The show opens with video footage of hip hop dance dignitary Ken Swift, of course, and each dancer is posed on a wooden panel, which the dancers manipulate throughout the show, creating interesting and clever scenery and scenarios.  What an excellent usage of props, as I almost forget that the only thing on the stage is the dancers and the panels… 

The show progresses into the dancers explaining to the audience how it felt when they first saw Ken Swift dance.  At this time, a very interesting part of the show emerges as the dancers view footage of Swift along with the audience, and then stop the tape to execute signature moves or steps that Swift originated.  There are very informative parts of the show that I appreciated as it isn’t a show that "pimps" the art of break dancing as most mainstream and many other shows do.  It’s way more than that…  It’s an exceptional, comprehensive work that isn’t necessarily about the obvious tricks that anyone can identify, but about the art of break dancing and its many components.  

At one point, it is stated "to be a good b-boy or b-girl, you gotta have footwork."   I want to yell out "THANK YOU!" because there are so many intricacies and nuances to break that so often, unfortunately, these skills get overlooked for power moves.  The dancers swivel, roll, dove, spun, and sort of tease the audience because they obviously are powerhouses.  Their individual personalities and passions are also interwoven into the show as they explain to the audience what inspires them to break. 

Ken Swift Solos represents not only a show honoring a legend but, one that informs about and honors an art form.

Photography by Yi-Chun Wu

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by JoiLynn
Performance:  olive Dance Theatre
Venue:  Hip Hop Theater Festival @Dance Theatre Workshop
Show Date:  Saturday, October 2, 2010
www.iDANZ.com

Have You Seen the iDANZ Social Network?

Click Here To Become a Member
of iDANZ.com Today!
The More Members We Have, The More We Can
Make a Difference.
It’s Free!
iDANZ – The Social Network Where Dancers Live!

Share on Facebook

September 8–11, 2010

The annual DanceNOW [NYC] Festival celebrates New York City’s vibrant dance community. Produced by DanceNOW [NYC] and presented in partnership with Dance Theater Workshop, this year’s festival features 40 choreographers, from young innovators to mid-career and established artists, in a lively showcase format. Continuing its signature “short takes” programming, the Festival offers audiences an opportunity to experience a wide range of dance by some of New York’s most innovative and dynamic artists.

“We are always looking for ways to inspire today’s dance makers, to challenge and support the creative process, and to provide artists with new resources to develop their craft,” says Artistic Director and Producer Robin Staff. Now in its sixteenth season, Festival Twenty Ten is taking the DanceNOW “less is more” policy to task, challenging Festival participants to create a new work or present a repertory work seven minutes or less, that offers a concise, clear, and complete artistic statement. The artist that best meets the DanceNOW Challenge will be awarded a week-long residency at Silo at Kirkland Farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, along with a $1000 residency stipend and a paid teaching opportunity at DeSales University, with whom DanceNOW has partnered since 2006 to bring New York City-based choreographer/educators to Bucks County/Lehigh Valley, to teach and perform. The artist will be selected during the Festival by a panel of administrators, educators, and peers.

Performances are at Dance Theater Workshop, September 8–11 (Wednesday through Saturday) at 7:30pm. Tickets are $20 in advance/$25 at the door, and can be purchased by calling 212-924-0077, or online at www.dancetheaterworkshop.org. Dance Theater Workshop is located at 219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues) in NYC. Subway: 1 train to 18th Street; A, C, E, L trains to 14th Street/8th Avenue.

Program / Festival Artists:

Wednesday, September 8

• Abraham.in.motion /Kyle Abraham
• ad hoc Ballet /Deborah Lohse
• The Bang Group /David Parker
• Bridgman/Packer Dance
• The DASH Ensemble /Gregory Dolbashian
• Jamal Jackson Dance Company
• Kawamura the 3rd
• Khaleh London
• Skybetter & Associates
• Dusan Tynek Dance Theatre

Thursday, September 9

• binbinFactory /Satoshi Haga
• Erica Essner Performance Co-Op
• Independentdancemaker /Kara Tatelbaum
• Roger C. Jeffrey /Subtle Changes
• Nicholas Leichter Dance
• Inmixedcompany /Maura Nguyen Donohue
• John-Mark Owen
• Iain Rowe
• Amber Sloan

