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
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

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
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

FELA!, the new Broadway musical that marries the biopic story of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti with his music, is a raw insightful adaptation of 37 Arts’ off Broadway version to the great white way.  This production is enhanced by the incredible spacial perspective and evocative powers of the design team.  The visionary choreography/direction from Bill T. Jones, changeable set which vibes-n-flows via video production, and costume design from Marina Draghici, as well as the innovative lighting design by Robert Weirzel, all place the audience at a brightly lit version of Fela’s beloved club, the Shrine.  The audience doesn’t miss a thing as this cozy theatre becomes a fringe Nigerian space, sweeping us all into the madness that becomes Fela’s MOP (Movement of the People).

Sahr Ngaujah is a quadruple threat playing Fela as he acts, sings, dances while playing both saxophone, drum and trumpet.  His ability to float between skills goes from strength to strength as he simultaneously takes on the persona of bandleader, disillusioned son, leader of a sociopolitical movement and lover to his many Queens (wives).  [The historical Fela was said to have married 24 women in an act of protest against Westernization and the Christianization of his beloved Nigeria.  He found protest in act like polygamy, smoking the peace pipe and even declaring his compound a sovereign nation].

So… here in the Kalakuta Republic, which basically translates to "rascally" from Swahili, the audience is drawn in by the uneven flow of the story and carefree style that, when combined, truly makes the production more accessible for Black audiences precisely because it is not formulaic.  Quite frankly, I like that it runs hot and loose with just about everything.  It is a casual, and at times, a crazed conversation between the audience and Fela.  The audience even gets the opportunity to stand up and get down with a free dance lesson!    A surefire recipe for a cult-like theater-in-the-making for "time-warped" FELA-Fanatics, this is a show that you will truly have to return to see time and time again in order to take it all in.

More like a rock concert vibe, the Highlife and AfroBeat band play powerful renditions of Fela’s most influential songs such at Upside Down, Zombie, MOP and more…  Arranged by the Brooklyn-based band, Antibalas, (a long time practitioner of the Afrobeat sound), the entire ensemble performs enmeshed in Fela’s flow and rhythmical structure infusing the story with emotion and electricity.

As the audience sits in their seats and the band warms up, very very slowly the dancers, "Fela’s Queens," begin to wind their waists off to the side, up on scaffolding, and out in the aisles until the whole theatre seems a "Shrine" to the beautiful black bottom.  Ain’t nothing wrong with it.  Besides, if by freeing your ass your mind follows, then the dancers in FELA! are all highly enlightened.  What I can’t stress enough is that they are all, all standouts in this cast and you get the feeling that this can of random parts has no filler.

A crowd pleaser and a Queen of the night with such versatility, Nicole Chantal de Weever all but breaks her back in several scenes where she flips between fierce African solo’s and beautiful snatched extensions.  While some of the male dancers like Corey Baker and Daniel Soto float between the African movement and the classical and contemporary dance vocabulary with grace and ease, the other women on stage, having familiar faces from the NYC African dance performance and class scene, look as if they have been dancing together for years.  (Actually, many of them have been doing just that, but not on Broadway).   Special kudos are in order to Rassaan Elijah “Talu” Green, who moves from being drummer to dancer with equal skill, and Gelan Lambert, an amazing tap technician who shows his improvisation skills well over that funky Afro Beat sound.  Who knew?  Before FELA!, Gelan has been known to be an awesome contemporary dancer in the "concert dance" world.  Werk!

Other standouts in the cast are Saycon Sengbloh as Fela’s African American Venus who brings him a "Black Power" mentality.  The stereotype of the Black American Queen, strong and angry, is not lost in the role and neither is the humor of this genre of blaxsploitation.  Sengbloh takes us back to the 60’s with her all out belting voice as she “turns [his] world upside down” with books!  Yes, they are dancing onstage doing their African while reading books.  The characters Sandra and Fela go back and forth over which side is more messed up:  African American or African.  Finally, Fela concedes that he had to go all the way to America to understand what his mother had been trying to teach him all along.

