Wendy Whelan / Restless Creature: Works & Process at the Guggenheim

April 14, 2013

New York City Ballet principal dancer Wendy Whelan, will be appearing at Jacob’s Pillow this summer to present Restless Creature, an evening of new works created for her by four different choreographers. At a Works & Process event at the Guggenheim, the audience was given the opportunity to hear Ms. Whelan and the four choreographers interviewed about the project. They also presented excerpts of two of the dances. Ella Baff, the Executive Director of Jacob’s Pillow, moderated.

Ms. Whelan sounded exuberant throughout the 90 minute presentation. The works that she’ll be performing at Jacob’s Pillow appear to be off the beaten path of classical and neo-classical ballet. Throughout the interview, Ms. Whelan spoke of the challenges as well as the liberation of moving into unchartered territory with these four artists.

The Works & Process event opened with a beautiful solo danced by Ms. Whelan and choreographed by Shen Wei. After dancing, she talked about seeing a performance of Wei’s work eight years earlier, and then having the opportunity to work with him when Peter Boal brought the two of them together. Ms. Whelan described Wei as being very clear in knowing what he wanted -- she said that she loves to see that in an artist. The challenge of stepping out of the ballet world to work with him was huge, but she couldn’t get enough. Among the instruction that he gave her in performing his piece was the request “not to blink”.

There are long rests in the music accompanying the Wei piece. She described the solo as being a dialogue -- the pianist “conversing” with the dancer. The dance is performed en pointe, something that Wei had to adjust to. This drew both dancer and choreographer out of their comfort zones. Wei kept asking her to do pointe work that couldn’t be done, but Ms. Whelan wished that it could be, so both artists focused on moving away from what was familiar. They worked together toward the end of creating original movement.

In choosing the choreographers for Restless Creature, she looked outside the neo-classical world of New York City Ballet. Kyle Abraham was the first choreographer with whom she chose to work. She met Brian Brooks at the Fire Island Dance Festival. She met Joshua Beamish in a ballet class. She chose Alejandro Cerrudo of Hubbard Street, as she’s a great fan of the company.

It was interesting to hear the enthusiasm with which she discussed the dancer-choreographer connection in the studio. She said that there are times when she enjoys this work even more than she enjoys the performance on stage. This is the part of the process that the audience never sees, so Ms. Whelan seemed especially happy that for Restless Creature, this connection that she experiences in the studio will move out on to the stage, as each choreographer will partner her in his piece.

She said that she is very comfortable in her role as dancer and isn’t interested in being the choreographer. She likes to be “the paintbrush” and “mix the paints”, but she doesn’t want to be the one who decides where to put the marks on the canvas.

Ms. Whelan and Joshua Beamish performed an excerpt from his piece. It’s markedly contemporary and very lovely, danced to a dramatic accompaniment which swells and gives way to quieter passages. There is surprising original movement in the upper body and some interesting counterpoint. I especially liked the small gestures of the hands and feet.

Choreographer Brian Brooks worked with Elizabeth Streb and is accustomed to extremes of movement. He said that his choreography embraces physics and momentum rather than fighting against it, as most ballet choreography does. He considers himself to be earthbound, whereas ballet tends to reach for the heavens. He felt that in his collaboration with Mr. Whelan, she begins to bring him skybound, while he draws her back down to earth. Ms. Whelan seemed very enthusiastic about performing his dance without shoes. Later in the program she exclaimed, “I can feel the floor! Taking the shoes off is like taking the bra off!” She seemed to find artistic liberation in bare feet.

Kyle Abraham got his start in rave and hip hop culture. He names Limon, Cunningham and Graham among his influences. He asked Ms. Whelan if his work was challenging for her. She laughed and told him that he could ease up on challenge part. Of all the collaborations, this one seemed the most interesting to me, and I hope that I get the opportunity to see the dance.

Alejandro Cerrudo said that he made a deliberate decision to steer away from specific influences like Ohad Naharin and Jiri Kylian, calling instead upon the accumulation of all of his experience. He admitted that before he met Ms. Whelan, he feared that she might be a diva, but he said that she made it easy for him to relax and focus on the work. Much of his dance is the result of the give and take between dancer and choreographer, unfolding minute by minute in the studio.

Of partnering, Ms. Whelan said that it’s different for each couple. A chemistry arises between the two, as a natural thing. Even in an abstract dance, over the years a story will evolve within it. It grows as a physical conversation.

The program closed with an excerpt from Brian Brooks’ work. Brooks is dressed in black against a black curtain, and at many points he seems to disappear into the darkness of the stage, even though he’s supporting Ms. Whelan’s weight so that she can appear to be defying gravity. The movement of the dance kept rolling and it seemed never to stop. I was taken by the originality and the quirky and clever voice of the work. Much in the way Brooks had described their process, the dance seemed at once to be ethereal and other worldly, yet earthy.

The full world premiere of Wendy Whelan’s Restless Creature will take place in the Ted Shawn Theatre at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, August 14-18, 2013. Tickets for the Pillow world premiere are on sale online at jacobspillow.org or at 413.243.0745.

All photos by Nisian Hughes

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Peridance Contemporary Dance Company

Sunday, March 10, 2013 - Program A

Salvatore Capezio Theater

Peridance Contemporary Dance Company is a wonderful group of strong expressive multi-faceted dancers presenting powerful choreography in a unique voice.

In Igal Perry's Conflicted Terrain, the choreography extends beyond the dancers to the live musicians who performed the stirring String Quartet No. 3 by Górecki. Each player in the quartet is perched on a platform which is moved to different stations throughout the passages of the music and the dance. The piece opens with one of the dancers seated in one of the musician's chairs, before a music stand. To me this seemed like a beautiful metaphor for how deeply and intimately a dancer or a choreographer can become with a piece of music and the performance of it -- as if there's no real demarcation where the music ends and the dance begins.

In the opening moments of the dance, a woman slowly shifts her weight from one foot to the other, releasing the working leg to a high second. As she finally holds the extension, her partner enters and bumps into the extended leg. This motif and a series of other phrases reprise throughout the dance. There are moments of the dance that flow so smoothly, with lovely and complex partnering, and passages in which the couples move in unison. All the while, the undertow of conflict seems to be present as the musicians are rearranged on the stage and distance opens between the couples. At times they are pulling so far from each other that they are only being kept upright by their partner's hold on them. This was a beautiful performance of an imaginative dance.

I'd never before seen Ohad Naharin's Mabul, an excerpt of which was performed on this program by Joanne DeFelice and Christopher Bloom. The clever choreography seemed to revolve around issues of trust and even redemption. Bloom is folded in upon himself, his arms outstretched, his hands clasped as if he's pleading. DeFelice backs away from him. When she allows him close to her, he bangs his head against her chest, as if violence is rising from what could have been a tender moment. The tension seems to be resolved when DeFelice is mounted on Bloom's shoulders as if they are one being, their arms moving in unison.

Infinity, also by Igal Perry, received its world premiere. Set to Beethoven's Hammerklavier, it's an atmospheric piece full of expansive movement in which every gesture seemed to contain its own little world -- a story of its own. The women's bodies are unfurled, their chests are open, arms apart and lengthened, legs long and extended in splits or opening up in sweeping grand rondes. The formations travel the expanse of the entire floor. There's a strong timelessly classical feel behind the contemporary movement.

The performance closed with Dwight Rhoden's Evermore, receiving its world premiere. It's a theatrical piece set to songs sung by Nat King Cole which would have been right at home on a Broadway stage. The dancers breezed through the complex athletic movement that is a trademark of many Complexions' pieces and the audience seemed eager to join in the fun. It was great to see the ease with which these contemporary dancers could transition into this Broadway style.

Peridance Contemporary Dance Company will be performing these works again this coming weekend.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

H.T. Chen & Dancers - A Tribute to Remy Charlip

Friday, March 1, 2013

Chen Dance Center

H.T. Chen & Dancers presented a combined celebration of the life and work of Remy Charlip, along with ceremonies for the Chinese New Year. The Chen Dance Center theater was made to take on the atmosphere of a Chinese Tea House, with servings of tea and cookies provided alongside the seats. Associate Director Dian Dong described the Tea House as a gathering center for the village, where people came to hear news, but also to socialize, drink tea, and enjoy art together. I was grateful for the background and context that Ms. Dong provided for the dances. Some of the stories behind them were every bit as interesting and beautiful as the dances themselves.

The evening opened with Lantern Procession based on a traditional procession intended to bring the villagers good luck in the New Year. Each dancer carried her own unique lantern and moved to music played on traditional Chinese instruments. There was a strong feeling of community in the dance, especially so when the dancers were joined by three elementary school children in traditional dress, who carried celestial images created by Remy Charlip.

This was followed by H.T. Chen's 39 Chinese Attitudes, which springs from one of Remy Charlip's "Airmail Dances". Charlip explained, ""I started to do these figures on a page and then give them to dancers, to soloists and groups of dancers, and have them figure out how to get from one position to another so they worked on the transitions and they thereby made the dance it's their dance and it is also my dance."

For 39 Chinese Attitudes, set to music by Louis Armstrong and Irving Berlin, Chen worked with a combination of Chinese images and images of athletes. The dance focuses on three movements: jumps, falls and attitudes. It opens with a sweet little narrative, in which a dancer delights in the fortune she just received in her oversized cookie. She swoons with happiness and shows it off to the others. Throughout the dance Chen used the falls to show drama and emotion, but he also used them to great comic effect, sometimes as the dancers deliberately struggled with their balances in attitude. Other vignettes include an adorable pas de deux between a moonstruck woman and the man who hopes to win her affections, danced by Eva Chan and Juan Michael Porter II. She swoons from happiness and she gives her partner the classic "come closer" and "leave me alone" gestures. Their endearing struggle is represented in a lift in which the woman deliberately cannot hold herself up or find her balance.

The dance has a lovely ending in which the women have a comic one-ups-manship struggle over who has more or bigger fortune cookies, until one woman arrives with a tray overflowing with cookies. This prompts the dancers to serve the cookies and plum wine to the audience. I felt that this also helped maintain the strong sense of community that I felt from Chen's dances. Not only was the company especially hospitable from the beginning to the end of the performance, in doing so they seemed to be acknowledging the importance of the relationship between the dancers and the audience.

David Vaughn delivered a beautiful reading of Charlip's humourous Ten Imaginary Dances, in which scenarios were suggested for different dances in the hands of various companies. This was followed by a wonderful performance by Stephanie Chun and Marlon Feliz who danced Charlip's Twelve Contra Dances. This piece really showcased the charm and elegance of Charlip's work. Stripped of pretense and technical fireworks, the dance uses deceptively simple movement to create lovely formations. As with so much of Charlip's work, it's sweet without ever being cloying, and it's humourous without ever going over the top. I felt that there was beautiful chemistry between the dancers, equal parts from the spirit of the choreography and the spirit of the dancers themselves.

As the evening closed, we were shown a fascinating collection of photos of a Chinese community among the cotton fields of Cleveland, Mississippi, which will be the inspiration for a new piece that H.T. Chen will be creating. The closing dance, Between Heaven and Earth culminated with the dancers performing under a shower of beautiful multi-colored confetti, used to great effect.

I thoroughly enjoyed this program and my visit to the Chen Dance Center in Chinatown. It was wonderful to have this glimpse into the culture and history of the Chinese, as well as to revisit Remy Charlip's wonderful books, artwork and dances.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Year of the Serpent - Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Victoria Theater - New Jersey Center for the Performing Arts

I'd been wanting to see the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company for years, but it wasn't until last weekend that I finally made the trek out to Newark to see the company celebrate the Chinese New Year with their production Year of the Serpent. The program was a wonderful mix of traditional Chinese dancing, music and opera combined with a new contemporary piece, Whirlwind, which received its world premiere this year. The dancers moved seamlessly between the different dance styles. It was very generous and helpful of the company to have provided the audience with detailed descriptions of the history and inspiration for each dance, along with narratives about the peoples and customs of the different regions of China from where these dances come.

The performance opened with a piece called Double Lions Welcoming Spring which tells the story of trust built between young children and ferocious lions. The dance is intended as a prayer for peace and harmony in the coming year. Playful and often funny (such as when the lion forgets himself on stage and nibbles on his own foot, or throws in an extra cabriole before exiting the stage) the dance includes dazzling acrobatics and tumbling sequences. Each lion is played by two men who do an amazing job of making the beast's back ripple in feline fashion, or making it rear back on its hind legs. The Chinese folk costumes and the design of the lion are so beautifully done.

In Song of the Water Lily, dancer Ying Shi embodies the beauty and purity of a young girl. She carries a fan ornamented with a lovely billowing scarf which resembles a flower petal. The lighting and music create the atmosphere of a lily pond, down to the sound of water droplets and bird songs spliced in with the traditional folk music. There is a wide sweep of movement, from luscious slow and controlled extensions and port des bras, to a rapid success of turns executed while spotting the floor. The dance is at once ornate and colorful as it is earthy and primal.

Another traditional piece, arranged by Ms. Chen, was the rousing Coin Stick Dance. Bamboo sticks filled with coins create a host of different rattling sounds as they are tapped against shoulders, hips and floor, or twirled like batons. The dance was presented as an ensemble piece, but had lovely partnering sections in which pairs of dancers tapped their sticks together. The piece was marked by pretty formations and nice footwork sequences.

One of the highlights for me was seeing Ms. Chen's earthy modern piece, Whirlwind, inspired by her journey on the Silk Road. It opens with six dancers standing still on stage, very subtly swaying forward and backward on the breeze. In this section, and throughout the piece, Ms. Chen used groups moving in unison, save for one dancer. These formations seemed to embody the phenomenon of the whirlwind, which she described in the program as coming from different directions. In the opening section, the dancers' mostly remain in their spots, but they execute beautiful adagio movement with the upper body and the plie, creating the atmospheres of a coming storm. As the dance builds, influences of various cultures can be appear. The energy of the wind can be felt in contractions and sighing movement. I loved the section danced by the men, locked onto one another's arms in a circle and swaying together in a way that seemed ancient and ritualistic. Great original movement in this dance and beautiful artistic execution by the dancers.

Min Zhou shone in the traditional Peacock Dance from her charming staccato birdlike gestures, shuddering shoulders and expressive movement of the upper body, to her lovely transitions into slow and controlled adagio phrases. She held her arm above her head, her hand shaped like the head of a peacock, her floor length skirt draped to resemble its plumage.

The program closed with Chen's traditional piece, Festival, a spectacle of cartwheels, barrel turns, colorful ribbons, and flags, complete with a dragon dance in which the dragon takes a spin around the audience. The piece was great fun and a fitting close to a beautiful program.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Azul Dance Theatre / Yuki Hasegawa Presents Elements

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Salvatore Capezio Theater at Peridance Center

Azul Dance Theatre's performance of Elements was marked by original movement in which beauty and artistic expression took priority over flash and tricks. Every detail of the choreography, costumes and staging had been beautifully considered. It's not often that I find myself at the theatre, seeing a new company for the first time, and being so deeply effected by the high quality of their artistry. This company was a wonderful surprise and they surpassed my expectations.

The performance opened with Mugen, a dreamy atmospheric new piece based on folk and traditional Japanese dance, choreographed by Azul's Artistic Director Yuki Hasegawa, set to music played on traditional Japanese instruments. The dancers wear beautiful kimonos, also created by Hasegawa. The piece is marked with wave-like movement in the arms and torso, often with the feet fixed to the floor in a deep lunge. After the moody and ritualistic first movement, there is inventive and humorous use of parasols in the jazzy second section. The Japanese instruments take on the strains of a 1960s beach tune, then Duke Ellington's Caravan. The dancers hop, push and pull as if against gravity or the wind. They strike a series of wonderful poses, making great use of the props. In the closing section, a man is seated as if in prayer, his sword by his side. But as he is meditating, a pair of arms appear from behind him, and reach into his robe, removing what looks like a scroll or a map. The figure who took the paper, sneaks up behind another who is also in prayer position, and slides the paper into her kimono. I felt as if the figure embodied distraction, interfering with the processes of the two mediators, breaking their concentration, and maybe even appropriating an important or sacred piece of them. She does everything that she can in a struggle to dominate the man, even going so far as pulling his sword and holding it to his neck or his heart.

Kanako Yokata choreographed and danced in It's not your fault. Entering the stage on a tether, she struggles to breathe and free herself. Once free, she struggles for balance before opening up into a lyrical adagio. An undertow seems to keep her close to the ground, where she winds up in the center of crocheted blanket. She pulls at the wool and it begins to unravel around her and the blanket tightens around her feet, as if she's traded in one constraint for another.

Non-western motifs appear throughout Hasegawa's Return to the River. The dancers enter the stage as if rolling like waves along the floor. The music is cut with the sounds of water sloshing. As the dance opens up, new influences appear. There is a Carribean feel to the way that the women rock their hips and jump. The dance builds with atmospheric lighting and a series of dramatic leaps as the dancers shriek. Their colorful harem pants and halters make especially beautiful costumes.

One of the stand out pieces of the program for me was Double Helix, choreographed and performed by twin sisters Hsiao-Ting Hsieh and Hsiao-Wei Hsieh, set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach. There is an elegance and a clarity to this dance which allowed the expression of the movement to stand out. The sisters perform in a highly synchronized fashion, but this never comes at the expense of the heart and emotion evident in every small gesture. I could have watched this dance all evening long. It was performed with lovely live accompaniment on cello by Serafim Smigelskiy.

The program closed with Hasegawa's Elements, a splendid theatrical piece. Before the dancing even began, I was taken by the beauty of the costumes, some in rusty autumn colors and others in the greens and turquoise of the sea or the woodlands. The first section pays tribute to water. Torsos and arms ripple and the movement resolves in lovely ensemble poses. Even when the dancers are just standing in place, their upper bodies are tremendously expressive. The wind enters the story, first as a lone figure dressed in white, then as a small group weaving in and out of the ensemble, sending the dancers to twirl and spiral and roll away. Soon the entire group is dressed in white and the dance opens up to an especially beautiful ensemble section with great partnering and counterpoint. Really well done. The drama builds with great use of bolts of fabric -- one to symbolize the sun and others to symbolize the ocean. The dance ends in birth so that the entire cycle may begin again. The performance demonstrated a great love, respect and compassion for Mother Earth and her processes. I'm told that Ms. Hasegawa named her company Azul after the blue of ocean water.

Elements lasted an hour and a half without intermission. The time seemed to pass in a heartbeat and Azul Dance Theatre left me wanting even more. If you have the opportunity to see this company, don't miss it.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Sokolow Theatre Dance Ensemble Presents Sounds of Sokolow Lyric Suite

December 8, 2012

The Theatre at the 14th Street Y

In the opening passage of Lyric Suite, Allegretto Gioviale, dancer Richard Scandola stands alone and shirtless. He looks around, guarding his own back, and he seems careful not to make a sound, as if he is hunting. Slowly and deliberately, he shifts his weight. The passage opens up only slightly as he moves forward in a series of turns until, like several of the passages of Lyric Suite, it closes with the same movement with which it opened. This passage was dedicated by Anna Sokolow to Vaslav Nijinsky, and even though the music and dance are non-narrative, the theatricality is always there. The dance does not respond literally to composer Alban Berg’s atonal music, but rather it works with the music to conjure emotion and atmospheres.

Francesca Todesco dances Andante Amoroso. There is interesting movement with the hands, fingers woven together as if to make a basket which she holds close to her heart. They move behind her neck, pulling on her head before she extends her arms overhead, hands turned palms up. It made me feel as if she was searching or beckoning to the heavens while reconciling the pull of earth. In another sequence, she seems to be rocking on the waves of the ocean before her gaze returns upward. There is a long and dramatic series of turns in which her head sometimes drops. In the closing moments, she is reaching skyward as her body sinks and finally falls to the floor.

Allegro Misterioso follows, danced by Samantha Geracht. She enters in a floor length gray skirt. Her hands tremble as she lifts them. She seems even further bound to the earth, sinking, falling, and getting back up. She runs frantically around the stage, at times moving backwards till the end of the passage, where she seems resigned to her fate, stuck on the floor and unable to rise as the stage goes black.