Friday, September 10

• Camille Brown
• Daniel Charon
• Jennifer Chin
• Gina Gibney Dance
• INSPIRIT dance company
• Stefanie Nelson Dance Group
• Riedel Dance Theater
• small apple co /Makiko Tamura
• Christopher Williams
• Ellis Wood Dance /Ellis Wood

Saturday, September 11

• John Heginbotham
• Sara Hook Dances
• Malcolm Low
• Pengelly: Projects /Fritha Pengelly
• PORTABLES /Claire Porter
• Race Dance /Lisa Race
• Marta Renzi
• Singh & Dance /Paul Singh
• Misnomer Dance Theater
• TAKE Dance /Takehiro Ueyama

DanceNOW [NYC] is produced by Directors Robin Staff, Tamara Greenfield, and Sydney Skybetter.

Bending the rules and defying the standard, DanceNOW [NYC] has followed its own path for more than two decades, seeking new means to promote, challenge, and develop the artistic careers of a wide genre of choreographers and connect new audiences to dance. Embracing its signature short-format programming, DanceNOW [NYC] offers cultural events that are distinct, accessible, and reflective of the new direction and passion of New York City dance makers. The DanceNOW [NYC] vision is directed toward developing relationships with New York City dance makers via year-round performance opportunities through the annual Festival at Dance Theater Workshop and the Dancemopolitan series at Joe’s Pub; promotion to new audiences to increase visibility; and creating opportunities for career advancement. Additionally, DanceNOW [NYC] supports artists through its artist-in-residency program at Silo at Kirkland Farm. For more information, visit www.dancenownyc.org.

DanceNOW [NYC] is supported, in part, with funds from the Barbara Bell Cumming Foundation, Jerome Robbins Foundation, Edith C. Blum Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

Image: PIERDUO, The Bang Group, Photo by Nicholas Burnham

Have You Seen the iDANZ Social Network?

Click Here To Become a Member
of iDANZ.com Today!
The More Members We Have, The More We Can
Make a Difference.
It’s Free!
iDANZ – The Social Network Where Dancers Live!

Share on Facebook

Zoom

Benefitting from today’s handy technology we pretty much all have sitting in our coat pockets and handbags, Zoom utilizes cellular technology in a brilliantly clever, interactive way that I’ve never seen before.  The audience is encouraged to take photos of the performance, both from off stage and at one point on stage, with their cell phones and then text them to a phone number. Later, the photos appear on the screen behind the stage.  At a couple points, one of the dancers nestles up to a laptop on stage and begins chatting with audience members via their cell phones, the text of which appears on the large screen above.  There is a lot of texting lingo…  lots of Wazup? TTYL, tots, :-).  The entire experience is unique and highlights well the way in which cell phone technology has come to be another level, albeit disembodied, in which we communicate and dance with each other.

Zoom really wins me over in the last few moments, when two dancers jerk and jolt in a piece that speaks to our inability to genuinely contact each other even amidst so many electronic means of communication.

Mr. Gotheiner’s choreography is exceptional.  He seems to be as at home composing movement that is light and playful as he is composing movement that is dower, spastic and macabre.  Yet, all of it expresses something honest…  The ZviDance company members are also wonderfully relaxed and well trained, performing complex pieces with an ease and harmony that belies the difficulty.  Mr. Gotheiner, who is also a renowned teacher of dance, seems to have been able to help them achieve a certain peacefulness in their bodies that one doesn’t see a lot in contemporary dance.

All in all, Zoom is a great success because it contains a thrilling collection of contrasts – electronic communications and dancing bodies, pleasure and pain, buoyancy and gravitas. ZviDance can do it all.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Dustin Wood
Performance: Zoom by ZviDance
Choreographer(s): Zvi Gotheiner
Venue: Dance Theater Workshop
Date: April 10, 2010
www.iDANZ.com

Have You Seen the iDANZ Social Network?

Click Here To Become a Member
of iDANZ.com Today!
The More Members We Have, The More We Can
Make a Difference.
It’s Free!
iDANZ – The Social Network Where Dancers Live!