Memorable lines from Ngaujah are in his description of colonialism as being metaphorically like "having guests in the house."  In a scene about “Hotel Africa,” he describes how at first “it’s quite nice” and then “things start to go missing.”  As the audience has a chuckle, Ngaujah begins to lists “Ashtrays, towels […] petroleum, diamonds, people!”  At this point, we realize that the fun jesting and joking around has quickly turned political, but not before he asked, “…and what do they leave in return?  Gonorrhea and Jesus!”  …OMFG

So yeah, this show is going to get real, real fast.  So, bring it fast and loose.  It’s about time for new blood on Broadway.  As Fela lights up a fatty and begins to describe his rise to fame and political ambitions, someone in the audience shouts “Puff puff pass.”  The work is irreverent, powerfully moving and one of the most insightful productions I have seen in a long time.  I hope that, as it gains in popularity, some of the funnier, raw, offensive, countercultural shit stays in!  For example, his monologue about taking a shit while imprisoned is funny, familiar, yet still foreign to the conservative American’s Puritan ethic.  So, the work quite wittily shakes cobwebs from ways of thinking to try to get something new to stick—a new "education."  Perhaps, it will be the countercultural revolution that stirs Fela’s soul and inflames his lyrics.

The most important question that is explored throughout the night is not colonialism, Christianity, police brutality, or government corruption, but rather, why Fela?  Why does he do all those crazy things?  How can Nguajah pull you in so completely that by the end you see him as saint and not sinner, revolutionary and not rascal, musical genius and not near-do-well, etc., etc.  Although the work often romanticizes and glorifies a lifestyle that causes so much pain to those closest to Fela (especially the women in his life), you can’t help but love Fela.

Using concepts from the Yoruba religion, the second act is spiritually unlike anything I’ve ever seen on Broadway.  The most amazing sections come toward the end in a sweeping all white ballet as Fela goes into a dream sequence in search of his beloved mother Funmilayo who has become an orisha (departed spirit who leads us from above) of the rain.  Played by Lillias White, the role is haunting and evocative and biographically balances Fela’s male chauvinism with his mother’s real feminist activism.  White’s singing sends chills down my spine and there are only a few dry eyes in the cast and audience as she takes her son under protection throughout as a watchful-eyed photo peers down on the audience in a three dimensional holograph.

Nguajah throws himself so completely into the role with his embodied talent that I often believe Fela is walking around in his skin.  He physicalizes his performance without making it a Broadway musical.  Instead, I feel like I am getting my hair braided and watching one of those African movies where I don’t understand why the two ladies in the film are going after each other with shoes, but I appreciate the fully committed way all the action takes place.  I feel that this work is a "watershed event’ on Broadway where something new brings a chance at real adventures for the audience.

Keeping it fast and loose, the work ends quite as it began, unexpectedly powerful and poignantly political.  After the immense applause, Bill T. Jones leaps on stage and treats us with an African solo across the floor dropping to his knees mid-stage to shake and undulate his body into the wing and out the door…  I want to cry.  This is it!  This is contemporary African dance fusion where all are swept up in the spirit of the music that calls the body to move in new and exciting ways.

Go see FELA!  Bring friends and keep this on Broadway long enough to truly celebrate the legacy he left behind in his music, activism and larger than life persona.  Fela Anikulapo-Kuti (1938-1997) R.I.P. brother… you deserve it.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Sasha Deveaux
Performance:  FELA!
Choreographer: Bill T. Jones
Venue: Eugene O’Neill Theatre
Show Date: November 23, 2009 @ 8:00pm
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

Nights of home-grown and self-curated choreography are nothing new; however they always manage to provide a slice of what’s current along with stand-out performances by their scarcely paid and loyal dancers.  Tonight at the Merce Cunningham studios, seven choreographers present their current twists on shrine-to-modern-dance choreography originally made famous by the founder of the Cunningham studios himself, experimentalist Merce Cunningham.

Maria opens the show with a double duet of red-hot partnering. The two women and two men are beautifully lit as they execute Urzua & Mercedez’s thoughtfully structured choreography.  The emotionality is stoked from within the movement with beautiful counterpart sections showcasing the talented and trained contemporary dancers.

In Surrender, Shani Worrell steps backwards to us as her actual voice is heard over tracks of her spoken word. “My body was designed by the voice of God for this exact moment.”  She lifts her head with careless hands tracing her face and hair.  Reaching and arching backwards, she slowly turns to reveal her swollen belly as her hand brushes down the sides of her hips.  Gently to the earth she steps on swollen ankles as the text describes the changes in a dancer’s body when they are almost “full term.”  The tenderness with which Worrell shows us the vulnerability and majesty of motherhood is overpowering.  Transitioning between slow, fast, African, and contemporary movement, the mother-to-be really woos the audience.