Melissa Sobel and Gregory Youdan danced Largo Desolato. The partnering is beautiful and the movement in this section is more lyrical and slow, but with intensity. It reminded me of Anna Sokolow’s quote, “True lyricism has to have passion and strength underneath it. For an arm to come up beautifully and with meaning, it has to have great power and energy.” There was a lovely and unusual sequence as the dancers sit on the floor and advance toward each other with a high developpe initiating each movement. They stand and grasp each other by the forearms, backs arched backward and chests lifted as if in euphoria. Simple movements like ronde de jambs and tendus on the floor are used to lovely effect. The gentle beauty of this passage seems to resolve the tension set up in the Allegro Misterioso.

But the tension returns, builds and explodes with a bravura performance by Luis Gabriel Zaragoza in Presto Delirando Tenebroso. Zaragoza’s dancing is riveting and dramatic -- I found it impossible to take my eyes off of him even for a moment. His facial expressions are haunting and heart breaking. He dances the role of one who’s been captured and dehumanized, like a soldier or a prisoner, but the humanity within him struggles to be set free. There are dramatic changes in direction that pivot rapidly and unexpectedly. He executes a series of grand jetes but he slowly loses steam, as if the life is being drained from him. He struggles to open up but winds up falling.

Lyric Suite closes with a quartet, Adagio Appassionato. Four women dressed in floor length red skirts travel along the stage mostly at close quarters. The choreography plays with level changes and the rippling swirling of the skirts to great effect. Some of the patterns seem to be more formal -- the women stand in a square at one point, as if for a reel. Toward the end there is another interesting sequence in which the dancers seem to be moving away from one another, yet the group remains at close quarters.

Anna Sokolow’s work was pivotal in the world of modern dance. It was wonderful to see it performed by Sokolow Theatre Dance Ensemble and it would be great to see more modern companies tackle her repertoire.

All photos by Meems.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

American Ballet Theatre: Choreography by Alexei Ratmansky
Guggenheim Works & Process

September 30, 2012

In 1986, renowned choreographer Alexei Ratmansky graduated from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy, having never heard the names Rudolf Nureyev or Mikhail Baryshnikov, and having never seen the choreography of George Balanchine. To comply with the policies of the Soviet Union, the Bolshoi did not discuss these men and their works. Ratmansky graduated during a tumultuous era, as the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, and the VCR and video tape were coming into personal use, introducing him to a whole new world of choreography and dancing.

While being interviewed by former Artistic Director of the Royal Winnepeg Ballet, John Meehan, at Guggenheim’s Works and Process last weekend, Ratmansky described the era as being very disorienting to students who had come up with only strict classical training. Their understanding of choreography mostly revolved around the works of Marius Petipa and Yury Grigorovich. As the outside world began to filter in to Russia, and as Ratmansky left Russia, he originally found himself resisting the new influence, in his mind and his body. This was typical of most dancers who were his contemporaries, trained in the Soviet Union.

Ratmansky danced for Meehan and the Royal Winnepeg Ballet in the early 1990s. Meehan remembered him as being a romantic dancer noted for his very soft landings. A short film showed Ratmansky in performance during that era, and it illustrated the extraordinary quality of his landings. Ratmansky told the audience that this quality came as a result of being made to do petit allegro at an adagio tempo ­ “It was killing!” ­ and battement tendu at 32 counts going out and 32 counts coming in.

He said that the Bolshoi always wanted their dancers to “color” the movement. After leaving the Bolshoi, when Ratmansky began to learn new choreography, he was encouraged to just do the steps. “Don’t act. Be more simple.”

He began choreographing for himself, on his own body, then had to learn how to choreograph on other dancers, beginning with his wife Tatiana. One of his first big jobs was a commission from the Kirov to choreograph their Nutcracker. He was on a one month deadline. “Every big work is crazy and intense with very little time.”

When the Soviet Union collapsed, people turned their attention away from works of the Soviet era, including The Bright Stream. Fifteen years later, the public began to feel nostalgic for the old works. Ratmansky loved the Shostakovich score and thought that the time could be right to stage a new version of The Bright Stream.

Veronika Part and Stella Abrera danced Zina and the Ballerina, a touching and heartwarming excerpt from Ratmansky’s The Bright Stream, in which two old friends who attended ballet school together are reunited. Every small detail in the movement displays the warmth between the women, especially in the moment when they reach out to lift each other’s chins so that they can see into each other’s eyes.

Even before the premiere of Ratmansky’s The Bright Stream, the Bolshoi Ballet, who did not accept young Ratmansky as a dancer, asked him to take over the entire company. He was 34 at the time. He took up the challenge and found himself in charge of 220 dancers and 20 coaches, some of whom were legends in the ballet world.

At the time that he took over, the Bolshoi was still very conservative, holding dancers in higher esteem than choreographers. So Ratmansky brought in new ballets choreographed by George Balanchine, Twyla Tharp and Christopher Wheeldon among others. In the course of his five year tenure, he introduced thirteen new ballets. There were 250 performances per year on two different stages. He hired new dancers fresh from the school to learn the new repertoire, as the older ones didn’t always “get it”.

Even after five years of working with the Bolshoi, he still felt that the resistance to new works and new choreographers remained very strong in Russia. So he left and came to New York to pursue his choreography. American Ballet Theatre invited him to be their Artist in Residence. He just signed a long term contract with the company, and he enjoys the support he receives and the freedom to create abstract and narrative ballets. He reflected fondly on the company’s history of embracing Russian emigres.

We saw a short excerpt of the scene from the Nutcracker that bridges between the battle scene and the Land of Snow. I’d seen ABT’s new Nutcracker in the middle of a blizzard in 2010, but I’d forgotten how much I’d loved it until I saw this charming section in which Drosselmeyer’s nephew transforms into the Prince. In Ratmansky’s version, two adult dancers enter upstage and mirror some of the movement of the children, who are imagining their future selves. It struck me that in the gestures of the adults, we see traces of the children they once were. As in most Ratmansky ballets, there is always the presence of light hearted humor along with the warmth. I especially loved the excitement of the children as the first snowflakes start to fall.

Ballet Mistress Nancy Raffa and principal dancer David Hallberg joined Mr. Meehan to speak of their experiences in working with Ratmansky. Ms. Raffa said that Ratmansky always comes to the studio well prepared with a clear vision and a little black book in which he has worked through the details of his choreography. Mr. Hallberg said that Ratmansky doesn’t move forward until one section is perfected. They will work on eight counts for "what feels like two weeks". About Ratmansky’s Nutcracker, Mr. Hallberg talked about the nervousness that he and Gillian Murphy experienced the first time that they danced it on stage. “He completely blew what we thought we knew about Nutcracker out of the window.” Hallberg’s words resonated with me and that’s part of the reason why I was so stunned by some of the backlash that the new Nutcracker received. I loved Ratmansky’s telling of the story from the very beginning, precisely because he brought a new and wonderful perspective to it.

Ratmansky’s new ballet, Shostakovich Symphony No. 9 will premiere Thursday, October 18, 2012 at New York City Center.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

New York City Ballet - Year of the Rabbit
Guggenheim Works & Process

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Last weekend as part of the Guggenheim’s Works and Process, New York City Ballet Media Director (and former soloist) Ellen Bar moderated a discussion with NYCB dancer Justin Peck about the new ballet he’s choreographed, Year of the Rabbit, which will be receiving its world premiere on October 5, 2012 at the David H. Koch Theater. Also on the panel were composer Sufjan Stevens and arranger and conductor Michael Atkinson. In addition, the audience was treated to a few excerpts of the ballet, accompanied by a live string quartet.

Year of the Rabbit began as an original work by Sufjan Stevens, composed for electronic instruments with lots of overdubbing. The music describes the signs of the Chinese Zodiac, the characteristics of the animals represented, and their relationships to one another, some in rivalry and some in friendship.

The evening began with a very short film of an excerpt from the ballet being performed on what looked like a Fire Island beach. I was instantly captivated by the swells of the music, which sounded before the movement began. Dense, atmospheric, dramatic, and quirky, it reminded me of the things that excited me most in the progressive rock music of the early 1970s. Later in the evening, as Michael Atkinson described his process in arranging the music for New York City Ballet’s Orchestra, he mentioned the inspiration of composers like Stravinsky and Bartok. Peck first heard Stevens’ music on WNYC-FM and he felt that it would be great for dance. He’d already been commissioned by Peter Martins to create a new ballet when he first approached Stevens about using the music, and having it orchestrated.

Joaquin de Luz seemed perfectly cast for his solo in Year of the Rabbit. Peck explained that rabbits elude their predators by darting back and forth. This is described in the music in quirky phrases of 5/6. As the solo begins, de Luz is shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Once he takes off, he leaves the ground in a spectacular series of leaps and turns, constantly changing direction and constantly traveling until he pauses at the end of the excerpt to look around, as if checking to see if he’s still being hunted.

Teresa Reichlin and Robert Fairchild danced a quieter excerpt. The music slides from rousing to lush, and Ms. Reichlin’s developpes are lyrical, dreamy and expansive. Peck worked to create unconventional movement, guided by the abstract and sometimes weird sounds in the music. The movement is so lovely, with surprising and beautifully unusual details.

It was wonderful to watch Justin Peck coaching Tiler Peck through a short solo that will be danced with a larger cast at the Koch Theatre. He explained that in this section of the choreography, the upper body and lower body moved as two separate parts, with one part initiating the movement for the other. They worked together on little actions which could “stretch out or condense” a passage of music.

Peck mentioned that the full ballet will have a large cast of dancers, and given the density and complexity of the music, I could imagine that a large cast would work superbly and create great excitement on stage.

In the hours when dancers weren’t available to rehearse with him, Peck worked out his ideas on paper. We were shown drawings he'd created, which resembled layered floor plans of the stage, color coded to depict the dancers and the directions in which they’d travel and the spots where they'd arrive. One of the musicians commented, “It looks like a game of Twister.”

I found it interesting that both Stevens and Atkinson had little interest in the ballet before they began working with Peck. Stevens had once been “dragged” to see Apollo, and he had found it to be restrictive, formal and conservative. But as Peck drew him into the ballet world, and took him to see the legendary Balanchine ballets, Stevens came around to understanding them, and then falling in love with them. He said it was “sublime” to see his music expressed with the human body. As a student at Julliard, Atkinson had lived in the same dormitory as SAB students, but admitted that he too needed to be “educated”, and that as his collaboration with Peck continued, so did his appreciation of the classic Balanchine works. It was fascinating to hear the musicians speak about their impressions of the dancers’ process. They remarked about how quickly and how hard the dancers worked and how their communication happened in a language that was different from that of the musicians. Peck explained that part of his job included “translating” between the language of music and the language of dance, saying that dancers hear music differently than musicians. He worked with Atkinson to adjust the dynamics of the music so that the dancers would be able to crucial details when they are on stage in the theater.

I was very excited by what I saw last weekend and I’m so looking forward to seeing the entire ballet.

Year of the Rabbit will have its world premiere on October 5, 2012. Tickets are on sale now.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Pacific Northwest Ballet New York Season Preview
Works and Process at the Guggenheim

Sunday, September 8, 2012

This lecture and performance given by Artistic Director Peter Boal and Pacific Northwest Ballet dealt with the endlessly fascinating topic of Balanchine’s choreography. I have found that no matter how long I spend in the theater seeing Balanchine’s works and reading about them, there’s always something new to learn, which so enhances my appreciation of the work. Mr. Boal along with the gorgeous dancers of PNB, Maria Chapman, Carla Körbes, Seth Orza, Lesley Rausch, Benjamin Griffiths, and Matthew Renko, explored the topic of changes made throughout the lives of the Balanchine ballets. Ballets discussed included Apollo, Four Temperaments and Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux.

There have been a host of different reasons for the changes made to the ballets. Mr. Boal told us that in the case of Apollo, “the boss” (Diaghilev) told Mr. B (who was 24 years old when the ballet received its world premiere) to make the changes. At other times, choreography was adjusted to suit different stages and different casts. Mr. Boal, who ironically was awarded his first contract with New York City Ballet on the day Mr. B passed away, learned the choreography from Peter Martins, Jerome Robbins, Suzanne Farrell and others from NYCB. When he went on to learn the same roles with other companies, including PNB, he found their choreography to be different from NYCB’s version, and different from one company to the next.

I have only ever seen New York City Ballet’s production of Apollo performed live, with its unadorned costumes and bare stage, so I found it really interesting to see still photos from the Ballet Russes production which included ornate costumes (the first round chosen by Diaghilev and a later version created by Coco Chanel) and a set incorporating Mount Parnassas. Quite a contrast. Mr. Boal also showed film clips of Jacques d'Amboise dancing the role in 1960, and Mikhail Baryshnikov performing it in 1978.

Even as a very young choreographer, Balanchine made the deliberate decision to remove entire passages of the story of Apollo and he was bold in answering his critics when they challenged him on that score. “I can do with my ballets whatever I want.” He understood the power that existed in editing one’s work.

It was wonderful to have Mr. Boal draw our attention to details in the choreography that helped to tell the story. After Seth Orza danced the first solo with lovely and quiet control, Mr. Boal described the movement in such beautiful language, saying that the dancer was to move like a “newborn colt”. A series of piques which melt in plie symbolize the way a newborn’s legs might fail beneath the weight of his body as he first figures out how to walk.

Carla Körbes’ Terpsichore left me swooning -- she is just stunning. Mr. Boal pointed out that in her manege, her saute arabesques lead with the chest, rather than with the arm. This one subtle little difference made her appear as if she was floating above the ground. As Mr. Orza and Ms. Körbes danced together, Mr. Boal pointed out that Terpsichore doesn’t “engage Apollo with the eyes”, but rather with the hands. It’s such a small detail, and so crucial to the story being told by the movement.

Ben Griffiths performed a more current version of Melancholic from Four Temperaments, with heaviness in his shoulders and softer lines while Matthew Renko danced an older version which was sharper and more forceful. Mr. Boal pointed out that in the current version, the stage is empty when the music starts, and that can build tension before the dancer even steps on stage. The audience becomes concerned that the character is late, or that the dancer may have missed his cue. In the earlier version, Apollo is on stage when the music starts.

Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux has had the most revisions. Designed with the intention of being a “showstopper” Balanchine and other choreographers constantly adjusted it to showcase the different strengths of the different dancers who performed the piece. A series of fabulous film clips were shown, alternating D’Amboise’s performance with Baryshnikov’s, illustrating the differences in choreography for each dancer.

PNB closed out the evening in spectacular style, performing an excerpt from the ballet. Though the stage was too small, and there was a wobble here and there, they delivered the most rousing performance that made me want to jump to my feet. This is a wonderful company that we in New York City just don’t see enough of. Their lines are so pure and their movement is so fluid. But beyond that, the dancers possess great charisma. Their dancing was playful, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves so much that the audience could not remain unaffected.

In addition to performing at Fall for Dance in October, Pacific Northwest Ballet will return to City Center to perform an All Balanchine Program and Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Roméo et Juliette in February 2013. Tickets are on sale now.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Some Dance Company

February 27, 2012

Choreography by David Fernandez
Featuring Stars From New York City Ballet and
American Ballet Theatre
El Museo del Barrio

Some Dance Company brought stars of New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and Dance Theater of Harlem together with local artists and students to celebrate the choreography of Artistic Director David Fernandez and to raise funds for Career Transition for Dancers.

In his program notes, Fernandez embraced the idea of dancing just for the sake of dancing, without attempting to be revolutionary or to deliver a profound message. Across the program pages drifted the word, “Some steps, some music, some dances.” The evening did succeed in having a relaxed and familial atmosphere or dancers coming together for no reason but to dance, and to support a beloved choreographer and a worthy cause.

Dance Theater of Harlem opened the night with Six Piano Pieces (Harlem Style) a stylish contemporary ballet piece with strong classical undertones and shades of uptown jazz. The men are dressed in suits while the women wear elegant party dresses. The dance conjures an atmosphere of a night stepping out on the town. It’s lovely and captivating and the dancers move with glamour and flair.

White Shirt, Black Tie and Black Pants describes the costumes worn by Lili Nicole Balogh, Nicola Curry and Nicole Graniero as they dance to Bach’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in E. It’s a lovely classical ballet piece interlaced with moments of strutting, adjusting one’s tie, finessing one’s appearance and shimmying the shoulders before straightening up.

Beethoven Sonata was danced by Kristin Draucker, Dorothea Garland, Kimberly Giannelli and Katie Moorhead. They are dressed in black jackets and black shorts, and they move to the soaring Beethoven Allegro, sometimes recalling the dramatic gestures of a passionate concert pianist.

One of the highlights of the evening was Vitruvian Man, danced by Chase Finlay, Ask La Cour and Amar Ramasar to a gorgeous piece of music called First Movement by Jenkins Palladio. A dance of rugged masculinity, the men are bare chested as they execute exciting turn sequences and spectacular leaps - often with the arms open wide.

A large ensemble piece danced to Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, juxtaposes a host of different dance styles with good humor. The women look electrifying in sapphire blue leotards by Body Wrappers / Angelo Luzio. They execute lovely ballet sections, sometimes against a conga line complete with bunny hops. Lovely formations appear on the stage as a group mime a performance by a chamber orchestra while two party guests enjoy cocktails. The piece ends with a wedding, complete with a line of festive trumpet players and weeping women.

Another highlight was Ask La Cour’s performance of Icarus (APR), danced to Pink Floyd’s Money. La Cour’s character is dressed like a laborer. He is sorting through items in a milk crate before he tucks some money into his wallet. He knocks a stool against the crate in time with the famous cash register bells which open the song. La Cour’s dancing seems to transcend the boundaries of the stage. He flies across the floor until a man in a suit and dark shades enters and deliberately bumps against his shoulder. He signs a check and surrenders it to La Cour, along with a pair of shades and wings. The story of Icarus plays out as Fernandez’s choreography juxtaposes the lust for money and the lust for flight. As La Cour’s character ascends, envelopes rain down from the sky. When his hubris ultimately leads him to ruin, he collapses on his stomach, only to be relieved of his wallet by the man in the suit and shades.

Fenandez had a sensual take on Libertango. Gonzalo Garcia gives a sultry and breathtaking performance along with Nicole Graniero and Luciana Paris. A sweeping and beautifully partnered pas de deux is at the center of the piece while a woman dances a solo counterpoint behind them.

Joaquin De Luz delivered an endearing performance of Five Variations on a Theme to Bach’s Violin Concerto in G. I loved the energy that he brought to this light hearted piece full of big turn sequences with unexpected and humorous landings. He carries off the subtle humor of the movement beautifully, as if he’s sharing a private joke with the audience. I love his precision and his musicality. He did not spare the bravura, delighting the audience with his awesome speed and a great series of tours and pirouettes.

The evening ended with the entire company and students clad in a rainbow of colored leotards first taking solos and then dancing together to Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing.

It was a most enjoyable evening. It was so generous of the men of NYCB and ABT to have appeared, and for David Fernandez to have arranged this performance to raise funds for as great a cause as Career Transition for Dancers.

All photos by Jesse Stein.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Salaryman - TAKE Dance

February 10, 2012

Nagelberg Theater - Baruch Performing Arts Center

Salaryman is a masterpiece, one that I want my dance friends to see, and one that I’d like to see again and again. Its spirit and imagery haunted me long after I left the theater. Takehiro Ueyama’s powerful choreography depicts the life of the Japanese businessman. He tells the story of the Salaryman’s dutiful resignation to his bleak existence in movement that runs the gamut from the aggressive and athletic, to the slow, lovely and lyrical. Also of note in this production was the exquisite use of stage craft, props, lighting and video. And best of all were the traces of humor and humanity that surfaced in unexpected moments. The choreography is very demanding and each of the multi-dimensional dancers pulls it off with apparent ease and strong individuality. I loved this piece and I loved this company.

The evening length dance opens with the sleeping Salarymen waking to a new day. A metronome placed upon a clear plastic cube pulses with urgency, counting the passing time. There is a beautiful live violin accompaniment by Ana Milosavljevic as the Salarymen awaken. The sheet which made up the Salarymen’s bedding turns into a sail and a stage curtain. The dancers pose in different vignettes, changing each time the sail passes over them.