Share on Facebook

“

For Blocks of Continuality, the DTW space is transformed into a multi-media experiment lab. The three dancers watch twenty-four small screens to obtain their cues, movement phrases, and visual references.  The audience watches two large screens, which project live video footage of these same twenty-four smaller screens.  The dancers move between trios, duets, or solos but maintain their focus on the screens for almost the entire evening.

During the first two sections of Blocks of Continuality, musician Geoff Gersh creates a minimalist soundscape to accompany a pre-recorded score by Geoff Matters.  In the first part of the performance, the small (and subsequently the large) screens play video footage of magazine advertisements and unrelated clips while the dancers incorporate the movements on the screen with their live action.  When a woman on the screen kicks a wall repeatedly, the dancers who are scattered around the space similarly kick the walls, the floor, or the audience’s seats.

For Blocks of Continuality, the second section takes up most of the evening… During this technological “telephone game” of sorts, the dancers watch indigenous and folk dances from around the world and then mimic the movements with varying levels of accuracy and energy.  Because the audience is presented with a video feed of screens the dancers are watching, the image is distorted and slightly blurred.  This creates an interesting circle of reference.  The audience is drawn to the live, present dancers in front of them; however, the dancers’ focus on the small screens shifts the audience’s attention to the large screens. This is an inherently unsatisfying action given the quality of the video and the perceived distance between the audience and the content.

Koosil-ja strips folk dances of their contexts by transferring the movements to her dancers, who are dressed in black, through a media intermediary.  Within this process of abstraction, many of the dynamic and rhythmic aspects of the movements are lost.  Although the dancing is purposely ambiguous and only for a few moments clearly choreographed, there are some memorable moments.  Twice during Blocks of Continuality, a dancer watches another dancer performing a solo on the small screen.  The live dancer then mimics the phrase, slowly making the movements more and more abbreviated until they are almost not moving at all.

During the final installment of the performance, the three dancers strap Nintendo wii remotes to various parts of their costumes and, through this wireless technology, each control the motions of an avatar.  Each of the three large screens follows the journey of an avatar through an online world named “The Slums.”  Amazingly, as the avatars and their human counterparts navigate through the “Slums,” Gersh creates music with his thoughts, thanks to a installation that detects his brainwaves.  Through meditation, Gersh’s brainwaves cause the installation to drum against a wall near the front row of the audience.  However, given the limited range of motion in Koosil-ja’s choreography, the avatars movements are very subtle and the correlation between the live dancing and its effects on the second world are not always clear.   

Koosil-ja shifts the importance of the evening onto the event itself- not necessarily the choreographic product.  Blocks of Continuality succeeds in creating an intriguing installation, an event exploring technology and modes of assimilating movement.  The audience is not meant to be entertained; rather they are present to witness this experiment and contemplate as one would at a museum or gallery, with inspiration and without urgency.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Tze Chun
Performance: Blocks of Continuality/ Body, Image and Algorithm
Choreography: Koosil-ja
Venue: Dance Theater Workshop, New York City
Performance Date: March, 2010
www.iDANZ.com

iDANZ Supports Doctors Without Borders
in their Haiti Earthquake Relief Efforts.

MSF/Doctors Without Borders has been working in Haiti for 19 years, most recently operating three emergency hospitals in Port-au-Prince, and is mobilizing a large emergency response to the Haiti/earthquake disaster.

Can you please help them provide medicine, surgeons, nurses,
and supplies to victims in this crisis?
Click Here to Send a Direct Donation to Doctors Without Borders

The iDANZ Commitment
For every new person
who signs-up to be a member of the
iDANZ Social Network, iDANZ will donate $1 to
Doctors Without Borders January 18 – April 1.
Go to www.iDANZ.com To help save lives by 
Becoming a Member of iDANZ Today!

Have You Seen the iDANZ Social Network?

Click Here To Become a Member
of iDANZ.com Today!

The More Members We Have, The More We Can
Make a Difference.
It’s Free!
iDANZ – The Social Network Where Dancers Live!

Share on Facebook

This week at Dance Theater Workshop (DTW), Brazilian dance company Grupo de Rua ties together hip-hop, breakdancing, Capoeira, and modern dance in a virtuosic, yet sincere investigation of street dance.

