cowell’s The Snows of Fujiyama (1924) was both mesmerizing and riveting.

I look forward to NYTB’s continuing its mission in the future, including revivals of neglected dances and ballets, and the nurturing of new choreographic talent. But this kick-off to the company’s fortieth anniversary year, and its recognition of the Cunningham Centennial celebrations, was both an apt undertaking and a successful one. The company remains one of New York’s venerated gems.

The post New York Theatre Ballet: It all fits appeared first on CriticalDance.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,
Terrace Theater
Washington, DC

March 19, 2019

Carmel Morgan

Akiko Kitamura’s Cross Transit has a wealth of ideas. And the ideas are intriguing. Cross Transit plays with the nature of time, memory, culture, human interaction with architecture, and so much more. Tokyo-born director/choreographer/dancer Kitamura founded the dance company Leni-Basso in 1994 when she was a graduate student at Waseda University in Japan, and then disbanded the company in 2009, turning instead to solo projects. In 2015, Kitamura began the Cross Transit project involving collaboration with a series of Cambodian artists. Cross Transit premiered in Tokyo in September 2016, and it was performed in Phnom Penh in 2017. A second installment in the series, Cross Transit — Vox Soil, premiered in 2018 in Yokohama, Japan.  

The choreography in Cross Transit, however, isn’t as interesting as the rich and varied ideas upon which it’s based. The movement is largely pedestrian and often comes across as cold and insular, especially at the start of the work when the dancers move slowly. They eventually engage more with each other, sharing weight and even exchanging words, but there’s something distant about their relationships.

Akiko Kitamura’s Cross Transit, photo by Sopheak Vong

The dancers repeat certain gestures and phrases, both movement phrases and spoken ones. They reach forward making a straight horizontal line with their bodies, one leg stretched out straight in the opposite direction. Fingers pinch at the air as if trying to seize fleeting memories. Dancers talk haltingly using only a few words, in a kind of verbal version of tag. They say, “leg,” “now,” “here,” “home” — and then occasionally, with perhaps a note of exasperation, one asks, “What are you talking about?” The language the words are spoken in varies. There’s a smattering of English, but I heard mostly Japanese, and I assume Khmer. Because I speak some Japanese, I understood more than most audience members, who I would guess were at least somewhat frustrated by not being able to catch the meaning of all of the words being tossed about.

The most striking and effective choreography occurs in the middle of Cross Transit. Five dancers (Ippei Shiba, Yuka Seike, Yuki Nishiyama, Lion Kawai, and Chy Ratana) rest seated in a lotus position, and from there their upper bodies come alive. For the most part in unison, and remaining mostly seated, they execute a series of surprising movements. Arms rapidly swish and rise. Hands circle, clasp wrists, hit chests, and slap the floor. The togetherness is notable, jarring, and also oddly comforting, particularly given the rather remote, slightly spooky feeling of the work otherwise.     

Akiko Kitamura’s Cross Transit, photo by Sopheak Vong

Cross Transit, though, is more about the big picture than the choreography. Actually, it’s very literally about pictures. Cambodian photographer and videographer Kim Hak supplies the pictures — images he has taken that are grouped according to themes. It’s these images that remained with me post-performance as  opposed to the choreography. I see empty buildings, discarded items. Hak’s photos definitely drew me in, but the dancing didn’t really enhance my experience of them or the stories that they impart.

Although the photos have stories to tell on their own, Hak’s voice provides background. Later in the work, Hak himself appears and speaks. Movingly, he tells of his parents having to cover cherished photographs in plastic and bury them in the ground to avoid harm by the Khmer Rouge, who would murder people like his father, who were discovered to be from the educated class.

Akiko Kitamura’s Cross Transit, photo by Sopheak Vong

The rest of Cross Transit’s artistic team also make great contributions. Hiroaki Yokoyama, composer and sound director, adeptly adds atmosphere. There are soft street noises and children’s voices to heighten the sense of abandonment in the eerily beautiful photos, gunshot-like pops to power the faster movement sequences, and cool flapping sounds that reminded me equally of a flock of birds and magnetic tape being quickly rewound, which illustrate the passage of time. Plus, Akihiko Kaneko’s video and set design are truly outstanding. Three large screens at the back of the stage are fabric pieces hung and folded to resemble kimono-like garments. At times, a white rectangle appears in the video projections forming frames that make photos. Toward the end of the Cross Transit, rotating shadows flutter downward over images of deserted buildings, like a snowstorm of photos spinning to and fro. The lighting design and technical direction by Yuji Sekiguchi are top notch, too. For example, Sekiguchi cleverly uses sudden bright lighting changes to act as camera flashes. Tomoko Inamura’s costume design consists of blocks of color — different colors on top and bottom, and while not exactly compelling, the soft-looking casual combinations allow the dancers to move flexibly and don’t distract from the photos and video that ground and inspire Cross Transit.                        

The post Akiko Kitamura’s Cross Transit appeared first on CriticalDance.

Chinese National Opera & Dance Drama Theater
David H. Koch Theater
Lincoln Center
New York, New York

March 21, 2019
Princess Zhaojun

Jerry Hochman

Converting a story about a legendary and revered person into a work of dance theater isn’t an easy task, as the facts that were the foundation for the legend have long since been overwhelmed by the legend’s power. Do you ignore details that might provide essential drama which might otherwise be lost? Do you treat the person as flawless, or disclose details that might blemish the image honed and polished over centuries? And are there cultural and / or political constraints that limit any flexibility?

I don’t know whether any of these considerations were taken into account in the creation of Princess Zhaojun, which had its New York premiere on Thursday at Lincoln Center’s Koch Theater. What the Chinese National Opera and Dance Theater presents is Princess Zhaojun the legend, without blemishes or distracting back stories. Although I’ll comment in this review on certain likely historical information the inclusion of which might have made the presentation more authentically dramatic, I have no idea whether the dance’s creators considered, or were able to consider, any options beyond what they did.

China National Opera
& Dance Drama Theater dancers
in “Princess Zhaojun”
(Princess Zhaojun leading procession)
Photo courtesy of
China National Opera
& Dance Drama Theater

In sum, for what it attempts to be, Princess Zhaojun is quite successful. There are few attempts here to add texture to characterizations – distractions from the accepted story-line do not exist, and there is no room to question. And, with some exceptions, the dances are a series of set scenes – like postcards that come to life. But Princess Zhaojun is an undeniably beautiful and vivid-looking production, with stunning costumes and lighting, accomplished choreography when considered in its cultural context, and its uplifting message is never subject to misinterpretation. Princess Zhaojun, one of the legendary “Four Beauties” of China whose beauty was said to cause birds to drop from the sky (other “Beauties” had similar appellations – e.g., causing fish to fall to the river bottom), is a heroine of China, who preserved peace and enabled the Chinese people, including the various ethnic groups within and around its borders, to flourish united.

Zhaojun’s mission, and her destiny, is something she and the audience know before any action begins. A Prologue shows writhing wounded, and bodies, called “conquest cadavers,” littering China’s northern border landscape, and depicts Zhaojun hearing their cries and vowing to do something about it. In the first Act (“Marriage Alliance”), Zhaojun is seen surrounded by other women while living a comfortable but solitary life in the palace, when a messenger arrives to announce that Emperor Yuan had offered Zhaojun in marriage to Huhanye Chanu, the monarch of the Xiangnu, an ethnic nation on the Han empire’s northern border. [In the program notes, the Emperor is said to have first offered his daughter, but she refused, and Zhaojun volunteered to take her place.] Later, at a banquet in honor of Huhanye, Xiangnu soldiers, clothed in ragged animal-skin costumes and looking like a regiment of Dothraki, and the Han, wearing rigid pseudo armor that made them look like imperial skeletons, parade before the two rulers and engage in semi-pretend fights to establish one side’s military mastery over the other. To calm the crowd, Emperor Yuan then announces the marriage alliance, Zhaojun and her entourage present before the two rulers, and Huhanye, who vaguely resembles Khal Drogo, is immediately enthralled by her beauty, declaring, visually, that she’s the moon of his life. [Spare your emails; Winter is Coming.]

China National Opera
& Dance Drama Theater dancers
in “Princess Zhaojun”
(Princess Zhaojun and Xiongnu soldiers)
Photo courtesy of China National Opera
& Dance Drama Theater

In the Second Act (there’s no intermission), titled “Foreign Land,” Zhaojun and her faithful servant Xiang Xi make the slow pilgrimage across the frozen plains to the forbidding northern border (complete with wall – the Great Wall), under Huhanye’s protection – and gradually, despite his primitive appearance, he becomes her sun and stars. They stop to camp, and Zhaojun falls asleep and dreams (even in Chinese dance theater, there’s a Petipa dream scene) that she’s back home with her friends, the nymphs of her youth, but that war with the nomadic brute barbarians who carry them off and do unspeakable things to them, and who kill (in her dream) the respected Han General Wei Jiang, will continue unless she does something about it. She’s a vision in a vision in a vision.

The Wedding Scene (Third Act) follows, during which the Dothraki-like soldiers have a wild, primitive celebration (although they don’t force Zhaojun to eat a horse’s heart), but Huhanye’s son, nasty Prince Jujulei, who doesn’t like the idea of this marriage alliance, suddenly presents his trophy – General Wei Jiang, whom he’s captured and bagged like an animal. At Zhaojun’s insistence, Huhanye orders the general released, and decrees that cross-border raids will thereupon be strictly forbidden. In the Fourth Act (Peace), twenty years later, an epidemic has erupted causing Huhanye to become seriously ill. Zhaojun cares for him – not, apparently, by slaughtering his horse – but he dies anyway. Temporarily undone by grief (although Huhanye’s ghost seems to materialize regularly), she recovers to nurse the affected Xiangnu population to health, and even consents, per Xiangnu custom, to marry Huhanye’s successor – Prince Fujulei – to maintain peace between the two Han and the Xiangnu. In the Epilogue, now old and gray, Zhaojun is revered by all for her courage and tenacity, and Han and Xiangnu march together in her honor.

Well…. not exactly.

Normally I would not discuss the factual information that’s out there about Princess Zhaojun, and if nothing else, artistic license certainly permits Princess Zhaojun’s creators to recreate the story as they see fit, but it shows what might have been added to the narrative mix.

China National Opera
& Dance Drama Theater dancers
in “Princess Zhaojun”
Photo courtesy of China National Opera
& Dance Drama Theater

Based on information from various sources (via a Google search of her name), Wang Zhaojun was born Wang Qiang, roughly in the mid-first century B.C., to a prominent family in a south province of the Western Han Empire – although another reference asserts that this was a post-death reconstruction – and she was well-schooled in those aspects of sophistication essential for a concubine, including being an expert at the pipa, a pear-shaped plucked instrument similar to a lute. The custom at this time in the Han Empire was to have the emperor pick a concubine from each province, and Emperor Yuan selected Zhaojun. [Some sources say she was simply summoned to the palace, was kept as a lady in waiting, and never was selected to be one of the emperor’s consorts, the backstory being that the emperor never met his concubines in person – choosing his consorts from among them only by portrait, and the portrait painter painted Zhaojun in an unattractive way because she didn’t bribe him. So, presumably, Zhaojun was a virgin concubine.]

At this time, the northern boundaries of the Han Empire were subject to repeated raids by various tribes, including the Xiongnu. One source states that the Xiongnu, collectively known as the Hun (related to Attila?) in what is now Outer Mongolia, had an established empire in that area (antecedents of Genghis Khan?), that cross-border raids had occurred for millennia, and that a Han emperor a century earlier than Yuan had proposed marriage alliances to keep the peace. [Another states that at the time of Zhaojun, the Xiongnu had split into a number of states, each of which was subservient to the Han Empire, and the details of that game of thrones might make for a very good TV series.]. However powerful the Xiongnu may have been when the alliance with the Han began, a series of environmental calamities reduced the Xiongnu’s significance to that of a vassal state. In an effort to augment his status, so some accounts go, Huhanye proposed the marriage alliance to Emperor Yuan. Yuan agreed, and would have offered one of his daughters to be married to the Xiongnu monarch, but none of them wanted the honor of leaving the comfort of the palace. So, sight unseen, he picked Zhaojun … or Zhaojun volunteered because she was tired of being isolated in the palace basement. On first sight, Huhanye (who already had many other wives) fell madly in love with her – and Emperor Yuan, who had not previously seen Zhaojun’s flesh in the flesh, had that painter executed.

China National Opera
& Dance Drama Theater dancers
in “Princess Zhaojun”
(Princess Zhaojun and Huhanye)
Photo courtesy of China National Opera
& Dance Drama Theater

To Zhaojun’s surprise, she fell madly in love with Huhanye too – or she just learned to cope. She bore Huhanye, who already had many children by his other wives, at least one son. After Huhanye’s death a few years after their marriage, Zhaojun reportedly was aghast at the thought of marrying his son, that nasty Fujulei, but as that was the Xiongnu custom, and since the then Han emperor refused to allow her to return to civilization, she agreed to do it. She bore Huhanye’s son two daughters.

The subsequent legend of Zhaojun grew after her death, adding and deleting facts as the years passed.

Obviously, the facts about Zhaojun as they may have been discovered (reportedly based on contemporaneous accounts) are far more interesting, and potentially far more theatrically dramatic, than the “facts” embedded in the legend and related in the dance. And although I can’t criticize Princess Zhaojun’s libretto for blindly adhering to the legend (and maybe embellishing it a little), failing to include at least some of this remarkably interesting information, and instead artificially creating drama to provide what drama there is, renders the entire dance considerably more cardboard than it needed to be.

China National Opera
& Dance Drama Theater dancers
in “Princess Zhaojun”
(General Wei Jiang and Han soldiers)
Photo courtesy of China National Opera
& Dance Drama Theater

In any event, we take it as it is. Princess Zhaojun is nothing if not opulent. Not surprisingly, for a production from China, the costumes are extraordinary. Credited to Yang Donglin and Sun Aina, there is not one scene of groups of women in which they do not look resplendent with the look of silk (the Han), or celebratory velvet (the “candle dance” – yes, in a way remindful of La Bayadère – that opens the wedding scene), or simple cloth elegance (the Xiongnu). The men are less lyrically portrayed – they’re warriors, but the same care has been taken with their costumes. [Like the Capulets and Montagues, the Han and the Hun have “colors” – the Han wear blue and orange (they should perform at Mets games); the Xiongnu are costumed in “animal-hide” tan.] And unlike some contemporary dance productions where the lighting, extraordinary though it might be, draws attention to itself, the lighting in Princess Zhaojun never does – you don’t see the lights as objects that move up and down or change color, but as means to electrifyingly illuminate or bathe the stage. Designed by Ren Dongsheng (who apparently also designed the opulent looking sets), the lighting is used almost as another character at times: in one extraordinary scene, it’s as if the heavens open and a deity with piercing light penetrating from “eyes in the sky” looks down to illuminate, and silently comment on, isolated areas of the stage.

Aside from my quarrel with the one dimensionality of the characterizations and the story, even though that may be exactly what director Kong Dexin wanted, the choreography (credited to a committee, each member of which presumably oversaw the choreography for individual dances), seen through Western eyes, is – with exceptions – disappointing. Women generally shuffle across the stage with tiny forward steps that make them appear to glide on air (like the angels in “George Balanchine’s ‘The Nutcracker’”), often posed with arms and torsos arched at a gentle “feminine” angle, and men who thrust and stump and then thrust and stump some more. For this reason, although each individual dance to one extent or another is different from another, as the scenes progress the women’s “folk dances” and the men’s martial combat mesh in the mind.

China National Opera
& Dance Drama Theater dancers
in “Princess Zhaojun”
(General Wei Jiang and Prince Fujulei)
Photo courtesy of China National Opera
& Dance Drama Theater

Having said that, the critical analysis here must be on recognizing that this dance must be seen through Chinese cultural eyes, not Western eyes. Its heritage – aside from the story’s specifics – is Asian. And in this context, the appearance of flatness, of uniformity, of relative unemotional detachment, of limited but exaggerated stylized movement, is not inappropriate. I would have preferred to have seen more variety within each dance, but it’s there – you just have to overlook the sense of sameness and of minimal movement variation, beautifully staged and executed as many of the dances involving the women most definitely are.

China National Opera
& Dance Drama Theater dancers
in “Princess Zhaojun”
(Princess Zhaojun and Huhanye)
Photo courtesy of China National Opera
& Dance Drama Theater

Those dances that are most memorable are those rare segments in which the leads, primarily Zhaojun and Huhanye, either dance solo or together. There is considerable beauty to the lyrical romantic choreography, with Zhaojun effectively melting into Huhanye’s arms as he receives her liquid body and effortlessly manipulates her, lifting and carrying her like a feather. There are no bravura “tricks” here. It’s all relatively low–key. But these dances are such a break from the cast of thousands pageantry that they stand – or dance – out. Also standing out is the one corps scene that is significantly different from the others – the “nymphs” in Zhaojun’s dream scene. None of them appear to be moving the same way as others, there’s an intentional sense of freedom consistent with Zhaojun’s memory of her happy youth, and the in-dream violence between these nymphs and the barbarian invaders (stylized – I doubt if anyone would find it offensive) is a visual shock.