The metronome and other pulsing sounds reoccur throughout the dance, as does the presence of the cubes and the flow of water. I was left with the feeling that the cubes symbolized the vessel of the Salaryman’s life, while the movement of the water symbolized his life’s energy - his spirit literally slipping through his fingers as he chooses, with the best of intentions, to live the obedient life.

Excitement revs up in The Game, a quartet for men dressed in business suits, which dramatizes the hustle and the grind of office work. The men move with fierce athleticism. The pulsing drumbeat speeds up The dancers are all aggression as they deliberately bump shoulders, scramble to move ahead in line, step over one another and even throw one another as the drumming intensifies.

There are terrific sections portraying the daily commute. Any New Yorker who regularly rides the subway can recognize the characters on the Salarymen’s train, and it’s here that Take showcases humourous new twists on everyday movement. One woman checks her make up in her pocket mirror. One man is nodding off and leaning too heavily against the passenger in the next seat. Everyone wears ear phones and few commuters pay any attention to their fellow passengers as they jostle along together.

The Salarymen travel to the Red Light district and tango with forbidden fruit, but it seems as if they receive as little respect from their temporary companions as they do at the office. The women knock them on their backs, then leave with their chairs. But when another woman dressed in street clothes approaches each one of the men, offering a bright red apple as a symbol of her genuine love and affection, she can not seem to impress any of the men whom she pursues.

The Salarymen drift home and are sometimes emotionally unavailable to their wives. One of the housewives, left behind while her man dallies with another woman, performs a slow moving solo full of yearning – heartbreaking without ever being cloying. The first act closes with a piece titled “I’m Worried Now, But I Won’t Be Worried For Long” performed by Takehiro Ueyama, depicting the upshot of the desperation that the Salaryman experiences. He appears to be stricken and losing his mind, wildly and compulsively moving upstage and downstage. Others look on in shock. Despite the fact that they’re aware of his distress, they all proceed like cogs in the wheel and no one breaks character or reaches out to help him. They even go so far as to step over him. Still, we are all stunned and devastated when we see what this man’s madness drives him to do.

Act II opens with the dancers looking startled and moving swiftly, their focus turned to their newspapers. Everyone reading the paper or talking on the phone or typing on their computers seems alarmed and anxious to spread the story. I was wondering if the story was about Take’s character’s desperate act. The excitement reaches a fevered pitch, leading into a beautiful and haunting passage in which the white sheet returns, is laid across the floor, and the stage goes dark as a video of the men swimming under water is projected on to the sheet. It’s as if a pool has opened up in the middle of the stage. Or, given the fact that the dancers are sitting by the side of this pool watching carefully, perhaps the Salarymen are on display in a fish bowl or an aquarium.

Sober business attire is traded in for the casual colorful clothing of youth for Kimochi E (I Feel Good). The piece is a riotous celebration of exuberant dancing. The dancers turn cartwheels and flirt with one another, sweeping across the stage and having great fun until they are rocking out full bore to a blistering guitar solo.

Everything goes gray for the somber Whispering Wall. Movement slows down as a quiet, moody pas de deux is performed with little traveling – most of the movement in the arms. Each of the dancers drifts toward approach the back wall and later sinks on to their backs.

The closing moments of Salaryman include exquisitely beautiful use of lighting on the water which flows from one plexiglas cube to the next as the metronome starts up again.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

RMBallet presents Intervals - The Ballet Russes Reborn - Gala Celebration

January 29, 2012

Ballet Arts Studio at City Center

RMBallet’s inaugural’s performance introduced an exciting new company of expressive dancers. Their theatrical dance works are both entertaining and compelling.

The studio wall is arranged with an exhibit of boldly colorful paintings created by guest choreographer Myles Marsden for his ballet Pictures at an Exhibition. The first section is an ensemble piece, in which the viewers arrive at the exhibit, dancing to the Promenade from Mussorgsky’s suite. A series of divertissements follow – pas de deux and trios that seem to tell the stories of the paintings and the effects they have on those who view them.

Robert Graham and Viktoria Hofstaedter perform Strangers, a stirring pas de deux full of swooning falls and high breathtaking lifts, danced to Pink Floyd’s Breathe. Every time that Hofstaedter falls forward or wraps herself around Graham, the movement seems to dramatize the spell that an artwork can cast over a viewer, lifting the spirit or inducing a dreamlike state and transporting the viewer to another world to experience a gamut of emotions. Hofstaedter’s movement is especially lovely and lyrical and Graham seems to channel the force of a powerful work of art.

Catherine Borrone, Analia Farfan and Richard Marsden dance the trio Dark Side of the Moon to Pink Floyd’s Time. The women trade off lovely solos full of yearning that are beautifully danced. Marsden’s enormous spirit is evident from the most humble gesture to the liveliest tours en l’air.

In the closing section, The Web, Luis Gabriel Zaragoza is crouched low upstage and seems to prowl along the back wall. Joanna Sienkiewicz and Lola Shapiro fly across the floor as they make their entrances, but soon they are doing bouree turns in place or hopping in arabesque, as if their ability to travel has been slowed down or even arrested. It left me with the image that they’d been captured in a web spun by the power of the artwork.

I’d never before seen Pictures at an Exhibition presented as a ballet and I was completely charmed by Myles Marsden’s approach to the subject, and his theatrical choreography.

Joanna Sienkiewicz delivered an emotion packed performance of The Sacrificial Dance from Nijinksy’s Rite of Spring, realized by Richard Marsden. Sienkiewicz can move with gossamer ballet grace, but she had no trouble delivering the anguish and the heaviness that this role demands. She seems driven and helpless at the same time. She just broke my heart as she jumped in place or pounded the floor, the fierceness of her movement growing more intense as the dance builds.

Richard Marsden’s jazzy Cherokee Ballet was stylish and great fun. Robert Graham partners the flirtatious Catherine Borrone while Viktoria Hofstaedter and Lola Shapiro provide the counterpoint of a chorus line. I especially liked the unison section performed by the girls toward the end of the dance. Very artistic and entertaining.

One of the highlights of the evening was Richard Marsden’s performance of The Cavalier in one of the variations from The Nutcracker. He is boyish and exuberant in the role and he seemed to be having a great time as he flew across the floor and executed one series of tours after the next.

The evening closed with Richard Marsden's sultry Latin flavored piece called Toros, performed to La Rosa Negra. Joanna Sienkiewicz moves with authority as Negra contrasted with Rosa, danced with jubilation by Analia Farfan, both women partnered by Robert Graham.

I've never before seen a ballet company who deliberately set out to pay homage to the traditions of the Ballet Russes and I really liked the premise upon which this evening of short dance pieces was based. RMBallet’s dances have a wide appeal. The evening’s program offered plenty for the ballet fan to appreciate, and it could be just as entertaining and deliver just as much of an emotional punch for a person who isn’t familiar with ballet.

I’m really looking forward to seeing where the company will go from here. This is one to watch!

All photos by Arthur Coopchik.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Peridance Contemporary Dance Company - Preview Performance

January 21, 2012

Salvatore Capezio Theater

Peridance Contemporary Dance Company has been on hiatus since 2007 as the Peridance Capezio Center went through a transition, moving to new quarters with its own in-house theater. In Fall 2011, the company re-emerged. The concert that I saw at the Capezio Theater was a preview performance, leading up to a formal season this coming May. The company offered a nicely varied program which showcased a group of gorgeous charismatic dancers and imaginative choreographers.

The program opened with an excerpt from Igal Perry’s Constructs for 4, beautifully danced by Shay Bares, Nikki Holck, Zach Thomas and Andrew Trego to the music of J.S. Bach. As with much of Perry’s choreography, classical ballet is at the core, but the movement is very much contemporary. Balanchine's influence seems present during certain passages of this quartet, but Perry's elegant formations speak in an updated voice with atmospheres that are more modern. I especially loved the lifts, which seemed so effortless. I was also taken by the way that the movement seems to open up so beautifully at moments when the strings reach the end of a phrase. Perry’s choreography and this group of dancers are extremely musical.

Leading from Behind, choreographed by Greg Dolbashian, received its World Premiere. It’s a modern piece set to electronic industrial music by Loscil. The music is quite menacing and tension is building as the dance opens with one man standing apart from a group of five women. The women line up shoulder to shoulder. The line becomes a motif that reappears throughout the dance, and much of the featured movement stands apart from the line. I especially liked one section in which the movement seems to spin off from or move through the line. One or two dancers will work apart from the line and as the dance goes on, it seems as if a series of battles of the will ensue. The choreography is clever and unpredictable. This piece was performed by Peridance’s Youth Ensemble, a group of strong, confident and well trained students who show great promise.

Kristin Sudeikis’s jazzy I am you was also given its World Premiere. The dancers all wear black pants, but the men are bare chested and the women are wearing nude colored tops. The dancers seem stripped down to explore issues of identity and influence, and the piece even includes Chorus Line type sections in which the dancers face the audience and speak to describe themselves, or perhaps to describe aspects of the human condition. The piece had an uplifting Broadway feel and the audience responded with great enthusiasm.

Igal Perry’s El Amor Brujo, dance to the score by Manuel da Falla, is a moving piece with a flamenco flavor. It is touching, bittersweet and packed with emotion. In the original libretto by Gregorio Martinez, the young gypsy woman Candela has lost her husband Jose, but Jose’s spirit continues to haunt Candela and won’t release her to her lover Carmelo. Perry tells the story with a slight twist – he sees Candela and Jose as being divorced rather than separated by death. Jose isn’t a ghostly spirit, but a physical presence in the story.

Nikki Holck’s Candela made my heart ache as she passes from her lover Carmelo (played by Attila Csiki) to her husband Jose (played by Andrew Trego). With quiet gestures and Perry’s imaginative choreography, she clearly expresses two different kinds of love. Though Candela and Jose are no longer together and have to move on, they embrace as if to respect the love they once had, even though they are now resigned to love each other from a distance.

Jose is a proud and masculine character, but beneath the surface he’s wounded. I was really taken by the way that Trego’s movement revealed Jose’s vulnerability. Joanna DeFelice is the very image of quiet strength as she dances the role of Lucia, the woman with whom Jose falls in love, allowing him to loosen his grip on Candela and let her go. Attila Csiki moves with such elegance and he expresses such tenderness as the romantic hero Carmelo. Some of my favorite passages in the dance are the ones in which the four characters move together at close quarters, with Candela weaving through the formation from one man to the other.

The ensemble delivers a very strong and stirring performance that really touched my heart. What affected me most about this dance was the subtlety with which the story is told. Perry and his dancers trust the audience and allow us to experience the emotion of the story without the use of cliched characterizations. The choreography never travels in the predictable direction. The dance truly does do all the talking and the story unfolds in a beautiful quiet fashion. I also appreciated the details. When the focus turns to the main characters, the company fills out the composition with lovely movement on the sidelines. Subtle lighting is used to strong affect too, in conjunction with projections along the back wall of the stage.

This is a wonderful dance that I’m looking forward to seeing again.

The Peridance Contemporary Dance Company will present its major New York City season this May, featuring works by Igal Perry, Kristin Sudeikis and Sidra Bell. Be sure to see one of their shows at the Salvatore Capezio Theater. Dates are May 5 and 6, 12 and 13, 2012. Visit their web site for further details.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

APAP Showcases at Peridance - Program A

January 8, 2012

The APAP Showcases at Peridance were nothing short of a beautiful dream which introduced me to several companies whom I’m looking forward to following in the future.

Program A opened with In Dividing, a moody modern piece with earthy sepia tones, presented by the Mettin Movement Collective. Throughout a series of vignettes, one individual stands apart from the rest of the dancers, who seem to comprise a tribe. I was surprised to read that choreographer Sarah Mettin is a 2011 graduate of the Conservatory at Purchase. Her artistic voice and the dancers who make up her company seemed quite mature. I especially liked the beautiful formations and counterpoint of the choreography, and the wonderful assortment of dancers who make up the company. This is one to watch.

Kate Thomas’s Ballet Neo presented The Appalachian Suites Project, a lovely lyrical contemporary pointe piece which opens with four women dressed in black. Their movement is expansive, with long extensions and arms that reach. There was the temptation for me to read things literally and to wonder if these women were mining wives or even widows. Their movement at times is reserved and the lighting is moody, yet their faces are not pained and their spirits seem very sisterly. As the dance progresses, two men join the group for a stirring series of partnering sections. Just beautiful. Ballet Neo also presented a gorgeous pointe piece called Measurement and Caution, danced by RJ Johnston and Bethany Lange. The dance was elegant and full of effusive movement. There was such strong chemistry between the partners.

Things became light hearted as Nathan Trice Rituals presented Chim Chim Cheree, accompanied live by a jazz trio and danced by four couples. In this theatrical piece, the women sang skat as they danced. The dance was a great and organic blend of Broadway and Trice’s signature, often quirky modern style. So entertaining and very appealing.

Jacoby & Pronk presented two solos. Prince Credell danced an Alonzo King piece titled Door, to ancient shofar sounds and Hebrew chants. I loved the primal feel conjured by the raw honesty and muscularity of the movement, the ancient music and the earthy costume. Drew Jacoby delivered an electrifying performance of Emery LeCrone’s contemporary ballet Aria. Jacoby has such an enormous presence on the floor and always manages to seamlessly blend fierce feminine strength with deep emotion and ballerina grace.

I was especially moved by Tomoko Imanaka’s Okuni performed by Tomoko Dance Art Company, a piece that seems steeped in traditional Japanese forms. The women make their entrance dressed in the black and white outfits and straw hats that we’ve seen in artwork of Japanese rice paddy farmers. Much of the dance travels in a circle. Much of it is performed in unison with a ritualistic feel. A woman in a gorgeous colorful silk kimono joins them. I think that she is Okuni, a temple dancer who founded Kabuki art forms. As the dancers shed their hats and white vests, they remain dressed in black as they perform a magnificent dance with the very colorful and glamourous Okuni at the center, mixing modern forms with traditional Japanese images.

Peridance Contemporary Dance Company performed an excerpt from Igal Perry’s El Amor Brujo, an elegant and dramatic piece which seems to explore the unseen forces that play with romance. At one point, a man and woman sit opposite each other and tentatively rise and move toward one another. They hesitate at first and never quite make it. When the four women and four men of the piece do dance together, they continually change partners. A pas de deux becomes a pas de trois. At one point one partner seems drawn away by a magnet or blown away by the wind. I really liked Perry’s unique take on this theme and I’m looking forward to seeing the full length piece later this month.

Olivier Wevers’ Flower Festival was performed by Seattle based Whim W’Him, a company who is completely new to me and who absolutely knocked me out with an amazing comic performance. Two men in business suits sit at opposite corners of the floor, having removed their black dress shoes. One at a time the men approach each other. They are teasing and challenging as they gradually strip away their clothing, one article at a time. The dance also contained a few partnering sections that were great parodies, in which standard ballet passages were blown up to the point of camp, or one partner wound up dragging the other around by his collar. There was even a brief game of salugi. Amazing performances were given by Andrew Bartee and Lucien Postlewaite. Great costumes by Mark Zappone. I hope to see this company in New York City again.

Charlotta Ofverhom ponders matters of food, both literally and metaphorically in Pas de Deux Sans Toi, a piece that could be both somber and comic, most of which she danced with a heart of lettuce in her mouth. When her partner joins her, he seems to devour her, and when he leaves her she consults the audience about her fears and matters of the heart. She did a good job of dramatizing how vulnerable we can feel within relationships, and how sometimes there is nothing left to do but to laugh about the folly of it all.

Noesis-Kinetics presented a quartet titled Recognition.docx, choreographed by Calen Kurka. Really good dancing, compelling choreography and sharp movement with a mechanical industrial vibe performed to a noisy accompaniment.

Lydia Johnson Dance’s beautiful untitled excerpt had a Greek classical feel with influences from Graham and Sokolow. The women wear floor length skirts and they dance in a line. They seem like sisters or women within a close knit community. They tend to one another, supporting and soothing one another. The dancing at times travels along the perimeter of a wide circle. There was also a wonderful series of trios. The choral music gives the piece an ancient atmosphere and so much of the movement reminds me of images from classical Greek artworks. I especially liked this piece and I look forward to seeing its full length version.

Ballet Next delivered a dazzling performance of Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux to accompaniment by a live chamber orchestra. Confident and fearless, happy and carefree, Michele Wiles absolutely sparkled and looked as if she was having so much fun. I can’t recall the last time I saw a ballerina looking so light hearted and it really lifted my spirit. Charles Askegard, as usual, made the superb partner. Ballet Next’s second offering was Mauro Bigonzetti’s La Follia, danced by Wiles and Drew Jacoby. Their presence, their attacks and their movement made a sharp contrast that worked so well. The piece is energetic and sensual, full of interesting hand and arm movement. Just breathtaking.

Dana Foglia Dance brought the house down with their closing number, Stilhed/Rock On, an exuberant fusion of hip hop and modern dance performed by a youthful and very stylish cast. The dance was so entertaining and won a rousing response from the audience, closing out a great series of performances on a very high note.

You never know what you’re going to find when you attend APAP Showcases. In the past, I’ve usually found APAP series to contain a few strong dances bolstered by several that just aren’t yet ready for the stage. But this APAP Showcase at Peridance was just out of this world. Both my guest and I were just stunned by the consistently amazing quality and variety of dance that we saw.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Wim Wenders' Pina in 3D

BAM Rose Cinema

Wim Wenders’ film Pina in 3D is a beautiful love letter to Pina Bausch from himself and her dancers. It’s one of the most beautiful dance films I’ve ever seen.

Earlier this week, in an interview with Leonard Lopate, Wenders said that there was “something wrong between film and dance period” and I’d have to agree. Dance works in plot driven films like The Red Shoes, but not so well in straight concert recordings. Wenders candidly said that when he first began working on the film, he just didn’t know how to do it. But when he first saw the new digital 3D, things began to work for him. The 3D effects are extraordinary and create the depth needed for the space in which the dancers work.

Pina told Wenders that she did not want a biographical film. Wenders described her as a woman of few words, so there would be no on camera interviews about the work. Their goal had been to make a film about the work itself, and so the film takes the audience on a journey through the dances.

From the earliest moments of the film, the enormous spirits of Pina and her dancers become palpable.

The first thing we see is Pina's connection to the earth and the elements. One dance is set on a stage covered with soil and the dancers themselves seem to have been born from the earth. There are very exciting unison sections danced by large groups, set to music that pulses with urgency. The men are bare chested and the women are wearing thin pale slips. The dancers move like a tribe, like a nation of their own. There is no room for pretense. Pretty movement is abandoned for that which is raw and primal.

Many of the dances move outdoors to settings that are natural, pastoral or park like. They also move to an Olympic sized swimming pool, to a floating tram car from the light rail mass transit system in Wuppertal, to an escalator, to a dark underground tunnel full of graffiti and murals, to a busy intersection of city streets.

Woven into the presentation of the dances are remarks made by the dancers. They do not appear on screen as talking heads, but rather we hear their words as they silently face the camera. It seemed to me that this worked to reveal who and what the dancers are in a way that their words alone just couldn’t. We see and feel their spirit, their vulnerability, their artistry, their insecurity. The dancers come from different countries the world over and most of them make their remarks in their own native tongue. They offer glimpses into what it was like for them to work with Pina . Many of them speak volumes by just repeating a simple statement that Pina made in the studio. One dancer says that Pina told her, “You just have to get crazier.” One dancer was told, “Your fragility is also your strength.” One dancer is waiting for Pina to visit her in her dreams. One dancer speaks of Pina’s penetrating gaze and her ability to see through pretense.

For Café Muller, Wenders shows us a recent performance of the dance, then cuts in archival footage of Pina in younger days dancing one of the roles. Her movement is gorgeous in its detail and musicality. The simplest port des bras becomes so lush and full of meaning. She talks about dancing with her eyes closed in Café Muller and I am taken by the amount of trust that was necessary for her to do that and to rely on the other dancers to clear the way for her.

Her dances seem so organic that I can’t even imagine that they are rehearsed and brought to stage in a traditional manner. They seem so raw and so spontaneous. They bear such little resemblance to collections of “steps” that we learn in a studio.