Choreographer Bruno Beltrão brings much more than his company of nine male dancers to New York City; he transports the less glamorous, but perhaps more impressive, side of Brazilian street dance to the DTW stage.

Highly energetic and physical, Beltrão’s evening-length work “H3” never loses its connection to sub-culture of street dance, the practice halls and pavement where movement is generated and mastered long before being presented in public. H3 offers a look into the personal side of a very extroverted dance form. Beltrão avoids the expected competitiveness of break dancing: the taunting, the raising of noses, and the self-congratulatory signal for applause. Instead, his dancers breathe heavily and drink from plastic water bottles as they sit and take breaks in clear view of the audience. He acknowledges the process of practice and revels in repetition.

Throughout H3, Beltrão uses the reoccurring movement theme of running backwards to display the experience and skill of his dancers. With each running lap the dancers make of the stage, the audience watches in wonder at the sheer force of their curving patterns.

Just as ballet technique relies on a foundation of simple small steps, street dance has a similar reliance on core mechanics, but these mechanics are pedestrian movements most readily available- walking and running. Instead of focusing on flashy inverted freezes or head-spins, Beltrão looks at the root of the phenomenon of street dance- at the preparation before the trick; he isolates the running start.

Another clear distinction between Grupo de Rua’s H3 and a hip-hop show is the choice of music. Instead of using loud and pounding popular hip-hop or techno, Beltrão allows the movement to set the pace of the performance. The first fifteen minutes of the dance is performed to a soundtrack comprised of faint street sounds (cars, shoes on the pavement etc.). At times, these noises are so subtle and quiet they could be confused for the sounds outside the building of Chelsea, NYC leaking into the theater.

During this first section, flat frontal lights illuminate the downstage area of the stage, while the upstage is left in darkness. The dancers open the piece by dancing close to the audience, basking in the same light as the forefront theater seats as if not performing, but simply sharing. Later in the piece, the entire stage is lit by cold overhead lights and strips of florescent bulbs that resemble a basketball court or perhaps a community center where street dancers in Brazil might practice their skills. The Marley is clearly Grupo de Rua’s own floor, carried with them on tour. Countless scuff marks from the dancers’ hip kicks reminds the audience that the company is proud of what it has been through and not afraid to show the nitty gritty parts of what they do.

Grupo de Rua charges backwards with large strides and simultaneously pushes street dance forward with new possibilities of being seen as artistry, not just tricks. Stripped of flashing lights, competitive theatrics, and heart pumping music, street dance with Grupo de Rua has an even truer soul. With Bruno Beltrão’s direction, this company also has a future on the modern dance stage.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Tze Chun
Performance: Grupo de Rua
Choreography: Bruno Beltrão
Venue: Dance Theater Workshop, New York City
Performance Date: February 21, 2010
www.iDANZ.com

iDANZ Supports Doctors Without Borders
in their Haiti Earthquake Relief Efforts.

MSF/Doctors Without Borders has been working in Haiti for 19 years, most recently operating three emergency hospitals in Port-au-Prince, and is mobilizing a large emergency response to the Haiti/earthquake disaster.

Can you please help them provide medicine, surgeons, nurses,
and supplies to victims in this crisis?
Click Here to Send a Direct Donation to Doctors Without Borders

The iDANZ Commitment
For every new person
who signs-up to be a member of the
iDANZ Social Network, iDANZ will donate $1 to
Doctors Without Borders January 18 – March 1.
Go to www.iDANZ.com To help save lives by
Becoming a Member of iDANZ Today!

Have You Seen the iDANZ Social Network?

Click Here To Become a Member
of iDANZ.com Today!

The More Members We Have, The More We Can
Make a Difference.
It’s Free!
iDANZ – The Social Network Where Dancers Live!

Share on Facebook

Come to Fresh Tracks presented by Dance Theater Workshop and expect to be surprised.  Fresh Tracks 2010 offers some shocking works from new choreographers seeking to get their names out there.

First on the program is up and down by Makiko Tamura who also dances in the piece alongside Ryoji Sasamoto. The dance is inspired by a long distance relationship of two people with the world in between.  One is on top, experiencing day, when the opposite is on bottom, experiencing night.  The couple, each wearing one shoe, seem two halves of one whole.  They stare out in the distance yearning to connect, and their movements influence the other, yet the distance remains apparent.  The choreography is fun and quirky, with moments of touching intimacy conveyed through interesting partnering.  Set among a landscape of discarded clothing, the dancers interact with different articles of clothing providing another layer to the work.

