Friday, March 29, 2024

Dance Review: And They Built a Crooked House, Becky Radway at the Connelly, NYC

In these troubled financial times it seems that everyone is looking for stability, strong foundations and a place to call home. Becky Radway intelligently explores this need in her full-length work, And They Built a Crooked House, at the Connelly Theater in the Lower East Side this weekend. While this description may not seem like […]

Dance Review: Beautiful Sock Removal? -Anna Halprin at DTW

While entering the Dance Theater Workshop to see Anna Halprin’s Parades and Changes, I know I have two choices: dare to speak to the person sitting next to me because after all, we are both drawn to the same show, or pretend to be wildly interested in my program, cell phone or dirty fingernails so […]

Dance Review: Wally Cardona/WC4+ at BAM

"The good parts are good," is the general agreement Tuesday night at the opening of Wally Cardona/WC4+ Really Real at the BAM Harvey Theater. It begins on trodden ground.  People (including non-dancers) enter the stage, walk around, and pose in a pedestrian fashion.  Text overlays the action with clips like “he led a somewhat uneventful […]

Dance Review: Carrie Ahern at the Brooklyn Lyceum

Theories about creation tend to take one of two routes, either there was always something, or, before there was, there was not. Sensate, Carrie Ahern’s new work at the Brooklyn Lyceum, speaks strongly for the first of these ideas. Walking into Ahern’s version of the Brooklyn Lyceum is stepping into a world that has always […]

Dance Review: 60X60, A New Family Reunion

60×60 is the dance equivalent of a crazy family reunion where everyone is inextricably linked by one thread, dance, but everyone has interpreted what that means differently.  Whether wielding eight foot dowels drowned in silk as modern shoulder pads, goggles, face paint and flippers to achieve that amphibious look certain music just calls for or […]

Dance Review: Cirkus Cirkur Rocks it “Inside Out” Creating an Imaginative Circus Story

Cirkus Cirkör captures the heart of New Yorkers in its new production of “Inside Out.”  Visiting their website (http://www.cirkor.se) prior to the show, I knew I was in for a treat, seeing a beating heart on my MacBook. Directed by Tilde Björfors, who also founded Cirkus Cirkör in 1995, “Inside Out” the production is like […]

Class Watch: Jill Johnson/Forsythe Workshop, Take 2 of These and Call Me in the Morning!

Ok, I don’t how most of you may feel about contact improv, I know how I feel about it…. eew, don’t touch me, Hello?  Swine flu!!  But, I have to say, when guided by a charming, intelligent, and beautiful dancer such as Jill Johnson of the Forsythe Company, it is a completely different experience. It […]

Dance Review: Riedel Dance Theater – Mischievously Entertaining, Spinning Tales through Dance

Riedel Dance Theater presents a haunted performance of Ukrainian Eggs: Terrible Tales of Tragedy AlleGorey in the intimate theater space of the Joyce SoHo over Halloween weekend. The title includes a pun to match the inspiration for the collection.  This series of storybook dance vignettes is based on the works of illustrator, writer and artist […]

Dance Review: A Perfect Break, Jen Abrams at Wow Cafe Theater

There is something to be said for art that accomplishes it’s goals, and Jen Abrams knows how to make it. However, success within the work doesn’t necessarily translate to success as performance. Most of This is True, running now through November 8th at Wow Cafe theater, is a clear, tight example of an art piece which knows exactly what it wants, and, mostly, how to get it.

Appearing at Wow Cafe, the longest-running, anarchically run women’s and transgender people’s collective in the world, Abrams’ work takes on the lives of four women who are sisters, friends, and lovers. At first, dynamics between the three original characters are functional, if flawed and Abrams skillfully uses movement as sub-text for spoken relationships between characters. All of this is well-constructed, and well-performed, if predictable. Two sisters fighting about the dentist and an outfit for a dinner out maintain respectable conversation, but their movements tell a deeper story, resorting to hair pulling and wrestling.

When the fourth woman (disturbingly portrayed through crashing handstands and pummeling elbows by Ariel Cohen) enters the mix, things start to come apart. The work is split into sections of “before” and “after” – characters lying catatonic, slumping in chairs, obsessively sorting socks, slapping themselves uncontrollably; we understand that something big has happened here. Abrams again is able to clearly illustrate the break down of relationships through movement, but the movement vocabulary is so dated that it, unfortunately, removes some of the urgency of the choreography.

In fact the whole work feels a little like a textbook example, circa 1998. It fits together well as dance theater, but, it’s very cohesiveness plus some poor choices undermine what is otherwise an emotionally powerful piece. As complicated as Abrams phrase work gets, she relies on overly simplistic movement and acting to get her through places where we are supposed to empathize with the pain of her characters. At one point, after we know what this “big event” is, Abrams (as Carla) faces the audience and shakes her knee, trembling with wide eyes and dilated pupils. Unfortunately, her acting isn’t enough to pull this off.

That being said, the work does reach out on several levels, finding resonance especially, I would imagine, with women and LGTB communities for it’s fully realized portrayal of female relationships. Whatever problems I find with the work itself…. whateveeeeeer… The real joy is in watching the commitment of these talented performers.

You have plenty of time to catch this show on its extended run, so head to WOW and check it out.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Meghan Frederick
Performance: Jen Abrams
Venue: Wow Cafe
Show Date: October 28, 2009
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Dance Review: Deborah Colker – BRIGHT COLORS, TIGHT SPACES

Four women hang suspended from the arms of four men.  The men dangle, bent at the waist, over the tops of 12 foot walls. The women hold on, wrist to wrist, legs held at 90 degree angles, free arms outstretched, in flight… Colker’s 4 por 4 at City Center is visually stunning.  Gorgeously high-budget sets […]

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