Even as the film takes the viewer straight to what is honest and primal, and launches into conversations about the deepest and most heartfelt matters, the dances do not lose their sense of humor. The film has a few moments in which the audience laughs out loud.

The last moments of the film got me so choked up. They are not sentimental and I don’t want to spoil them for those who will see the film, but I have to say that I left the cinema with my heart overflowing with love and awe.

I highly recommend this film to dance enthusiasts, but I think that the humanity of Pina’s dances and the brilliant way in which this film was created and presented will give it a universal appeal.

If you love dance, be sure to see this film.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Sounds of Sokolow
Odes
Merce Cunningham Studio

Though I’d spent years reading about Anna Sokolow, and I’d developed quite a soft spot in my heart for her words and her work, I’d never before seen her dances performed live. The program for Sounds of Sokolow consisted of three solos, an old restored film of Ms. Sokolow setting Odes on her company back in 1965, followed by a live performance of Odes by the current company. The performance was so beautiful and it surpassed my expectations.

The program opened with Two Preludes from 1985, choreographed by Sokolow and reconstructed by Evelyn Shepard, performed to Rachmaninoff’s Preludes for Piano. The music was presented live in a beautiful performance by Amir Khosrowpour.

In the first prelude (Op. 23: No 1 in F sharp minor), dancer Melissa Birnbaum rolls and slowly unfurls, reaches out and stretches, only to curl up again. She rises slowly and executes a lovely series of turns, but her movement gradually contracts and draws itself back into the torso. She winds up sinking slowly to the floor again, as if surrendering to gravity.

The second prelude is in a major key (Op. 23: No. 2 in B Flat Major) and the mood brightens. In this section she seems to break free from the confines of the earth or whatever else was drawing her down and within before. She is reaching, spinning chaine turns with her eyes closed, and executing spectacular jumps. The choreography and movement are exquisite - stripped to the essence, completely without pretension. More than anything, I am taken by the musicality of this choreography. Even the rests are beautiful and meaningful.

The second solo, At the Still Point of the Turning World is a 1975 piece choreographed by Ernestine Stodelle, reconstructed by Gail Corbin, performed to the recitation of a poem by T.S. Eliot. Dancer Lauren Naslund looks like the earth herself, dressed in a sky blue unitard. At first she seems to be searching, then pointing at something off in the distance. Her arms trace large circles as if her torso was the axis. She chaines across the floor, like a revolving planet, spotting her hand.

Artistic Director Jim May choreographed and performed the third solo, Passage, also to Rachmaninoff’s Preludes for Piano. In this piece he is either traveling very slowly or not traveling at all. At first his movement seems more stiff and twitchy than fluid. It seemed as if his character was struggling to stay healthy and alive. He falls to the ground and when he is off his feet, his arms and legs unfold smoothly. When he rises again, he walks with the same stiff movement until finally halting abruptly as the dance ends with him posed like Christ crucified in the light a moment before the floor goes dark.

The film consisted of 20 minutes of edited video from Sokolow’s Archives, and it just took my breath away. It was the first film I’d ever seen of Sokolow speaking and moving. In the opening moments, she is standing among her dancers as they work in the studio, setting Odes. She is calling the counts, but there is such emotion and commitment in her face, in her body and in her voice. We can see the breath rising and falling in her chest and her arms. She’s completely entrained with her dancers and with the drama of each step. Inside her studio, her intensity is astounding. I can only imagine what it must have been like to feel the energy within that studio all those years ago. And I had to smile when I heard her New York City accent.

We see her being interviewed, saying that in our society, that which is popular is usually “nice and harmless” and that she has no interest in that.

Back in the studio, we can see the immediacy and urgency with which she works. When one dancer’s movement isn’t fluid enough for her liking, she declares that movement doesn’t stutter if it’s truthful. She talks about the need for total commitment to the dancing, not just in the mind and the body of the dancer, but commitment to the moment in time in which the choreography is being danced. She talks of “extreme physical concentration.”

There is a passage in Odes in which the dancers (a rather large ensemble of 23) have to rise from the floor together, in silence, during a pause in the music, even though they are all facing front and therefore can’t see one another. Sokolow talks about how people in other civilizations dance without music because they learn to sense one another, and she urges her dancers to train themselves to sense what the dancers around them are doing.

She stands against academic and intellectual thinking in the studio. She uses emotional or visual imagery, telling her dancers to move like the wind. Every movement must be done full out at all times. She urges her dancers to have such a strong commitment to the movement of the moment – strong enough so that they can’t simultaneously be giving consideration to what comes next.

Just seeing her speak and work was such a huge inspiration to me. It only made me want to learn more and more her and her work.

After the film, the company performed excerpts from Odes live. Because I had just seen the film, the performance took on so much more meaning for me.

The first section, danced by the ensemble, is the opening of the piece and it’s titled Octandre. The dancers are wearing unitards in different earth tones. As they crowd together, I could feel Sokolow’s intensity. As the dance opens up, we see a modern take on Greek dancing, with three women moving in a line, arm in arm.

I loved the look of the dancers. There is nothing waif like about them and there is a wide sweep in their ages. (I found that, as with Martha Graham’s choreography, a young dancer might not have the gravitas to execute some of Sokolow’s work the way that a middle aged or older dancer could.) The dancing is demanding and the dancers are fiercely strong and individualistic. They are in complete command of the space in which they work.

Density is a duet danced by Yayoi Suzuki and Luis Gabriel Zaragoza. There are trills being played on the flute. The dancers wear blue unitards and their outstretched arms form a “V”. They remind me of birds. In the opening adagio section, they stay close together, moving slowly in to a deep plie arabesque, or in very slow splits to the floor. They stand straight with the working leg in coupe back, then proceed to rapidly beat the top of the foot against the floor, which emulates the sound of a bird flapping its wings.

The closing section is a big ensemble for 23 dancers called Electronique. Toward the end of the piece, a sound like an air raid rises within the music and the dancers are flat on their backs on the floor, their torsos still pumping with the force of life. It made me feel as if a nuclear attack had nearly claimed the entire population.

But the piece ends so beautifully with one man rising again, a split second before the lights black out, as if to show that humanity will still go on.

I found myself wishing that there were more performances of Anna Sokolow’s work. It is among some of the most gripping, moving and beautiful that I’ve seen. I’m looking forward to seeing what the company offers in the future.

A special nod to pianist Amir Khosrowpour and flute player Roberta Michel whose live music made the performance that much more beautiful. It is so wonderful to have live music played at a dance performance in as intimate a setting as the Merce Cunningham Studio.

All photos by Meems.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Daniela Hoff's Shadowlands

October 28, 2011

Daniela Hoff Dance Company
2011 Wave Rising Series
John Ryan White Wave Theater

Daniela Hoff’s Shadowlands is a somber work that explores the subject of fear, “from simple worries to deep rooted primal fear”. Her dancers are dressed in gray and black and there is a starkness to the entire performance that seems to strip away any and all pretenses.

As the piece opens, four women appear to be focused on four different things. Two face forward, one faces back, one is curled up on the floor.

They each begin to exhibit different symptoms of fear. One is writhing. One can’t seem to stand still. She steps tentatively, as if testing her mettle to move forward. She retreats, hesitates, then attempts to move forward again. Others twitch and tremble. There is tightness in their shoulders. Their arms are held close to their bodies.

From the earliest moments of the dance, it seemed to me that not only was Hoff addressing the sensation of fear, but more than that she was demonstrating its viral effects. She succeeded in highlighting the thread of humanity that unites living things, and the way that it can serve as a conduit when fear begins to spread throughout a community. And though she was addressing a serious and sometimes debilitating experience, the piece also reminded me, in an almost Shakespearean way, of the folly of humans and how easily they surrender to the experience of the group, maybe without even questioning what the group is doing.

As the dance progresses, we see how fear can hamper movement and independence. The dancers march together, as if they haven’t got the courage to break ranks, as if their unity will assuage their fear, or maybe in unity they can attack the cause of the fear. In this theme, I saw echoes of how folks in this country behaved in the wake of the 911 attacks, when “terrorism” first became a household word. But among the dancers, individuality emerges once again when, one at a time, they choose against locking step with the others.

They’ll return to the crowd formation, again taking their cues from one another. They seem to be testing the barometer of fear within the group. The dancers also attempt to affect the movement of one another. One will pose the arms and torso of another and I wonder if this is to say that their fear gives them the power to manipulate others. Within the crowd, we see that they have the capacity to drive one another crazy. As the dancers constantly measure one another, it leads me to believe that the group has to agree on what’s fearful in order for the fearful experience to thrive.

Throughout the piece, we will see a dancer stiffen or shake in fear until she reaches the point where her movement is almost completely impaired. She will seek out a calmer one, maybe with the hope that she will be helped to release her fear. In one passage, one dancer reaches out again and again to another who remains calm. She is repeatedly pushed away. Does fear become a burden on those who wish to remain calm?

It seems as if feelings of calm and peacefulness begin to descend upon the group when the movement becomes more expansive. Those who are tense seek out the presence of those who are calm. Arms and torsos begin reaching in less frantic, more lyrical ways. The dancers appear to be lighter and more buoyant as one works to keep all the others from losing their balance.

I really enjoyed the closing moments in which the dancers stand at close quarters again, in the spotlight. As the spotlight fades and returns, they strike poses to create different tableaus. The composition of these images was just gorgeous ­ great tension and beautiful counterpoint.

I’d seen Hoff’s work before, at the In Sight Suite Festival last summer. Her artistic voice and the important subjects that she chooses to address really stand out and make compelling statements.

All photos by Steven Schreiber

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Mid-Pointe Choreographers Showcase

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Merce Cunningham Studio Theater

Beauty. Emotion. Artistry. Drama. Humor. Bravura. Musicality. It is all there for the choreographers and dancers of the Mid-Pointe Project Choreographers Showcase, featuring works by Ursula Verduzco, Benjamin Briones and Brian Norris. The choreographers are ballet dancers who are approaching the mid-point of their careers. When they had trouble finding venues to present their works, they decided to start their own showcase. I hope that this year’s event is the springboard of what will become an annual festival.

A pair of men’s boots are standing at the side of the floor at the opening of Ursula Verduzco’s Nostalgia, a sweet sensual piece with a Latin flavor, swaying hips, swirling costumes and a youthful, happy mood. It was danced beautifully by Laura DiOrio with Shannon Mayor and Mary Susan Sinclair. Throughout the piece, DiOrio approaches the boots, casts an adoring glance at them, then places her hands over her heart as her upper body contracts, as if the tug on her heart is propelling her entire body. I was wondering if the boots belonged to a lover or a crush, or if they represented a fashion from a beloved bygone era. The piece ends with her taking up the boots by the laces and slinging them over her shoulder as she leaves the stage. There’s something triumphant about the way that she carries herself as she crosses the floor before her exit. It made me feel as if the owner of the boots or the era that the boots represent had become a cherished part of the life story of DiOrio’s character.

Benjamin Briones’ Vieja Ciudad de Hierro (Old Iron City) is a collection of vignettes, some with narratives that can be comical or heartbreaking. The piece opens as a beautiful young woman fresh out of the shower, clad in a bathrobe and pearls, her hair wrapped in a towel, vies for the attention of the plumber who’s come to her house to make repairs. She succeeds in distracting him just as her husband returns. A series of episodes unfolds, interspersed with lush gorgeous interludes in which the characters seem to abandon the story line and just dance, mostly as couples. These passages really showcase Briones’ choreographic voice, along with the talent of his dancers. What I loved most was the way that the dance reached so directly to the hearts of those in the audience. There’s an urgency and explosiveness to every movement, even when the dynamics are understated. The narrative sections are also very compelling, each dealing with affairs of the heart, ultimately winding up with two of the characters involved in a knife fight to the death. I also felt that Briones made great use of the space and I loved the energy with which the dance traveled across the floor.

Two saloon girls seek the affections of a cowboy in Brain Norris’ Westward Symmetry, a light hearted parody with an all male cast, danced to triumphant Sousa marches. The choreography is not adjusted for the men; the two who play the saloon girls handle all of it on pointe, including a perfectly synchronized series of pirouettes from fifth position. The dancers in this piece charmed the audience completely.

Briones’s Zavavy is great fun from beginning to end as two men (Andres Neira and Cristian Serrano-Goden) vie for the attention of a flirtatious young woman (played by Stephanie Wolf). The men take turns swaggering and trying to be slick, but the harder that they work, the less impressed the girl seems to be. Even as she makes it clear to the them that they haven’t scored any points with her, she does manage to find her way back to them, again and again. The movement is big and expansive, it travels and doesn’t stay still, which gives a buoyant happy lilt to the entire piece. Briones is masterful when it comes to making us laugh at the folly of human beings and the silly things that we do. Even as his dancers are being playful and going for the laugh, the movement remains so artistic.

Number 9 is a very sweet piece danced on pointe by Jonathan Mendez to the second movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Dressed in street clothes, he seems to be dancing for nothing but the sheer love of ballet. The piece is so lighthearted and humorous and Mendez is just adorable as his ebullience sometimes runs away with him, and he has to stop to correct his own alignment – he pushes his own shoulders down, lengthens his spine, and tucks his rib cage and derriere back into place before taking off again.

The evening ended with Hidden Souls, choreographed by Ursula Verduzco, which had a Medieval mood, a dark floor and dancers dressed in hooded black robes. The dance opens to the sound of an ancient chant and the dancers enter as if in a processional. The women are completely covered until one manages to push her face out beyond the black scarf that had been covering it. Drama builds as the dance opens up. The women are reaching, yearning, praying, grieving, their bodies tense. Again, there is great use of the space as the dance travels, and the formations in which the dancers move are striking and haunting. There is an undercurrent of mystery to the piece, the presence of an untold story. Gradually, the women shed their robes, and it seemed to me as if the hidden souls were finding their way into the light.

This was a wonderful program which ran the gamut of emotions from heartbreaking to hilarious, from dark to joyful, from deep and soulful to lighthearted and silly. It had a great cast of dancers who have it all going on. Each one has such personality, warmth and passion. The choreography is just superb. In the narratives we see characters whom we recognize, either from the world around us or within ourselves, and we are drawn into their stories. Another hallmark of this showcase was the attention to detail of the stunning costumes, many of which were created by Verduzco and Briones and their company UBCostumesDancewear.com

I’m really looking forward to seeing what the future of this festival will bring.

All photos by Rachel Neville.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Garth Fagan Dance

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Joyce Theater

Program A of the Garth Fagan Dance Company’s Joyce season began with Prelude, which pays tribute to the rituals of the dance class. It opens with one dancer working alone. His legs and arms unfurl in different positions. It seems as if his body is reawakening to the movement at the start of a new day. He appears to be testing his balance and the physical mechanics which will deliver the expression of the heart and spirit. The music starts and the dancers enter the stage. We watch the warm ups and deep stretches, the square movement of ballet class floor work, and the isolations of the head and ribs from jazz class. The dancers are all dressed in black and they tend to stay in their own territory on the floor. A girl in green tights travels, which seems to give us a glimpse of the reward that all this disciplined ritual will bring. Different dance styles blend together seamlessly and beautifully as the dancers begin to take off and travel on the diagonal. The men perform spectacular leaps and jumps. I especially loved seeing the sweep of ages of the dancers, and the evidence that the body does not have to be 21 years old in order to move beautifully.

Senku is a solo, danced by Vitolio Jeune, whom we all got to see on Season 5 of So You Think You Can Dance. Jeune is such a gorgeous dancer and in this piece we can see the sweep of his skills from the most subtle and touching gesture to the bravura of his spectacular jumps. The choreography seems to be describing the experience of listening to music, describing the way that music effects the brain, the soul, and the body. At first, Jeune’s hand is to his ear. He hears the music, then executes a flying jump. He puts his ear to the floor, I’m assuming to feel the vibrations. He is staring intensely, as if possessed. Alternately, he is the listener, and then he becomes part of the music itself.

Madiba, a tribute to Nelson Mandela, was given its World Premiere this week. In the program notes, Fagan included this beautiful quote: “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” Fagan said that he didn’t want to do a straight autobiographical piece about Mandela’s life. Instead, he chose to use this quote as his inspiration and his springboard.

The first section opens with a group of dancers traveling forward together at close quarters. This is followed by an absolutely stunning pas de deux, illustrating the courtship of Nelson and Winnie Mandela. The woman is dressed in white and the two of them can not stop smiling. The movement is joyful and exuberant. There is a series of euphoric lifts in which the man turns rapidly, often while holding the girl, who is in a front split, on his neck and shoulders.

Mandela (danced by Norwood Pennewell) later comes out on stage wearing a tiny video camera above his ear. We only notice it because the little red power light can be seen. The video that he’s recording is projected on to the back of the stage in real time. Now we can see the dancers from our own perspective and from his. As the dance goes on, we see the dancers emerge from the wings, come toward him and back away from him. When he executes turns, we see how the lights swirl as the camera passes rapidly by them. Then, from the side of the stage, he watches as the dancers form a circle. Their bodies become the bars of his jail cell, and he can only passively watch the action that is happening on the other side.

There is another very powerful pas de deux in this piece, the most memorable of the evening for me. It is danced by two women. One is black and one is white. They are getting to know each other, through looks and touches, moving closer toward each other in increments until they are sliding caresses along each other’s arms. Their movement isn’t necessarily romantic, although it could be seen that way too. Fagan said that they can also be seen as two sisters, a mother and daughter, or two female friends getting to know each other, or even two nations or two races, reaching out beyond perceived barriers, becoming familiar with what was unfamiliar, and finding truth and beauty. They can also be seen as discovering a new way to be.

The evening closed with Thanks Forty, which premiered a year ago and is a celebration of the forty years of Garth Fagan Dance. The piece is divided into four sections; MUSE - Work, JUMP - Earn, HEAL - Pray, FETE - Joys, which is a lovely way to look at the phases of a long career. Each phase has it’s own mood and music, including classical music from Shostakovich and traditional African music.

The piece opened with a woman running backwards along the perimeter of the stage. It made me wonder if she was “rewinding” to go back to the birth of the company. The JUMP-Earn section was great fun in which the men got to showcase their spectacular leaps and jumps. I especially loved the HEAL-Pray section, danced by five women in black dresses with ruffles. The women are smiling, there are sounds of waterfalls and birdcalls, and we are taken back to what is primal and natural. FETE - Joys brings us to the climax of the celebration, and it brought the house down. I loved it that it showcased a beautiful young girl dressed in pink, alongside the company’s two veteran dancers, Norwood Pennewell and Steve Humphrey.

I adored this program. Later in the evening, when Garth Fagan came out on stage for a Dancer Chat, hosted by the Joyce’s Laura Diffenderfer, it became clear why this company is such a joy to see. Fagan spoke honestly off the cuff for about fifteen minutes. He seemed to personify a life well lived. He comes across as the liveliest, most enthusiastic, happiest man. You can not be anything other than uplifted when you listen to him speak. Or when you see his company dance.

All photos by Yi-Chun Wu.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Dancer Chat with Emily Kikta

September 30, 2011

New York City Ballet
School of American Ballet

I can't say enough good things about the Dancer Chat events that New York City Ballet hosts on selected Friday evenings before performances. They are small scale informal conversations which take place among the artists, management, teachers and audiences of New York City Ballet. Typically, a dancer is interviewed and a Q&A session follows. I have been around the dance world for more than three decades, but every time that I attend one of these events, I always come away with a greater appreciation for the dancers and the company, and I always learn something new. Joan Quatrano has moderated the sessions that I've seen. She is welcoming, she raises great questions and she knows how to keep the conversation moving.

Those who attended last Friday's Chat were introduced to Emily Kikta, who has recently joined the corps de ballet. Though this is her first season in the corps, she's already had the opportunity to originate a featured role in Paul McCartney and Peter Martins' Ocean's Kingdom.

