The evening opens with Drowntown.  Amazingly athletic and energetic, this is a powerhouse.  The dancers weave and dodge one another without missing a beat, yet join each other to prove a point at different times.   It is inspiring…  Imagine walking through Time Square at rush hour.  Watch out or you will get left in the dust!

Next on the program is Wraith. Danced by Michelle Pellizzon and Danielle Schulz, this piece is hauntingly beautiful.  With costumes by Tonatiuh Otero, they look like beautiful red Nymphs.  Showing their clean and pure technique, they dance in tune with each other ever so effortlessly.  Nymphs in a time of loss, they are still, however, hopeful for what is to come…  Beautiful!

Moving on to The Polarity, danced by Gierre Godley and Dillon Honiker, all I can say is WOW!!!!  Showstopper.  They both dance with power and masculinity; it is refreshing.  Throwing themselves on each other without a care in the world, they are out to kill!  I am immediately put in to the frame of thought of watching “The Matrix”, a wonderful fight scene with all the special effects coming to life right before me.  This (The Polarity) is wild abandon at it’s best!

The Missing, danced by Michelle Pellizon, is next and what a shocking surprise…  She is a revelation in this piece shaking, twisting, and contorting her body into oddly beautiful positions.  It’s really amazing. Merging her beautiful technique with the oddest of moves it is like watching a drug addict fight through withdrawal.  Happiness, sadness, longing, and cravings she is going through all the emotions right before your eyes.  I am happy to report she wins in the end!  Congrats!

And finally, Terminus, wraps up this wonderful evening.  Danced by the company, they save the best for last taking complete command of the stage and not being afraid of it.  The power of the dancers fill the floor bringing the audience to the edge of their seats.  Their movements are faster, sharper, and clean, as if to put the final stamp on the evening.  Wearing costumes by Keiko, they leave the audience wanting more and ready to stand up and join in!   Eryc Taylor Dance is one company not to be missed.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Devin Pullins
Performance  Eryc Taylor Dance
Venue:  Joyce SoHo
Show Date:  November 13, 2010
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Nicholas Andre Dance never misses a step with thoughtful choreography and beautiful movers.

Wired (world premiere) sets the tone of the night at Joyce SoHo as Nick Ross gives his dancers six concise choreographic themes from 2007 forward. Nicholas Andre Dance is a champion at concert dance forms with beautiful movement and well-trained bodies. Precision and force are trademarks of the articulate choreography from Nick Ross.

From the Beginning, dancers ooze energy into the space while wearing dark-hued short unitards with lightning-inspired neon green veins running across their bodies.  The chemistry and excitement are subtly contained in the dancers’ opening sequence.  A quartet showcases the clean lines and technical work.  The women dance with a precision and unison seemingly tying the company together, while the men run the gamut of styles and diverse talents—all strong.  It is interesting to see Nick Ross’s contemporary choreography build on themes and variation creating a very structured development of his six stories –a choreographic tool and construct very characteristic in style and concept taught at SUNY Purchase College.  This alum successfully utilizes these tools of the craft to effectively articulate his own choreographic voice in each work.  The dance department at Purchase should be proud…  It is noted within the footnotes that this production does not prescribe to providing any notes whatsoever in the program.  This purist stance allows the audience their own interpretation and challenges them to think for themselves while reading the movement for clues.

Undercurrent (2009) is a mature-minded quartet where the dancers reverberate with an intense energy that builds and never quite peaks; however, well-handled, this work is exquisite to watch and enjoy.  Kristy Engel and Trista Jennings both shine in their solo sections opening up, pulling away from the corps-styled movement and letting their hair down to feature individuality.  Tommy Scrivens is riveting and caught my eye with his very masculine dancing and seasoned execution of the work.  Ross shows his softer side with all the understated elegance and emotive movement that draws on imagery and allows the audience time to savor his creation.