The Miner is choreographed by Eleanor Smith and contains no music. The dance is performed by Molly Lieber, who provides a sort of soundtrack with her breathing and dancing. This dance could be dissected into various parts that present different activities including (but not limited to anything) swimming, leaping like a frog, sprinting a ten foot distance, and playing the piano. Amazingly, the solo dancer is able to hold the audience captive as she explores the space and time she is given. Though the choreography is set, she seems to be improvising, often unaware of others watching, often turning her back. Perhaps this voyeuristic perspective adds excitement to the audience’s experience of the work. “The Miner” is an artistic experimentation of movement that is honest and inspiring.

We are Weather choreographed by Vanessa Anspaugh and her dancers seems to present the difficulties faced in a triangulated relationship.  The dancers Aretha Aoki, Lily Gold and Mary Read all have powerful stage presences that are cool and calm though some moments in the dance are quite dramatic.  With natural pedestrian movement the piece is nonetheless well-crafted and intentional.

Good Girl is a solo performance by dancer and choreographer Liz Santoro, performing with a projection of herself.  Provocative and entertaining, the dance confronts our expectations of what we consider a “Good Girl.”  Liz Santoro keeps the choreography simple, including a simple first arabesque- what better way to convey innocent intentions?  I say, dare to put yourself out there, Good Girl!

Naughty Bits is a work by Jen McGinn and gathered inspiration from the Chronicles of Narnia.  Dancers are adorned with animal elements: a furry paw, feathers sprouting from an arm, horns upon a forehead.  One dancer toots a horn signaling the dance to begin. The dancers form a mass of morphing faces, expressions evolving from happy to sad to relief.  One dancer is set apart; she takes off her bottom garments and dances in a clergy shirt and collar.  Is this a statement about the “Naughty Bits” of society?  After seeing this work, that is something you will have to decide for yourself!

The evening performance concludes with Heart Ain’t In It: Four-Chamber Studies. Though this work doesn’t seem to contain much dancing, the choreography by Enrico D. Wey presents an interesting paradox of the easily replaceable dancer. Live music is performed, then mimicked by another cast who takes the final bow.

An awesome part of Dance Theater Workshops’ Fresh Tracks series is its post-performance wine and discussion with the artists.  It is especially interesting for the audience to interact with the artists of such abstract works and amusing that many of the artists express ambiguity in their responses encouraging each member of the audience to discover how the dances reverberate within themselves.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Lea McGowan
Performance: Fresh Tracks 2010
Choreography: Makiko Tamura, Eleanor Smith, Vanessa Anspaugh, Liz Santoro, Jen McGinn, Enrico D. Wey
Venue: Dance Theater Workshop, New York City
Performance Date: February 11, 2010
www.iDANZ.com

iDANZ Supports Doctors Without Borders
in their Haiti Earthquake Relief Efforts.

MSF/Doctors Without Borders has been working in Haiti for 19 years, most recently operating three emergency hospitals in Port-au-Prince, and is mobilizing a large emergency response to the Haiti/earthquake disaster.

Can you please help them provide medicine, surgeons, nurses,
and supplies to victims in this crisis?
Click Here to Send a Direct Donation to Doctors Without Borders

The iDANZ Commitment
For every new person
who signs-up to be a member of the
iDANZ Social Network, iDANZ will donate $1 to
Doctors Without Borders January 18 – March 1.
Go to www.iDANZ.com To help save lives by
Becoming a Member of iDANZ Today!

Have You Seen the iDANZ Social Network?

Click Here To Become a Member
of iDANZ.com Today!

The More Members We Have, The More We Can
Make a Difference.
It’s Free!
iDANZ – The Social Network Where Dancers Live!

Share on Facebook

A man in a tuxedo takes the stage at Dance Theatre Workshop while the houselights are still up. He welcomes the audience and says that we are going to try an experiment.  He splits the audience into three sections, then instructs us all in the singing of, what else, "Do, a Deer". Instantly I am hooked, and from what I can see, so are those around me.  How rare is it that the audience is all grins before the show even begins?