Early on during the chat, it struck me that Ms. Kikta is not your average eighteen year old. She appears to be sharply intelligent, poised, easygoing, confident and obviously very happy to be dancing with NYCB. Again and again, she talked about how much fun she was having. Suki Schorer, her teacher at School of the American Ballet (the official school of New York City Ballet) was in attendance at the chat and when asked to speak about Ms. Kikta, she called her mature and steady, not emotionally fragile, as some young dancers can become if they start their intense training too early. I haven't yet had the opportunity to see Ms. Kikta dance, but knowing that she will bring all these qualities to the stage, I'm really looking forward to seeing her. She is tall and as Ms. Schorer said, She's gorgeous to look at.

She gave us a little behind the scenes peek into the process of creating Ocean's Kingdom, for which she originated the role of an Amazon. She told a wonderful story about Paul McCartney working with the dancers in the studio, suggesting movement and expression, and even demonstrating steps and having the dancers lift him. Her costume for the piece was starfish shaped, and she gave us insight and anecdotes about Stella McCartney's process for perfecting their designs. She said that when Savannah Lowery first tried on the prototype costume and kicked her leg, the entire costume ripped. She emphasized that there were many subsequent fittings to perfect the costume and to get it to work with the movement, and that it always goes this way when a new costume is being created.

This lead to a conversation about the different aesthetics upon which different companies focus. Balanchine wanted his dancers to be incredibly glamourous and he labored over every detail of a costume and a ballet, down to the height of the dancer's bun and the choice of her earrings. They also discussed the quick and exciting attack that became the signature of a Balanchine dance. It's not sleepy ballet.

I was surprised to learn that Ms. Kikta wasn't on a solid ballet track from a very young age. Ms. Schorer went on to say that there isnt necessarily an optimal age for a girl to decide that she's going to pursue a career in ballet – it can vary from one dancer to the next. Ms. Kikta trained at her mother's studio in Pittsburgh, where she had a varied background which included jazz and contemporary dancing. She was in her teens when she decided to focus on ballet. She began by doing summer intensives with SAB. She was in high school when she decided to stay on throughout the year. In 2010 she became an apprentice to NYCB, dancing in Snowflakes and Flowers every night during Nutcracker season. In 2011 she was invited to join the corps and she began to learn many ballets.

When asked how she retains all the choreography for so many different ballets, she talked about learning them in phrases, and she explained that during last week's performance of Diamonds, she was singing the steps to herself in her head as she was dancing. She said that the music gives her the references that she needs to remember the choreography. Ms. Quatrano elaborated, saying that composers have remarked that SAB students and NYCB dancers are very attuned to music. I also found it interesting that Ms. Kikta said she prepares to learn choreography by working with videos first.

Looking ahead, Ms. Kikta said she aspired to dance Emeralds or Rubies, or Wheeldons After the Rain. Now that I've become completely charmed by her, I hope that it comes to pass.

If you are purchasing tickets to a Friday evening performance, check to see if there's a Dancer Chat scheduled before the curtain. They usually start at around 6:45 in the Rose Building, across the street from the Koch Theatre. No matter how much time you've spent at the ballet or in the studio, you will come away from a Dancer Chat with renewed respect for the artist and the company.

Photo by Paul Kolnik.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

An Evening With New Chamber Ballet

Friday, September 9, 2011

City Center Studios

For years, I’d seen the beautiful postcards distributed by New Chamber Ballet in the dance studios of Manhattan. I really liked the concept of a chamber ballet, performing works on an intimate salon type of scale. Last weekend, I finally got the opportunity to see them dance.

Miro Magloire not only choreographs, arranges and performs music, and serves as the company’s Artistic Director, but he also hosts the evening. He is very gracious and charming as he chats easily with the audience about the things that inspire his dances and what the company will be up to in the near future. I consider it a great treat when a choreographer takes the time to do this. It breaks the ice and it always enhances my own enjoyment of the dance.

The first piece, Love Song Solos, choreographed by Magloire, is set to the romantic music of Schubert, Brahms and Wagner. However the music is not in any form that the audience can recognize. Magloire has arranged the songs for percussion only and he plays them on maracas as the ballerina dances the melody.

Katie Gibson dances a passage of lovely lyrical movement that rarely rests ­ one phrase flows seamlessly into the next. At moments, her back is to the audience as her hands float together in front of her face and I wonder if she is weeping. Sarah Atkins seems to be reaching and yearning in her section of the dance. When she takes up a slim black baton in the palms of her flexed hands, the prop lengthens and enhances her lines, especially the line of her spine, and it’s a beautiful effect. Victoria North flies a fluttering blue scarf overhead. She tosses the scarf away, lights upon different chairs but doesn’t stay put, finally kicking the last one away with a loud thud. Her hands and arms are rippling overhead or right in front of her. I loved the moody green gray costumes designed by Candice Thompson for this piece.

Leise, Leise (German for Softly, Softly), another work by Magloire, was given its world premiere. The floor is set with three chairs and the grand piano along the studio’s diagonal. (I was thrilled that Melody Fader was playing the piano. I’ve taken many ballet classes where she was the accompanist and she’s always been one of my favorites.) The one dancer seated in front of the piano is dressed in pink and the two seated up stage of the piano are dressed in pale blue. The girl in pink seems to be the central figure and she moves to the quiet and sometimes stark accompaniment of music by Luciano Berio. One of the most compelling sections of the dance came when the girl in pink stayed in place while one of the girls in blue boureed around her, forward and then backward. It conjured images that reminded me of the pull of the tide. When the girl in pink begins to travel again, the girl in blue shadows her, rolling behind her like a wave gathering momentum as she moves around the floor.

My favorite piece of the evening was a solo titled In A Simple Black Dress, also choreographed by Magloire, accompanied by Miranda Cuckson on violin. To me, it seems as if the black dress is the blank canvas. Depending upon how the dancer wears the dress or moves within the dress, that’s what the dress and the dancer become. Dancer Emily SoRelle Adams shows herself and the dress in several different incarnations, changing with the look that she gives the audience as she moves along the perimeter of the floor, to the way that her shoulder leads as she turns to face the audience, to the attitude in her regal female walk. She’s clearly in control, even when she’s deep in a second position plie, her face dreamy, her flexed hands crossed overhead as she sways back and forth as if she’s riding the breeze. Her hands almost remind me of a plumage, a lovely accessory for the simple black dress.

The evening closed with Emery LeCrone’s Chamber Dances, with music by John Adams, performed deliciously by Miranda Cuckson on violin and Melody Fader on piano. The piece opens with a jazzy burst of energy. The three dancers, Madeline Deavenport, Victoria North and Lauren Toole move briskly through this section, their lines long and their arms unfurled, alternating between unison steps and attractive counterpoint movement. The music gives way to an adagio section in which, again and again, the trio alternately travels together and then unfolds into a new and beautiful tableau. The pace picks up again with the quick footwork of a petite allegro and culminates with the dancers spinning a spirited series of chaine turns across the stage.

For me, this was a wonderful introduction to the New Chamber Ballet. I appreciate how much they are capable of creating without relying on an astronomical budget and an enormous cast. I also really enjoyed seeing ballet performed in this intimate studio setting.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Latin Choreographers Festival

Friday, August 5, 2011

Founded and Directed by Ursula Verduzco
Baruch Performing Arts Center

This year’s Latin Choreographers Festival in New York City delivered some of the most imaginative choreography and heartfelt dancing that I’ve seen all year. The Festival featured the work of thirteen different choreographers in styles ranging from modern and contemporary to pointe. Many of the dances had strong narratives while others were more abstract. Each choreographer brought a unique perspective to the festival and it was pure pleasure to watch each group perform in its own artistic voice.

In La Danza Del Fernando, based on a true story, the protagonist (danced by Roberto Lara) is a laborer. To the accompaniment of traditional Mexican music, he drags himself across the stage and pauses to tend to his sore muscles. We can feel the burden he endures. When his work is finally done, he learns that his employer has shortchanged him. Against the wishes of his woman (danced by Ursula Verduzco), he chooses to hunt him down and attempt to settle the score. In a dramatic moment, before he leaves, he is on his knees and his woman performs the sign of the cross over him before the stage goes dark. The blackout seems to be an omen that things will not go well for him. When he finds the man, a struggle ensues, the laborer's humanity is disregarded and he is treated as if he were disposable. The result is even more heartbreaking when you consider that the same scenario will probably be played out with another worker on another day.

Triangulo, choreographed by Alejandro Chavez, tells the story of a love triangle between three men (danced by Chavez, Mariano Aviles and Isaac Santana). Dressed in black, the men swagger across the darkened stage. They seem like tightly wound coils. I felt as if a confrontation was liable to erupt at any moment, and just as I was expecting the fight to start, one man drew another into a warm embrace. The dancing in this piece was intense and electrifying. The men move with such abandon. I especially liked the counterpoint of the faster sections. The movement was lightning quick and then it would be so well synchronized when it came together in unison. The very high lifts were dazzling too. At one point, the dancer being lifted executed a cabriole to the front as he reached the top of the lift. These lifts were so much more than tricks – they were fearless displays of intense emotion. The choreography of this piece was especially imaginative and the dancers carried out the intricate quick steps with clean technique, making it look effortless.

Benjamin Briones’ Lights On navigated the rocky waters of a stormy relationship. The dance opens with a young couple (Fredrick Davis and Ursula Verduzco) holding hands but pulling apart until they lose their balance. The woman keeps egging on her man, looking for a fight, at moments even striking out at him or throwing punches in the air in rapid succession, as if she was working with a speed bag. Then she’d count on her fingers as she scolded him, presumably listing her many grievances against him. At first, he does what he can to keep from rising to the bait. He covers his ears and even kisses her. They dance together but ultimately, she strikes out at him again. This time she’s really hurt him and she’s consumed with remorse. She wants to make peace and they slow dance together, but it won’t be long before their pattern is repeated again in one way or another. The choreography was very clever. Even as we are laughing with recognition at their troubles, the dancers break our hearts with their very emotional portrayal of these characters.

In Nothing To Hide, choreographed by Ursula Verduzco, dancer Nicole Correa awakens suddenly within a cage of white fabric. Throughout the dance, she attempts to get out, but it takes some doing before she has the wherewithal to accomplish this. At times, she makes it out, but she stays on the floor and finds her way back inside. Again and again, she pulls her hair in front of her face. At times she clings to the fabric as if it's part of her -- maybe she is even finding comfort in hiding within it. When she finally breaks free and moves toward the center of the stage, her movement, especially her port des bras, becomes big and expansive. She still resorts to sometimes pulling her hair in front of her face, until near the end of the dance when she can finally open her mouth wide and extend her arm, staking her claim and reaching out.

The piece titled No Regrets drove me to tears. A traveler meets the angel who is about to take him to heaven. I felt as if the choreography was so quiet and reverential while delivering such a huge emotional wallop. There was no drama or hysterics. The portrayal of this man’s last moments was so sweet and heartwarming that it almost gave me solace about the fate of friends of mine who have recently passed away. The dying man is reluctant to leave earth, but the angel convinces him that his time has come, and he serves as a reassuring companion as the transition begins. This piece was so extraordinarily beautiful. It was choreographed by Marcos Vedoveto and danced by Dante Puleio and Robert Johnston to music by Ennio Marricone.

Some Day, choreographed by Eloy Barragan and danced by Jennifer Pray and Steven Gray, told the story of lovers who seem to be dancing at cross purposes. They are dressed in gray which seems to demonstrate the limits on their relationship - it never manages to get going, let alone heat up. The movement in this dance was especially original, lyrical and lovely, as the dancers approach one another but never quite meet. It’s as if they can’t find each other. Maybe they exist in two different dimensions. Finally, they do come together in a kiss, and as they execute a turning lift, she is hanging on to him, but he is not holding her. Exquisite dancing by Pray and Gray.

The dancers in Belo Corpo delivered a bravura performance of intricate choreography executed at breakneck speed. The dance, choreographed by Tony Powell, pays tribute to the power and vitality of the female body. The women are dressed in flesh tone bras and boy shorts, and they're dancing to skat music. The movement is quirky and lots of fun and the choreography is so clever. The dancers do not stop for a moment, and it must take incredible athletic strength to get through this piece. But they show no signs of exertion. They all seem so happy, as if they’ve lost themselves in the music and they are enjoying themselves completely.

The festival closed with Blue Soup, choreographed by Aszure Barton (the one non-Latin choreographer in the festival) and performed by the Steps Repertory Ensemble. The dancers are dressed in business suits and they execute very quick steps to the accompaniment of Latin percussion. There seems to be movement to every single beat and it’s great fun to watch. Then the movement slows way down as we hear Randy Newman singing I’m Different. The dancers, all but one, move in unison while the rugged individualist does his own thing. The final piece was a lovely duet, ending with a little sadness when the woman looks over her shoulder to see the man, but he’s missing. He scoots back into his place when she’s no longer looking.

I wish that time and space allowed for me to write at length about every choreographer and dance in this festival, because each dance was so beautiful, passionate, and so well done. This is the second time that I’ve seen the Latin Choreographers Festival and I think it’s become my favorite in New York City.

All photos by Rachel Neville.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Eiko and Koma - Water

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Paul Milstein Pool, Hearst Plaza at Lincoln Center
Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival
Eiko and Koma

Something transformative happens when dance is taken out of the theater, out of the studio, and in to the open air. Eiko and Koma’s performance of Water carried things one step further. It was performed in the pool in front of the Vivian Beaumont Theater, after dark.

In the midst of the noise and tension of as artificial an environment as New York City, the atmosphere of the production took me back to what is natural and eternal - an element like water. Even when outside noises and images intruded on the evening, like the sound of a motorcycle roaring up 65th Street, or the sight of red lights and flashes on the cameras of those in the audience, the undercurrent and the integrity of the performance couldn’t be violated.

Eiko appears. Her entrance is so quiet and unobtrusive that I only notice she’s there when those around me start pointing at her. She is being lit with white light, and she looks other-worldly. Standing alone in the water, dressed in a white kimono, she could be a spirit or an intercessor between this world and the unseen world. Her face is white, her hair is loose and her arms are lifted to the sky. The water in which she stands is dark and still. Her reflection and the ripples in the water which radiate from her body, create the most beautiful images. She seems to be part of the water. Her movement is so very slow and lovely, giving the viewer the opportunity to experience every tiny detail of every gesture. Her facial expression is sometimes pained from struggle, sometimes resigned to her fate, and sometimes impassive, calm and knowing.

Koma approaches her from behind and lifts her hand. There is no clear narrative here – I think it’s left up to the viewer to decide what he or she is seeing. To me, it seemed that Koma was in peril and Eiko had the power to help him, even if it meant interceding on his behalf with what cannot be seen.

Slowly, he lowers himself into the water. As he does this, I am taken by the beauty of their bodies against their reflections on the surface of the dark water, and the way that their physical presences grow gradually smaller as they slowly submerge. The slightest rise or fall from the water seems to change the physical size of them.

Koma continues to submerge until only his face and one shoulder can still be seen. There are passages in which only the dancers’ faces and hands break the surface of the water, and though they become very small physical presences, we still feel the presence of the entire body and its spirit, its emotion, its motivation and its movement.

Musician Robert Mirabal, who provided the haunting primal accompaniment on drums, shakers and Navajo flute, is also partially submerged in a corner of the pool. He’s not lit and he is sitting alongside a raft made of pieces of driftwood. His movement is as expressive and reverential as the dancers’ as he sets the raft drifting toward Koma. The raft approaches at this same extremely slow pace, soon to be accompanied by the sound of the drum, a steady rhythm that sounds like a rapid heartbeat, and then joined by the sound of a shaker. Tension builds, then gradually eases as the drumbeat slows, giving way to the pure and powerful call of the wood flute.

Eiko and Koma are natives of Japan. They are dressed in kimonos and they are wearing white Butoh makeup on their faces, so one can’t help but be reminded of the recent devastating events in Japan and the part played by water, or by man’s manipulation of the natural world. Though the waters are still in Water, we can sense that the characters share a story which may not be completely resolved, and perhaps the water will become a permanent part of them, if it doesn't overwhelm them all together.

The performance and the notes from the program leave the audience with much to consider. Water is essential to our lives. Our bodies are made of water, water cleanses us, water fosters the growth of crops, water quenches our thirst. Water moves around an obstacle to reach its destination. Water is eternal. But water can also overpower. Water has a spirit of its own and water demands respect.

Toward the end of the piece, Koma receives a small raft full of lighted candles, and this act also conjures an atmosphere of the eternal. The raft of candles and the two figures slowly drift into the darkness.

Just as when it began, I never really knew when Water ended. But the mood that it created was so intense, that it seemed disorienting to find my feet and leave the plaza once it was over. The performance was so moving, so beautiful and so special because of where it took place.

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To view an exhibit of sets, costumes and videos chronicling the 40 year old collaboration between Eiko and Koma, visit Residue an Installation by Eiko & Koma, at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Now through October 30, 2011

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Jennifer Muller / The Works

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

The White Room - World Premiere
Cedar Lake Theater

I’d had the opportunity to see The White Room when it was still a work in progress. Last November, the company hosted an informal performance of the first act without costumes. The dancers were dressed in pieces from their own wardrobes and the dance was performed in a studio. This was my first experience in seeing the bare bones of a dance while it was still in “draft” format and then getting to see the same dance fully realized.

The White Room tells the story of an innocent girl. When the dance begins, she is dressed in white, and seems to represent the tabula rasa. Every movement seems to hold fascination for her. She is someone new, either a new baby just born, or an initiate in a new organization. Along the way, she encounters strong individuals who are new to her and we watch to see how she interacts with them and how they influence her. The dance is performed to a collection of cello pieces which range from the melodic to the somber to the sawing.

Some of the most exciting sections of the dance revolve around a group of men dressed in office attire. Images of high rise office buildings are projected behind them as they set about vying for power within their own hierarchy. We’ve met people like this in our own lives -- the top dog, the lieutenant, the manipulator -- and it was interesting to see the way that Muller showed them working against one another, first jockeying for position within their own organization, and then battling for the attention of an exciting woman. Tension builds as percussion kicks in behind the swells of cello music. The movement explodes, becomes bigger and sharper and sometimes combative. Muller’s lifts are used to great effect. Some of them seem so elegant and so simple, such as the image pictured in which the women seem to be landing from grand jetes, yet they remain airborne. Still I can’t recall having seen them used before. When a similar confrontation appears in Act II, large scraps of mylar confetti fall from the ceiling. I could search for the symbolism in this and attach a dozen different meanings to it, but no matter what the audience member took away from that moment, the shiny confetti against the dimly lit stage created a beautiful evocative image in and of itself.

Muller also used crimson draperies which unfurled from the ceiling to dramatic effect. Toward the end of Act I, there is a passage that reminds me of teenage girls in a dormitory. The draperies which fall before them could be a secure blanket or something behind which to hide. Not all of the dancers seem to be hiding in fear. Some seem to be hiding so that they can carry out illicit activity without interference from an authority figure who moves across the stage, mostly casting disapproving looks at her charges. Sometimes the simplest movement, such as an arm being extended parallel with the floor, the fabric gathered in the hand, created the most beautiful image. Given the frantic way that the innocent girl leaves the stage after her draperies are stripped away from her, does seem to suggest that she’s been stripped of her last defenses. In a passage in Act II, the characters return carrying white masks in front of their faces. It left me with the idea that their individuality would always be with them, no matter what they had to do or how they had to appear in order to get by in The White Room.

Certain character really fired my imagination. Rosie Lani Fiedelman plays the bad girl, the rebel. She may be caught within the hierarchy, or held under the authority of a matron, but she’s not about to surrender and do things anyone else’s way. Fiedelman's dancing is sexy and defiant. She captured my attention again and again.

Abdul Latif played the master manipulator. Everyone has known a controlling person like this. No matter what is happening between any of the other parties, he’s got an opinion about it and he’s going to do what he can to ensure that things go his way. He even dares to try to manipulate the man at the top of the pyramid, played with a great flourish by Pascal Rekoert. At moments Latif's character seems defeated, he stands still or moves slowly, one of his shirt tails hanging out of his trousers. But his setbacks are only temporary.

I especially liked Gen Hashimoto, whose character I saw as the ultimate patriarch. He is dressed in the long black robes of a priest and he carries out something akin to a religious ritual by anointing the innocent girl with water. His character even stands up to the man at the top of the hierarchy at one point, and he alone could influence the man’s behavior. Hashimoto is a captivating dancer whose movement is lovely and lyrical while being very assertive. He was able to exert his authority and lay down the law without a lot of foot stomping and aggression.