Aside from the pageantry, there is one scene that is particularly noteworthy – and it contains little dancing. When General Wei Jiang and some of his soldiers are en route to the wedding, they get ambushed by Prince Fujulei and his men. Slowly, almost unnoticeably, Fujulei’s soldiers replace Wei Jiang’s soldiers – but Wei Jiang proceeds forward without noticing, followed closely behind by Fujulei as they exit the stage. The audience doesn’t see a battle, doesn’t see the capture, but what’s happening is obvious, and Wei Jiang is next seen in a bag at the wedding.

China National Opera
& Dance Drama Theater dancers
in “Princess Zhaojun”
Photo courtesy of China National Opera
& Dance Drama Theater

Multiple casts rotate in the lead roles. I saw what I presume is the first cast – Dou Shuaifang as Zhaojun, Zhu Lin as Huhanye, Guo Haifang played Fujulei, Yang Siyu was Wei Jiang, and Yu Yu played Xiang Xi. They, and the rest of the 41-member cast, performed magnificently. Dou Shuaifang did particularly fine work in a very one-dimensional role, especially acting virginally shy in her initial dance with Huhanye (and simply looking gorgeous in everything else – including carrying that pipa), and Zhu Lin’s Huhanye, in addition to being a capable and ardent partner, had the most acting to do, at times looking like Kal Drogo, at times – like when he first spies Zhaojun and could hardly contain himself – as if he’d just won the concubine lottery.

Legend or human, it’s undeniable that Princess Zhaojun is the embodiment of cross-cultural acceptance for the greater good. China as it is now known believes it owes its unity, at least in large part, to this woman who was a concubine, a queen, a sad and tragic figure, and a heroic one. And in a sense, when the Chinese celebrate the lunar New Year and parade through the streets within a multi-unit dragon that blends the occupants together to move as one, they implicitly honor Princess Zhaojun, the mother of Chinese dragons.

The post Princess Zhaojun: Mother of Dragons appeared first on CriticalDance.

Diablo Ballet – Once Upon A Time
Lesher Center
Walnut Creek, CA

March 22, 2019

Bryn Namavari

Diablo Ballet’s 25^th Anniversary season was celebrated with the world premiere of Once Upon A Time, a new ballet in two scenes by choreographer Julia Adam. Set to music from George Gershwin’s An American in Paris and Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra and accompanied by the Contra Costa Wind Symphony, Adam created a fairytale remix enjoyable for all ages. Before the performance began, the anniversary celebrations were kicked-off with a film retrospective by Walter Yamazaki with interviews from Artistic Director Lauren Jonas, and founding board member Ashraf Habibullah. Interspersed with archive film clips were touching, often tearful, messages from Diablo alumni expressing their love and appreciation for the company and for Jonas over the years. It was clear that Jonas and the company have made a lasting impact on the dancers and the community at large through their creative work and their youth PEEK community dance programs. Along with Walnut Creek Mayor Cindy Silva, a cast of over a dozen alumni dancers joined Jonas and Habibullah on stage to take a bow and join the celebration.

Michael Wells in Julia Adam’s Once Upon A Time
Photo Bilha Sperling

In contrast to Diablo’s typical mixed-repertoire shows, the evening consisted of a single story ballet in two scenes. The first scene opened with Michael Wells as ‘Boy’ in a gray and white school uniform sitting with an open text before an elaborately painted scrim of a storybook and castle. The boy is trying to work out an “equation” for a fairytale, i.e. what happens when you add Little Red Riding Hood plus the Seven Dwarfs, and so on. The scene then changed to a classroom filled with plain white chairs, a teacher’s desk and chalkboard. Boy and a red-caped ‘Girl’ (Jackie McConnell) are the last to join the other students and are scolded for being tardy by the teacher (Raymond Tilton). Distracted from their studies, all of the classroom children dance and play, and the teacher must continuously break up the fun. There is a lively game of musical chairs, and the last two standing are our ‘Boy’ and ‘Girl.’ Obviously enamored of one another, Boy then dances a solo to impress Girl, albeit a gawky version of what a tween might consider a “dance to impress.” They join in a pas de deux – Wells is perfectly awkward and McConnell is the picture of grace; the perfect foil to Well’s boyish character.

Scene 2 transported the audience and characters to the boy’s imagined fairytale world. The stage was transformed with a feast laid out on a large table. Jillian Transon entered as a Fairy Godmother complete with a glittering gown pinafore worn over her schoolgirl uniform, tiara and wand. Then, magically, each of the students from the first scene entered as fairytale characters from a myriad of stories: Little Red Riding Hood, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Snow White—all dancing together. Mario Alonzo’s vibrant costume designs were drawn directly from the iconic Disney-esque images that have become a familiar part of our shared cultural visual language. From Cinderella’s blue ball gown and the wicked step sisters’ exuberant feathered head-dresses, to Sleeping Beauty’s pink dress, the audience was able to immediately recognize each of Adam’s intended characters.

Amanda Farris, Michael Wells, Rosselyn Ramirez & Raymond Tilton in
Julia Adam’s Once Upon A Time
Photo Bilha Sperling

As the fairytale story progressed, Adam created ever-more hectic confusion on stage. Like a living game of Exquisite Corpse, each of the fairytale characters’ costumes became increasingly more jumbled creating amusing combinations: a Dwarf Stepsister, a Big Bad Wolf with a feather headdress, a White Rabbit tangled in a beanstalk. With his perfect comic timing, Tilton stole the show with his humorous transformations from Big Bad Wolf in Granny’s nightgown to Wicked Stepsister in bright orange gown and headdress to Wicked Stepmother of Snow White. Eliciting laughs from adults and children alike, Tilton proved himself an audience favorite despite his role as ‘villain.’ Finally, through all of the growing confusion and cacophony, in true fairytale style, our hero and heroine were able to find each other. The ballet came to a close as the young lovers had their first kiss amid a crescendo of music and surrounded by a shower of red petals.

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Pacific Northwest Ballet
McGaw Hall
Seattle, WA

March 16, 2019
Director’s Choice Program: Bacchus; The Trees The Trees, In the Countenance of Kings

Dean Speer

Pacific Northwest Ballet has commissioned a cornucopia of new ballets over the years, including more than 100 during the tenure of its Founding Directors and many more during its current Artistic Director’s nearly 15 years at the helm. That’s a lot of dances. Yet this is necessary as new works are the incubator of moving the arts forward…and, importantly, can be and often are a reflection of their times.

Director’s Choice presented three works, two world premieres and one PNB premiere. To me they all shared some common elements — strong openings and visuals, and a clear artistic voice. My only choreographic fuss would be that I would have liked each to have had a stronger ending.

Pacific Northwest Ballet dancers
in Matthew Neenan’s “Bacchus”
Photo by Angela Sterling

First on the program was Matthew Neenan’s large group work, Bacchus, set to music by Oliver Davis. Bacchus is light in tone and showcases the dancers’ technique and artistry. I would have liked the concluding pas de deux — Elizabeth Murphy and Seth Orza — to have stood by itself and allowed to develop.  Having some other cast members scurrying behind it and across the stage toward the end I found unnecessary. The duet was lovely unto itself and didn’t need any encouragement. Costumed in grape-colored unitard designed costumes, the dancers came charging onstage at the beginning at full tilt. I enjoyed the humor of section IV with Kyle Davis and Price Suddarth alternately catching each other.

Pacific Northwest Ballet dancer Margaret Mullin
in Matthew Neenan’s “Bacchus”
Photo by Angela Sterling

The Trees The Trees, inspired by a book of poems of the same name, was choreographed by Robyn Mineko Williams and develops through a series of five vignettes. These seemed unrelated to each other, yet had the common thread of vocalist Alicia Walter declaiming the words of the poems either by singing or speak-singing them, in something of a cabaret style. Walter was sometimes deployed as a stand-alone and sometimes mixed in with the dancers. I didn’t see an arc to the work, and it pretty much ended as it began. Williams’ piece seemed to be an outcome of her contemporary experience with Chicago’s Hubbard Street Dance and was the most “serious” of the evening’s unveilings. It was fun seeing the amazing PNB dancers adapt to a non-balletic style and how well they brought across Williams’ vision.

Pacific Northwest Ballet dancers Ezra Thomson
and Dylan Wald (center) and Christopher D’Ariano (left)
with guest vocalist Alicia Walter,
in Robyn Mineko Williams’s “The Trees The Trees”
Photo by Angela Sterling

Justin Peck’s In the Countenance of Kings was first done at San Francisco Ballet and staged here by Felipe Diaz. Like Neenan’s piece, it’s a large work for large cast and is also light in tone with playful visual formations. It begins with the dancers positioned, kneeling together in a clump and as the music begins, they peel off right and left and the dance begins. I enjoyed the unexpected poses, such as when the entire cast lay down on the stage at the edge of proscenium, teasing us that perhaps this was the conclusion but then lifting up their torsos to peek at us, with their respective arms and hands lifted up to ear-level. It was a playful and a cute visual. Kudos to leads Elle Macy, Margaret Mullin, Laura Tisserand, Jerome Tisserand, Lucien Postlewaite and Joshua Grant. These leads were each given character names by Peck (Quantus; Electress; Botanica; The Protagonist; The Foil; and The Hero), as was the corps de ballet — The School of Thought.

Pacific Northwest Ballet dancers
Jerome Tisserand and Elle Macy
in Justin Peck’s “In the Countenance of Kings”
Photo by Angela Sterling

I hope all three works will be brought back for future viewings. Ballet companies need large group works such as the two that bookended the program and for the satisfaction of the inner soul, works like The Trees The Trees.

The mighty PNB Orchestra was led by two maestros — Doug Fullington who conducted Bacchus and Emil de Cou for the second two.

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Ballet Hispánico
The Joyce Theater
New York, New York

March  26, 2019
El Viaje, Sombrerisimo, Homebound/Alaala

Jerry Hochman

Ever since Twyla Tharp choreographed Push Comes to Shove for American Ballet Theatre, other dances featuring bowler hats have become, by comparison, second (or third or fourth) best. And ever since . . . forever, dances about leaving home / arriving at a new home / yearning to return home (collectively, “home”) have been commonplace. That essential prop, and that subject, were presented in Ballet Hispánico’s three-dance program for its annual Joyce Theater season. Flying bowler hats are still inevitably remindful of Tharp’s piece, and “home” is still a hackneyed subject, but the program, enlivened by the company’s highly accomplished dancers, proved more interesting, and far more enjoyable, than anticipated.

One of these dances stood out over the others because its treatment of the subject of “home” was so different, and such great fun to watch. Although it was the program’s final offering, I’ll consider it first.

Ballet Hispánico dancers
in Bennyroyce Royon’s “Homebound/Alaala”
Photo by Paula Lobo

Prior to Tuesday’s performance, Bennyroyce Royon was a name unfamiliar to me. Not any more. His Homebound/Alaala, which celebrated its world premiere at this opening night performance, is a riot of action, color, and community, and it bathes its audience in its exuberant ambiance. Even though its subject – according to the program note, the intersection of Latino and Asian cultures and the quest for home – is nothing new, Royon and the Ballet Hispánico dancers breathe new life into it. Without being overwhelmed by its originality, it’s one of the most original-looking treatments of the subject that I’ve seen.

Chris Bloom and Ballet Hispánico dancers
in Bennyroyce Royon’s “Homebound/Alaala”
Photo by Paula Lobo

A Brooklyn-based Filipino-American dancer and choreographer and Juilliard graduate, Royon has pieced together a paean to yearning for the familiar, discovery of the new, and community that is more celebration for what’s happened than nostalgia for what’s been lost. In the process, he’s also changed the focus from the literal to the metaphoric. Large rectangular boxes fill the stage, and sandals (apparently, from my research, particularly significant in Filipino culture) are ubiquitous, and at one point are lined horizontally downstage.  The boxes are not only suitcase surrogates; they act also as barriers to cross, mountains to climb, and places to hide (as well as convenient stage dividers). The sandals are symbols of cultural memory. The boxes are moved initially from a starry-skied departure point and then from place to place on stage during the course of the dance, to me symbolic of moving from one “home” to another until the immigrants find some permanent location to hang their hats (or to put on their shoes).

Ballet Hispánico dancers
in Bennyroyce Royon’s “Homebound/Alaala”
Photo by Paula Lobo

The boxes serve another function as well. Some have words or images on them, and some open to allow an occasional dancer to open them wistfully (and maybe insert or remove cherished sandals). These boxes, some of which are emblazoned with the word “Fragile” (and some with another images that I was unable to discern, possibly Filipino words) – are the repositories of “fragile” memories. [“Alaala” is Tagalog for “memories.] I’ve also been advised by a colleague that boxes similar to those in Homebound/Alaala, called “balikbayan boxes,” are used by Filipinos living outside the Philippines to ship gifts back to people still living “home,” but this does not appear to be the purpose of these boxes.

Ballet Hispánico dancers
Gabrielle Sprauve and Dandara Veiga
in Bennyroyce Royon’s “Homebound/Alaala”
Photo by Paula Lobo

As all this is happening, Royon’s musical choices, all Filipino songs, provide the more obvious “memories” connection. The music is at once lilting and haunting; gentle and persistent. Island music from a different island. After a (not surprisingly) wistful beginning (to 10-string classical guitarist Perfecto De Castro’s evocative “Hatinggabi – Midnight”), the dance continues on a steady pace (those boxes keep moving) through two Filipino folk songs (“Apat na dahilan,” sung by Pilita Corrales, and “Dandelon,” sung by Nora Aunor), then, in a change of pace, to “Ay, Leng,” by Grace Nono, and finally explodes with energy to “Anti-wana” by Pinikpikan, from a film soundtrack.

As interesting as the metaphors and music are, however, the dance wouldn’t work as well as it does without Royon’s choreography. It’s fluid, but it’s not ballet, and it has a contemporary feel, but it’s not the form of contemporary dance dominated by pervasive and rigorous corkscrew or angular movement. If there’s a connection here to Filipino folk dance (and I suspect there is), I didn’t see it, and it’s done so subtly that even if I’d been able to recognize Filipino folk dance I might not have noticed it. I can’t describe any particular “style,” and don’t know if there is one. What it is, however, is “big” movement. Dancers gulp space moving back and forth across the stage as they push, pull, throw, or tug boxes, and as they celebrate in what might be a local playground (a good natured “South-East Side Story”; dances at a different kind of gathering).

Ballet Hispánico dancers Raúl Contreras and Omar Rivera
in Bennyroyce Royon’s “Homebound/Alaala”
Photo by Paula Lobo

At one point (to “Ay, Leng”), the dance changes focus, presenting two male dancers who, at first tentatively, then exuberantly, discover homosexual inclinations. Shortly thereafter, the pair is “caught” by other community members, but instead of the anticipated scorn, they find acceptance. At first I felt that it was out of place here, particularly as, to my recollection, it’s the only “relationship” depicted in the dance – and even if there’s a reason for its presence that’s personal to the choreographer. But the point is consistent with the thrust of the dance as a whole (the contrast between the “new” culture and the “old,” expressed by the new community’s acceptance of differences), so in that sense, it fits well.

As difficult as cultural assimilation appears to be, and although interrupted from time to time by memories of the culture they left behind, Royon’s piece is fun. I suspect there’s a measure of culture clash depicted here between the Latinos in place and the arriving Filipinos (occasionally one box-laden dancer is chased by another; “fights” break out between one subgroup and other), but that’s not the dance’s point, and it’s all handled deftly so that whatever conflict there may be translates into a comic interaction that passes quickly. And when the community clearly unites and the Filipino music becomes more celebratory, the feeling becomes infectious. Homebound/Alaala confronts a serious subject with such good nature that one find it necessary to pinch oneself to make sure it’s real. And by minimizing any obvious limitation to the Filipino / Latino experience (aside from the Filipino music), the result is a dance with a cosmic consciousness that can appeal to anyone unable or unwilling to let homebound memories evaporate in the context of creating a new, different, vibrant multicultural community.

Melissa Verdecia and Ballet Hispánico dancers
in Edwaard Liang’s “El Viaje”
Photo by Paula Lobo

El Viaje (The Trip) is about emigration / immigration, rather than a meeting of cultures. That’s fine, but the result is more limited as well: apprehension and determination rather than celebration or, alternatively, fear of cultural loss. It’s also significantly different visually from Homebound/Alaala and many other dances that address the subject. A former dancer with New York City Ballet, Edwaard Liang here has crafted a lovely ballet, filled with lush movement quality to match the lush, dreamy score (Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, by Ralph Vaughan Williams, recorded by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields). The choreography is lyrical – almost lyrical to a fault – befitting the music, and what there is is well crafted. But as good as the choreography is, and as brilliant as the Ballet Hispanico dancers are in executing it, looking lovely isn’t enough to elevate El Viaje into anything distinctive or profound. There’s no real conflict here; no real expression of inner turmoil; no real apprehension; no elaboration on the yearning for the old culture or the temptations of the new. It’s all fairly low key.

Far more concerning is that, other than singing the praises of the Chinese emigration to Cuba, Liang’s purpose isn’t set forth clearly. I don’t know whether the focus is on the emigrant going on a “voyage” to a new life, or on an immigrant’s experience (another kind of “voyage”) trying to be assimilated into that new culture. They’re opposite sides of the same coin, and the emotions involved are similar – but the confusion, at least in my mind, could have been easily cured.