Another world premier, Elegy, is set to Philip Glass’ “Metamorphosis #1 & #2.”  Chris Ralph opens the work with a solo.  His sculpted frame glides across the stage and embodies Ross’ concepts with ease.  Ralph is joined by Tommy Scrivens and Aaron Walter; this athletic trio overpowers the stage.  The work drags a bit in the middle when a quartet of women performs their phrase in a very static pattern while the focus is on the men.  Moreover, the ending seems unfortunately rushed.  I would have liked to see more integration of the theme on the background dancers and not what looked to me as an unfinished section by the choreographer.

Passages (2009) features an intriguing tableau of dancers walking across a back panel of marley. Burke Wilmore’s lighting for this work is amazing and perfectly integrated into the choreography.  Twice this month I have seen him transform the white walls of Joyce SoHo with an amazing palette of colors (such as Burke’s work with the Dash Ensemble I reviewed a few weeks earlier).  Equally, Ross’ costumes in brown hues highlight the dancers’ physiques and never detract from the work.  For me, Jeremy Nedd shines with great presence in this work, especially in his duet in which he is such a strong partner.

Richard Cook, a beloved ballet faculty member at Purchase (gone too soon on July 14^th, 2009), is memorialized by Ross in The Last Man (2007), a work he dedicates to Cook. The male quartet with athletic partnering utilizes a theme of three dancers against the one to dramatic effect.  The men move beautifully and feature the best dancing of the night as Ross’ more contemporary style is infused with weight and more athletic contact work.  From the beginning to the middle, the dancing is even amongst the men and solid in choreographic structure but staggers a bit in the end as one man is about the be left on stage alone.  To counter this cliché, Ross makes the decision to leave another facing away and downstage as “the last man” is left representing loss.

The evening closes with Until Blue (2009) a strongly counterpointed work set against a beautiful blue cyc.  Ross sets his dancers in motion in lightweight patterns that speak to me about the joy of dance and fellowship of company members.  Without missing a beat, the clean lines and beautiful bodies of Nicholas Andre Dance close out their season at Joyce SoHo flying high in this well-structured repertory work. This is the most versatile of his works featuring beautiful partnering and sections infused with imagery, emotion, and the interesting placement of dancers in space.  I am in awe of how easy it seems for this company to present their best, piece after piece.  I would really like to see what this choreographer could do with an evening length piece as he has quite a talent for themes, imagery and transitions.  Nothing is lost on the audience as each movement on his cast is made manifest.

Photography by Steven Schreiber

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Sasha Deveaux
Performance:  Nicholas Andre Dance
Choreographer: Nick Ross
Dancers: Katlyn Baskin, Kristy Engel, Trista Jennings, Jeremy Nedd, Morgan Palmer, Christopher Ralph, Juan-Antonio Rodriguez (appearing courtesy of Complexions, Contemporary Ballet), Tommy Scrivens and Aaron Walter
Lighting: Burke Wilmore
Venue: Joyce SoHo, NYC
Date: December 20, 2009 @ 8:00pm
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As I walk into the Joyce SoHo the stage is already preset sparking my interest as to what is about to come.  A chair, a hanging dress and hat, a projection screen, and a coat stand with various coats and hats hang upon it.  Hmmmm.  I wonder…  I also notice panels on the ground and wonder what they are for. The lights go down and Thomas DeFrantz walks out and takes his position.

The scenery is funky. Through tap dance and an occasional passé or battement, DeFrantz expresses a period where Monk is frustrated from being “passed over” for young musicians as well as an artistic love for his muse, Billy Holiday. DeFrantz approaches a picture of Holiday and “plucks” a gardenia from her picture in reference. 

At another point, he shows Monk’s admiration for his wife in a very creative way by picking up a dress hanging in the background and begins to do a sort of abstract ballroom dance with the dress occasionally throwing in a shuffle or two.  For a one man show, this sequence is a very creative and interactive way to show love for a woman. 

Delightfully imaginative, we see monk dance happily around his apartment as a “parade of musicians.”   At other times, DeFrantz exhibits unhappiness and sits depressed in his chair.  Overall, the piece creates an emotional aftertaste that leaves the audience with the spirit of Monk.  And, for those who don’t know about the man, you need to get on it!