Another very compelling character was the lieutenant, the second in command, played brilliantly by Alvon Reed. When we meet him, he appears to be on the brink of dissatisfaction with his station and he is no longer interested in deferring to the top dog. Again and again, we see him move toward the rebellious girl, but we question whether their relationship is only superficial and expedient. A means to an end.

I really liked the manner in which themes of hierarchy and influence were addressed in The White Room. It shines light on many issues in contemporary society -- issues that are always right out there in plain sight but may rarely be considered.

All photos by Paula Lobo.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Swan Lake

June 28, 2011

American Ballet Theatre

Even after having spent decades at the theater watching dance concerts, I continue to hold a special place in my heart for American Ballet Theatre’s production of Swan Lake, choreographed by Kevin McKenzie. For me, every last detail of the ballet is just beautiful. The pastoral sets and swirling skirts in so many shades of blue, all designed by Zack Brown, just delight my eye from the moment the dancing begins. Even though everything involved with the production is so purely classical and pleasing to the eye and the ear, still the story always carries that undercurrent of edginess, to give it an added spark.

This season I saw the lead roles performed by Gillian Murphy and David Hallberg. Both dancers disappeared into their characters. Throughout the entire evening, there was never a moment when I felt that I had to suspend disbelief. Mr. Hallberg’s Siegfried seemed to possess a mischievous streak, as if he was almost a bit of a rebel. Even though he appeared young and almost boyish in Act I, there were moments when he seemed to have a devilish gleam in his eye, and this showed itself in his movement too. I was so happy to see Susan Jaffe playing the role of the Queen Mother and I enjoyed the few brief moments that she shared with Hallberg. The Pas de Trois, danced by Renata Pavam, Simone Messmer and Sascha Radetsky, was especially lively and lyrical.

Ms. Murphy made the most vulnerable Odette. She is such a convincing actress and her movement is so organic to her character. This was especially evident in a breathtaking sequence of pirouettes and pique turns toward the end of Act II in which she just sailed as if weightless and riding on the wind, the way that a bird would. As the dynamics of the music shifted and built, she picked up speed in a seamless transition. When she is partnered with Mr. Hallberg, their dancing seems effortless. There is such strong chemistry between them. They moved through balances, penches, turns and lifts as if they were one entity. At times, it was almost as if they weren’t even touching, but instead just floating along together side by side.

In sharp contrast to her guileless Odette, Ms. Murphy blazed on to the stage as Odile. From the moment that she made her fiery entrance in Act III, she appeared to be in complete control of the moment, a combination of defiant bad girl and femme fatal. Her spirit was every bit as convincing as her dancing. For me, this act was the crescendo of the evening, and I hung on every single gesture and step.

The entire cast, from the players in the party scenes to the swans, were just magnificent. The big ensemble dances were so uplifting and full of life. Every formation struck by the swans is just so achingly beautiful and the sets at the lake completely capture the atmosphere of the forest. They are among my favorite in all of ballet.

It seemed as if the evening was over almost moments after it started. At just the moment when I was sure that I’d witnessed something close ballet perfection, I was reminded of the things that are sometimes in store when you go to see live theater. When it came time for the bows, the swans were assembled on stage, behind the scrim. The scrim began to slide in to the left wing, but it only made it about a third of the way across the stage before it got stuck. We could see that it was being yanked, but it was stubbornly refusing to move, so finally it was lifted vertically, clearing the stage and vanishing above. What a relief that this didn’t happen earlier to mar this beautiful performance.

I look forward to ABT’s Swan Lake every year and I always feel a little heartbroken when it’s over. This year was no exception.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Ballet Nacional de Cuba

June 9, 2011

La Magia de la Danza
Ballet Nacional de Cuba
Brooklyn Academy of Music

Ballet Nacional de Cuba performed for four nights at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of the Si Cuba Festival, which gave New Yorkers the opportunity to experience Cuban culture. The festival went a long way toward opening my eyes, ears and all my senses to the heritage of this nation which is such a close geographical neighbor, yet from whom we are so far removed.

I’d read about all the creature comforts that American dancers take for granted, that aren't to be had for Cuban dancers, including simple things like air-conditioning, water bottles, bandages and Marley floors. But I’d also heard from American dancers who had the opportunity to work in Cuba that their artists are so inspiring and that they can do so much with what little that they do have. From the moment that the Ballet Nacional’s BAM program opened, and throughout the evening, again and again I kept having the sense of Now I know what they mean!

Without the huge budgets enjoyed by American companies, their sets and costumes are a little less spectacular. Still, I saw things at La Magia de la Danza that I’d never before seen at the ballet. Much has to be said about the tricks that this company can perform. I’m usually not one for tricks. But I saw so many in this performance that took such technique, strength, poise and timing that there were moments when I couldn’t believe my eyes. Maybe just to assure the audience that they mustn't doubt what they’d just seen, the choreography would often repeat the trick.

Still I felt strongly that the tricks were just a stunning ornament on what was, down to its bare bones, a very stirring heartfelt performance. These dancers do not get bogged down in perfect technique. Instead they move with such stirring passion and sincerity. Even when presenting the most popular excerpts of the most popular ballets, there was never a moment where their dancing seemed anything less than beautiful, genuine and compelling.

One thing that struck me about the company was that while the ballerinas looked like seasoned professionals at the top of their game, some of the men looked very young and relatively slim compared to the men I’m used to seeing at the ballet. It also seemed to me that in many of the excerpts, almost all of the bravura came from the women. The men were excellent partners, but I’d have liked to have seen them featured more than they were. I later learned, via Dance Magazine editor Wendy Perron’s blog and an informative article by Gia Kourlas in The New York Times, that many of the boys who are trained in Cuba choose to defect when they come of age. Ballet Nacional's repertoire is mostly limited to the classics. While many Cuban dancers long to expand their horizons in terms of choreography, some like Lorna Feijoo who dances with the Boston Ballet also lament that America’s ballet is too “Hollywood”, while Cuba’s ballet is strictly ballet.

One week earlier, I’d seen Diana Vishneva playing an ethereal waif-like Giselle in Act II with American Ballet Theatre. In contrast, Ballet Nacional’s Sadaise Arancibia’s Giselle was so deeply somber, both in face and movement, giving a completely different take on the character, but one that was every bit as heartbreaking.

Viengsay Valdes appeared as Princess Aurora in the pas de deux from Act III of Sleeping Beauty. Adorable and jubilant, she moved through one astonishing turn sequence to the next, one run finishing in a fish dive! She also performed an impossibly long series of turns in attitude front. I especially liked her partner Alejandro Virelles.

There was something amusing about seeing the Waltz of the Flowers and the Nutcracker’s Grand Pas de Deux performed on what had been one of the hottest days in June. Ballet Nacional’s Flowers were dressed in soft pastel colors and danced with garlands of green leaves. The dance featured two leads (not named as Dew Drops in the program) and a Sugar Plum Fairy dressed like a pink confection. Beautiful performances by Anette Delgado and Dani Hernandez.

The company also danced scenes from Swan Lake, Coppelia, and Alicia Alonso’s Gottschalk Symphony. For me, the highlight of the night was Don Quixote, with dazzling performances by the Yanela Pinera as Kitri, Jessie Cominguez as Mercedes, Jose Losado as Basil and, of course, the bull fighters.

The audience was wildly enthusiastic. I’d never heard cheering at the ballet like I heard that night in the balcony at BAM. It often reached rock concert levels.

It’s sad to see the company go. I’d have loved to have seen more than one performance, but their run was so short. I’m hoping that we Americans won't have to wait too long to see them again. They are an exciting company who have a very passionate audience here in New York City.

Ballet Nacional de Cuba

Dance Magazine editor Wendy Perron’s Blog

Havana’s Sphere of Influence by Gia Kourlas

Si Cuba Festival

All Photos by Jack Vartoogian.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Danza Contemporanea de Cuba

May 18, 2011

Joyce Theater

The Si Cuba Festival is currently being celebrated in New York City and will run through June. It features Cuban visual art, film, music, and a generous offering of dance. Companies performing here include Ballet Folklorico Cutumba, Ballet Nacional de Cuba, and Danza Contemporanea de Cuba.

Danza Contemporanea’s program at the Joyce opened with Sulkary, a 1971 piece for three men and three women, choreographed by Eduardo Rivero. Paying tribute to the African roots of Cuban culture, it’s performed to traditional music which opens with spare chants and drumbeats. Dressed in flesh colored leotards ornamented with shells and beads, the women strike poses that we’ve seen in ancient artwork. On the beat of the drum, with the smallest most unexpected isolation, they transform from one pose to another. They often move with their arms held up, elbows bent, wrists flexed, palms facing the ceiling. Then their arms wave like the wings of birds and their torsos ripple. Much of their movement is expansive and peaceful.

The men arrive carrying staffs. They are aggressive, claiming their territory, glaring at the women with wild eyed intensity, tapping the butts of their staffs against the stage floor as if to stake their claim. They carry themselves as Gods and not as slaves. The couples come together, striking beautiful primitive poses, ending with the women up high on the men’s shoulders, as if together they make some kind of gorgeous exotic being.

Pedro Ruiz’s Horizonte was a very pretty tribute to the tropical colors, breezes, light and rhythms of the waters surrounding Cuba. The dancers are dressed in diaphanous costumes in a spectrum of pastel blues and purples. The movement is joyous and the dancers are happy and smiling. The choreography is full of big leaps and high dramatic lifts. In one especially beautiful passage, the men roll across the stage like the waves on the ocean, and somehow leap high from their prone position on the floor, just like a spray of ocean water or a flying fish.

Much was said about this piece in the New York Times and in Dance Magazine, suggesting that it was too tame and cliche. I will confess to having felt that way for the first few moments of the dance, but as it progressed I became completely drawn in. I have seen a lot of Mr. Ruiz’s work, but for me this piece stood out as one of his best. I felt that it suited the company so well, as if he’d taken the time to know the dancers personally and to play to their strengths. As to whether or not it’s a singularly Cuban work, before this night my experience with Cuban dance began and ended with Carlos Acosta’s autobiography No Way Home, so I’m in no position to comment. But I did feel that there was something very special and lovely about this dance. Some in the audience commented that they could practically feel the ocean breezes and smell the clean air.

Demo-N/Crazy (which Artistic Director Miguel A. Iglesias Ferrer pronounced “Demon Crazy”) opens to silence and then the sound of sawing strings. The women are bare chested and there is a feeling of innocence -- the calm before the storm. The men and women embrace. But this atmosphere becomes shattered when one of the men breaks free of one of the women and leaves her sitting alone on the stage. She sings a melancholy song as she slowly crosses the stage and moves on. From this point on, a frenzy of energy and noise is unleashed.

One passage is danced to the song Ne Me Quitte Pas in which two sets of men battle each other. Things become quite brutal. We are wondering if they are lovers and this is the end of their relationship. But Ferrer later told us that it had nothing to do with relationships or sexuality, but instead it was more a statement about the chaos and aggression that characterize so much of today’s world, locally and on an international stage. From that perspective, the piece really worked as each individual escalated in battle, refused gestures of conciliation, and grew ever more violent.

The piece ends with each dancer in a headstand, which they hold for an awfully long time. It seemed to me to reflect that the world is currently in a state of being upside down, and while we all hold out hopes of a better future, at the rate that we’re going there isn’t much on the horizon to give external encouragement. It has to be found within.

If Demo-N/Crazy demonstrated nothing else, it proved that the dancers in this company are world class technicians who have managed to accomplish the feat of presenting soulful dance without being encumbered by their own virtuosity.

No matter how uplifting the performance and the Dance Chat, I left the Joyce Theater feeling just a little bit sad. The evening drove home for me the fact that whenever there is a standoff between two entities, no matter who was the aggressor, who was at fault, or what happened, both parties often wind up paying a huge price. It makes me sad to consider everything that America and Americans have lost because of what Fernando Garcia Leon (Danza Contemporanea’s Public Relations Director) so poetically referred to as “an artistic dialogue hampered by US - Cuban politics”.

Mr. Leon speaks as beautifully as the company dances and I felt that his words summed up the situation. He said that in cultural and geographic terms, Cuba and the United States have a close relationship, even in spite of the political turmoil. But the current political landscape keeps both cultures disconnected from the best of what could be. I am sure that artists and audiences in both nations are looking forward to a time when the embargo ends and the artistic dialogue can flourish without restrictions.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

American Ballet Theatre On to Act II Works & Process at the Guggenheim

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Isadora Duncan famously said, “If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.” While I understand this sentiment completely, I’ve found that there is definitely something to be said for having dancers talk to their audience. As a dance fan and a perennial dance student, I’ve found the Works & Process series, in which artists discuss their process before an audience, to be a wonderful educational resource. I’ve attended several of their events this season and each one was so illuminating. When one watches a dance performance, the experience is a personal one, different for each member of the audience. But I have found that if the dancer is willing to pull the curtain back just a little bit, and speak candidly about what goes on behind the scenes and how decisions are made, it winds up increasing my enjoyment of the dance performance exponentially.

ABT - On to Act II was the final event for this Works & Process season. The evening introduced us to several dancers who spoke of the paths they traveled either when they retired from the stage or moved on from the company. This session opened with a slide show of beautiful dance photographs by Rosalie O’Conner, who danced with ABT for fifteen years before retiring in 2002. She is now associate staff photographer for ABT and company photographer for Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, Ballet Arizona, Boston Ballet and Tulsa Ballet.

Moderator Wes Chapman, former ABT principal and current Artistic Director of ABT’s Studio Company, served as moderator for the evening. He presented the students of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, ABT’s pre-professional training program. They performed the waltz from Les Sylphides. They were absolutely lovely, despite being a little crowded on the Guggenheim’s small stage. Later in the evening, the students performed Jessica Lang’s beautiful Vivace Motifs. Great work.

Rachel Moore, Executive Director of American Ballet Theatre, appeared next. Her story was especially compelling, as it illustrates that dancers are usually multi-talented, multi-dimensional individuals. They bring additional talents with them when they join the ballet world, or they develop them alongside their ballet career. And then these talents can ultimately wind up serving the ballet world somewhere up the line. In Ms. Moore’s case, she is the daughter of two economists who had experience in fund raising and working with unions. Her early exposure to economics guided her to transition to arts administration when she retired from the stage.

She’d danced with ABT for four years before becoming sidelined with an injury. She wound up attending college at a time when most ballet dancers didn’t do so. She interned for the National Endowment of the Arts and she moved on to become an arts advocate in Washington, DC. She served as Director of the Boston Ballet School before becoming Executive Director of ABT. Her background as a dancer and an administrator enables her to “speak both languages” -- to translate economic realities so that dancers can understand them, while translating the world of ballet so that it can be understood by those who fund it.

Next, we met Susan Jaffe. Ms. Jaffe joined ABT in 1980 and danced with them through 2002. Today, she is Ballet Mistress for ABT, as well as a choreographer and teacher.

Mr. Chapman asked her who had influenced her as a Ballet Mistress. She gave the reply that I love most: “Everybody is an influence.” She went on to speak with great affection for those who trained her, especially for the Kirov Ballet’s former Prima Ballerina Assoluta, Irina Kolpakova. Ms. Jaffe said that working with Ms. Kolpakova was like beginning again from scratch. She said of Ms. Kolpakova that, “she would run like a butterfly around the room calling, ‘Be free!’”.

Ms. Jaffe went on to demonstrate the responsibilities of the Ballet Mistress. This segment really drove home to me how focused and smart dancers have to be. I have always been in awe of the way that pros can memorize so much choreography. But as I watched Ms. Jaffe coaching the lovely Sarah Lane who performed Swanhilde’s entrance from Coppelia, it became clear that the steps of the choreography are only the beginning. Each phrase of the variation is loaded with small details and each one of those details has to be committed to memory too, even when they change on the fly.

Ms. Jaffe urged Ms. Lane to demonstrate Swanhilde’s excitement in the way she runs when she first enters the scene, even if it meant delaying her entrance by a breath so that she could run faster when she finally does appear, and still hit her mark on time. Ms. Jaffe urged Ms. Lane to be less lyrical, to display Swanhilde’s happiness through the quickness of her movement. Ms. Jaffe also demonstrated what is called a “pick up”, in which a dancer who is facing one direction, is about to turn to face the opposite way, but leads by turning her head slightly before turning her entire body. Another little nuance was demonstrated in the gesture in which Swanhilde wonders why her fiance keeps blowing kisses to the doll. At first, Lane just opened her arms as she mimed, “Why?” Ms. Jaffe suggested that she take a step backward as she opened her arms, and that one subtle little detail really magnified Swanhilde’s bewilderment and the urgency she feels to have her question answered.

As Lane moved across the stage on the diagonal, Ms. Jaffe coached her to have her arm arrive in position before her leg reached its maximum height – to travel on the cabriole, but not on the pique. There is so much for the ballerina to memorize, so much for her to commit to her heart and mind so that she can ultimately forget it all and just play the role in the moment of the dance. What amazing skill it all takes!

Martine van Hamel appeared next. She joined ABT in 1970 and danced with them for over twenty years. She now plays character roles, and she treated the audience to an excerpt from Cinderella in which she plays the step mother. In James Kuldelka’s choreography, the step mother is “a faded beauty and a drinker”. As van Hamel rose from the interview chair, she reached for her robe and said, “Let me put on my shmattah.” The moment that she donned that robe, she transformed into her character. She talked about the way that Kuldelka had instructed her to shuffle her feet rather than to walk, to show how the drink had affected her.

The evening ended with the appearance of Jose Manuel Carreno. This is his final season with ABT after sixteen years with the company. He spoke of how he’s looking forward to freelancing, coaching and teaching. He wants to do more contemporary dance and even Broadway. The evening ended with a performance of Transparante performed by Carreno and Melanie Hamrick.

Chapman did a great job of moderating for the evening. He raised all of the questions that I’d have wanted to ask and then some. Thanks to the Guggenheim for a fantastic Works & Process season.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Dance Brazil

April 27, 2011

Joyce Theater

Dance Brazil combines contemporary dance and capoeira, the Brazilian martial art practice performed to music. For their Joyce season, they presented three pieces choreographed by their Artistic Director, Jelon Vieira.

A Jornada, created in 2001, describes the journey of Africans to Brazil and their struggle for liberation. Live musicians provided what I considered to be an especially moving and then exhilarating score, composed by Marcelo Zarvas.

As the dance opens, six men are seated in close proximity of one another. Their torsos slowly lengthen and release, and it leaves me with the impression that they’re on a ship. They rise to their feet but are soon seated again, facing a new direction. They hold together in a close formation, like a tribe, and they tend to crouch close to the earth as they move. The dance opens up a bit as women join them. There are lovely high lifts and many rippling isolations in the upper body. But the travels never remain smooth for very long. They are interrupted by sudden turbulence as hypnotic repetitive phrases are played on the strings.

In the second section, much of the movement is still close to the ground, deep in the knees, but the solemnity seems to lift. The music is joyous. The men turn cartwheels, barrel turns and ariels. Everyone’s smiling and we feel as if we’re at a celebration. The steps are quick and the swaying women are sexy. The men jump impossibly high, drawing their knees all the way to their chests as they reach the apex.

The final section opens with what sound like gunshots played on the drums. The dancers tense up and shudder. The drums sound like thunder. The music is absolutely stunning as the bravura kicks in. The capoeiristas take on one another, each one strutting and showing off his moves. It’s all performed with blinding speed and some of the dazzling movement seems to defy gravity. The men nearly hold themselves horizontally in space, their upper bodies parallel to the floor, while their legs sweep and strike. They come close to flying.

Batuke was given its New York premiere. In the program notes, Vieira writes with such affection about his personal history with the Batuke music of capoeira, which his mother used to refer to as “noise”. If it was noise, then it was beautifully rhythmic and full of celebration. You can read Vieira’s liner notes here and view a video of Nana Vasconcelos playing the berimbau, a traditional African instrument used in Brazil in the practice of capoeria. The piece was performed with the live accompaniment of three percussionists.