Ballet Hispánico dancers
Melissa Verdecia and Lyvan Verdecia
in Edwaard Liang’s “El Viaje”
Photo by Paula Lobo

The ballet begins with a highlighted sole dancer, Melissa Verdecia (f/k/a Melissa Fernandez), wearing a red dress, standing downstage center with her back to the audience, and apparently slowly waving at an assemblage of dancers grouped upstage center. The piece closes with a similar picture, except Verdecia’s character is facing downstage right at the assemblage of dancers closer to the downstage right wings, with the area illuminated in sunlight as if all were embarking on a voyage to an unknown future. I saw this initially as the woman in red waving goodbye, at least symbolically, to her past culture and at the same time expressing her yearning for it (that that past culture may have been Chinese is not, to me, in any way apparent), and then being transported to the new one. Seen this way, what happens in between are the pressures to leave or not – with the ultimate decision being to leave for a better life, symbolized by the change of positions, with the dancers now heading into the sunset (or sunrise) on a golden path to a new beginning.

Ballet Hispánico dancers
Eila Valls and Jared Bogart
in Edwaard Liang’s “El Viaje”
Photo by Paula Lobo

But it may also have been that the woman in red is at first greeting, and being greeted by, the “new culture” residents, and then being encouraged by the new culture’s representatives (the other dancers) to join them – with the accent being how wonderful these Cubans were to welcome this stranger (and by extension, the Chinese emigrants as a group) into their community. In hindsight, I suspect that this was Liang’s intent. In any event, the distinction isn’t really critical here. The central character is different (obviously by her red dress), and recognizes she must leave, or is different, and tries to blend in. In between, the memories of her “previous” culture, and the possibilities of her “new” culture, push and pull in various directions.

But although it’s admirably simple and straightforward visually, what there is raises questions beyond whether the woman in red is waving goodbye to her old culture or hello to her new one. Why is she in a red dress, while the other dancers are attired in more simple, relatively dull costumes? If the intent was just to single her out as the new arrival, couldn’t it have been done in a way that didn’t make her look not just different from the others, but more elegant? And if the thrust of the dance is how she’s being welcomed by the native Cubans, what does this say about Liang’s vision of the Chinese culture from which the woman in red came and the Cuban culture which, presumably, is welcoming her with open arms? Is this what Liang intended – to picture the Chinese culture as sophisticated and the Cuban culture as more earthy and common?

Ballet Hispánico dancer Dandara Viega
in Edwaard Liang’s “El Viaje”
Photo by Paula Lobo

All this being said, the absence of clarity here isn’t fatal to the dance. Much more significant is the movement quality. El Viaje may not be a memorable ballet, but it’s a lovely piece of work to watch: silken smooth, with some indelible images – e.g., the woman in red hurtling herself onto the outstretched arms of the “community” (representing either the cultural foundations that she’s leaving or the welcoming buoyancy that she’s receiving) – and, not surprisingly given Liang’s background, with a pervasive fluidity. Gentle even in conflict (one male dancer from the group, Lyvan Verdecia, is singled out to convince the woman in red to stay, or leave, or to accept him (or by extension, his culture), and their pas de deux is a dance highlight. Melissa Verdecia has been a standard bearer for Ballet Hispanico at least since 2016, when I first saw the company. In addition to her technical ability, she infuses her performances with an aura of drama that would make her the center of attention even if she weren’t already, as she is here as the woman in red. And in terms of passion, Lyvan Verdecia is her equal.

In between these two comments on the immigrant experience and cultural assimilation, the company presented Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Sombrerisimo. Originally choreographed in 2013 for an all-male cast, what made this incarnation different was the execution by an all-female cast.

Ballet Hispánico dancers
in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s “Sombrerisimo”
Photo by Paula Lobo

Inspired by the surrealist paintings of Rene Magritte and intended, according to the program note, to reference “the iconic sombreros (hats) found throughout the world to help represent culture,” to me the piece has no connection to Magritte’s paintings beyond featuring bowler hats, and the use of bowler hats in a dance titled Sombrerisimo is emblematic of cultural clash rather than being representative of cultures around the world. Bowler hats evoke a stiff upper lip and the kind of insouciance personified by Mikhail Baryshnikov in Tharp’s dance; “sombrero,” even if it technically is translatable as “hat,” is not generic, and evokes images that are a lot more … macho. And if a “hat” is representative of cultures around the world, why only use a bowler? That tossing bowler hats into the air has been done before (see Tharp, above) doesn’t help.

But approaching Lopez Ochoa’s dance intellectually misses the point. Sombrerisimo isn’t a cerebral dance – it’s fun, a little outrageous, a lot audacious, and absolutely pointless beyond that. In its original incarnation, I suppose it was greeted by audience as a beefcake dance, albeit fully clothed, designed to highlight macho manliness and male virility (which I suspect, to some, is redundant). I never saw that version, but having now seen it danced by women, I suspect that the impact is similar. If some members of the audience may have swooned at the sight of men preening and posing and tossing their hats in the air in its original Fall for Dance presentation, I don’t doubt that many in the audience for this performance felt similarly about women preening and posing and tossing their hats in the air. These women (Shelby Colona, Jenna Marie, Eila Valls, Gabrielle Sprauve, Dandara Veiga, and M. Verdecia) all looked like they were having a blast doing what the big boys did, without the testosterone factor – and, consequently, probably a lot more sensually. And if nothing else, it fit with the rest of the program, since anyplace one hangs, or hurls, one’s hat is home.

The post Ballet Hispánico: Home is Where the Hat is appeared first on CriticalDance.

Heather Desaulniers

• San Francisco Ballet – The Sleeping Beauty
  War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco

• Rogelio López & Dancers – Dicotomia Del Silencio
  Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, Berkeley

• Deborah Slater Dance Theater – The Sleepwatchers
  ODC Theater, San Francisco

March 10th – In my February 2018 CriticalDance column, I reviewed San Francisco Ballet’s The Sleeping Beauty at length. Choreographed by Artistic Director and Principal Choreographer Helgi Tomasson (after Marius Petipa), the ballet premiered back in 1990, but last year was my introduction to this particular version. And so I had thoughts aplenty – about the set, staging, choreography and the overall grandeur of this three-act narrative ballet. Beauty has returned as part of SFB’s 2019 repertory slate and just opened over the weekend. Though many of my observations held true from last year, there was still newness to behold in this first matinee performance.

San Francisco Ballet in Helgi Tomasson’s The Sleeping Beauty
Photo © Erik Tomasson

An infant princess. A curse. A prophecy. A long nap. A kiss. A wedding. Simplified and distilled, these are the main plot points of Beauty. Though clocking in at close to three hours, clearly other chapters and episodes factor heavily into the action. During the (extensive) Prologue, we meet a mélange of mortals and fairies, all of whom have come to pay tribute to the new princess, Aurora. And it’s the fairies who are the stars of Beauty’s opening segment. With delicate, graceful and floaty movement tropes, I quite enjoy the choreography for all six main fairies. Though occasionally, things do look a little busy. And with the sheer number of steps and transitions packed into every phrase (something which befalls much of the ballet), many of the sequences feel in constant pursuit of the downbeat in Tchaikovsky’s score. Having said that, several notable moments impressed. Ellen Rose Hummel’s Fairy of Courage variation commanded with its piercing feet, pointed fingers and staccato ball changes on pointe. Jasmine Jimison’s whimsical Fairy of Playfulness solo is one of the briefest dances in the lot, but in that short stay, Jimison, an apprentice with the company, captivated with her presence and technical clarity. I would even go so far as to say that she was the standout star of the afternoon, but more on that later.

Then the ballet has a time lapse and we finally (at least thirty-five minutes in) meet Aurora, danced by Mathilde Froustey. This second half of Act I features a number of stunning technical feats, famous moments (the Rose Adagio) and ends with the onset of the hundred-year slumber after Aurora is pricked by the dreaded spindle.

Act II continued to be both curious and elusive for this viewer, because while some important events transpire, on the whole, it feels extraneous. Yes, it introduces Prince Desiré (Vitor Luiz), connects the Prince and Aurora through a lengthy vision/dream scene and concludes with the kiss that awakens the Princess. But I’m not convinced that this chain of events a) has to take this long or b) couldn’t be folded into Beauty’s other acts, assuming they too had had some editing. The six-year-old who attended the performance with me remarked as follows, “This sure is a long dream.” Indeed.   

While the middle act is not my favorite, I did find Beauty’s third act to be a lot of fun. More fairies appear, as do some special feline guests, all in celebration of Aurora and Desiré’s marriage. Many lovely moments unfolded throughout, but by far, the highlight was Jimison and Esteban Hernandez’s Bluebird pas de deux. They were absolutely sensational. I saw Hernandez as the bluebird last year and it’s no surprise he has been cast again. His theatrical quality, exuberance and jumping prowess are the perfect match for a role replete with complicated batterie, bravado turns and pas de poisson. And Jimison, as the enchanted princess, had it all. Flawless technique, inviting stage presence and artistry to spare. Her face radiated joy in every instant and her movement had balance, intricacy, placement and heart. I wouldn’t be at all surprised she ascends swiftly through the SFB ranks.

March 23rd – Costuming is definitely something that I am pulled to in dance performance, though I don’t often give too much thought to the specific materials involved. But watching Dicotomia Del Silencio, the newest full-length work from Rogelio López & Dancers, I was haunted by the black brocade fabric used for the pants and sleeveless tunics. It was layered, weighty and significant, and as the night went on, would prove to be an ideal mirror for the quintet’s heavy narrative threads.

Silencio was a dance of heady, raw themes, which were unpacked through a mosaic of scenes and vignettes. And at the center of them all was the oft painful and lengthy journey of personal processing. As Andrew Merrell, Alexandria Whaley, Kevin Gaytan, Rebecca Johnson and López moved from chapter to chapter, several penetrating lines of inquiry emerged. How does care, attention and the passage of time affect past experiences? How do we try and help each other through challenging discoveries? With those overtures, are we actually providing comfort or just trying to make ourselves feel better? Are we allowing each other the freedom and time to truly process grief and trauma? When is it the right moment to reach out and when is it time to let go?

Rogelio Lopez & Dancers in Dicotomia Del Silencio
Photo Ryan Kwok

Aptly, the idea of embrace factored heavily into Silencio’s choreography. Traditional hugs abounded as did more abstract musings on the motif. Dancers would wrap around each other’s legs and gently cradle another’s head in the palm of their hand. In contrast, there were several solo statements counterpointing this sense of togetherness. Dancers backed away from the group; legs swam through the air, like they were treading water; López unhurriedly traversed the outside perimeter of the Shawl-Anderson studio space. The message: sometimes trudging through emotions and events is benefitted by the presence of others, and sometimes it isn’t. Much of Silencio’s phrase material was slow, methodical and ritualized, which matched well with its focus on processing and healing. But there was also plenty of intense, high-throttle movement: energetic rebounding, precarious cantilevered balances, bodies collapsing onto the floor. In these instants, pain, desperation, anger and disbelief washed over the room.

An integral trope in Silencio was the use of hand-held LED lights, which illuminated each dance episode, primarily from above. This lighting design (also by López) had a very powerful and intriguing dual effect. On one hand, it intimately emphasized all of emotional work that was playing out on stage. At the same time, because the handheld lights were utilized throughout the hour-long work, they had an anesthetizing quality as well, which fit like a hidden narrative fiber. Navigating extreme seasons and remembering unimaginable circumstances often requires a little anesthetic. Framing Silencio was a score composed and performed by David Franklin. Chimes, gongs, guitar, piano, even keys affixed to a long, wooden board contributed musical melodies and sound effects. While the music felt like a good fit for the piece, I did wonder if maybe the overall volume could have been adjusted. At times, the music was too loud for the studio venue and ended up pulling focus from what was happening onstage.  

March 29th – A search for understanding, for explanation, for relief – these themes and more lie at the heart of Deborah Slater Dance Theater’s The Sleepwatchers, co-directed by Deborah Slater and Jim Cave. Sleepwatchers processes these questions by taking the concept of sleep, or rather sleep disorder, into the Dance Theater sphere. The 2001 work, currently remounted as part of the company’s thirtieth anniversary, is chock-full of Dance Theater elements, expertly woven into a rich artistic tapestry: text, characters, scenework, set, sound, humor and movement. And by simultaneously mining these disciplines, Sleepwatchers makes some penetrating physical, psychological and emotional statements about the mysterious process of sleep.

Deborah Slater Dance Theater in The Sleepwatchers
Photo Robbie Sweeny

Slater, Cave and their collaborators did a terrific job creating a sense of place. A bed was positioned center stage; movable flats (by Jack Carpenter) doubled as room dividers and as educational whiteboards. Much of the cast was costumed (by Jeanne Henzel) in pajamas and lingerie, others were dressed as medical professionals. David Allen, Jr.’s score and Teddy Hulsker’s sound design included some well-known sleep-themed tunes layered with mechanical whirs, maybe a sleep apnea machine or a ventilator.

Different personas wandered through Sleepwatchers’ ever-changing scenes, which included medical lectures, sleep studies, nightmares and memories. One woman was trapped between adulthood and youth. Her brother was an integral part of the story, as were a number of Doctors and other characters conjured during sleep. Together, they all went on an investigative journey to discover why sleep was elusive for her. Eventually, they do find the answer, but along the way, encounter a myriad of issues, primarily around control. There is commentary about the need for answers; the obsession with figuring things out; the tendency to protectively reframe circumstances; and the discomfort we often feel with an “I don’t know” posture.

Choreographically, Sleepwatchers has a varied physical language – gesture, contact-improv syntax, capoeira inspirations and of course, modern vocabulary. Dance factors more heavily in the second half. In fact, for the first thirty minutes, I wondered if physical theater was a more apt description for the work than Dance Theater. But again, dance does play a significant part, just later on. Broad extensions of the arms and legs embodied searching. An ensemble sequence found all six cast members lifting and interacting with each other – a metaphor for the intersection of their experiences. And there was a postmodern pillow dance to “Mr. Sandman.”

There is much to love in Sleepwatchers, it’s a winning piece of contemporary performance. But it does face a couple of challenges, or maybe, it’s more accurate to say one two-pronged challenge. Clocking in at more than an hour (with a late start, it’s hard to guess the exact run time), Sleepwatchers is too long. Having said that, it isn’t inherently too long. It’s too long because there’s so much repetition, too much for me. As each character navigates the story, recurring motifs were everywhere – in their interactions with each other, their scenework and their movement phrases. For example, there’s a sleep ogre character threaded into much of the dance: half impy leprechaun, half creepy gremlin. The role was communicated well and the choreography was very fitting. But every time the character was onstage, the same things would play out and play out at length. Repetition is indeed a tenet of Dance Theater, though finding the right balance can be tricky. Too little and there isn’t enough narrative impact; too much and the potency is lost.            

The post SF/Bay Area Round-up March 2019 appeared first on CriticalDance.

Scene 2, Opera House
Oslo

22 March 2019

Maggie Foyer

In opera houses across Europe, ballet and opera cohabit, sharing facilities but seldom joining forces on stage in equal partnership. In Oslo, Andreas Heise’s production of Dido and Aeneas broke the mould immersing Scene 2, the smaller stage, in music, song and dance as artists joined forces in exuberant Baroque fashion.

Astrid Norstad in Dido and Aeneas
Photo: Erik Berg

Originally staged by choreographer Josias Priest in 1689 for a school for young gentlewomen, this production diverts from modern minimalist trends in maverick design. Designer Bregje van Balen has created an extravagant fantasy throne in contrast to the elegant period dress that alternates with modern dress and dancewear. Then there is the sheer delight of the peripatetic Baroque Soloists under leader Bjarte Eike, as they carry their instruments around the stage to embrace the action.

In this compact operatic gem, the path of true love leads a decidedly convoluted path. Henry Purcell and librettist Nahum Tate adapted Virgil’s epic poem to create Dido and Aeneas, shifting the source of malicious intent from the gods to the witches. Heise takes this a step further by removing the supernatural element and shifting the malevolence to conniving humans who set in motion a chain of events resulting in Dido’s tragic death.

The characters of Dido and Aeneas each have a dancer and a singer persona and a flexible interchange between the two. Dido, despite her queenly status, is defenceless against Prince Aeneas’s charm. Her vulnerability is encapsulated in the delicate form of dancer Heidi Cecilie Baastad Christensen, while her strength is captured by singer, Astrid Norstad, most impressively in her deeply moving Lament. Aeneas is a complex vacillating youth, singer Mikkel Skorpen opens the action rolling onto the stage locked in the arms of the sorceress before moving on to a richer prize. Dancer Aeneas, Shaakir Muhammad, a powerful performer, is the more grounded and a stabilising force. Heise has joined their differing male energies in a duet that crosses boundaries and probes personal spaces.

Mikkel Skorpen and Shaakir Muhammad in Dido and Aeneas
Photo: Erik Berg

The evening is full of such surprises. The Sorceress, Désirée Baraula, a charismatic personality with a mane of dark hair, is more interesting and complex than common interpretations of evil. She helps to prepare the charm in the ‘deep, vaulted cell’, but her anger derives more from hurt and rejection and she, most unusually, expresses regret at the outcome of her actions. In the final scene Dido is clothed in the Sorcerer’s black dress as she prepares for her death in an ambiguous cross-over.

In contrast the ‘faithful’ Belinda, Dido’s handmaid, (sung by Lydia Hoen Tjore) is a traitor and with a partner in crime, singer Eira Sjaastad Huse. The doubling up of the two plotters adds menace to the drama. A brief moment when their mistress is absent, and Belinda sits on the throne preening like the cat that got the cream with the ‘other woman’ by her side, is a study in duplicity.