The most intriguing part of the piece and focus of the work is the technology used.  At various points in the evening DeFrantz interplays with projection and music creating a composition that is unique to every evening of performance. Each panel triggers a prerecorded visual and/or audio sequence that DeFrantz is in control.  The panels are connected to a laptop where Eto Oro, the media artist who collaborated with Defrantz on this project, monitors the media and only interacts if there is glitch. 

The technology platform is created through a program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology that DeFrantz created called SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology.  This collective’s goal at M.I.T. is to “stage alternative histories of race, sexuality, gender, performance, and technology.” What an innovative idea! 

In a post performance discussion DeFrantz expresses the purpose of the project and his hopes that other performers will be inspired to use the platform that he has created. This project seems very promising and is an important new addition to the history of dance and performance in general.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by JoiLynn 
Performance: Monk’s Mood
Choreographer:  Thomas DeFrantz
Venue: Joyce SoHo, New York City, NY
Date: December 11th, 2009
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Julliard and Purchase once again prove that they are still churning out hot young dancers with their “DASH Ensemble”, as seven of them present Gregory Dolbashian’s Sundowning at Joyce SoHo.  Dolbashian’s sometimes-uneven choreography looks phenomenal when attacked with such commitment, although the work as an evening-length performance has miles to go before full cohesion of ideas is achieved.  However, Dolbashian presents us with a colorful display of humanity under the spell of a setting sun.

“Sundowning” or “sundown syndrome” is an unexplainable medical condition, where patients experience increased agitation and disorientation in the late afternoon/early evening.  It is thought that diminished ability to detect the onset of night might create these emotional disturbances and cardiac irregularities. Burke Wilmore’s exquisite lighting choices play with your eyes in subtle organic variations.  His vision of sunset includes both a watered down palette of colors and striking shadowy visuals in black and white.  On top of this… a sea of dancers exploring different realms of consciousness.

The piece opens as Christopher Ralph backs into the space, his eyes hazed over as if he can see nothing even after looking for too long.  Ralph is an amazing technician and is quickly joined by the equally talented Antonio Brown and Jonathan Windham.  The trio, twitching and agitated, begin to ooze mysteriously through a backward driving turn sequence, falling off balance as if in total disorientation.  All have legs for days as they hit their forehead on their knees, kick into arabesque and flip around.  I find it a shame that Dolbashian teases the audience a bit in the opening, with thoughtfully phrased movement sequences, showcasing the dancers training…  for this type of ferocious dancing only returns intermittently throughout the work.

For me, Sundowning takes a left in sections that present quite a different story. The more mature sections of solid choreography, where the intension is expressed through the body (in more of a concert style of dance) contrast sharply with more playful adolescent scenes that seem to come out of the downtown dance scene.  In the latter, the dancers joke, play and say the strangest things.  It is not that the text is inappropriate in dance- but Dolbashian needs to decide what style of dance to utilize.  He seems trapped not only between day and night – but Uptown and Downtown as well.  He takes the company of versatile movers and spends most of the evening testing out how many things he can do with a black jacket from puppet show, to security blanket, to plague infested cloak.

Starting with such beautiful movement that started to explore the theme of Sundowning, the spoken text seemed to drag the work down in a form of reverse maturity.  The text itself needs to be more thoughtfully used as I recognized excerpts from other choreographer’s works. (One example being a scene from Purchase faculty Kevin Wynn’s Tracing Sirocco in 2006).  In another text-laden section, Brown digs deep to give his best performance of the night unfortunately while repeating various shouted snippets of the phrase, “I need someone to help me understand what I am doing…how to help myself…Why can’t he just love me the way I need?”

In 2009, audiences are less concerned about the line between uptown and downtown dance scenes although Dolbashian’s effort to blur these is unsuccessful. I would welcome an edit and exploration of those sections that best captured the strange and eerie concept of “sundowning.”  Other beautiful and stunning sections appear throughout the work where dancers explore a movement idea in more fragmented ways with gradual development of a single phrase.  In several scenes, Alexandra Johnson’s extreme ability to express mood with understated movement effort is intense and stunning.