I could identify no narrative in this dance. It was just pure joy, pure dance, pure jubilation, pure celebration of the drum and of capoeria. . The audience couldn't help but get caught up in the exhilaration and they gave a loud enthusiastic response.

Again, the dancers move in groups throughout and rarely stray from one another. The choreography always seems to contain an undertow of unison and community. In turquoise leotards and long white tassle skirts, four women ripple and sway and occasionally rub their hands together as if they were washing. The capoeristas join them. They are dressed in traditional costume, each carrying sticks that remind me of Indian clubs or nunchucks. They begin by using the instruments to accent beats in the music, but as the capoeria battles ensue, each capoerista strikes a stick against that of his opponent, always in perfect rhythm with the music.

For all the flash and acrobatics of the capoerira movement, the artists never sacrificed heart and soul, and never lost their connection to the music or to the earth. It all fused together into an exhilarating whole which deeply affected the audience and brought them to their feet.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Stephen Petronio’s Underland

Sunday April 10 – Evening

Joyce Theater

Stephen Petronio's Underland opens with guest artist Reed Luplau hanging upside down about ten feet above the stage and descending a rope ladder like a spider. A triptych of screens cover the back of the stage and as the beautiful heartrending noise of Descent to Underland rings out, cloudy images are displayed. Petronio's Underland was inspired by a collection of songs written and performed by Nick Cave. In the program notes, Petronio says that this dance is an attempt to locate a "place" beneath the surface.

Petronio has a unique voice when it comes to choreography and it's nothing but a pleasure to witness his dancers at work. The movement is quick, challenging and unpredictable, all of it executed beautifully. Right out of the gate, the dance is dazzling even as the subject matter of the songs continually grows darker. We see high leaps, lots of cabrioles and big dramatic grand ronde des jambes. Some of the men perform a recurring movement in which the back leg folds and unfolds rapidly, as if the dancer is shaking something loose. Legs and arms are fully unfurled. The movement is big, sharp and expressive. I am impressed by the dancers' ability to be moving at full tilt and then suddenly halt the momentum and melt into something static and softer. I often get the feeling that the choreography contains hidden references. Early in the piece, a few sequences end with the dancer standing straight in fifth position with one arm en haut, as if ready to perform a barre exercise.

In the program, Petronio stated that he considered the dance to be non-narrative, but I found it hard to listen to the emotion of these songs and the stories that they tell without imagining a narrative in the choreography.

During the first songs, the dancers are dressed in torn black and gray costumes. Their movement, along with the visuals on the screen, grow slowly darker in tone. The piece turns a corner about halfway through, during the song The Carny, when the men emerge in white and the women in red tutus. The movement becomes a mechanical waltz.

For The Weeping Song, the company emerge dressed as GIs,. Their costumes are torn and it left me feeling as if they'd been through battle. Andy Warhol style repetitive images of mushroom clouds appear on the screens. The images multiply and toward the end, when the original image returns, we see the image of a dollar bill inserted inside the cloud. The dancers dramatize the ravages of war and the piece resolves with them marching barefoot. It seems as if this is the first moment in the evening when the action settles down and an eerie kind of quiet descends.

Four dancers come downstage and cling to one another in The Ship Song. They are expressing fraternity and love. I felt as if they were preparing to move, or maybe they were being relocated. Perhaps one of them was embarking on a journey of his or her own. Throughout the piece, the dancers don't travel far from their opening spots on stage. Their physical closeness reminds me of the closeness of a family.

Emotional fireworks ignite to accompany the song Stagger Lee. Natalie Mackessy explodes on to the stage in a crimson red dress. She seems to be moving impossibly fast and she is put through a course of acrobatic lifts. I wondered if she was representing violence for the sake of violence. Even amongst this selection of dark songs, the music and lyrics of Stagger Lee are especially ferocious and gritty. As the emotion runs higher and higher, the GIs return, this time with bits of red fabric hanging from inside their uniforms. Have they been bloodied? Are their bodies on fire, figuratively or literally?

This dance moves into The Mercy Seat, a heart wrenching song sung from the point of view of an innocent man being placed in the electric chair. A clock is projected on the center screen, ticking down the minutes to the hour of execution. But there is some redemption to be found in Death is Not the End, where the company returns to the stage dressed in white, and the dancing resolves into something more lyrical and peaceful.

As bows were taken and a standing ovation rose up, loud cheers went up for dancer Shila Tirabassi. Petronio took up a microphone and announced that after ten years with the company Ms. Tirabassi had just given her last performance. This saddened me, because the first time that I'd ever seen this company years earlier, she'd been the featured dancer in the very first piece, so I have always associated her as being one of the quintessential Petronio dancers. She's provided me with so many hours of amazing dance.

Petronio ended the night by telling the audience, "Without art, we're nothing more than a bunch of dumb monkeys who would kill each other for a crust of bread."

All Photos by Julie Lemberger.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Philadanco - Guess Who's Coming To Dinner

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Joyce Theater

Philadanco’s dazzling performance kicked off with the sultry Bolero Too, choreographed by Christopher Huggins. As it opens, the dancers are seen in silhouette, lined up along the back of the stage, which is lit red. One couple comes forward to dance, and then another. Their movement is sensual, sleek jazz fused with modern. The women are dressed in red, each one with a red flower in her hair, while the men wear high waisted black tights and white shirts. As the familiar music builds, larger groups emerge.

The dance incorporates a variety of styles, from ballet all the way to break dancing turns on the floor and it moves from one to the next in a seamless fashion. One is never jarred by the transitions. The partnering is breathtaking, with huge high lifts and dramatic throws. The dancers are all elegance and passion, and while they appear to be swaying to the classic music, their bodies never stop. The choreography is intricate and demanding, the steps come fast and furiously, yet the dancers pace themselves so beautifully that none of it ever feels hurried or frantic. Their movement never loses its silkiness.

Choreographed by Urban Bush Women founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, By Way Of The Funk is all attitude, sheer fun and great entertainment. The dancers are dressed in black and silver, with no shortage of spandex, fringe, sequins and shining bellydancing coins. The piece starts as three soloists take turns grooving to excerpts from hits of the early 1960s. We hear echoes of Chuck Berry, James Brown, and Sly & The Family Stone. Then the piece hits its stride to the music of Parliament Funkadelic.

Yes, the movement is funky. It has great syncopation with stunning details such as surprising grand jetes shimmering like fireworks where you’d least expect to see them. The dancers are having fun and their enthusiasm is infectious. One man, left alone on the stage, is so lost in the music that he might never stop dancing, until another man comes out to lay his hand on him and disrupt him. He pays him the ultimate compliment. “Cool!” “Cool?” the dancer checks. “Cool!” the man affirms. “Cool!” the dancer agrees.

Later on, during the Dance Chat, Artistic/Executive Director Joan Myers Brown admitted that she wasn’t convinced of the merits of this dance when she first saw it. Originally Zollar had proposed to create a ballet based on the life and work of Marian Anderson . But as Zollar was riding a train one day, she heard some funk music, and By Way Of The Funk was born. Philadanco had already secured a grant to do the Marian Anderson piece, but they were able to persuade the Powers That Be to fund By Way Of The Funk.

This piece showcases the depth of these dancers. During the Dance Chat, Choreographer Huggins stressed that the dancers have to know their bodies, their spine, their center, their placement, but they’ve also got to be able to get down in their knees and curve their backs. The dancers had to know how to “get down”, which is what they did from beginning to end of By Way Of The Funk

In Ray Mercer’s Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, the fearlessness and the commitment of the dancers went into overdrive. At the center of the stage, there is a table that is four feet high. Throughout the dance, the various guests bring their ideas, opinions and beliefs to the table. I have seen this theme in dances before, but Mercer’s interpretation brought matters to a new level. Each guest at this dinner has a very strong presence and is speaking in a passionate artistic voice.

There is an underlying tension in the air. There are beats in the music that could be taken for a ticking clock, and eventually the beats of a metronome become prominent. The table (which is only 6 feet wide) is used to great affect. One dancer slides under the table and as she moves within this confined space, we can feel her frustration and the containment of her energy. When she finally bursts out and leaps up on the table, she seems to take flight, to be laying herself bare, to be unencumbered by what others may think of her. Mercer used the different levels to good effect, with dancers sometimes moving in unison, one on the table top and one on the stage. The bravura of this performance comes in the daring leaps that the women take from the table top. They leap up, as if on a high dive, and hurtle themselves with their legs open in a split, into the arms of the men. The degree of trust between the partners has got to be extraordinary. One false move, one moment of lost concentration and things could quickly turn dangerous.

The final piece of the evening was Enemy Behind The Gates, also choreographed by Huggins, about the “enemy” who dwells amongst the group, looking just like everyone else, appearing to be part of the community, but who isn’t what he or she seems. Ms. Brown referred to this dance as Philadanco’s Revelations, their signature piece.

(Ironically, the piece received its world premiere on September 10, 2001, and it seems quite prescient given the way that American life was about to tip the following day.)

There is a militaristic mood to this piece, from the uniform style costumes to the unison movement of the dancers. Though the movement is fluid, it conjures an atmosphere that is tense and rife with paranoia. Again it becomes evident that the choreographer is paying very close attention to every tiny detail in the music. Not a single note is lost, but the dance never seems too busy. This piece was also marked by dizzying turning sequences that come in rapid succession and change direction just as quickly. Just as I felt this raising gooseflesh on my arms, some of the turns landed in unpredictable off center poses that were just as breathtaking. And as in Bolero Too, there are dramatic and very high lifts.

The Dancer Chat was the icing on the cake of this amazing evening. Joan Myers Brown appeared with choreographers Christopher Huggins and Ray Mercer, who talked about their processes and took questions from the audience. Ms. Brown talked about the genesis of Philadanco, whose original focus had been to provide high quality dance training to African Americans, who (in the 1960s) were excluded from dance companies and educational programs. I got the feeling that providing education and training was still the highest priority for Ms. Brown. I loved it when she talked about her thought process in choosing choreographers and dances. She insists that her choreographers teach and spend time with the company, getting to know them really well. She doesn’t approve of just “teaching a routine”. Even after a piece has been set and performed again and again (the company tours forty weeks per year) the choreographer will still return to fine tune the dance.

This was an amazing and extremely uplifting night at the theater, in the presence of a remarkable group of artists.

Don't miss Philadanco's upcoming Philadelphia season at the Kimmel Center. Friday May 6 through Sunday May 8, 2011.

All Photos by Lois Greenfield.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Royal Danish Ballet - Guggenheim Works & Process Live Web Stream

Sunday, March 20, 2011

This is my second experience with watching a simulcast provided by the Guggenheim’s Works & Process Series. Not only is the series a wonderful concept, in which an Artistic Director can offer insight into dances moments before they are presented on stage. But having the opportunity to watch the presentation on a video stream while reading the scrolling chat in an adjacent window on my computer screen, and being in the “virtual” company of knowledgeable fans and one of my favorite ballerinas -- Ashley Bouder -- throughout the evening is the icing on the cake.

In this edition of Works & Process, John Meehan, Professor of Dance at Vassar College, interviewed Nikolaj Hübbe, Artistic Director of the Royal Danish Ballet and former principal dancer of New York City Ballet. RDB presented a program which combined the new -- an excerpt from a work by Jorma Elo – with the old, a ballet called Napoli, choreographed in 1842 by August Bournonville. From the 1830s through the 1870's, Bournonville choreographed over 50 ballets for RDB, creating a unique style that became the company’s signature.

The evening opened with Hübbe speaking about the way that Bournonville structured class. After his death, his students codified his teachings with steps or combinations titled for the days of the week. The first dance of the evening, an excerpt from Bournonville Variations, paid homage to his system. Five men dressed in gray, some wearing jackets which made reference to characters from classic ballets, performed an assortment of these combinations. Most of what we saw was petite and middle allegro work, sometimes performed with unusual port de bras, including one sequence where the men danced with their arms folded across their chests. The sequences moved along lines or on the diagonal, as they would in class. As a ballet student, all I could think of was how challenging all that footwork must have been. It seemed as if it never let up. The men performed it so beautifully, and their footwork was so quick and clean.

During the break, Meehan interviewed Hübbe about his training. Hübbe had it in his mind at an early age that he wanted to be a ballet dancer. His parents originally discouraged him, placing a higher value on his academic education. But by the age of 9 he’d managed to convince them to let him audition at the Royal Ballet School. He said that during his student years in Denmark, male ballet dancers were considered to be “men of craft”, on par with intellectuals and artists, and that there was no stigma involved in being a dancer.

Before I heard this interview, I never realized that Balanchine had served as Artistic Director of the RDB right after he left the Ballet Russes. He set Apollo on the RDB, and Peter Martins’ uncle became the first Danish Apollo.

The first piece in the next dance section was an excerpt from Jorma Elo’s Lost on Slow. Then came Bournonville’s Jockey Dance, a tip of the hat to the English love of horse racing. Hübbe described the theme of this ballet as being, “Anything you can do, I can do better.” I was taken by the fleet footedness of the dancers, veteran Thomas Lund and newcomer Alban Lendorf. Ashley Bouder said that one would rarely see footwork like this anywhere else. Even the hips become involved, as the dancers turn in and out at breakneck speed, each one trying to outdo the other. This piece was followed by an excerpt from Bournonville’s A Folktale. The costumes used in all the dances throughout the evening were absolutely beautiful, but the crimson red dresses worn by the ballerinas in A Folktale were just extraordinary.

The interview continued with talk of the Royal Danish Ballet itself. The company is 250 years old, and was described as being “notoriously difficult to direct” because of some of the archaic rules involved. In America, private enterprise runs the dance world. But with the Danes, it is all subsidized by the state, and with this come rules that can not be violated. One of the rules requires that dancers have to retire at the age of 40, so freelancers have be hired to play roles like the parents in La Sylphide. The Artistic Director has to maintain the balance in keeping tradition alive while keeping current with the times.

Hübbe also said that, as a young dancer, he wanted to come to America and dance with New York City Ballet because he wanted the opportunity to “step out of the story” and to prove that he could “dance without a liberetto”. So it was amusing that when he came to NYCB, the first ballet in which he was cast was Donizetti Variations, which has a libretto.

The next dance was an excerpt from Bournonville’s La Sylphide. I wish that I could credit the ballerina who played this role, because she was so lovely. Her port des bras especially was so expressive. She really embodied the look and the movement of a fairy from the forest. I would love to see RDB’s full length ballet.

The evening closed with a celebratory tarantella from Act III of Napoli, full of exuberant dancing and lovely colorful costumes.

The Royal Danish Ballet is about to embark on an American tour which will bring them to the Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, among other places. They will not be able to perform the full length La Sylphide here in New York City because the theater doesn’t have a deep back stage area and can’t accommodate the sets. Ashley Bouder added that behind the stage of the Koch Theater, all that they have is a cross over. I had to wonder why Lincoln Kirstein and Philip Johnson would have chosen to have the theater designed this way.

For hours before the performance started, Ashley Bouder was tweeting her reports from the rehearsals. She mentioned that the dancers were concerned that the floor was very slippery. Hübbe, who had been nothing but charming and charismatic and completely natural throughout the entire evening, ended the performance by thanking the dancers and expressing his relief that no one had fallen during the show!

The program is archived here.

Keigwin + Company’s Exit

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Joyce Theater

Keigwin + Company's Exit was a great time from beginning to end. The evening length dance is set in a dark smokey night club. Along the back of the stage, there is an unadorned black wall containing an exit door that seems to lead to a back alley. The dancers are decked out in full club regalia, down to their torn fishnets.

They move with abandon and aggression, shedding costume pieces without inhibition. Several of the ensemble passages were just so exuberant and such pure entertainment. On the way out of the theater, I overheard someone in the audience say, "It would be fun to party with them!" I loved the dynamics of these dances, especially as the aggressive movement seems to melt into something unpredictably supple, silent and almost balletic at times.

There were low key passages too, in which couples and trios mostly dealt with conflict amongst themselves. The women sought affection from the men and found themselves rejected. One man spurned the advances of another, while keeping his eye on a third man who had no interest in him. Along the black wall one dancer pins another, either for romance or for a fight. We've seen this behavior before and we've seen it dramatized on stage, yet nothing in the dance seems cliche.

There was also plenty of camp. While one couple struggled with each other, a third man, dressed in nothing but a dance belt, a sheer shirt and a pair of skyscraper heels, paraded in through the exit door and lip synched to Sammy Davis Jr.'s I Gotta Be Me. In another scene, lit as if with a black light on Day Glo paint, the company, including the men, danced (and I mean really danced!) in white high heel pumps. They moved with ease and exhilaration, carrying it off in high style. Toward the end of the evening, poppers exploded from the wings launching confetti and metallic silver streamers, which stayed on the stage for the remainder of the dance. This worked beautifully when the streamers got caught on the dancers' feet and swirled around them as they turned.

The fabulous music for this dance was composed by Jerome Begin and Christopher Lancaster, and performed by Jerome Begin. This was electronica at its best, with the beloved synth drums of club music sometimes accompanying beautiful noise and sometimes set against haunting melodies.

By the end of the evening, I felt as if I had a passing acquaintance with each of the dancers, caught a glimpse of their flamboyant side and their darkness, and was reminded of how great it feels just to get together, to dance and to party.

The company received a standing ovation. The woman sitting behind me squealed, "Can they do the whole thing over again? Right now?"

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Evidence

Sunday, February 13, 2011- Evening Performance

Joyce Theater

From the moment that I found my seat in the theater, I could feel the electricity in the air. A selection of Stevie Wonder songs filled the room, people were singing along to themselves, and it was difficult to sit still. I soon found out that if one is in need of a lift, either physically, emotionally or spiritually, one will find it by watching Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence perform.

The recurring theme in three of the pieces that were presented on Sunday night seemed to be the formation of community, either on a journey to a holy place as in Ife/My Heart, or uniting in the face of fear as in Lessons: Exotica/To Harm The Dangerous or to make the world a better place, as in On Earth Together. As far as I’m concerned, today’s society can’t be presented with these themes often enough. I feel that it’s the only thing that will help us to get beyond our current condition.

In Ife/My Heart, the dancers are all dressed in white. As happened several times throughout the night, the dancers began by moving along the periphery of the stage in a procession. Three families are traveling in line with one another to a destination of togetherness. The first is dressed in traditional African clothing while the other two groups are wearing more classic contemporary dress and this left me wondering if Brown was deliberately contrasting the traditional with the contemporary as part of the story. Community is central to indigenous peoples and that's how we all started out. I often feel as if American society is crying out to return to those ways.

The dancing is so riveting and so alive, and so deeply anchored in the spiritual. Though the dancers begin moving in a somewhat reserved fashion, the intensity and the fire grows as the piece progresses. The footwork becomes faster, the jumps higher, until everyone in the audience is feeling the spirit.

For You was a tear jerker about losing a loved one to death, a solo performed by Ronald K. Brown to Donny Hathaway’s rendition of the Leon Russell piece A Song For You. The earthiness of Brown’s understated movement along with the raw power of the lyrics of the song took me completely by surprise and really broke my heart.

From the start of the concert, the audience’s energy was up as high as I’ve ever seen it at the Joyce, but when the Stevie Wonder songs which accompanied On Earth Together began to play, things went into overdrive. Some of the movement in this piece is a little more subdued. What I loved about it was that every little vignette or conflict within the dance seems to end unpredictably with forgiveness and compassion and a call to love, which was just so beautiful. A small woman carries a man out on to the stage. There is weariness between them, maybe a long difficult journey shared. For a moment it seemed as if the two were going to go their separate ways. But then just when I expected the woman to push the man away, she kept him near to her.

The evening was full of great movement and great grooves. You could almost feel the sense of community among the people in the audience. Maybe it’s because the dances and dancers of this company reach their audience so directly and on such a visceral level. When they dance, it’s as if all the intellectualizing and pretense in the world is instantly stripped away so that matters could be addressed with complete honesty, directly to the heart and soul.

Photos of Grace and Water also presented during Evidence’s Joyce Season.