The dance is multifaceted. The opening processional dance in formal lines in the dress and style of the period gives way to livelier Baroque dance full of nimble skips and neat batterie. Later the dancers perform in neo-classical style in nude bodytights as exquisitely refined as Bernini’s sculpted shapes. The pairings continue to intrigue and excite: Baraula bearing the weight of Christensen as she carries her on her back, duets with a singer and a dancer and the space between and round filched by the Baroque Soloists.

Désirée Baraula and Heidi Cecilie Baastad Christensen
in Dido and Aeneas
Photo: Erik Berg

There is a case for viewing Dido and Aeneas as a political allegory in England of 1689, a newly re-established Protestant country with a tendency to build conspiracy theories against the feared Jesuits. It was a period when liberalism was emerging as a reaction to the idea of natural hierarchy. Throughout the opera, order and chaos tread a precarious balance as individuals subvert and turn the tide of events to suit their own purpose. This was a youth production: the dancers are all members of Norwegian National Ballet 2, while the lead singers are drawn from the Norwegian National Opera’s apprentice soloists. It is significant that the work was staged for young artists as they are the ones who will be shaping our new world order in these turbulent times.

The post Norwegian Opera & Ballet: Dido and Aeneas appeared first on CriticalDance.

Ariel Rivka Dance (with Guests slowdanger and Alison Cook Beatty Dance)
Baruch Performing Arts Center
New York, New York

March 28, 2019

Ariel Rivka Dance: Rhapsody in K, She, Mossy, Ori
slowdanger: memory 6
Alison Cook Beatty Dance: Magnetic Temptations

Jerry Hochman

Ariel Rivka Dance presented its annual New York season last week, inviting additional companies to join them on each night of the four-program run at the new Baruch Performing Arts Center. I saw the opening night program, which included pieces by slowdanger and Alison Cook Beatty Dance. The evening demonstrated, yet again, that unexpectedly interesting and well-crafted dances can be found in nooks and crannies everywhere in New York.

With the exception of those ARD pieces I’ve previously seen and reviewed, which I won’t comment on further, I’ll consider the dances in order of presentation.

As a choreographer, Ariel Grossman’s craft turned a corner several years ago with her presentation of Ori, and continues to show noteworthy growth, including successfully choreographing subjects that might be considered beyond the boundaries of dance craftsmanship or audience interest. Last year Grossman presented She, a dance about post-partum depression largely accompanied by the sound of a breast pump. To my surprise, I found it to be a compelling and insightful piece of work.

Members of Ariel Rivka Dance
in Ariel Grossman’s “Rhapsody in K”
Photo by David Gonsier

This year, Grossman, whose recent choreographic efforts have centered around her two children, was based on movement qualities observed in one of them – her 4½ year old daughter. Wonderful, I sarcastically thought to myself: a dance with a lot of jumping up and down, running around, and unfocussed limb flailing, and reflecting a two minute attention span to boot. Well, Rhapsody in K certainly has a lot of jumping up and down, running around, and unfocussed limb flailing. But there’s more to it than that, and except for one crotchety critical observation, it’s one of Grossman’s most accomplished dances.

Members of Ariel Rivka Dance
in Ariel Grossman’s “Rhapsody in K”
Photo by David Gonsier

The dance begins almost too cute, with one of ARD’s female dancers, outfitted like an overgrown 4 ½ year old and moving like an overgrown 4½ year old to a child’s recorded words and sounds (presumably those of Grossman’s 4½ year old daughter Eva). When that segment ends, the “real” dance begins. To a composition by Stefania de Kenessey (the same composer who created the score for She) and company Executive Director / Composer David Homan (who is also the choreographer’s husband), played effervescently by violinist Rebecca Cherry, Grossman takes those initial themes that her daughter provided and creates a series of themes and variations for a company of seven super-sized kindergartners (which, presumably, is where the “K” in the dance’s title came from). The style – the movement, expressions, and attitude – is child-like, but the choreography is coherent and engaging, and never takes the 4ish exuberance too far over the top — on the contrary, it relies on the fact that many in the audience have seen this movement before, and that part of the appeal of Rhapsody in K is its trip down memory lane. The “children” assemble and reassemble in distinctive lines and patterns, “perform” sequential movement (or sequential variations on a basic movement), break out into smaller subgroups and into dance solos that not only fit appropriately but that serve to cleanse the visual palette. The movement quality, while clearly based on her daughter’s “improvisations,” looks far more natural than many pieces of contemporary dance that I’ve seen. Marianna Tsartolia’s costumes successfully embrace childish klutz and adult/child kitsch (or maybe it’s the other way around), and with the violin played from a level above the stage area echoing against the theater’s bare walls, the dance’s atmosphere is bathed in a sort of heavenly musical glow. All in all, it’s not only a hoot – which is the best that I’d expected – but a highly accomplished piece of work.

Members of Ariel Rivka Dance
in Ariel Grossman’s “Rhapsody in K”
Photo by David Gonsier

That crotchety criticism: it goes on too long, with too many false endings. Just when you think that, when Hana Ginsburg Tirosh’s child character does her solo dance and announces “All Done,” that “all done” means “all done,” the dance continues through another segment or two before a final group of oversized children announces “all done” in unison. Some parts of it could have been cut – but I recognize that choosing to eliminate part of an artistic creation may be roughly equivalent to choosing from among one’s children.

I can’t think of a more contrasting piece to follow Rhapsody in K than slowdanger’s memory 6. There are no program notes, so my only knowledge of the dance is from what was presented on stage. But after burying my head in my hands for the first few minutes of it, I ended up being thoroughly impressed.

slowdanger dancers (l-r) taylor knight
and anna thompson in “memory 6”
Photo by David Gonsieer

slowdanger is a “multidisciplinary performance entity” based in Pittsburgh, co-founded by co-artistic directors anna thompson and taylor knight. memory 6 is performed by thompson and knight, to music by thompson and knight, with costumes by thompson. I confess that I have a prejudice against companies or individuals who insist on presenting themselves with a lowercase initial letter – I assume it’s done to emphasize that in their minds they’re no more significant than anyone else, but it has the effect of accomplishing just the opposite – drawing attention to themselves.

Be that as it may, memory 6 begins with one standing dancer, back to the audience and dressed in what appears to be a woman’s black dress, writhing in apparent agony.  I assumed it was thompson, until a body emerged from the darkness stage left, and I saw it was a woman wearing a similar black dress. thompson approached the standing person, who turned (and, not surprisingly at that point, it was knight), and the pair then began a dance that explored the duality symbolized by their almost identical costumes.

slowdanger dancers (l-r) taylor knight
and anna thompson in “memory 6”
Photo by David Gonsier

Portraying two sides of one individual, or suggesting that there’s no difference between genders, or displaying the agony of being born one sex and believing oneself to be the other, or exploring the nature of an unusually confusing but emotionally powerful relationship, or permutations of any or all of them, has been done before. [Or maybe, given its title, the dance is about breaking away from the memory of a relationship, or the memory of a prior life.] But after getting over the intentional deception and focusing on the choreography, exactly what thompson and knight are trying to portray becomes less important than how they’re doing it, and the choreography here – the passion and pain of this relationship, whatever the nature of that relationship may be – is so intense, and so well-executed, that ultimately the reason behind it doesn’t matter. That being said, it would have been nice to have had a clue.

Members of Ariel Rivka Dance
in Ariel Grossman’s “She”
Photo by David Gonsier

Following a reprise of Grossman’s She, which on second view looks even more accomplished and powerful than it did previously, ARD presented the evening’s second world premiere, Mossy. To another composition by De Kenessey, Grossman here creates a duet that, according to the program note, “reflects the physical, emotional and intellectual consequences of constant interruption,” from a mother’s perspective. While I enjoyed the piece as a relatively abstract expression of dependence and independence, I was less sanguine about the communication of Grossman’s intent. I could see the emotional turmoil, but I couldn’t see the cause of it; I saw nothing that I could connect to a mother’s constant interruption. Indeed, the presence of two women in the piece makes little sense (with respect to Grossman’s stated intent) unless one posits that the two women are really depictions of the same woman whose life and personal identity has been torn apart, in which case the cause of the inner turmoil might be considered irrelevant. But if the turmoil is to be considered in a context, something more is needed. Again, however, as an expression of two women’s inexplicable inner turmoil, the dance was very well crafted, and very movingly executed by Caitlyn Casson and Casie O’Kane.

Members of Ariel Rivka Dance
in Ariel Grossman’s “Mossy”
Photo by David Gonsier

Before the evening concluded with ARD’s reprise of Grossman’s Ori, Alison Cook Beatty Dance, a company I’d not previously seen, presented Magnetic Temptations, a powerful though not entirely successful piece of work danced magnificently by the company’s eight dancers. There’s nothing wrong with the Artistic Director Alison Cook-Beatty’s choreography – in fact, much of it is quite impressive, with a combined lyrical / balletic and contemporary edge, but it’s too repetitious (which is caused by the nature of the subject) and too long (which is caused by the score).

Members of Ariel Rivka Dance
in Ariel Grossman’s “Ori”
Photo by David Gonsier

Without knowing more than what was presented on stage, I saw Magnetic Temptations as a mystical dance that explores the ability to overcome destructive emotional forces, like tempting sirens, through the power of prayer. To me, the accompanying music sounded Buddhist, or maybe Islamic, since the sound was vaguely Middle-Eastern – something like an extended call to prayer or to battle inner demons, or both. I believe I’m right as to the first part of that – in my view, that kind of spiritual battle against “magnetic temptations” is what Cook-Beatty was choreographing, but I was completely wrong about the musical source.

Following the program, I found that the score selected by Cook-Beatty, Grá agus Bás, by Donnacha Demehy, is an example of historic Irish melismatic music that Demehy, a contemporary Irish singer / composer / musician, and associate artists created, at least in part, to both rekindle and celebrate the style. In melismatic music, vowel sounds are carried over two or more musical notes that vary in pitch and duration. And it does have a connection to religious music – it’s a characteristic of sacred songs of Middle-Eastern origin (Islamic; Jewish), as well as Gregorian chant.

Members of Alison Cook Beatty Dance
in Alison Cook-Beatty’s “Magnetic Temptations”
Photo by Paul B. Goode

I’m not a music scholar, but to my ear, where some melismatic music sounds uplifting either by itself or in connection with dispassionately conveying a narrative, other examples can sound musically one-dimensional and aurally irritating (which may be how it’s supposed to sound), with minimal sound variety, no rhythm, and little in the way of melodic development. I suppose that one’s reaction to it depends, to a large extent, on one’s cultural background and exposure. That’s a long-winded way of explaining why, although many commentators have found Grá agus Bás to be not just an attempt to resuscitate a mostly forgotten Irish style (“sean-nos,” which means “old style”) and an extraordinary accomplishment, I found it withering. I’ll grant, though, that it grows in texture and timbre as it approaches its end – it just takes a long time (over 25 minutes) to get there.

Translated, “Grá agus Bás” means “Love and Death.”  I didn’t find a translation of the lyrics, but that title, combined with the music’s sound quality, is certainly sufficient to inspire the visualization of psycho-religious battle for the soul. I found much of Cook-Beatty’s choreography to be thrilling to watch, with an emphasis on images of the central character, Timothy Ward, confronting and battling forces that adhere to his body, and by extension his soul, like magnets. These forces are primarily, to me, depicted as sexual temptations (ergo, the dance’s title), a conclusion difficult to avoid since much of the dance consists of the company’s female dancers hurling themselves at Ward like sirens, or furies, or a plague of attractive locusts, and wrapping their bodies around his until he fights them off – only to have them regroup and attack again. They’re relentless. I suspect that Cook-Beatty didn’t intend to limit the temptations to that one temptation – the pervasive sirens are probably visual metaphors for a host of destructive impulses.

Except for the choreography for Ward, which I found relatively uninteresting (he’s possessed by these destructive forces, tries to run from them, runs backward in circles a lot for reasons not at all clear to me, occasionally reaches up as if praying for some supreme being’s assistance, and otherwise appears as a victim of persistent and unyielding tempting assaults), the choreography for the remaining seven dancers is imaginative and visually fascinating to watch – to a point. After awhile, however, one tires of seeing the same movement, however interesting it may be, repeated over and over (or appear to be), for no apparent reason beyond the fact that the music doesn’t end.

And when, finally, Grá agus Bás reaches its minimalist crescendo, the dance finally ends – with Ward stomping into the ground and the furies that controlled him thereupon disappearing. All he had to do was stomp his feet? It took 25 or so minutes for him to figure that out? Of course that’s not fair – it often takes people lifetimes to overcome inner demons and temptations that they find impossible to ignore. But the audience shouldn’t have to wait that long before a dance’s hero, or “everyperson,” conquers the personal demons that torment him.

The company’s dancers are a solid and engaging group, but I must admit that my focus was almost constantly on the women, who seemed in continual, feverish motion and to be everywhere at once. That they’re also very good at what Cook-Beatty has them do is a bonus. In addition to Ward, the company’s dancers included Carolina Rivera, Fiona Oba, Vera Paganin, Sasha Rydlizky, Niccolo Orsolani, Jacob Brown, and Richard Sayama. While I have quibbles about Magnetic Temptations, Alison Cook Beatty Dance is now on my radar.

Finally, I must again commend ARD for sharing its program with companies of such high caliber. It not only enhances the evening for the audience, it enhances ARD’s pieces by association. And I must also salute the eight companies that joined ARD on these programs, particularly since each had only one performance opportunity. Based on this program, they made the most of it. The other guest companies included Tina Croll + Company, 277 Dance Project (both on Friday’s program), Beth Liebowitz/Beth & Artists, Kyleigh Sackandy, and mignolo dance (on Saturday’s matinee program), and Amma/Amanda Krische and Valerie Green/Dance Entropy (on Saturday evening).

The post Ariel Rivka Dance & Guests: Childs Play, Adult Turmoil appeared first on CriticalDance.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,
Eisenhower Theater
Washington, DC

March 28-30, 2019

Carmel Morgan

For three evenings in a row I sat and watched the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company perform distinct works that together form the Analogy Trilogy. I was skeptical given the divergent subject matter that the three works would feel like they fit under one umbrella. I remained skeptical after the first two nights. In the end, in my view, Analogy Trilogy did come across as a trilogy, and I was glad I was able to experience it that way.   

The first night featured Analogy/Dora: Tramontane, based on interviews conducted around 2002 between Jones and his mother-in-law Dora Amelan about her life as a young French Jewish woman during WWII. This first section of Analogy Trilogy, which premiered in 2015, certainly tears at the heart. Amelan’s stories are sympathetic and compelling, and the parallels between the internment camps in Vichy France where she volunteered, and the detention of asylum seekers crossing the border into the United States are haunting. In both, families suffer separation. Dora’s observations about children and parents being ripped apart resonate. They are one of the reasons sharing personal narratives is so important. History tends to repeat itself, including, maybe especially, the bad stuff.

Analogy/Dora: Tramontane begins with voices. (“Tramontane,” as defined in the program notes, means “beyond the mountains,” and the term further names a powerful dry, cold wind that occurs in southern France). Microphones and a pair of empty stools sit in an isolated pool of light on an otherwise dark stage. Dancers in pedestrian clothing enter the stage and maneuver large lightweight puzzle-like pieces, designed by Bjorn Amelan, whose mother provides the work’s inspiration. Some of the pieces have a blood red side, others only white or pale gray. Things unfold slowly as nine dancers cooperate to form various shapes. They rotate, bend, kneel, peek over edges, and eventually, a structure with a window and a door appears. The movement is repetitive, not random, and it complements Dora’s words without being a mere pantomime of the actions about which she speaks. The emotions of the dancers adhere to the narrative, even if their individual gestures don’t always closely mimic the scenes described. There’s great beauty in witnessing dance that’s consonant with the dialogue and offers sincere empathy.  

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Analogy Trilogy, Analogy/Dora: Tramontane, photo by Paul B. Goode

Dancers take turns taking on Dora’s voice, and this technique works well, although it’s slightly disorienting at first. A stoic sort of sadness permeates many of Dora’s tales, and the dancing tends to match this tone. There are lot of languid sweeps. The arrival of war, however, is depicted by staccato hops, jumps, and flinging arms. I exited the theater thinking that humans are sometimes incredibly fragile, and sometimes incredibly brave and strong. Also, some wreak havoc and cause pain, while others, like Dora, are a source of calm and act as a partial antidote to despair.

Another family member of Jones, his nephew Lance Briggs, is the focus of the second installment of the trilogy. In Analogy/Lance: Pretty aka the Escape Artist, from 2016, once again there’s a spotlight on an empty stage. The audience is welcomed to “The Pretty Show.” Dancers in hoodies move to text based on interviews between Jones and Briggs. I found Briggs to be a more challenging, less sympathetic personality than Dora. He struggles to deal with himself and his alter-ego “Pretty.” The two battle. Dancers strut on a catwalk, stopping to pose. There are bunch of jumps with one leg deeply bent behind, foot almost to rear.

Early on we learn that Briggs, who is African-American, was once a promising young scholarship student studying at the San Francisco Ballet School until drugs and sex work intervened. Although he was still a child then, Lance labeled himself a “predator,” explaining that he preyed on older men, even resorting to threats of blackmail, to obtain money. We also learn that Lance later loses movement in his lower limbs. In between ballet school and the rehabilitation facility, Lance squanders several opportunities to “make it” and often succumbs to harmful addictive behaviors. He comes out with a popular song, travels and works overseas, is occasionally embraced as a performer and model, but he stumbles nonetheless. Lance commits robbery, lands in jail, and continually relapses. These ups and downs are accompanied by some colorful costume and music changes.