I think that exploring “sundown syndrome” through two different styles of dance was a lot to bite off.  Not to be a purist, but some of their raw movement material really got me thinking and experiencing emotion with the dancers… and it was a shame to squash that experience with the less electric “talk and play” sections. However, it is those sparks of solid dancing that convince me that The Dash Ensemble is a new company to watch! 

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Sasha Deveaux
Performance:  The DASH Ensemble
Choreographer: Gregory Dolbashian
Dancers: Antonio Brown, Marie Doherty, Caitlin Fennick, Alexandra Johnson, Christopher Ralph, Shakirah Stewart and Jonathan Windham.
Lighting: Burke Wilmore
Venue: Joyce SoHo
Date: Friday, December 4, 2009 @ 8:00pm
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SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology Presents NYC Premiere Of

Monk’s Mood: A Performance Meditation on the
Life and Music of Thelonious Monk

Joyce SoHo
December 11 – 13, 2009

SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology, in residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, presents Monk’s Mood: A Performance Meditation on the Life and Music of Thelonious Monk at Joyce SoHo on December 11 – 13, 2009. Conceived by and featuring Thomas F. DeFrantz, this solo performance explores tap dance as a narrative form of storytelling, augmented by digital technologies. New Jersey-based poly-media artist Eto Oro provides programming and visual environment.

Monk’s Mood explores Thelonious Monk’s life and music as well as personal relationships with his wife, Nellie, and the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, who befriended Monk and other jazz musicians of the bebop era. The work approaches his isolation, melancholy, creative genius, and ultimately, his madness. The improvisational nature of the work allows DeFrantz to interpret Monk’s chord progression, rhythms, tone and feeling – enhancing the audience’s exploration of jazz, tap dance and emergent technology blending together as a theatrical story.

"One of my concerns is how to use technology to enhance theatrical storytelling, improvisation and artistic performance," said DeFrantz, a Professor of Music and Theater Arts at MIT. “In a way, my steps are analogous to Monk’s piano keys; I’m interpreting his rhythms and collaborating with my feet. The performance is spontaneous and original."

The 50-minute work employs high-tech floor pads, conceptually designed by MIT and Stanford graduate students, to trigger sound and video images during the performance. A digital archive of related content is manipulated within each of the ten scenes, resulting in a one-of-a-kind improvisational and emotional narrative. The use of technology in such a unique performance capability, displays the exploration and educational possibilities of creating new performance platforms.

DeFrantz began developing Monk’s Mood during a summer residency at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Italy. He developed it further in residencies at Stanford University and Hampshire College. Sections of the work have been performed at New Haven International Festival of the Arts (2002), Centre National de la Danse, Paris (2005), American Dance Festival (2007), Capetown South Africa International Ballet Gala (2008), and in residency at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln (2009).

Performances start at 8:00 PM Eastern. Tickets are $15 or $12 for students and seniors; tickets can be purchased in advance at www.joyce.org, or by calling (212) 352-3101. Tickets will also be sold on site one-half hour before curtain. Post-performance discussions will take place on December 11-12, 2009.

Venue Information

Joyce SoHo
155 Mercer Street (Houston/Prince)
New York, NY 10012

B/D/F/V to Broadway-Lafayette, R to Prince, 6 to Bleecker

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Darcy Naganuma’s company, Naganuma Dance, is a collection of beautifully muscled bodies that know how to move.  In their latest show, Nouveau Americain, this weekend at Joyce SoHo, Naganuma brings out all her tricks, b-girling, pas-de-chat-ing, and high-kicking through dissertations on our nation’s troubled state.

The first and strongest piece of the evening, Ameriwho?, opens with a string of spoken and visual responses from the international community to the question, "What is the first thing you think of when you think of America?".  Not many of the answers are positive and Naganuma takes these disconcerting impressions as the jumping off point for her choreography.  Her "New America" is fashionable- dancers are punk-ishly clad in zebra stripes, red, and cut-off jeans, but dysfunctional- they stagger and shake like hot-wired robots between jazzy jumps and turns.  As structure builds and unwinds the dancers are torn apart and glare at one another and the audience.  They take turns mouthing along with the Brazilian girls, "It’s not my fault."  Naganuma’s America, then, is post-Bush.  Struggling to move past the lingering troubles of the last 8 years, but getting sidelined, perhaps, in angst that does more harm than good.