From there Elkins takes off on a tender modern-dance re-make of the classic musical.  Each song is acted, mimed and danced in Elkins signature blend of pop and lock, breakdance, capoeria, and 90’s modern dance grooves.  Here his style is particularly effective, contrasting sharply with the original Northern European feel which everyone clearly remembers, booty-drops in incongruous places become a consistent joke.

But, his sense of humor goes beyond this easy one-liner and he finds ways to make the movement itself funny in clear short statements that make you laugh out loud.  In the nunnery, Elkins crafts a convent of nuns out of hoodie wearing dancers who all move in beautiful canon, clearly exemplifying the harmony of the original vocal score.  The canon becomes a double joke on the line "How do you catch a wave upon the sand?" when the nuns, joined hand to elbow, pass one of Elkins’ signature ‘waves’ through their linked arms.

Elkins has also gleaned some great comic acting from his troupe of fearless dancers.  Notable for their hilarious duet to "I have Courage" are Donnell Oakley and Meghan Merrill, two of Elkins three Maria’s.  They fight against one another, symbolizing opposite sides of Maria’s personality at this pivotal moment in the story.  Each woman’s dancing is full and fearless but their duet timing is the real draw of this dance.  Nearing the end of the exhausting section, Oakley sits in a disjointed pile next to the effervescent Merrill.  Merrill tips herself into a side-ways downward dog as Oakley crosses herself, dives between Merrill’s legs, bounces her shoulders off the backs of Merrill’s knees and flies off again, only to spring on to the next move.

The supporting cast and guest artists are all in on the joke and perform it with such commitment and energy, I wonder why we can’t do this (funny modern dance) more often.  Get to DTW to catch this show while it lasts.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Meghan Frederick
Performance: Fraulien Maria
Choreography:  Doug Elkins
Venue:  Dance Theater Workshop
Show Date:  December 17, 2009
www.iDANZ.com

Have You Seen the iDANZ Social Network?

Click Here To Become a Member
of iDANZ.com Today!

The More Members We Have, The More We Can
Make a Difference.
It’s Free!
iDANZ – The Social Network Where Dancers Live!

Share on Facebook

Joined by the five other company members of Anna Halprin under the direction of performer, Anne Collod, I see six well-toned dancers stare at the audience with the looming intensity of a sunset in the desert and carefully unbutton their white oxfords and peel off their trouser socks, sport coats, slacks and undergarments until they wore nothing but a stare that made me feel more exposed than they looked.  As a dancer who has grown up watching dancers perform in various states of undress and nakedly prance about dressing rooms as though skin were an outfit donned on the red carpet, the nudity alone did not bother me nor seemingly anyone else in the audience.  It is their complete dedication to the task at hand, the undressing, and their subsequent focus that is making this accessible "dance move" strongly communicated to the audience.

Following this audience stare down, they undress a second time while gazing across the stage at one particular company member, and then undress a third time while staring with the same a partner creating three duets.  Even with my aforementioned proximity to nudity and with the focus taken away from my audience member role,, I feel quite vulnerable.  Why? 

In a normal situation, I would grant them the privacy of averting my eyes.  But, here they are, on a stage, performing, and as an audience member am I not supposed to fulfill my responsibilities and watch?  Life has taught me that when sitting in an audience at a show, you direct focus forward and dream of the moment when the enigmatic beings on stage may toss an accidental glance your way.  Performers often direct their focus outward and, while modern dance often jests at the concept of the fourth wall, pushing through the audience with their candor, at DTW these six performers obliterate even the most modern of these notions and invert my entire idea of performing.

Nothing about their disrobing causes me to think, “Man I wish I could take my sock off that luxuriously while articulating my left baby finger so eloquently. What charm, what finesse!”  The inversion lies in their ability to perform mundane tasks with a heightened sense of awareness – more Eastern than Western in its origins – no multitasking, no highlighting of seemingly impossible feats, just unabashed focus on what it is to do one thing.  Between my earlier struggle with wanting to seem like a normal person who could be social and converse with my seat mate and my desire to seem fully engaged by the inanimate objects in my lap, I become aware of how specific Halprin’s dancers must be.