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Analogy Trilogy, Analogy/Lance: Pretty aka the Escape Artist, photo courtesy of the Company

There’s definitely something lonely about Lance, about his proclamation that he’s not a loser.  The dancers capture the highs of his high times, playfully gyrating, and also his lows, lying and writhing on the floor. As in Dora, dancers at times sharply lean as if carrying a heavy burden. The love and pain are palpable. Jones encourages his nephew to tell his story to a larger audience, to write it down, but Jones is the one who gets around to tackling the storytelling, and he’s very masterful at it.

The final night brought the conclusion, Analogy/Ambros: The Emigrant, based on “Ambros Adelwarth,” who is not a relative of Jones, but a character in the The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald. I couldn’t conceive in advance how this third section could possibly relate to the first two, but it’s the glue that binds them. Right away, I saw familiar objects on the stage — a puzzle-piece from Dora and a projection of a rotating rectangle from Lance. Soon thereafter I also recognized familiar choreography. In fact, much of the choreography appeared to have been recycled from the first two parts of the trilogy. While this third installment isn’t told via interviews with Jones, it similarly depicts personal history through the significant life events of someone else, as discovered by someone else (in this case Sebald) investigating relatives.  

The story of Amrbos has to do with the narrator’s great uncle who emigrated to the United States from Germany, his service to a wealthy family, a possible homosexual relationship, and confinement in a mental institution, including electro-convulsive therapy (ECT). Some of the dancers are interviewed on film talking about their reactions to the material. Subsequently, with regard to the dancing itself, there are flashes of light, and the dancers freeze. This happens over and over and over, perhaps representing ECT and/or the fragmented nature of memory generally.      

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Analogy-Trilogy, Analogy/Ambrose: The-Emigrant, photo by Paul B. Goode

One thing that’s markedly different in the final Ambros section is the projection/video design by Associate Artistic Director Janet Wong. In the first two pieces, the projections and videos don’t overwhelm and are kept quite simple, but here they play a much greater role, and dancers even interact with them. However, the simplicity of the costumes by Liz Prince and the brilliance and effectiveness of the score by Nick Hallet is relatively constant throughout.  Plus baritone Matthew Gamble and pianist Emily Manzo, performing live, were always superb. 

I know Analogy Trilogy has a lot of deep, philosophical things to say about the human journey and the desire to unearth and revitalize memories, but in this final section, I got lost. I thought I was keeping up intellectually, and then the threads I thought I’d figured out unraveled. That’s not to say that Jones or the dancers have failed, just that I ultimately felt a little bit left behind, and that’s ok. My inability to grasp the entire big picture doesn’t mean it wasn’t conveyed well, although I could sense that some others similarly felt befuddled, frustrated and/or a little bored. One man stuck his feet out into the aisle and reclined far back in his seat as if to take a nap, one woman played on her cell phone, several others fidgeted in their seats, and one woman left the theater and didn’t return. Yet Analogy Trilogy absolutely deserves to be seen and pondered.   

The post Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company: Analogy Trilogy appeared first on CriticalDance.

New York City Ballet

Composer’s Holiday
Kammermusik No. 2
Opus 19/The Dreamer
Symphony in C

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Opera House
Washington, DC

April 2, 2019

Carmel Morgan

The New York City Ballet (NYCB) has been coming to the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, for over four decades. It was great to welcome the company again this spring, when the cherry blossoms were at their peak. The company performed two diverse programs of short ballets, both of which were enjoyable, but Program B, which is the subject of a separate review, came out ahead in my view.

Program A’s first two works, although reasonably strong, didn’t particularly appeal to me. That doesn’t mean, however, that the dancing or the choreography was substandard. The opening work, Composer’s Holiday, choreographed by Gianna Reisen, a 2017 graduate of the School of American Ballet, now just 19 years old, is pleasant. Reisen is the youngest choreographer to create a ballet for NYCB, and it’s also her first ballet for a professional company. That’s an impressive accomplishment, and one that I applaud. The ballet world could use more female choreographers, and I hope Reisen continues to generate new work.

New York City Ballet, Composer’s Holiday, choreography by Gianna Reisen, photo by Paul Kolnik

Composer’s Holiday is a very fine first ballet, and there’s no doubt Reisen is talented. The ballet, featuring handsome short billowy dresses by Virgil Abloh of Off-White and music by Lukas Foss (Three American Pieces for Violin and Piano), is fast moving and zingy. Although youthful, it doesn’t feel childish. There are many cheerleading-like elements — a group holding a single dancer aloft, then tosses and catches her (accompanied by an audience gasp); women with knees tucked to their chests are grasped snugly by male partners who merely look as if they caught the women after they’d fallen from some height, dancers fly in peppy bent-legged jumps. The pointing and pushing sort of eluded me, though. The meaning of these gestures, if there was one, wasn’t apparent to me.

New York City Ballet, Kammermusik No. 2, choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust, photo by Paul Kolnik

Kammermusik No. 2, choreographed by George Balanchine to loud clashing music by Paul Hindemith, followed. It’s also zingy, and not terribly exciting to me, either. Two ballerinas in pale blue (Abi Stafford and Teresa Reichlen) take charge. A line of male dancers with conjoined arms form a kind of baseline against which the pair and their partners move. Of the two female leads, Reichlen displayed more energy and stole my attention. Dancers use flexed feet fairly frequently, even spinning on the back of their heels. The men hop about with arms stretched out like airplane wings.

New York City Ballet’s Sterling Hyltin and Gonzalo Garcia in Jerome Robbins’ Opus 19/The Dreamer, photo by Paul Kolnik

After the first intermission was Jerome Robbins’ Opus 19/The Dreamer, beautifully danced by Sterling Hyltin and Gonzalo Garcia in the lead roles. They both expertly conveyed emotion (longing and tenderness) and executed with crisp technique. Hyltin’s pointed feet were daggers. The shrieking strings of Sergei Prokofiev’s music (Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major) were piercing, too (violin solo by Kurt Nikkanen). Hyltin’s impossibly silky smooth extensions made her a believable illusion.

New York City Ballet, Symphony in C,
choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust, photo by Paul Kolnik

Balanchine’s Symphony in C, to George Bizet’s glorious Symphony in C Major, is what the ballet patrons were waiting for, though. When the curtain rose after the final intermission, the audience audibly “oohed.” New costumes by Marc Happel include Swarovski crystal crowns, headpieces, and earrings, and they sparkle along with bright white fluffy tutus. This is a resplendent ballet, and one simply melts into its staggering loveliness. It also shows off NYCB’s depth as more and more dancers enter the stage. The power of unison among so many dancers is astounding. There’s nothing like a dizzying sea of arms of legs and legs reaching together in sublime harmony.  

New York City Ballet’s Sara Mearns in Symphony in C, choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust, photo by Paul Kolnik

Of the four movements, my favorite by a mile on opening night was the Second Movement: Adagio splendidly danced by Sara Mearns and Jared Angle. Mearns gave me goosebumps. She was so calm and commanding, lithe yet strong, and seemingly flawless, that I was glued to her. I also was thoroughly drawn in by the First Movement: Allegro Vivo, nicely danced by Ashley Bouder and Tyler Angle. The fact that two dancers toppled (one female dancer from the corps somehow slipped and landed on her rear, a male principal dancer faltered while landing in a kneeling position and set a hand down on the floor) didn’t mar the overall magnificence of the performance.  

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The Washington Ballet: Three World Premieres

Wood Work
Shadow Lands
Teeming Waltzes

Harman Center for the Arts
Sidney Harman Hall
Washington, DC

April 5, 2019

Carmel Morgan

As it did last year, The Washington Ballet (TWB) presented three world premieres at the end of its season. In 2017, to conclude Julie Kent’s first season as TWB’s Artistic Director, the company presented one world premiere, Frontier, choreographed by Ethan Stiefel. The new works this year were far better than any of these prior world premieres. In particular, the new work by Stiefel was a success. This surprised me because I called Frontier, a ballet about space travel, “a clunker of a commission.” In my handwritten notes about Stiefel’s new piece, Wood Work, among other things I scribbled “redeemed.”

Indeed, Stiefel’s Wood Work was not only my favorite of the three world premieres, it’s an accomplished ballet that I’d like to see again and hope TWB repeats. The dancers looked fabulous, composed and yet joyfully springy. Stiefel’s choreographic skills shined through in this one. I liked everything about it. The Danish String Quartet’s modern renditions of traditional Nordic folk music played splendidly by Regino Madrid (violin), Armine Graham (violin), Stephanie Knutsen (viola), and Sean Neidlinger (cello) run from somber to sweet. The costumes by Derek Nye Lockwood fit the theme — prim frock coats and tailored dresses in mostly dark muted blue and gray shades but also with a highlighted couple (Maki Onuki and Gian Carlo Perez) in mustardy gold. The excellent lighting design by Joseph R. Walls places the dancers in a foggy forest, which is later steeped in dappled sunshine. The choreography is varied and interesting, and very musical. And the dancers seemed at ease with the shifting moods, from flirtation to longing, whether buoyantly leaping and grinning or standing still, looking pensive.

The Washington Ballet in Ethan Stiefel’s Wood Work, photo by Victoria Pickering/IGDC

Wood Work is inventive and invigorating, and the imagery is rich. I admired the often clean lines, the way the dancers’ arms seemed to sprout at the beginning like new buds and branches. When the music sounds like a jig, dancers tap their feet along with the plucking strings, their heads happily jiggle. To the appealing wholesomeness of what might be remnants of a community dance, Stiefel adds delightful quirks. When everything seems straightforward, Stiefel reliably throws in movement that breaks the Puritan feel. Suddenly, hips swivel, arms snake, women on pointe purposefully land on half-toe, dancers walk backward, some face up on their hands with knees up in a crab-like position kick up their legs, arms whip around in a backstroke. Onuki was at her spritely best, and Perez matched her enthusiasm. Perez thrilled in a solo section in which his shoulders peculiarly but wonderfully rolled over and under, and then he sped off in a series of spins.                

Dana Genshaft, the lone female choreographer on the program and a former soloist with the San Francisco Ballet, contributed Shadow Lands, set to music titled “Omnivorous Furniture” by Mason Bates. I might have enjoyed it more if I had enjoyed the music, but I found the recorded music loud and extremely unpleasant, jazzy but uncomfortably dissonant. I do think, however, than Genshaft and her creative team adeptly conjured an alternate futuristic world. The costumes by Reid & Harriet Designs feature an abundance of nude sheers and tight-fitting metallics, shorts that look molten. Once again Joseph R. Walls hit it out of the park with his lighting design. Light dazzles forth in a vertical beam that peeks between two almost-closed curtains. Subsequently, a spectrum of mood-shifting colors bathes the dancers.

The Washington Ballet in Dana Genshaft’s Shadow Lands, photo by Victoria Pickering/IGDC

For all the drama in the music, however, the dancing somehow struck a false note with me. Genshaft’s choreography isn’t timid, but it doesn’t delve quite far enough into the realm of the strange given the strange music that accompanies it. I admit I easily tire of endless extensions and lifts in which female dancers spread their legs. A woman’s hand resting on her male partner’s chest or shoulders — that seems oddly traditional and incongruous with the sci-fi theme. Rolling on the ground, though, isn’t typical in a ballet, and I wanted to see more of that. The dancers sometimes came across as insect-like, and when they did, I paid more attention. At times, the strip of light at the back of the stage could have been a bug zapper.    

In sum, I felt that Shadow Lands fell short of being finely polished, but I would welcome seeing something else by Genshaft. I know that just because one piece doesn’t capture my fancy, another by the same choreographer just might.  

The evening of world premieres closed with Trey McIntyre’s Teeming Waltzes. I had read beforehand that the ballet would incorporate a ball pit. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about that, but after seeing it I can tell you it’s a fun prop. Yet I don’t think McIntyre used it to its fullest potential. His Teeming Waltzes is a silly comic romp, missing inspirational choreography, but supplying laughs aplenty. In the program notes, McIntyre said he created it to “generate more love in the world.” Lighthearted ballets have their place in a company’s repertoire, but I don’t think Teeming Waltzes is one that will likely be continually performed.

The costumes and scenic design by Design Army are a sight to behold. Two bright yellow suns (or moons depending on your perspective) hang over the stage. More planets dangle later on, and a handful drop at the end. In addition, of course, there’s the ball pit at the back. The ball pit is mostly used as a sight gag, with relatively few little kicks and dives into it. The music is Johann Strauss’s “Emperor Waltz” and “Blue Danube,” played live by the same quartet that accompanied the first work on the program, plus the spectacular Glenn Sales on piano. The music doesn’t really fit the choreography, but I assume that was McIntyre’s intent. The contrast is humorous.     

The Washington Ballet (Maki Onuki and Tobias Praetorius in foreground) in Trey McIntyre’s Teeming Waltzes, photo by Victoria Pickering/IGDC

Alex Kramer and Corey Landolt wear white and yellow vests, respectively, like members of different sports teams. Kramer’s sleeveless vest fully covers his upper body, but Landolt’s yellow one is tiny and leaves his chest mostly exposed. There are also ridiculous giant circular hats for six women, yellow and black ones that make them look like oversized black-eyed susans. And their black leotards have a circular cutout in the center that shows off their belly buttons. Onuki appeared in a spider-woman type getup. Her face had a mask of black lines, her neck was lined in black webbing, and she wore shiny tall black boots. Her partner, Tobias Praetorius, an exchange artist from the corps of the Royal Danish Ballet, wore a black sort of bolero style jacket that reminded me of a matador. Together, they resembled practitioners of sadomasochism.   

Kramer and Landolt made the most of their comic roles, throwing balls at each other, then making up with a hug. They excelled at clowning, turning expertly from playful to vengeful to tender. They’re “frenemies,” I guess? I can’t say the six women are given much interesting to do, other than to rock their heads back and forth, and in one case retrieve a tossed ball. Onuki and Praetorius in the second half of the ballet don’t seem very funny, and I couldn’t discern why they were there. Teeming Waltzes is campy and amusing, but it’s not one of McIntyre’s best works.

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Sadler’s Wells Theatre
London

4 April 2019

Maggie Foyer

She Said and the later incarnation She Persisted are Artistic Director, Tamara Rojo’s response to the dearth of women ballet choreographers. Despite the proliferation of female dancers, in twenty years of dancing in ballet companies, she realised that she had never danced in a work by a woman choreographer.

The middle work of the evening, Nora, was choreographed by first artist, Stina Quagebeur. She has shown distinct promise in short works written for company workshops and came up trumps with her first main stage work. Based on Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, the work concentrates on the central trio of Nora, Torvald, her husband, and the bank clerk, Krogstad, each given a distinctive movement language. A chorus of 5 Voices added textured layers to the ballet, initially seeming to be the expression of societal constraint but later supporting her life-changing decision to leave her husband.

Crystal Costa with ENB Artists in Stina Quagebeur’s Nora
Photo: Laurent Liotardo

The role of Nora underlines Crystal Costa’s fine dramatic talents as she captures both the inner turmoil and the outer chameleon character. One moment she is Torvald’s model, contented wife, the next a woman with her own mind, the nuances expertly portrayed in her movement. Jeffrey Cirio as Torvald, is a man bound by the conventions of his class and society. His fierce rage when learning of his wife’s misdemeanour switches the instant the offending document is torn up and the relieved husband embraces his wife. But Nora is in another place and as she and the Voices silently exit, he is left alone in a fractured house.

Junor Souza portrays Krogstad as ultimately a man of integrity, after an interlude where he threatens blackmail, investing this crucial character with dignity and a compelling presence. The scene where he argues his case with Torvald is skilfully choreographed in telling gestures and attitudes. Quagebeur employs a wide range of movement as well as having the theatrical nous to know when less is more. She is a real choreographic find and I’m sure we will be seeing more of her work.

Katja Khaniukova and Irek Mukhamedov in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Broken Wings
Photo: Laurent Liotardo

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Broken Wings makes a welcome return this time with Katja Khaniukova making her debut in the role of Frida. The Mexican painter’s tempestuous life is portrayed in vivid technicolour with fantasy figures of deer, birds and butterflies. Even the constant theme of death is embodied with comic ferocity in the black and white skeletons. Irek Mukhamedov returns to repeat his rich interpretation of Diego Rivera and is an excellent foil for Khaniukova’s high voltage passion. The pair lived a life stranger than fiction and Ochoa successfully translates this into an unusual and entertaining ballet.

Francesca Velicu in Pina Bausch’s Le Sacre du Printemps
Photo: Laurent Liotardo

The evening closed on Pina Bausch’s iconic Rite of Spring,probably the most mesmerising of the many, many interpretations of Stravinsky’s score, given an excellent performance by the English National Ballet Philharmonic under Gavin Sutherland. The commitment of this company of superb dancers gives potency to the sheer muscle power demanded and leaves the audience drained as well as the company. Tiny Francesca Velicu, barefoot in her torn red dress, repeated her triumph as the Chosen Maiden.

This was a five-star evening, making a statement about gender inequality in grand style.