Naganuma’s Box Suite relies on collapsible Ikea storage units for it’s movement invention, and does a great job riffing off comments that America is "A bunch of kinds" with it’s slapstick bumbling (heads inside the boxes) to Rachmaninoff’s very recognizable, "Flight of the Bumblebee."  Naganuma utilizes her dancers’ varied backgrounds by choreographing a hip-hop section starring Sarah Ahn from Hawaii who pulls off some great b- girl moves.  These are translated onto some of the more ballet-bodies in the cast, and morphed into petite allegro steps.  The dancer’s vibe off one another, tossing the boxes, sharing the limelight, and looking like powerful, versatile women.

Throughout the rest of the evening Naganuma expounds on this idea of the New American, finding strong material in her cast’s international background.  America, as we know, is a melting pot and it is great to hear Naganuma’s dancers all speaking in their native tongues.  Whether using a thick Trinidadian accent, German, Japanese, or Jersey slang, Naganuma’s dancers command their voices well, and let us know that they are intelligent people, bringing personal and varied backgrounds to an American dance company.

Finally, Naganuma takes an unexpected turn in the last piece of the evening, Tower. Her dancers are clad in translucent earth tones with the ladies in black bra tops. They speak in a language unidentifiable to me, and seem to be worshipping, murmuring to one another, perhaps cautioning, perhaps urging each other on.  I’m not sure what this work has to do with the rest of the program, although it is, again, great to see these beautiful bodies.

Naganuma finds a gorgeous image to end the evening when Charly Wenzel, a small blonde woman, cradles the much larger Dwayne Brown in her arms.  He almost covers her with his body, but looks into her face for comfort which she gives, in small movements, as the lights fade.  Bravo!

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Meghan Frederick
Performance: Naganuma Dance Company
Choreography: Darcy Naganuma
Venue: Joyce SoHo, New York City
Show Date:  November 19, 2009
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at Joyce SoHo
December 17 – 20, 2009 at 8pm

Nicholas Andre Dance, a New York City-based company whose mission is to bring athletic concepts of modern dance movement to a wide variety of audiences, presents its Sixth New York City season at Joyce SoHo, 155 Mercer Street (between Houston and Prince Streets), NYC December 17-20, 2009 at 8pm. Tickets are $20 ($15 for students/seniors/DancePass) andare available at

www.joyce.org or by phone at (212) 352-3101 or (866) 811-4111.

Nicholas Andre Dance will present two world premieres: Wired, set to music by Steve Reich and an untitled new work set to the music of Philip Glass. The company will also present recent repertory including: Until Blue (2009), an exhilarating, fast paced athletic work that pushes the dancers to their limits through the pure joy of movement. Passage (2009) is a full company work interspersed with soft gestures that grows in volume like a conversation, with graciousness and ends with the image of a wave ebbing and flowing on the shore. The piece follows the deliberate nomadic journey of a group across the land to new beginnings. Undercurrent (2009) features a quartet of men and women, with two different casts depending on the performance, who gracefully grow throughout the work while keeping a constant through line. The use of counterpoint and staging teases the eye without ever demanding it look in any one place. The company will also perform a repertory favorite The Last Man (2007), a defining piece of Mr. Ross’ work as a choreographer that is dedicated to the memory of the late Richard Cook.

Dancers: Katlyn Baskin, Kristy Engel, Trista Jennings Jeremy Nedd, Morgan Palmer, Christopher Ralph, Juan Rodriguez (appears courtesy of Complexions Contemporary Ballet), Tommy Scrivens and Aaron Walter. Lighting design by Burke Wilmore.