So often, dance works to prove that the human body can do things far more extraordinary than perform the tasks necessary to get from morning until night.  Halprin, joined with desire to take these daily tasks and make them engaging by reducing them to their raw efforts and results, pushes the concept of "new work."  This particular aspect of Parades and Changes was initially highly controversial and often banned.  Its return to the stage speaks to its importance both in the 60’s and now when no one can dedicate their focus to rituals that link the universe.

The evening takes many other tasks – ripping butcher paper, stomping on small platforms, dressing each other in found objects, etc., and works to bestow upon each task the integrity of highly technical dance work (or what I’d gather a brain surgeon dedicates when operating on a premature baby).  Unwavering in their attention to each task or “cellblock,” they are augmented nightly by their pacing and staging.  No two shows are the same which breathes life into "choreography" that has been engrained in both company and audiences members for all of time.

Go to Dance Theater Workshop to check them out and if you’re lucky, you may just sit next to a man who will talk to you like a human and then perform a human task that makes him seem otherworldly.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Eileen Elizabeth
Performance:  Parades and Changes
Venue: Dance Theater Workshop
Show Date: November 18, 2009
www.iDANZ.com

Have You Seen the iDANZ Social Network?

Click Here To Become a Member of iDANZ.com Today!
The More Members We Have,
The More We Can Make a Difference.
It’s Free!
iDANZ – The Social Network Where Dancers Live!

Want to stay connected to iDANZ?  Join our network
using the following services:

Share on Facebook

Tere O’Connor is known for being hyper-articulate. He’s good at talking about dance, talking about his work, and talking about talking.  But ultimately it’s the effect of the work which matters.  A piece must speak for itself without any supplemental commentary. O’Connor’s last piece, Rammed Earth did this brilliantly, but for reasons I’m still attempting to identify; Wrought Iron Fog leaves me dissatisfied.  Perhaps it’s the curse of creating something brilliant that makes it impossible for the following piece to live up to it.

I’m surprised by many of his choices in Wrought Iron Fog.  From the very beginning it reeks of concert dance.  Warm, flattering side-light fades up to reveal five dancers dispersed in the space like trees in a mystical forest, their feet planted in place, their bodies doing googley articulations a la Forsythe.  Is it this?  Or a parody of this?  It’s hard to guess his intention.

It doesn’t stay here for long.  Instantaneous shifts from one ambiguous thing to the next are a constant.  The change is clear, but what it was, and what it has changed to, leave a lot of space for interpretation.  Dance phrases of arabesques and relevés spontaneously become static bodies with just twinkling fingers or gyrating pelvises.  The new thing is layered on top of the last thing with seemingly no connection beyond the fact that they are next to each other.  They are only related by proximity.

The cinematic shifts in perspective which were characteristic of Rammed Earth, and what made it so visually captivating, appear only rarely here.  I see it once clearly when Hilary Clark falls back away from the group, reaching out with both arms the whole way until she hits "bottom."  It’s as if we’re above the scene looking down; the "camera angle" is from above.  The comedy and the drama of this moment work like magic.

I connect most to the piece in the more physically rigorous sections:  the animalistic crawling on the floor, the whirling, spiraling movement, or the repeated running out of control until they fall to the floor, and I hear the squeaking of flesh skidding across marley.  It’s here that I’m completely engaged, experiencing it viscerally.

At one point all five dancers stand still in formation waiting for the music to come in, and for the first time in James Baker’s sound score, it sounds like a song.  The dance is frontal and presentational, and their faces are sexy and expressive as they mouth secret messages.  Here he’s clearly criticizing this, but I’m enjoying this.  If they were doing it seriously, I would think it cliché, but knowing that they are making fun justifies my indulgence.

A prolonged sequence of unison movement signals that it’s the climax and it’s moving towards an end.  But isn’t this the standard formula?  Is O’Connor commenting on the standard formula, or using it?  Maybe claiming to criticize something is just an excuse to use it.

Tere O’Connor’s ideology of dance attempts to diminish the expectation of representation or underlying narrative.  As he puts it, dance is "sub-linguistic."  I agree with this approach to dance completely, but if you’re not going to use narrative or language, then the movement, sound and visual aspects of the piece better speak.  Parts of Wrought Iron Fog do, but much of the work’s ambiguity leaves me disconnected.  Perhaps if I didn’t already view Tere O’Connor as such a genius, I’d be thrilled by the piece. That’s the curse of reputation.