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[pending receipt of additional performance photographs]

Dorrance Dance
New York City Center
New York, New York

March 29, 2010
Program B: Jungle Blues, Three to One, Basses Loaded, Lessons in Tradition, Harlequin and Pantalone, Jump Monk

Jerry Hochman

There may have been someone in Friday night’s City Center audience who didn’t love the Dorrance Dance program, but with the possible exception of some who didn’t want it to end, I doubt it. Simply put, the program I saw (the other two were substantially similar) was one of the finest and most joyous evenings of dance in recent memory. The standing ovation that greeted the company after the final dance’s conclusion extended beyond the orchestra into the theater’s upper levels, and could have continued far longer than it did after the curtain came down, but that’s not a City Center thing. On exiting, there was not a frown to be found.

If there is anyone who has not yet heard of Artistic Director and choreographer Michelle Dorrance and her company of dancers and musicians, suffice it to say that in less than a decade Michelle Dorrance Dance has revitalized tap as a dance art, broadened its scope with choreography that places it on par with that of other forms of theatrical dance, and expanded its boundaries by marrying tap with other forms of dance, and with music not usually associated with it. As I initially observed when I first saw the company, if you think you know tap, think again.

That’s not to say that everything that Dorrance has touched since I became acquainted with the company has turned to gold. At times in recent programs I thought Dorrance, in her zeal to demonstrate tap’s roots and to integrate tap’s cousins into the mix, became too didactic, and in her efforts to take tap into the 21st century and beyond, was pushing an agenda that sounded good on paper, and maybe in rehearsals, and that no doubt appealed to many, but which to me seemed less of a partnership than a shotgun marriage. And I found her recent foray into choreographing for American Ballet Theatre last fall inscrutable and somewhat disappointing.

I say all this to put my reaction to Friday’s program in context. Abetted by two guest choreographers and a guest musician, the program was stunningly well-conceived and executed. Everything worked: the introduction to Dorrance’s choreography represented by a couple of early pieces, Jungle Blues (2012) and Three to One (2011); a smashing world premiere piece, Basses Loaded (a City Center commission); two dances buoyed by the choreography, and the presence of super-clown Bill Irwin, Lessons in Tradition and Harlequin and Pantalone (another City Center commission); and a marvelous dance, Jump Monk, choreographed by legendary tap master Brenda Bufalino. Some may consider the program retro, and perhaps that’s why I found it so appealing. But even if it is, it’s retro with a forward-looking edge.

Dorrance Dance
in Brenda Bufalino’s “Jump Monk”
Photo by Stephanie Berger.

Tap has a long and distinguished heritage, which Dorrance throughout her career has not just acknowledged, but emphasized. But unless one is a scholar of tap, if you think about it, tap is usually associated by an average dancegoer with individual or pair performances as one act among many (e.g., Vaudeville), or as a divertissement in the context of a film or musical theater, or a tv sketch or variety show. The inventiveness and virtuosity was always clear, from Bill “Bojangles” Robinson to the Nicholas Brothers to Astaire and Kelly and Sammy Davis Jr. and Gregory Hines, and especially in those rare situations in which a tap dancer would present a solo evening-length show (a la Savion Glover), but regardless of the particular tap style, to me it seemed more something to appreciate than get enwrapped in. Not surprisingly, the exception, to me, was Agnes de Mille’s use of tap to further the narrative in Rodeo.

Imagine the shock, then, upon seeing those early Dorrance Dance pieces that were choreographed to entertain, and that looked, structurally, a lot like ballet and the best of contemporary dance. There was a broader context of which virtuosity was one component among others, and there was a narrative of sorts. The first audiences to see Jungle Blues and Three to One must have been blown away by the freshness of the experience, and including those dances in this program provides particular insights.

In Three to One, Dorrance is flanked by Byron Tittle and Matthew “Megawatt” West, obviously drawing knowledge and inspiration from the tap experience that they transmit to her. It’s not copycat; it’s more cerebral than that. At the end, the two men depart, leaving Dorrance’s character to make the most of what she’s been given. Even more than the tap dancing itself, the look on Dorrance’s face – a look of both abandonment and opportunity – is universal, and elevates the entire dance to something greater than its tap components.

Jungle Blues is a more complete introduction to the qualities that make a Dorrance Dance performance memorable. Choreographed to the composition of the same name by Jelly Roll Morton, the dance isn’t only an example of tap virtuosity (although there’s plenty of that), it’s a “real dance,” with a defined structure within which are enmeshed the virtuosic solos and dueling duos that seem to an inevitable component of the art form. There’s a “corps” that provides a continually shifting background, featured groups that shuffle in and out of the main area of focus, sub-groups of varying size and composition, and a sense of musicality that makes the choreography an adjunct to and expression of Morton’s multi-faceted composition. In other words, it’s “seeing the music,” except its vehicle is tap rather than ballet or contemporary dance.

(l-r) Warren Craft and Bill Irwin,
with Gregory Richardson on Bass,
in Bill Irwin’s “Harlequin and Pantalone”
Photo by Stephanie Berger

It seems that improvisation goes with tap territory, but it’s clear that even with improvisation, Dorrance’s choreography allows for it rather than either smothering or being dominated by it. And I suppose it’s a credit to both Dorrance and the dancers who improvise that you can’t tell from performance to performance what’s improv and what’s not. But in Jungle Blues, Christopher Broughton is specifically recognized for his solo improvisation, and his solo was audacious and impeccable. Tittle, West, Dorrance, Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie, Warren Craft, and Nicholas Van Young similarly excelled with less extensive solos, whether what they danced was improv or not. Carson Murphy, Claudia Rahardjanoto, and Leonardo Sandoval completed the effervescent and highly capable cast.

These two dances were the evening’s aperitifs. With the world premiere of Basses Loaded, the inventiveness took a step in another dimension.

One of the hallmarks of Dorrance Dance – at least of those pieces I’ve seen – has been the company’s adventurous use of music to inspire and power the dances. It doesn’t always work to my satisfaction (although I must emphasize that audiences have gushed), but with Basses Loaded, it did. The “Basses” of the title are instruments: Double Basses and Electric Basses. Here, to a composition by company musicians Donovan Dorrance and Gregory Richardson, the four dancers (Elizabeth Burke, Luke Hickey, Craft, and Tittle) tap to the varying rhythms and tempi of the score, with the instruments being an increasingly significant part of the stage action. With the musicians initially arrayed upstage left (the Dorrance siblings on Electric Bass, guest musician Kate Davis and Richardson on Double Bass, and Richardson occasionally also on Electric Bass), the dancers at first are driven by the music (with Burke and Hickey particularly memorable), and then, gradually, the musicians change their positions such that they frame some of the action, and then become moving component parts of it, with Davis and Richardson hauling their Double Basses back and forth across the stage (from opposite directions). Instrumentalists have been incorporated into dances before, but I can’t recall seeing anything previously that’s quite like this. If any part of Basses Loaded had been less than stellar, the entire piece might have fallen flat. But the score, the choreography, and the execution (by both the musicians and the dancers) were as flawless as the concept was ingenious. Basses Loaded hit a home run.

(l-r) Michelle Dorrance, Kate Davis,
and Bill Irwin in “Lessons in Tradition”
Photo by Stephanie Berger

The presence of Bill Irwin on the program was a stroke of genius. Without him the program would have been sufficiently rich. With Irwin’s particular gifts – his connection to tap, his history of rich comedic theater, his performance quality, and the choreography he contributed – it overflowed with talent and good cheer. I did not see Irwin in his legendary Broadway appearances, but somehow, I feel as if I had – by osmosis if nothing else. Irwin’s rare quality of intelligent zaniness penetrates the senses and reveals clowning to be the extraordinary performance art form that it is.

Lessons in Tradition, which Irwin co-choreographed with Dorrance (Michelle), was a 2016 Vail Dance Festival commission. This engagement was its New York premiere. The thin “story” of sorts is the contrast between old-school tap (Irwin) with new tap (Dorrance), but that statement provides no clue as to the piece’s scope and ingenious humor. Any attempt to describe it couldn’t possibly do it justice, so I won’t try. Suffice it to say that Irwin and Dorrance, abetted by Kate Davis and Naomi Funaki, delivered a smashingly entertaining piece of theatrical genius. And although the audience was already well aware of Dorrance and Irwin’s multi-faceted talents, Davis’s multi-dimensional talent (musician, singer, actress, and even hoofer) was a huge, and pleasant surprise.

Warren Craft
in Bill Irwin’s “Harlequin and Pantalone”
Photo by Stephanie Berger

If Lessons in Tradition is “about” the tap tradition. Harlequin and Pantalone, the program’s second world premiere, is “about” the comedic theater tradition. Featuring Irwin’s choreography and libretto, and immeasurably enlivened by his narration, the piece is a non-stop smile — not one of belly laughs, but of recognition that what was being presented was comic genius. Harlequin and Pantalone is a take-off on the standard commedia dell’arte Harlequin story, but it’s limited to the two title characters, and elevated to high art by Irwin’s choreography and libretto, and by the astonishing antics of Warren Craft. Craft has performed in every Dorrance Dance program that I’ve seen, and his tall, thin, bald, ghost-like visage belied the superb quality of his tap execution. But nothing I’ve previously seen from Craft prepared me for his comedic tour de force dual character performance here, providing yet another example of the multi-dimensional talents of the members of this company. While it may be a little short on the dance component, Harlequin and Pantalone is a gem.

Dorrance Dance
in Brenda Bufalino’s “Jump Monk”
Photo by Stephanie Berger.

And it was succeeded by yet another gem: the evening’s closing piece, the company premiere of Bufalino’s Jump Monk. Like the earlier Dorrance choreography on this program, Bufalino’s choreography here proves what Dorrance herself has been saying so emphatically: that boundary breaking as her choreography is, it is built on a foundation established by others. Jump Monk was choreographed in 1997 for the North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble, and my understanding is that this is its first performance by a different company.

Trying to describe Bufalino’s choreography, like attempting to describe Dorrance’s, is an impossible task. It could easily have become a jumble of movement to Charles Mingus’s jazzy, percussive, exuberant music, but it’s not. On the contrary, it’s a coherent dance that, as Dorrance did with Jungle Blues, uses tap as a vehicle for seeing the music, but presents it in a form that provides a definite structure of lines and patterns within which the tap creativity explodes with energy. Like everything else on the program, Jump Monk is a celebration, and a joy to watch.

Just as tap is far more than slamming one’s metal-augmented feet to the floor, this Dorrance Program was far more than an evening of tap. At the risk of abusing an already abused metaphor, it was the grandest of grand slams.

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New York City Ballet

Easy
In the Night
The Runaway
Something to Dance About: Jerome Robbins, Broadway at the Ballet

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Opera House
Washington, DC

April 6, 2019 Matinee

Carmel Morgan

NYCB’s Program B was even more diverse than Program A, and it ignited more passion from the audience as well. Justin Peck’s Easy, to music by Leonard Bernstein, is bouncy and fun. It makes a snappy tribute to both Bernstein and Jerome Robbins. The cheerful pink, yellow, and blue of the casual costumes, even the sneakers (by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung) and set (scenery by Philadelphia street artist Stephen Powers) positively pop, as does the chipper dancing. Christopher Grant, a member of the corps, really shined, and added a ton of charm to the work. The dancing in Easy is playful, theatrical, jazzy. Dancers exchange broad conspiratorial smiles.

New York City Ballet’s Easy
choreographed by Justin Peck, photo by Paul Kolnik

Robbins’ In the Night, to music by Frédéric Chopin, isn’t one of the chirpy Robbins’ pieces, it’s elegant. Three couples (Ashley Laracey and Alec Knight; Emilie Garrity and Ask la Cour; Brittany Pollack and Peter Walker) in different stages of a relationship dance under a single starlit sky. They’re introduced individually, and then they all meet together at the end of the work. The first couple, Laracey and Knight, seem to be infatuated with each other, beginning to fall in love. They were my favorite of the three couples. She floated as lightly as her gossamer lilac skirt, and he glided along with her, the two mirroring each other’s movement. Definitely a fairy tale romance! The second couple seemed more grounded, having already passed the falling in love stage. Garrity was swept up by la Cour in a dazzling lift and was turned completely upside down, so that her feet were vertical beside his head. The third couple, Pollack and Walker, fight, but even when they move away from each other, they’re drawn back. At one point Pollack leaves Walker, exiting the stage, only to dramatically leap back into his arms from the wings like a magnet. In the end, the couples nod to each other in acknowledgement — are they different versions of the same couple?

I cannot do Kyle Abraham’s The Runaway justice in a short paragraph or two. It’s so striking and brilliant, it’s awe-inducing. It’s also challenging, both to the dancers and the audience. The Runaway has searing messages about racism and contemporary culture, I think, embedded in it. Taylor Stanley was phenomenal, unforgettable. He began and ended The Runaway, and in my view served as its power source. Dan Scully’s lighting allowed all of Stanley’s muscles to be seen and appreciated. I marveled at Stanley’s control as he balanced, one leg extended high into the air for what seemed like forever. The ripples and shudders that moved through his body, too, were absolutely riveting.

New York City Ballet in The Runaway, choreography by Kyle Abraham, photo by Paul Kolnik

The costumes by Giles Deacon are difficult to describe, but are fantastic. Inky black and white patterns, hair-like headpieces and collars, even one headpiece that rises into the air like a palm tree. I got the sense that the dancers initially represented a tribe of some sort — with unique attributes. As the music moved from Nico Muhly’s classical score into the realm of hip-hop and rap, the dancers became not the original tribe, but members of a group that co-opted movement of the tribe, and robbed the tribe of its innocence. And yet the spirit of tribe remained indomitable. Or something along those lines? I’m not entirely sure what it all means, but I’m sure I loved it. The choreography is gripping and bold, and the dancers were fierce.

New York City Ballet’s Taylor Stanley in Kyle Abraham’s The Runaway, photo by Erin Baiano

Closing Program B was Something to Dance About: Jerome Robbins, Broadway the Ballet. It’s a compilation of Robbins’ greatest Broadway hits, directed and staged by Tony Award-winning director and choreographer director Warren Carlyle. It’s sort of like a choreographic career highlights reel, performed live. Something to Dance About is sweet and light, vibrant and lovable. Guest vocalist Leah Horowitz sang while dancers moved around her. Is one of the pieces included “America” from West Side Story? You bet. The “Wedding Dance” from Fiddler on the Roof? Yep. 

New York City Ballet’s Something to Dance About: Jerome Robbins, Broadway at the Ballet, choreography by Jerome Robbins with direction and musical staging by Warren Carlyle, photo by Paul Kolnik

A video featuring Robbins’ own words kicks off Something to Dance About, and it ends with the dancers turning their backs to the audience and curtseying to a large projection of a photo of Robbins, which is affecting. In between it’s all colorful costumes, lively dancing, songs that stick with you. It was a wonderful way to end a wonderful program.

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The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Opera House
Washington, DC

April 9, 2019

Carmel Morgan

Le Corsaire isn’t among my favorite of the classical story ballets (I’m not into kidnapping, sexual assault, slavery, and distasteful cultural caricatures), but I would jump at the chance to see anything the Mariinsky Ballet performs. Their recent production of Le Corsaire at the Kennedy Center was nothing short of spectacular. Normally, I find getting through three acts of any ballet a challenge on a weeknight after a long day at the office. Not so this time. I was captivated from the beginning and remained that way the whole time. Starting with the huge billowy blue waves and slanted rain of the prologue and ending with the pirate ship happily sailing off in the epilogue, excitement reigned.

The Mariinsky Ballet’s Maria Khoreva in Le Corsaire, photo by Natasha Razina ©State Academic Mariinsky Theatre

I have to give credit to everyone who had a hand in Le Corsaire, because each detail added up to perfection. Nothing disappointed me. To the contrary, Le Corsaire was astonishingly grand, like an over-the-top dream. The opulent costumes, the vibrant music, the striking sets, and the exuberant dancing made me want to rub my eyes in disbelief. Seeing Le Corsaire in all of its splendor, I understood more deeply why the Russians flock to see ballets in such big numbers. When ballets are performed at this level, it’s simply thrilling. Instead of being passively pretty or pleasant, watching the Mariinsky’s Le Corsaire felt active, more like being a fan at a sporting event or on an amusement park ride, except with top notch artistry to match the constant anticipation and leaps of the heart.

The Mariinsky Ballet’s Maria Khoreva in Le Corsaire, photo by Natasha Razina © State Academic Mariinsky Theatre

Under normal circumstances, Le Corsaire isn’t a terribly engaging story, but the Mariinsky’s dancers breathed magic into every moment. Rather than seeming like the silly old story it is, this Le Corsaire pulsed with surprising liveliness, and I actually felt invested in what took place. Although they made it look easy, the dancers must have worked very hard to achieve the exhilarating and stunningly smooth performances they gave. The pantomime was lively and clear and well integrated so that the story efficiently flowed. In particular, Soslan Kulaev as Seid Pasha pointedly entertained, expertly turning himself into both a creepy villain and a buffoon.

The Mariinsky Ballet’s Maria Khoreva in Le Corsaire, photo © Svatlana Avvakum

The entire opening night cast impressed, especially 18-year-old rising star and first soloist Maria Khoreva as Medora and principal dancer Kimin Kim who reprised his first role with the company as the slave, Ali. Their dancing defied gravity. Kim launched so high, so gracefully, and with such prowess, that he seemed inhuman. And Khoreva, too, seemed to go beyond the bounds of humanity as she speedily spun around and around, tight and upright and beaming, or was swept up and lifted, light as a feather, toward impossibly elevated heights. Together their physical mastery and artistic excellence astounded.  