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Dancers Chat with Zachary Catazaro

January 28, 2011

New York City Ballet.
Dancers Chat with Zachary Catazaro

On selected Friday evenings during New York City Ballet's season, they offer an event called Dancers Chat about an hour and a half before curtain. Across the street from Lincoln Center, in a studio in the School of American Ballet (SAB - the official school of New York City Ballet), there are about one hundred chairs set up for guests who reserve seats. A moderator interviews one of the company's dancers and opens the floor to questions from the audience. This was my first visit to a Dancers Chat and it turned out to be a wonderful experience that I highly recommend.

On this Friday evening, we met Zachary Catazaro, who dances in the corps. Throughout the informal 45 minute discussion, he was friendly and very forthcoming. The audience seemed very friendly too, and even joined in sharing anecdotes about performances that they'd seen while firing questions at him.

One of the highlights of the chat came when he shared his reflections on the experience of playing the Cavalier in a performance of The Nutcracker last year, with Rebecca Krohn as his Sugar Plum Fairy. He had one month to prepare for the role. He mentioned that he wanted to be in fighting shape because the costume has white tights. He said that throughout all the years that he'd watched the role of the Cavalier being performed, he'd always felt that it was a role he'd love to dance. But the reality of it was that the role was very hard. Once the Cavalier comes out, he doesn't leave the stage. The dancers who had experience with this role advised him about just how to expend his energy.

Throughout the evening, the subject of the economical use of a dancer's energy came up again and again. The moderator quoted Margot Fonteyn as saying that the hardest thing in dancing a ballet was knowing how to pace oneself and knowing when to breathe. I would have thought that the hardest thing would be remembering all that choreography, but he said that it's relatively easy to remember.

He mentioned that years ago, the Second Act soloists in the Nutcracker also had to play Parents in the Party Scene and Mice in the Battle Scene and still have the stamina and focus left to perform their featured roles in the Second Act. It's no longer done that way.

It was heartwarming to hear him say that on the night that he danced the Cavalier, the other dancers cheered him from the wings. He kept saying how supportive the company members are of one another even though they are always engaged in 'friendly competition'. No barracudas in the company, regardless of what Hollywood films have to say on the subject.

He also said, though I'm not sure if he was joking, that the dancer who is in the role of Mother Ginger receives hazard pay for having to get up on stilts.

When asked about his favorite ballets, he listed Cortege Hongrois and Opus Jazz. He's currently rehearsing Cortege, as well as Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake with Ana Sophia Scheller. He said he also hopes to dance the role of the Brown Boy in Dances At A Gathering.

He attended Public School, finishing High School in two years time so that he'd be able to devote himself full time to his ballet training when he joined SAB at the age of 16. He talked about some of the dancers who are taking college courses. Once he went into detail of the exhausting schedule that a ballet dancer must maintain, it's absolutely amazing to me that any dancer could take on college courses on top of all that. He mentioned that some of them get together and study on Sunday evening, because that and Monday is the only time they have off.

About Alexei Ratmansky, he said that he loved working with him. He was very nice, very particular, and that he knows exactly what he wants, but he also listens carefully to the dancers. He is steeped in the history of Russian ballet.

Regarding partnering, he said that a dancer has to train in partnering from a young age. The type of build that a dancer has can affect his partnering skills. Short slender men are usually not as good at partnering, but he mentioned that Joaquin De Luz was the exception to this generalization.

He told us that Mr. B (George Balanchine) wanted "fingertip partnering". As Mr. B taught it, the man does not help the woman spin in turns. He pointed out that at NYCB, partners do not hold hands in the "handshaking" position as the woman performs a promenade; instead the woman lays her hand on top of her partner's and uses it for balance, the way she'd use the barre. When he said it, I could suddenly remember so many famous photos in which I'd seen the hands placed in that position. It's so interesting to have these little details pointed out. It makes the ballet even that much more compelling to me. He also said that Peter Martins teaches the men to use their thumbs against the ballerina's back to help her stay on her legs.

Our host recommended Merrill Ashley's book Dancing for Balanchine, saying that Ashley is one of the best when it came to explaining exactly what Mr. B wanted from the dancers.

I'm really grateful to New York City Ballet for offering this program. It goes a very long way toward enriching the audience's experience at the theater. I'd also like to send reverence to the moderator -- I think that her name is Joan Quintano -- who kept the conversation moving so easily that the time just flew by.

Related Reading:

Ballerinas Take a New Approach: Talking

Photos of Zachary Catazaro

Photos by Paul Kolnik


Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Sneak Preview of Yesid Lopez’s Bolero at APAP - DeMa Dance Company

January 7 & 8, 2011

DeMa Dance Company presents a Sneak Preview of Bolero Stravaganza Choreography by Yesid Lopez APAP Showcase - Dance New Amsterdam

Choreographer and Artistic Director Yesid Lopez's latest work for the DeMa Dance Company was inspired by Pablo Picasso's mural Guernica, which depicts the ravages of the Spanish Civil War.

I had the opportunity to watch Yesid set this dance on the company last month and to speak to him a little about his process. I felt that this dance was a huge undertaking, in that Yesid was attempting to deal with the horror and tragedy of war through the lens of the humanity of its victims.

Last weekend, at APAP at Dance New Amsterdam, the DeMa Dance Company performed a sneak preview of what will become an evening length piece based on the life and work of Picasso. This piece is called Bolero Stravaganza.

It opens with the dancers standing still, their backs to the audience. They are costumed in muted grays and greens to echo the tones of Guernica. One dancer faces the audience and begins the piece, her face contorted in a silent scream, her fingers tensed into claws, her movement sharp and staccato as she begins to sink.

The dancers represent a civilian population, being made to pay the ultimate price in the battle between warring factions of those with power. Each dancer, individually or with a partner, is put through the paces of facing the brutality and the horror of war. Even while the dancers are holding their own places within the formation, a stormy atmosphere of chaos erupts. In a very dramatic moment, the dancers line up to face a firing squad.

As I said when I first saw this piece in rehearsal, from the very beginning of this dance it struck me that even in the midst of the turmoil of war, when its victims face one another, it is with expressions of compassion and even benevolence. The bodies of the wounded are carried. The dancers run to one another and find shelter. When they are moving in unison, even if the movement seems to convey nothing but tension and fear, it also seems to be creating an expression of their brotherhood.

I have seen this company grow from humble beginnings in the summer of 2009 to where they've arrived today, as a cohesive unit with a distinctive and edgy style emerging. Still the dancers remain as fierce individuals in their own right. They gave a couple of great performances last weekend and I was gratified to see how well received they were.

Big congratulations are in order for Yesid Lopez and the DeMa Dance Company.

Photos by Ceren Salman

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Guggenheim Museum's Works and Process

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Guggenheim Works and Process - Live Web Stream Pacific Northwest Ballet's presents Giselle Revisited

On Sunday night, I had the opportunity to view a live web stream of the Guggenheim Museum's Works and Process from the comfort of my home. The Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB) presented Giselle Revisited.

Before last night I had very little knowledge of the company. I'd seen their Nutcracker on television and that was about it. So it was wonderful to have a chance to see them in this setting. Beyond that, I have never before had the opportunity to see a ballet deconstructed to the extent that the presenters (Doug Fullington, Marian Smith and Peter Boal) did for Giselle. I was impressed by the extent of their research and the fascinating details that they unearthed and shared with the audience.

They opened by speaking of the history of Giselle and their work in reconstructing the ballet through the use of primary sources. The audience had the opportunity to view images of the original music scores, which had been written in the dance studio, along with pages of Stepanov notation, which had been done for the entire ballet. I've spent a fair amount of time in ballet classes and theaters, and I've worked behind the scenes with a small ballet company, but before I saw this presentation, I never truly understood the intricacies that were involved in this classic ballet.

The presenters also pointed out voices in the music and what they were meant to say, to accompany the mime and action in the ballet. Mention was made too of this ballet's influence on Balanchine. He never created a Giselle of his own, but one of the presenters pointed out distinct references to Giselle in Serenade and Baiser de la Fee. I've seen both ballets several times, but before now I never understood the connection.

The dancers, Carrie Imler, Carla Korbes, Seth Orza and James Moore, were just amazing. Technically, they handled complex and speedy footwork with apparent ease. Artistically, they really became the characters whom they were playing, even during these short little excerpts from the ballet. I was especially taken by the port des bras on the women. Their movement filled the music so beautifully.

This presentation left me with a new appreciation for Giselle. I can't wait to see it again, and now I'm so curious about all the hundreds of little details and references that must go in to the creation of every ballet. I'll also be sure to see PNB when they come back to New York City

I am so grateful to PNB for putting together this presentation and to the Guggenheim Museum's Works and Progress for streaming it over the web. I feel that it's presentations like these that will keep ballet alive and keep the audience engaged. I also really enjoyed the chat that went on alongside the webstream, which was populated with some of my favorite bloggers and other knowledgeable ballet fans.

The best part of all was that when it was over, I didn't have to trudge to the subway and look forward to an hour plus trip back home to Brooklyn! The webcast is archived here.

Photos by Jesson Mata


Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

American Ballet Theatre - The Nutcracker

December 26, 2010

American Ballet Theatre presents The Nutcracker Choreography by Alexei Ratmansky
Brooklyn Academy of Music

I don't remember having ever seen a story ballet that took the audience behind the scenes of its characters' stately homes.  Alexei Ratmansky's Nutcracker opens in the kitchen, where the servants are putting the finishing touches on the dishes for the party and the children sneak inside to catch a glimpse of the feast.  I found this setting to be so endearing.  From the very beginning, it established the tone for what was to come.  This Nutcracker had any number of beautiful and heart warming moments and its characters seemed so genuine.  Inviting the audience in to the kitchen and letting us know that there's a little problem with mice in the house seemed to break the ice and create an easygoing rapport from the very beginning.

One problem that I've had in the past with various Nutcrackers is that the Party Scene can sometimes seem interminable.  But because Ratmansky opens his Nutcracker with this very charming Kitchen Scene, the pacing of the Party Scene is perfect.  There is plenty to watch, the young guests are boisterous and exuberant, and there are a few sweet surprises.

The design of the scenery (created by Richard Hudson) is ingenious. Sets transform from Kitchen Scene to Party Scene to Battle Scene, to Snow Scene with such ease.   In the Battle Scene, the Christmas tree grows as if going right through the ceiling of the home, but in the blink of an eye, all the action is taking place at the foot of the tree as Clara watches from a chair above.  The audience is shown the chair from a perspective that leaves us feeling as if we are on the floor with the Mice and Soldiers too.

I loved the Snow Scene. Snow is one of my favorite dances in all of classical ballet.  I've heard it said that if a person had gone their entire life without ever having seen a snow storm, then Tchaikovsky's music could give them the experience.  Ratmansky's Snowflakes weren't just swirling beautifully; at times they became menacing as a blizzard.  In those moments, I felt as if the light was fading and night was closing in, bringing potential danger. Especially beautiful was the way that the dance ended, with each ballerina laying on the stage on a diagonal, face up, her back arched.  As the final notes were played, each one released the arch and fell flat, in the same way that a snowflake has dimension while its riding on the wind and then falls flat on to the drift.

In Act II, Arabian was a crowd pleaser as four ladies vied for the attention of one shirtless man, who goes on to feel a bit of their wrath before the piece ends. The Russians added a bit of slapstick interspersed with spectacular switch leaps and barrel turns. I was just knocked out by the Flowers.  Their beautiful costumes moved like big puffy carnations. Early in the dance a row of ballerinas lower into arabesque penchee and their skirts seem to open up just like the petals of a flower.  The Flowers dance with Bees who alternately supply a few laughs and some dashing partnering.  The dance ends beautifully with each Flower, one by one, being lifted, thrown and caught by another Bee.

In the program Ratmansky speaks of his deliberate decision to minimize the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy, rather than making her the focus of the Second Act. From beginning to end, his story focuses on Clara, the stages of her journey and her dreams of the future. So rather than winding up the night with a Grand Pas De Deux danced by the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier, Young Clara and her Prince meet themselves as adults, played by Veronika Part and Marcelo Gomes.  In their Grand Pas De Deux, Clara the child is seeing herself as an adult. Veronika Part transitions seamlessly between regal ballerina and playful little girl, often with the smallest childlike gesture. In this dance, Ratmansky clearly chose to stay faithful to the story instead of going for big ballet flash.  In the lobby after the performance I overheard some audience members lamenting that the Grand Pas De Deux didn't showcase the dancers' strengths.  But to me, it seemed the perfect ending for the atmosphere created from the beginning of the ballet.  It was a heartwarming story told in faithful choreography.  And for those who needed a dose of bravura, Marcelo Gomes provided it with a stunning sequence of turns in his solo.

The children did a great job.  Kai Monroe (as Fritz) and Philip Perez (as The Nutcracker Boy) were especially charismatic and Athena Petrizzo (pictured above as Clara) delivered a very convincing performance, carrying a good deal of this production on her young shoulders.  From the opening notes, I was completely drawn in to the spirit of the story, and this is even after having sat through my fair share of Nutcrackers this season.  The choreography was full of good humor and a few tricks of the eye.  At times I was amazed by how much Ratmansky was able to convey with very simple understated movement.

It all made for a wonderful and memorable evening.  I loved this production.  It was well worth braving the New York City blizzard of 2010 to witness it.

Photos by Rosalie O’Connor

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Walking in Two – Tom Pearson and Donna Ahmadi

November 16, 2010

Dance New Amsterdam Heritage Series: Contemporary First Nation Tom Pearson | Third Rail Projects and Donna Ahmadi | Mantis Dance Theater

With Walking in Two, Tom Pearson and Donna Ahmadi set out to address questions of Native identity. Sidestepping the predictable, they brought a fresh voice to the conversation in three dances. They made thought provoking statements and raised compelling questions about what it meant to be Indian within the dominant society and on stage. However, in the broader sense, I felt that the works expanded toward questioning the entire concept of identity. I can say that because by the end of the performance, I wound up wondering about my own people, and where they stood within the greater society, on stage, in music and in the dance world.

I’d never before seen a theme addressed so thoroughly in the course of one afternoon and I really appreciated the lengths to which the artists had gone. Those who attended the concert were provided with an interactive art installation, a gallery of memorabilia from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show as well as beautiful still photos of the dancers and their families, and three dance pieces, one of which was briefly previewed on video in the gallery.

The video that I saw in the gallery before the performance began, showed two dancers (Rebekah Morin and Marissa Nielsen-Pincus) in a forest, each one pushing at a deeply rooted tree as if they were trying to topple it. They pushed and pushed, occasionally striking a pose of resignation (and maybe even acceptance) before they set to work pushing again.

Inside the theater, the two dancers appeared in Donna Ahmadi’s Scalp Lock. The piece opens with Ahmadi moving low to the ground, her back to the audience, while a projection of a tree root covers the back wall of the theater. She is way upstage and as she backs up toward us, her braids begin to grow until they are about eight feet long, and tethered to the two dancers from the forest. Throughout the piece, Ahmadi struggles against the women, who continue to pull on her braids, attempting to manipulate her and dominate her, with the same dogged determination they used to push at the tree. At times Ahmadi appears to reach some kind of accord with them; they line up in single file with Ahmadi at the back, the pulling ceases and the movement briefly softens. But mostly they are waging an escalating battle. As the battle intensifies, the film takes us back to the forest. I felt deeply moved by the earthy atmosphere that it created in the room, and the backdrop that it provided for this conflict. Toward the end of the dance, Ahmadi is still struggling against the women, clutching on to her own braids with her hands over her belly, and the braids become an umbilical cord that can’t be cut.

The dance titled Walking in Two centers around the theme of the performing Indian. It’s compelling material because there are Natives who will tell you that their dances are not performances and that their traditional ceremonial outfits are not costumes; that performance and costumes are non-Native constructs. So the questions are raised about the Natives who performed in the Wild West Show. Were they complying with the dominant culture or were they sharing their own traditions?

The piece opened with Pearson and Ahmadi dressed in traditional clothing, their backs to the audience, each twirling a hoop overhead. The twirling goes on for a long time, and I began to wonder if it represented a mechanical performance, as opposed to one that’s an expression of the sacred. A hoop dance is performed and as it ends, a hoop is tossed in the air and one of two cowgirls also appearing in the piece, shoots her pistol overhead, the imaginary bullet flying through the center of the hoop.

The mood is shattered, the dancers face the audience, and Daft Punk’s Techno Logic comes blaring from the speakers, followed shortly after by Pat Benatar’s Love Is A Battlefield, to which the dancers perform the choreography from the 1980s video. The Natives entertain questions from those attending the Wild West show. Traditional music returns and Ahmadi performs a beautiful shawl dance. As the piece proceeds, the dancers, both Natives and cowgirls, gradually shed layers of their clothing

Without the clothing of performance, they begin to look a little more alike. A trio comprised of the two Natives and one of the cowgirls, now without their distinctive costumes, begins a canon of movement, sometimes performed in unison. As the piece ends, Ahmadi is unraveling her braids.

It was an accurate and artistic representation of what happened to Natives and all people who were forced into assimilation. Little by little, the things that make their culture unique are stripped away. But identity lives on within the blood memory and will be passed on to future generations.

The entire presentation was so well done. It left me with many beautiful images and plenty to consider.

Photos by Corrine Furman

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com

Jennifer Muller / The Works – The White Room

November 12, 2010

Years ago I read an interview with a musician. He was asked to name the people who had influenced his work. He replied that he’d been influenced by every single person he’d ever met.

This line has been with me all day long as I collect my thoughts about The White Room. Last night I had the opportunity to attend the Stages of Creation Fall Benefit at the Ailey studios, where I saw a draft of the first act of this new dance, the first evening length work that Jennifer Muller has created in 15 years. It was presented in a raw form, the dancers’ costumes having come from their wardrobes, the studio bare. The dancers moved to a series of gorgeous cello pieces performed by artists from Zoe Keating to Yo Yo Ma

We meet an innocent young girl, alone on stage at the beginning of the piece. She encounters and interacts with a procession of characters. The girl approaches a disinterested and distracted mother figure, a girl who is reluctant to befriend her, a boy with whom she falls in love, and then a another boy who steps in with all the swagger of a tom cat invading the turf of another. He’s ready to come between her and the boy, and he seems more interested in domination than tenderness.

A group of women slowly drift across the floor. They are wearing dresses and ballroom shoes, looking more sophisticated and jaded than the innocent girl. The girl finds the mother figure again, but the woman is still unavailable to her, and winds up pawning her off on an authority figure; a teacher, a nun, or a babysitter? The girl is clearly unhappy about this.

It will be exciting to see where this piece goes when its finished and ready for performance.

Today, as I was getting my notes together to write this, and remembering the musician’s quote about his influences, I began to feel that while the girl had been encountering others, she was also encountering what might become aspects of herself.

I was very impressed with all the dancers. Hsing-Hua Wang, an apprentice who had stepped in for an injured dancer, performed the role of the innocent girl and she was just brilliant. The piece opened with her standing still, her back to the audience. Even in the simple gesture of looking over her shoulder to face the audience and then turning toward us, she was exquisite. Neither understated nor overblown, her movement really captured what is so natural among humans, and not so easy to reproduce on the stage.

This was true for all of the dancers. We easily recognize the characters they are playing. We’ve all known people exactly like them. In playing their parts, I felt that the dancers ran the risk of going over the top, presenting these familiar characters as caricatures, yet each one managed to get their point across in an organic fashion. The movement, though very recognizable, was never predictable.

I also have to say that everyone, from the board members, to the administrators, to the dancers, to Ms. Muller herself was so extraordinarily kind and welcoming. The dance world can sometimes be such an abrasive place, but there was no sign of this anywhere in the entire evening. When I had the privilege to meet and speak with Ms. Muller, she said that she makes sure that the company works with an attitude of respect in the studio. She said that while she presented conflict in her art, she didn’t enjoy conflict in real life, so it was important for her to keep it out of her studio.

This becomes obvious when you see the dancers of the company working together. Each dancer is a strong individual who complements the others beautifully.

I’m really sorry that it’s taken me so long to finally see this company. They are fabulous. And I am so grateful for their hospitality.

The full length work is scheduled to be performed in June 2011.

Photos by Paula Lobo

Click here to go to Karen’s blog at www.wetpaintjournal.com