Photography by Yi-Chun Wu

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Julie Fotheringham
Performance: Tere O’Connor Dance, Wrought Iron Fog
Venue: Dance Theater Workshop, New York City
Show Date: November, 10, 2009
www.iDANZ.com

Have You Seen the iDANZ Social Network?

Click Here To Become a Member
of iDANZ.com Today!

The More Members We Have, The More We Can
Make a Difference.
It’s Free!
iDANZ – The Social Network Where Dancers Live!

Want to stay connected to iDANZ?  Join our network
using the following services:

Share on Facebook

The group presents a challenging, fun, gender-bending, James-Dean-inspired trio at Dance Theater Workshop this week.  It is an evening filled with inspired dancing and the witty use of both text and music.

As the lights come up, Michelle Boulé appears seated in a chair, wearing a red jacket and jeans, seemingly dressed as James Dean.  She speaks almost incomprehensibly into a mike, before falling drunkenly to the floor.  I enjoy the confusion of listening as hard as I can; attempting to make sense of her words, but only catching snippets of meaning.  Boulé so fully embodies the character that, even in my confusion, I trust her to take me on this ride.  Then enters Tarek Halaby, dressed as a woman in a wig of curly brown hair and a long blue skirt; he moves with a strikingly authentic femininity.  The pair perform a duet at the edge of the stage, subtly introducing their characters to the audience using subtle and well-crafted body language as their dance vocabulary.  Eventually, Gutierrez joins the pair onstage, at which point the now-trio busts out a section full of dreamy arabesques and stretchy backbends.

One of my favorite parts begins with Boulé and Halaby acting out a scene in which they are the characters from a James Dean movie. Upon reaching the end of the scene, they immediately start again from the beginning.  This time, however, Gutierrez says their lines over-top of them, as if he had seen this movie a million times and can recite all of the lines of all the characters. When the scene begins for a third time, Gutierrez takes over Boulé’s voice completely, while she performs a slow solo; dancing in a downstage spotlight, seeming almost to be having an out-of-body experience.  Boulé rejoins the others, all three pick up scripts, and they begin to recite.  Gutierrez, with the mike in his mouth, reads everyone’s lines with them; the distorted sound lending a sinister feeling to the whole business… The intensity builds as the reading get faster, louder, and more frantic.  Finally, Gutierrez spits out the mike; the others ask him, “What’s your problem?” to which he responds, “I don’t know, but it’s gone now.”  Finding this to be an acceptable answer, the two join Gutierrez for a trio in which each move is announced before it is performed.  The anticipation of seeing what the move will be, after hearing the name, is intensely satisfying, especially with these three creative, beautiful dancers.

One more time, the cast recites their story; then, they strip down to their underwear, shedding their personas along with their clothes.  As pop music blares, the dancers are free, leaping and bounding through the space.  In an exhilarating moment, Gutierrez jumps into the audience, dripping sweat, and climbs up onto the arms of a chair.  When he looks like he will lose his balance, the audience reaches out to support him.  Using their support, he crosses over to the other side of the theater on the arms of the seats, runs back down to the stage, and executes a beautiful series of leaps, as if to say “I am free.”  With the freedom celebration over, the performers collect their clothes and exit the space as a new, younger version of the trio enters, performing even as the original trio bows and the audience leaves.  Brilliant!

‘Last Meadow’ creates a world that I don’t understand but excited to explore with these three amazing dancers.  Miguel Gutierrez is exceptionally creative and smart.  …Now while I am on my way to rent a James Dean movie, you go see this dance.

iDANZ Critix Corner Official Dance Review by Hope Davis  Performance:  Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People, ‘Last Meadow’ Choreography: Miguel Gutierrez Venue:  Dance Theater Workshop (DTW), New York City Performance Date:  Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 www.iDANZ.com

Click Here To Become a Member of iDANZ.com Today!
The More Members We Have, The More We Can Make a Difference.  It’s Free!

iDANZ – The Social Network Where Dancers Live!

Want to stay connected to iDANZ? Join our network using the following services:

Share on Facebook