The Mariinsky Ballet’s Kimin Kim in Le Corsaire, photo by Valentin Baranovsky

I surely witnessed an important piece of history as Khoreva, fresh and eager, delivered such a solid and inspiring performance in her first lead role in a full length ballet in the United States. Khoreva’s legs flew up to her nose and the back of her head like they were pulled with invisible strings. Her back pliantly curved, her feet crisply arched, and her elastic limbs stretched on forever. Khoreva is excruciatingly thin, however, and I found myself appreciating her more when her mid-section was covered versus when I saw her ribs noticeably protruding beneath her bare skin in Act I’s bikini top costume. Remarkably, despite her tiny physique, she also boasts incredible strength and unflagging energy. It was definitely an opening night to remember.

The Mariinsky Ballet’s Maria Khoreva in Le Corsaire, photo by Natasha Razina © State Academic Mariinsky Theatre

Comparisons to Diana Vishneva, in whose footsteps Khoreva follows at the Mariisnky, may not be far off. I caught a glimpse of a knowing, self-assured smile that reminded me very much of Vishneva, and I suspect Khoreva’s young career is headed for the same kind of acclaim. While Khoreva is exceptionally good now, she has room to grow and improve. She could add more depth to her performance and also a little more abandon. I feel certain that will happen over time as she matures and takes on new roles. Without a doubt, I expect to see Khoreva soar even higher. She already enjoys tremendous popularity as a darling of Instagram. I can only imagine that Khoreva will continue to gain admirers as she’s given additional opportunities to show off and expand her talent.

The Mariinsky Ballet in Le Corsaire, photo by Valentin Baranovsky

The kind of ballet Khoreva and Kim exemplify is the kind that keeps the Russians cheering and coming back for more. (There were plenty of Russian language speakers in attendance, as always happens when a Russian ballet company comes to DC. Interestingly, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and his wife were present, too.) The audience went wild with applause for Le Corsaire. Like at a rock concert, cell phones came out flashing during the curtain call and audience members squealed with joy. This is what great ballet can be!

The post Mariinsky Ballet: Le Corsaire appeared first on CriticalDance.

[pending receipt of performance photographs]

Natalia Osipova’s Pure Dance, with David Hallberg
New York City Center
New York, New York

April  3, 2019
The Leaves are Fading (pas de deux), Flutter, In Absentia, Six Years Later, Ave Maria, Valse Triste

Jerry Hochman

As might be expected in an evening of dance featuring two of the finest ballet dancers of this generation, there was nothing less than stellar about their performances, those of the two other dancers with whom Osipova and Hallberg shared the program (Jonathan Goddard and Jason Kittelberger), and many of the six dances in which they appeared. It might not have been the kind of “pure dance” that the program’s title implies (not a single piece on the program lacked at least some emotional or thematic component), but to me this was a positive. As good as most of it was, however, until the evening’s final piece, something was missing – those very qualities that make Osipova and Hallberg the great dancers they are.

One of these qualities is the capacity to make ballet movement sing. Perhaps that’s why I so admired their execution of Alexei Ratmansky’s Valse Triste – and perhaps it’s also because Ratmansky choreographed this ballet on them (it premiered with the initial performance of this program, at Sadlers Wells in London on September 12, 2018). Ratmansky’s pieces often require more than one viewing to fully appreciate their complexities and wit, and maybe that will be the case with Valse Triste. But on first view, the piece is the joyful song in movement that I’d looked forward to seeing throughout the evening, and that I’ll look forward to seeing again to fully appreciate. But for now, its presence as the concluding piece on the program made the wait to get there worthwhile.

To Jean Sibelius’s eponymous 1904 composition, the piece, like the music, is a study in pleasant contradiction. “Valse Triste” means “sad waltz,” but there is nothing sad about the music. The contradictions arise from Sibelius’s subject – the arrival of death, and the furious attempts to escape its grasp that precede it. That aspect of the piece does not exist in Ratmansky’s ballet – what’s there is a delicious and enchanting duet that begins (as does the music) reflectively, but soon is overwhelmed with exuberance. Instead of an annunciation of death, the music here becomes a celebration of a relationship rescued from the depths of … something (whatever it was that prompted the initial image) to, ultimately and literally, soar. As the piece begins, Hallberg stops to think about …something, and Osipova playfully pulls him out of it. They glide through the air and across the stage, they entertain each other with solos, they inspire each other – all through silken smooth choreography that characteristically looks far simpler than it is. It’s a magnificent little piece, and it was a magnificent way to end this program.

Some of what came before it was quite good; some not; but all the dances were high caliber. For me, the finest were the two solos, In Absentia, danced by Hallberg, and Ave Maria, by Osipova.

I’ve only seen one dance choreographed by Kim Brandstrup, Jeux, a piece he created for New York City Ballet. As undeniably well-crafted as it was, I found it muddy, with images that, though interesting in a cerebral way, were inscrutable. In Absentia is a much more focused piece, and far more successful both in concept and in execution.

The extensive program note, however, almost scuttled it. There Brandstrup relates the title to two things: the way in which a dancer, having absorbed the music to a particular piece, “absents” himself from the world around him and focuses his attention on making the music flow from within. The other sense of “absence,” according to Brandstrup, relates to the way he says Hallberg reacted in the studio while creating this piece, resulting in a sense of solitude that infused the room.

David Hallberg,
here with Stella Abrera
in Alexei Ratmansky’s
“Whipped Cream”
Photo by Gene Schiavone

I saw none of that, although I don’t doubt both happened as the dance was being prepared. Choreographed to J.S. Bach’s Chaconne in D-minor, Part 1, In Absentia is far simpler, and far less cerebral and mystical. Hallberg is seated in a chair slightly downstage right, facing a light emanating from that corner of the stage, as if hypnotized by it. But there’s a difference between being catatonic and being totally absorbed in whatever it is that’s commanding his attention, and Hallberg definitely communicated the latter. The mysterious, somehow pervasive beam of light serves another function – emanating from below and in front of Hallberg, it casts his huge shadow against the back stage scrim (lighting design by Jean Kalman). The image of a brooding Hallberg literally overshadowed by the echo of a brooding Hallberg is emblematic of the power that this “force” has over him, and the Herculean effort it might take, in his mind, to relieve himself of this shadowy burden.

Following this initial period of blank-faced concentration, Hallberg lifts himself from the chair, and, still possessed by that dominating “force,” responds to it in movement, as if, having been presented with some scenario, he was – seemingly mindlessly – working through whatever the experience was. Another way to see it, equally valid I think, is that he was exploring impulses of his own that no longer existed, having been subsumed by the spell that this force had over him. Either way, Hallberg’s performance as a man who isn’t there, but is, is as magnificent in its own way as was his portrayal of the tormented, emotionally imprisoned victim of totalitarian excess, with the unseen image of Stalin looming over his shoulder, in Ratmansky’s Chamber Symphony, from his Shostakovich Trilogy. [And how appropriate it would have been for American Ballet Theatre to have returned this masterpiece to their repertory this coming Met 2019 season.]

In the end, unable to escape the force that has captured him (or having worked through whatever moribund inclinations he may have had), Hallberg returns to his chair, and to staring at that light – which now clearly is emanating from some screen (either television or a computer monitor) to which he has yielded his mind and body.

So, if it’s not sufficiently apparent, In Absentia is “about” a person who absents himself from community, a zombie-ish prisoner of a a different sort of totalitarianism. In someone else’s hands, this piece might have been as commonplace as the dance’s subject would lead one to believe. But in Hallberg’s, it cut like a knife.

Natalia Osipova,
here in Russell Maliphant’s
“Silent Echo”
Photo by Bill Cooper

To balance Hallberg’s solo, Osipova danced one of her own: Ave Maria, choreographed by Yuka Oishi. I’m not familiar with Oishi’s work, but this solo was highly accomplished, although with limited movement variety. That being said, it relied more on Osipova’s infusion of character than on steps.

The dance opens with Osipova, in a simple but stunning white dress (costume design by Stewart J. Charlesworth), with her back to the audience. As she begins to move to the strains of Schubert’s composition, she, uncharacteristically, looks weighted, as if burdened, or broken. Oishi stresses in a program note that the piece is not religious, but about a woman’s “strength of love and sensibility.” I disagree. While there’s certainly evidence of strength, it’s the strength to cope, to survive, and to overcome adversity. She’s not lamenting (this is not akin to Martha Graham’s Lamentation); she’s overcoming. And a religious element is produced not just by the nature of the music, but in images of Osipova reaching upward as if in prayer, even if it’s praying only to some unknown force, and for more strength. It’s a mystical quality that infuses the dance, which has an Asian, maybe Indian, feel. With an included sense of ritual, Ave Maria brings to my mind’s eye a solo that Nikiya might have danced in La Bayadere. That being said, Osipova makes the most of the limited movement, seething with passionate resolve to overcome whatever it is that is beating her down, and saving it from being an overly saccharine tribute to a woman’s inner strength.

The two contemporary dances had moments, but didn’t really gel. Flutter is choreographed by Ivan Perez to music by Nico Muhly (“Mothertongue: 1. Archive, II. Shower, IV. Monster”), a composition comprised of a soundscape of women’s voices speaking the numbers of addresses where Muhly had lived. Some of it sounds angelic, but most of it comes across as just a very strange, and affected, take on Julio Iglesias’s “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before.”

Flutter is almost as strange. Osipova and Goddard are crazy for each other – their fluttering arms and legs seeming to propel them to more fluttering arms and legs. Every once in awhile, the couple retreat upstage to the back scrim, but do not disappear in the darkness (the program note says they do; they don’t). They just retreat as if regrouping, and then return to center stage. And every once in awhile, Osipova will be drawn toward the front of the stage, looking down briefly at where the orchestra pit might be, looking increasingly nervous about what’s there.

Natalia Osipova and Jason Kittelberger,
here with James O’Hara
in Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s “Qutb”
Photo Bill Cooper

As this dance progresses, the significance, and the time devoted to, Osipova’s peering into this abyss of sorts and being impacted by it increases, until it almost destroys the relationship – but it doesn’t. What purpose does this serve? Perez doesn’t say in the program note, but the only explanation that makes sense is that the abyss is what Osipova sees when she looks into an uncertain future. I suppose, as visual metaphors go, it’s as good as any, but between the fluttery choreography, the meaningless retreats upstage, and the growing significance of this abyss, it all borders on the sophomoric.

Osipova and Goddard make the most of the fluttering choreography (as I watched, I thought of a Dancing With the Stars “quick step,” zapped with a continuing electric charge that made the dancers’ limbs flail uncontrollably), but as good as their execution was, nothing could really save this piece.

Six Years Later is better, but it’s a close call. This dance is about is a different kind of “abyss” – the abyss of memory, and the persistence of it, real or imagined. Its narrative of sorts, according to the program note, is a casual encounter, which may or may not have been so casual, and which spawns memories of presumed past encounters, which may have happened, or maybe didn’t, or maybe followed the opening encounter, or maybe happened many times. The piece is filled with passion, artificial excuses for disagreements, break ups, reunions, passion, artificial reasons for disagreements … you get the idea. It also featured, choreographically, a lot of head-pulling and manipulating, which beyond the obvious sensation of the characters playing with each other’s heads, made me uncomfortable.

What saves the dance is the superb job that Osipova and Kittelberger do in investing their characters with a touch of humanity despite the contrived silliness of what they’re doing. Don’t misinterpret that – this kind of situation – memories built on memories that get rekindled or re-remembered repeatedly – is not an unusual phenomenon. It awaits a more intelligent rendering than choreographer Roy Assaf gave it. But Six Years Later has the music (Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata), and more of a purpose than a generalized fear of some unknown abyss. And Kittelberger, who I last saw in another Osipova program (with Sergei Polunin) in 2016 at City Center, in Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Qutb, and who I described then as being very good as somewhat of a stone in motion, here displayed considerable emotional involvement – but it was undone by the choreographic artificiality.

This brings me all the way back to the program’s opening piece: to me, the evening’s one major disappointment. Antony Tudor’s The Leaves are Fading is one of my favorite ballets. From the first time I saw it, it struck a chord – and not just because I saw it at its premiere performance. It was the subject of my first review (not a formal one; an assignment for a class I was taking at the New School). I remember everything about it vividly – including most memorably the central pas de deux with Gelsey Kirkland and Jonas Kage. Somehow, it made my heart soar and melt and explode at the same time. I’ve seen it many times since, including danced by Amanda McKerrow and John Gardner, who staged this presentation and who were in the audience for this opening night, and I have very strong feelings about it.

Taking this pas de deux out of context exemplifies why I react negatively to excerpts from larger pieces that are presented out of context. It may be a scene apart, but it’s a part of a whole, without which it becomes a simple, lovely pas de deux without a reason for being. In context, within a woman’s autumnal memories, it’s a reimagining of what it was like to be young and in love. Several smaller duets precede it, each very nice but each somewhat surface, like a summer romance. And then the Kirkland / Kage duet became the focus, beginning like the others, but gradually becoming something considerably more. The change in character, all within the context of a woman’s memory, from what may have been a summer fling to the couple’s recognition that this love was going to last and endure, is in Antonin Dvorak’s skillfully assembled music and Tudor’s choreography, and epitomizes why Tudor is the master of being able to see inside a character’s head and make them not just real, but compelling. And, of course, it requires performances capable of expressing those emotions primarily through the choreography, but also through the soul – with a minimum of emoting. Kirkland had it with Kage and later with Ivan Nagy, as did Amanda McKerrow, who performed it together with John Gardner, both of whom staged this performance. It’s soul.

But that soul, that connection, was absent from Osipova and Hallberg’s performance. Their execution was first rate, but it was steps. The emotional growth, the recognition and the communication that this relationship was different from the others, wasn’t there. It wasn’t their fault – it couldn’t have been communicated as an excerpt. It left me appreciating their performances, but feeling unmoved.

Which returns me, now, to the end, and the beginning. Had I not seen the relationship built between Osipova and Hallberg during the ballet’s closing piece, Ratmansky’s Valse Triste, I might have wondered about the quality of their reportedly legendary relationship (despite the undeniable quality of their Giselle with ABT a couple of years ago). I still doubt that theirs is anything close to the stage relationship between Diana Vishneva and Marcelo Gomes, but at the end of Valse Triste, when Hallberg lifts Osipova horizontally overhead, her body facing the sky, arms and legs extended upward, both joyously acting as one, this gave me some hope that they will return, together, in a vehicle that can more suitably reveal the character of their stage relationship.

The post Osipova and Hallberg: Pure Dance at City Center appeared first on CriticalDance.

Apollo, Deco, The Cage, and Stravinsky Violin Concerto
Merriam Theater
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

April 7, 2019 at 2:00pm

Sigrid Payne DaVeiga

Audience members awaited their seats early today at the Merriam Theater on this beautiful spring day, as if what they expected from Pennsylvania Ballet’s All Stravinsky Program would surpass the delights of the cherry blossom season freshly burst upon the city of Philadelphia. The excitement was palpable as the curtain opened on the still and statuesque figure of Arian Molina Soca as Apollo and gasps of awe were heard throughout the theater.

Apollo was a pleasurable opening selection in today’s program in its efforts to introduce Igor Stravinsky’s stylistic diversity as a composer and the first major collaboration between Stravinsky and George Balanchine performed first in 1928. Balanchine’s choreography in Apollo was interesting and timeless in its intentional restraint of movement and refinement in its precision. Soca’s rendition of Apollo was masculine and beautiful. He struck an infinite number of picturesque shapes fitting of the subject of a photograph today, strikingly in alignment with Soca’s new and impressive work as a photographer himself for Pennsylvania Ballet. Soca is demonstrating himself to be a dancer of extreme talent who embodies his art but is also capable of capturing the beauty of its form through the lens of his camera when he looks on other dancers in their work and beauty.

Arian Molina Soca and Oksana Maslova in Apollo
Photo: Alexander Iziliaev

The three female dancers featured today as Apollo’s half-sisters were Oksana Maslova as Terpsichore, Dayesi Torriente as Polyhymnia and Nayara Lopes as Calliope. All three dancers performed their selections with extreme precision and flawlessness. The rapture of their performances was not necessarily in their athletic extensions or ability to fill the stage but more in their delicate delivery of the reserved yet complicated choreography. Their ease of movement made it easy to overlook the difficulty in the intricacies of their footwork.

The magnificent collaboration required to dance in intertwining shapes together in such a beautiful and seamless framework was like looking into a perfect pocket-watch where one can see all the tiny moving pieces functioning flawlessly with a clock-work fastidiousness. The moment when all three women held hands in a circle with Soca with their backs to one another and delicately lifted their legs in a simultaneous arabesque penche was breathtaking.

They had a seemingly unconscious capacity to register their neighbor’s location and timing in such a way that their legs appeared to arrive upwards at exactly the same instant but in truth they silently negotiated the arrival of their arabesques so that no single dancer was affected by another, like one person breathing the same breath. The audience’s rapture was felt most strikingly in the last moment of the piece in the iconic shape created of the three women’s legs in arabesque at slightly different heights holding onto Soca’s Apollo in the shadow of the setting sun, like the Gods of the myths from which their story stems. The audience was enraptured with this piece and the applause was effusive.