The mission of Nicholas Andre Dance is to bring athletic concepts of modern dance movement to a wide variety of audiences. The company creates and presents new works that are conceptual, emotional and passionate, generating an intelligent understanding and appreciation for dance.

NICHOLAS ANDRE DANCE

Joyce SoHo

155 Mercer Street (between Houston and Prince Streets), NYC

December 17-20, 2009 at 8pm

Tickets $20 ($15 for students/seniors/DancePass)

Tickets can be purchased at www.joyce.org or by phone at (212) 352-3101 or (866) 811-4111.

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Hailing from Mexico and New York, this week Carlos A. Cruz Velázquez’s company,  colectivodoszeta, adorns us with an evening of works, -some revivals, one new- and, of course, some surprises.

In Velázquez’s Purple Waves (…fading Red), Nobody, my eyes never left Velazquez and fellow dancer Christina Noel Reaves.  Clad in torn "I Love NY" t-shirts, sneakers and bike shorts Velazquez and Reaves aggressively sprint through the stage with chairs showing an intense draw and an intense aversion to each other bringing the audience members on a whirlwind tour of push and pull, love and hate and overall intensity.  As I read up on the piece, it only makes sense that this is about a relationship with a bipolar friend.  Their athletic movement that leaves them flying through the air at one moment and sometimes clutched in each others arms gasping for breath at the next and then back again wrestling in a duel that rivals a WWF match (whew…) is astounding!   A ridiculous mix of Unkle, Marilyn Manson, Madonna and others shows the choreographer’s ability to mix both sound and movement without letting either one overpower the other.

In Abandoned thoughts (as if…nothing/me against myself), we see Reaves again joined by Lori Byargeon and Clare Cook in a trio revived from 2007.  Dressed up in satin and lace the trio begins literally coming at the audience with a vibe so tongue-in-cheek you’d think they stepped right off of a carousel but forgot that it was gone.  Their costumes say innocence and cotton candy, but as the prancing trio begins to move into a series of playful spanks, growls, and hair tossing, you see that they are all having fun playing on stage.  The aggression from Nobody is revisited (which seems to be one of Velázquez’s themes), and the chairs are their again being thrown about like rag dolls.  Cook says that since the piece first originated, it’s been performed many times and grown as all three dancers have traveled down different career paths.  There is a fierce strength between the three that walks that line of sisters who wouldn’t be afraid to rip each other’s hair out but would kill someone else if they tried.

Like Nobody and Abandoned thoughts (as if…nothing/me against myself), Gone (…a scar and a feather) and On the minimum scent of…(time), are revived from 2008 and 2003, respectively.   Gone is a beautiful dance moving almost completely horizontally through the marley tapings and is only punctuated by sweeping falls on the diagonal.  I hear “Awesome!” as Yin Yue performs a short solo segment in the middle.  I think everyone in the audience agrees.  On the minimum scent of…(time), which is more of a performance art piece, starts with just Velázquez, some shoes, three chairs and a cupcake.  Though he soon brings up two somewhat hesitant audience members to share in the piece,  they seem much more at ease after he shares his cupcake with them.

Lastly, the only new piece of the night is Of shame and leaves (…or recipe to forget).  Breaking up the evenings overriding aggression, this radiant piece simply shows the audience a beautiful dance performed by beautiful dancers.  Simple is not bad here – the lack of props and with the whole company on stage, aside from Velázquez, the floor is a sea of bodies clad in flowing dresses and Max Richters’ score, so heartbreaking I couldn’t write anything down.  The dancers seem to pour their happiness out on the stage so much that it seeps up into the audience.  I can’t help but think what a gift it is to watch.

Velázquez and his dancers shine whether showcasing their technique, their aggression, or their most innovative way to roll themselves or a chair across the floor.  At the Joyce SoHo through Sunday…  Check them out!

Photography by Julieta Cervantes

iDANZ Critix Corner Official Dance Review by Eileen Elizabeth Performance:  colectivodoszeta Choreography:  Carlos A. Cruz Velázquez Venue: Joyce SoHo, New York City Performance Date:  September 17, 2009 www.iDANZ.com

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