Arian Molina Soca and Artists of Pennsylvania Ballet in Apollo
Photo: Alexander Iziliaev

After a brief pause, today’s performance moved to the second selection, Deco, a world premiere by Matthew Neenan set to Stravinsky’s Tango (1941) and Sonata (1924). Albert Gordon was heavily featured in this piece as the opening soloist. His movements were simultaneously sharp and whimsical with flair reminiscent of the movement of the tango. Jacqueline Callahan and Kathryn Manger danced the female roles in this piece today. They were both tempestuous and flirtatious in their dancing and invited the audience to share in the fun and seduction of this piece.

Artists of Pennsylvania Ballet in Deco
Photo: Arian Molina Soca

There were some intriguing moments when the dancers danced to silence and then they were joined by Stravinsky’s magical score, transcending a space of sound and movement that brought authenticity to the intention of the piece. The pianist, Martha Koeneman, played all of the music for this piece. Koeneman’s bright light for her music set an interesting scene against the dark stage and dramatically underscored the musicality of this piece and created the ambience of a tango. Manger was a real highlight here; she clearly enjoys performing and is so light-footed and delightful to watch. The strident closing pose of the five dancers as the lights went out finished this piece on another strong note as the dancers’ enticing smiles and outstretched arms were still visible, reminiscent of a scene from a raucous night of fun that the audience definitely enjoyed.

The third selection, and favorite, today was the company premiere of The Cage choreographed by Jerome Robbins (1951) felt at the time to be a shocking piece of choreography. The Cage was an exceptional selection to feature the power of the female dancers of Pennsylvania Ballet. The curtain opened on a full stage-height web-like cage structure enclosing fourteen of the female dancers, unrecognizable in flesh-toned leotards covered with intricate dark markings and with their hair splayed out in wild shapes. Thirteen of these women surrounded another woman, the Novice, danced by Yuka Iseda, who was wrapped in a shroud almost like a mummy. The women’s movements were harsh and brutal as they unwrapped Iseda from the shroud and in an animalistic interaction left her exposed.

Ian Hussey and Yuka Iseda in The Cage
Photo: Alexander Iziliaev

Iseda’s movements were initially frail and entirely convincing as she reached out to find her space and then would cower into herself as the most vulnerable creature amongst the group. Her costume was similar to the other women once unclothed but there was the added feature of a white rib cage over the back of her leotard  which enhanced her appearance of vulnerability. Sydney Dolan masterfully played the role of The Queen of this band of creatures; her movements aggressive and violent as she claimed her space as the dominant creature.

Aleksey Babayev danced the role of the first intruder into the cage and Iseda’s Novice moves quickly and brutally to make him lose his footing. Her petite frame appears to violently break his neck against a dramatic crashing note in the music. Even more shocking was Ian Hussey’s interplay with Iseda when he appears as the second intruder into the cage. Iseda and Hussey perform the most lovely and passionate pas de deux of the entire performance today. The dance was unparalleled in its capacity to convince the audience that the two were enraptured with one another. Their partnering was perfect; her extensions beautiful and their connection as dancers magnificent. The grotesque nature of Iseda’s quick movements to destroy Hussey, after their perfectly beautiful and intimate pas de deux, was shocking and terrible. Iseda’s interpretation of this character, initially so fragile amongst the creatures, with the ability to transition into extreme aggressive violence such that she is ultimately elevated amongst the creatures in the cage was truly horrifying and chilling. The Cage was definitely the highlight of today’s production and left the audience in complete awe.

Ian Hussey and Yuka Iseda in The Cage
Photo: Alexander Iziliaev

The closing selection after a second intermission today was Stravinsky Violin Concerto, an enduring collaboration between Stravinsky and Balanchine. Mayara Pineiro and Lillian DiPiazza were the featured female principal dancers in this selection. Zecheng Liang and Sterling Baca were their respective partners. The first movements of the piece focused on one of the principal dancers set against for four dancers of the same or opposite gender. The movements of the piece throughout were quick and vivacious and the group of dancers had a great energy moving the audience through each asymmetric pairing.

Pineiro and Liang danced the first pas de deux, intended to present a sophisticated portrayal of power dynamics. The message was most obvious in the unusual shapes the two dancers created as Pineiro circled the stage in an interesting revolution of backbends with her hands on the floor. Pineiro delicately placed her arabesque onto Liang’s shoulder and he gracefully promenaded her in this challenging position. Their pas de deux was artistic and captivating.

DiPiazza and Baca danced the second pas de deux, the focus of which was an affectionate and oppressive co-dependence between partners. DiPiazza danced this pas de deux beautifully. The curiosity of their forms piqued the audience’s intrigue as DiPiazza’s feet were flexed in fifth position and Baca lifted her into the air. It was curiously off-putting but intriguing and well-delivered. The passion and poignancy of the piece was most obvious in an extended moment when DiPiazza simply leaned backwards on Baca and they watched her hand move back and forth together.

Zecheng Liang and Mayara Pineiro in Stravinsky Violin Concerto
Photo: Alexander Iziliaev

Stravinsky Violin Concerto closed on the entire group of dancers moving brightly in a beautiful collaboration against a light portion of music. The choreography again created the image of an intricate piece of craftsmanship, a perfect pocket-watch where every single tick of a second hand and turn of a tiny pointe shoe works in unison to shift all of the pieces of a glistening piece of machinery together. The audience was spellbound with today’s performance and the Merriam Theater was filled with thunderous applause as the production ended.

The post Pennsylvania Ballet – All Stravinsky Program appeared first on CriticalDance.

Tom Gold Dance
The Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College
New York, New York

April 4, 2019
Significant Strangers, Counterpoint, Blind Revelry

Jerry Hochman

Some things are a given. Like the sun rising in the east. Like April showers that bring May flowers. Like always hitting a traffic jam (or a subway delay) when you’re in a hurry to get somewhere. Like my being late to post reviews. One of these “givens” is the quality of Tom Gold’s choreography. Having only recently been introduced to his company (recently being five years ago; the company was formed in 2008), I’m continually surprised at the variety, as well as the skill, that his choreography reflects. The common denominator among all his pieces is that there is no common denominator.

For this year’s annual season Gold outdid himself, presenting three pieces of indisputable quality that couldn’t have been more different from each other. One, Significant Strangers, was a world premiere; a second, Blind Revelry, was a New York premiere, and the third, Counterpoint, was one I’d seen two years ago, but which here looked reborn. Each demonstrated, in addition to craftsmanship and variety, another quality often absent from contemporary ballet: they were all hopelessly interesting, especially if you value a challenge in addition to enjoying a clever choreographic presentation. Significant Strangers is an example.

Evelyn Kocak and Michael Sean Breeden
in Tom Gold’s “Significant Strangers”
Photo by Eugene Gologursky

I had not heard of the composition by Leonard Bernstein that Gold, a former New York City Ballet soloist, uses as the foundation for this dance. Not knowing anything of the score forces one – or at least me – to try to figure out what it’s doing being part of the dance (as opposed to having a preconceived notion of the music, and whether the dance “fits” or allows me to see the music in a different way). That’s what I tried to do here. Sometimes it’s just a matter of the music fitting the choreographer’s vision of the piece, which is fine. In other situations there’s an intellectual connection. It took awhile before I figured out what Gold was doing, but once I did (or at least think I did), I recognized how extraordinarily polished a dance Significant Strangers is.

Part of my difficulty was that the program description did not indicate the name of the Bernstein composition at the beginning of its identification of the music, instead mentioning a series of names which I thought were the score’s dedications, culminating in “For My Daughter, Nina, from Anniversaries.”  I assumed that the title of the Bernstein composition was “Significant Strangers,” that it was dedicated to a whole lot of people, and that the title Anniversaries only related to “For My Daughter…”  The only part of the description I understood correctly was that it was dedicated to a whole lot of people.

Beginning in 1942, Bernstein created brief compositions to commemorate the birthdays of people significant to him, who may well have been strangers to each other. The first, Seven Anniversaries, included “tributes” to, among the seven, Aaron Copland and Sergei Koussevitzky. These musical gifts were even pithier than musical short stories. Some lasted minutes, some seconds; they conveyed the impression Bernstein had of these peoples’ characters, and then stopped. Each is a unique jewel. Together, however, they comprised an eclectic but remarkably coherent suite of musical miniatures. After the success of Seven Anniversaries, Bernstein followed with Four Anniversaries in 1948, Five Anniversaries in 1949-51, and Thirteen Anniversaries in 1988, each following the same format as the original. These compositions are collectively referred to as the “Anniversaries.”

With rare exception (if any), Bernstein’s music explores character. From Fancy Free to West Side Story to Dybbuk. the music is meant not as abstract rumblings of rhythm, but as a reflection of the character that is the human element of the musical subject, which Jerome Robbins subsequently visualized. Gold here does the same. He’s cherry-picked 14 from among those 29 “Anniversaries” that best fit his concept of the flow of a dance, and the result is a suite of diverse images that are choreographically interesting and as distinct from each other as are the characters Bernstein celebrates. It’s also, whether intended or not, a tribute to Bernstein. And it’s a very appropriate way to recognize that this year is the celebration of Bernstein’s 100th Anniversary (a two-year event, beginning on August 25, 2017 and, carrying through his 100th year, ending on August 25, 2019), as last year was the celebration of Robbins’s Centennial.

Significant Strangers should not be confused with, say Sir Frederick Ashton’s Enigma Variations. It’s not a visualization of characters as much as it’s a visualization of character based on the dancers’ choreographic interactions.

Adriana Pierce and Michael Holden
in Tom Gold’s “Significant Strangers”
Photo by Eugene Gologursky

Performed by a cast of four, the piece carries the theme of “significant strangers” from brief movement to brief movement, using the music in each section to power Gold’s choreography of independent characters, or pairs, or groups, and in the process creating a stage landscape of miniatures that may be humorous one moment, sweet the next, and featuring characters that may be dominant or submissive, caring or uninterested, male or female. Describing each individual dance is virtually impossible because they were presented seamlessly; the only unifying choreographic factor for each is the quality of Gold’s choreography.

The only drawback to Sophisticated Strangers is that Bernstein’s music is not so much a celebration of birthdays as an occasion to reflect on how he sees the particular person’s character. So although the rhythm varies, there are few soaring melodies or attention-grabbing punctuations. For that reason, the dance can seem slow-paced (even though many movements are quite spirited). But that’s surface. If you see what Gold is doing, how his choreography differs from movement to movement no matter how brief, what you see is sophisticated choreography. Evelyn Kocak, Adriana Pierce, Michael Sean Breeden, and Michael Holden were the highly capable cast of dancers, and Joseph Liccardo provided the live piano accompaniment.

Gold created Counterpoint, a pas de deux which followed Sophisticated Strangers on this program, in 2017, and I saw it during that premiere engagement. I enjoyed it then, but it’s better now. Part of my modified opinion has to do with a change in costumes. Part also with a change in cast. And perhaps (though I’m not sure), part with a modification to the choreography.

Abigail Mentzer and Barton Cowperthwaite
in Tom Gold’s “Counterpoint”
Photo by Eugene Gologursky

Choreographed to two composition by Steve Reich (New York Counterpoint and Nagoya Marimbas), at its premiere the dance had an otherworldly feel, primarily a consequence of the very strange-looking costumes. Although the male dancer in the duet is still bare-chested, the costumes have now been replaced with new ones designed by Marlene Olson Hamm, and the sense of otherworldliness, which was a distraction, has disappeared. Even though the costume for the female half of the pair is still distinctive, it’s distinctive in a casual way, and it fits the piece far better.

As I observed two years ago, Counterpoint is one of Gold’s more interesting dances. It’s structured similarly to a classical grand pas de deux – except there’s more structural variety here than one might usually find. But it’s choreographic content rather than structure that makes this dance interesting, and it’s a more challenging piece to like because it’s relatively cerebral. That being said, the current incarnation looks less quirky than it did previously. Maybe in the intervening two years Gold subtly modified the choreography. More likely, however, is that the dance looked different because of a change of cast, with Abigail Mentzer and Barton Cowperthwaite assuming the roles, and with it, a change in counterpoint.

A graduate of the School of American Ballet and a former soloist with the Pennsylvania Ballet, Mentzer provided a solid, commanding and fiery execution, as well as a change in level of physical maturity (and I don’t mean that as a negative). It may have been less polished than what I’d seen at the dance’s premiere, but it was delivered with far more confidence and animation. Cowperthwaite, who first joined the company last season, provided the unexpected counterpoint. Tall and lithe, Cowperthwaite sailed across the stage like liquid silver, and added far more grace, magnetism, and physical power to the role then I’d previously seen. A dancer with an eclectic background in ballet and contemporary dance, Cowperthwaite here owned the stage.

The evening’s final piece, Blind Revelry, is strange … because we don’t know what’s happening and why. But that strangeness is part of the piece’s charm. It’s also a cover for another interestingly structured example of ballet choreography that blends a sense of ballet tradition with a contemporary flair.

Members of Tom Gold Dance
in “Blind Revelry”
Photo by Eugene Gologursky

Blind Revelry is about … blind revelry. Literally. It’s a visualization of a party of sorts, in which the dancers are costumed in a variety of outfits, and there’s a central female character dressed in black. All wear masks that cover their eyes. Onto the scene appears a woman in white, without mask. Innocent … but at the same time curious about what this revelry is about. [An acolyte? A novice? A chosen one?), who eventually is convinced to / is required to / wants to don a mask as well.

That’s it. Well, not quite. There’s far more to this ballet than that flimsy semblance of a plot. Blind Revelry, which premiered last year at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (and must have looked particularly intriguing in that museum/romantic context), has a pervasive atmosphere of mystery that comes with not really knowing what’s going on, but recognizing that not knowing is not significant. As I watched, I thought of Balanchine’s La Sonnambula and La Valse (though of course on a smaller scale), both of which are superb ballets, and both of which exude an air of mystery without any clear indication of why what’s happening is happening.

That Blind Revelry is a dance of mystery, however, isn’t nearly as important as the process, the structure, that Gold has created to tell this enigmatic story. Kocak, a former principal with Pennsylvania Ballet, is the woman in black (a cross between a mistress of ceremonies and a cult leader) and Mentzer is the woman in white. Whether they’re at stage center or not, the ballet swirls around them. Gold has the balance of cast (Breanne Coughlin, Kaila Feldpausch, Amy Holihan, Breeden, Cowperthwaite, and Holden) assemble as a sort of floating frame that highlights the action. Although this “frame” is a fairly constant presence, it’s not the kind of “frame” that might form a border for lead dancers. Here, the frame’s composition is porous and gap-filled, and changes during the course of the piece – dancers move in and out of it; brief solos and duets emerge from it and then retreat back into it (including the women in black and in white); and it may briefly collapse in order to surround and highlight one of more action foci.  It’s all very fluid, so you don’t necessarily notice its existence. But it’s there. And when I saw what Gold was doing structurally, and how skillfully he was doing it, I just sat back and smiled.

That exposition isn’t meant to, er, mask Gold’s choreography. It’s just that after awhile you get used to it being as varied, skillfully crafted, and interesting as it is. With Gold and his dancers, it’s a given.

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The Print Room at The Coronet
London

21st March 2019

Stuart Sweeney

Saburo Teshigawara’s distinctive work has garnered for him a worldwide reputation as a dancer, choreographer and teacher. It was noteworthy at the opening night of The Idiot that so many of the celebrated names of the London dance world were in attendance. In 2013, Teshigawara founded Karas Apparatus a combined studio, gallery and performance space for up to 60 attendees with post performance discussions part of the routine. It was there that The Idiot was first performed in 2016 and it is fitting that his first visit to England with this production should be in the intimate setting of the Print Room.

It’s confession time: I haven’t read Dosteovsky’s The Idiot, but a quick look at a plot summary was helpful before the performance. The novel, considered one of the author’s finest, charts the life of Prince Myshkin, a young man who has spent several years in a sanatorium and as a result is awkward and inexperienced in dealing with his peer group. Although possessing intelligence and high moral principles, he is sometimes called an idiot by those who do not see below his surface.

We first see Teshigawara framed in a pool of flickering light, standing with knees slightly bent, expressing his vulnerability. As he depicts Myshkin’s physical disability, his movement quality is arresting – a whole body experience with hands, arms and legs apparently with a life of their own as he move with staccato rhythms. In another section, Myshkin’s illness is portrayed with Teshigawara’s hands fluttering like frantic butterflies.

Rihoko Sato and Saburo Teshigawara in The Idiot
Photograph by Elliott Franks

Teshigawara is partnered by Rihoko Sato, playing the role of Nastasya. She is an elegant and precise dancer and we see Myshkin immediately enthralled by this vision. Their duets see Myshkin dancing in his most integrated style, but in her absence he reverts to the earlier, awkward, hectic style.

In the novel, Myshkin is betrothed to Nastasya and on their wedding day, his best friend runs off with bride to be and then kills her. The murderer invites Myshkin to visit and after seeing the body, the Prince descends into madness. On stage, we merely see Nastasya’s body stretched out, which would have lacked resonance for anyone without a knowledge of the tragic circumstances of the original plot. However, Myshkin’s anguish is movingly portrayed by Teshigawara, collapsing onto the his knees with his legs splayed out in hopeless despair.

Saburo Teshigawara in The Idiot
Photograph by Elliott Franks

Overall, Teshigawara and Sato present snapshots of the huge novel with imaginative choreography. I have one caveat: Teshigawara’s disturbed dancing does becomes repetitive and even at only one hour, the performance would be stronger with a 10 minute edit.

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