One of our hosts for the night, Eddie Stockton presents Inside Your Touch, a melodramatic trio where all are searching for the sensation of touch but cannot find it from or with each other.  Stockton employs pulsating bodies accenting the down-tempo beat under cool pools of light.  Their skin becomes electric with anticipation as they throw their backs into layouts while their hands either reach or grope their own bodies.  The rhythm is steady like a heavy heartbeat at 3 AM ,and I can hear “Break for Love” in the back of my head.

Just Getting There is Ursula Verduzco’s strange take on death – a contemporary ballet set to the soundtrack of Apocalyptica.  One dancer starts in white, running in circles as Jacob M. Warren (“Death”) with black accent face-paint slowly walks forward.  Warren is amazing in the role as his long frame articulates Verduzco’s concept.  “Death” partners the first dancer beautifully, as four women (“angels”) surround them, trying to contain this evil.  Ultimately, one is singled out to face the trial of her life as she and “death” struggle through beautiful partnering. The work takes a three-part musical structure that doesn’t quite work with the storyline, but rather creates an artificial motivation rather than something organically derived from the movement.  Surprisingly, the chosen one does not die, as Verduzco’s persistence against Warren’s hotness ultimately allows her to continue on the journey of life.

Kerry Shea gives perhaps the best performance of the night as a sprung timepiece in Alison Seidenstricker’s Clockwise.  The choreography is academic in structure and minimalistic in slow development of accumulated movements that vary every so slightly to conclusion.  Shea is so well rehearsed and committed to the movement that seeing her thin frame in profile with just one arm jutting out designating time becomes hypnotizing.  What is it about clocks as the first modern machines that draws us in?  Perhaps, it is Seidenstricker’s witty movement that doesn’t take itself too seriously captured flawlessly by the very talented Shea.

The excerpt, Flow Structure no. 1, creates a Dumbo-esque (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass) mood that is akin to the scene where Sammy Davis Jr. lets it flow in The Rhythm of Life in DUMBO for the musical Sweet Charity.  The dancers maintain a steady rhythm that is as improvisational as water flowing.  Rather than taking a literal personification, Julia Y. Edwards works with more descriptive qualities such as weight.  Her flow is more like droplets running down the windshield of a parked car.  The dancers heads are heavy as their hands and ankles bend softly into the ground in poignant, abstract, and beautiful flow.

Sharon Wong creates beautiful chemistry in her duet Unmapped Territories with lyrics in French and English, where we hear that “water knows the secret of life and harbors subtle shades of pain.” Eddie Stockton and Kristin Licata create real emotions as the movement often puts their bodies on top of each other in creative partnering and evocative slow gesture.   As Wong doesn’t rush these lovers, Stockton lifts and returns Licata so slowly up and down that his shear strength and endurance is a testament to love itself.  The endearing choreography has depth with sensual embraces and overt sexuality.

In Hey little girl!  Where are you going? or Zavavy, Ursula Verduzco is anything but the helpless little girl but instead plays the coquettish damsel.  Benjamin Briones Ballet presents a brilliantly talented trio including Jacob M. Warren who’s full body flexibility and long classical lines are freakish in their perfection.  Adrian Silver is like a force of nature, turning classical movement from step to pantomime to balls-to-the-walls humor.  The audience can’t stop laughing from beginning to end as the guys’ bro-mance over bongo drums quickly turns to an all-out fight over the lovely Verduzco.  She performs her pointe work aptly despite the slick modern dance floor and noticeable lack of rosin on her toes.  Go BBB… this is a company with great storylines and hopefully staying power.

Mixtape is a delight and I look forward to the next installation!  A shout-out goes to Temisha Johnson for the well-paired lighting design that tied the show together.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Sasha Deveaux
Performance:  Mixtape: A Fresh Cut of Movement Vol. 2
Curators: Eddie Stockton & Sarah Collins
Choreographers: Antonia Urzua and Juan Mercedez; Shani Worrell; Eddie Stockton; Ursula Verduzco; Alison Seidenstricker; Julia Y. Edwards, Sharon Wong, and Benjamin Briones (Benjamin Briones Ballet)
Venue: Merce Cunningham Studios
Date: Friday, November 13, 2009 @ 9:00pm
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

When people of Irish decent get angry over the use of the ‘mythical’ leprechaun by the Boston Celtics and Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish, do people of African decent have the right to get angry over the use of Africa’s cultural music, spiritual symbols, costume and a very few steps in an African ballet choreographed by a white American woman from Kansas? ¨ Maybe.

Now, I am as "harmony in the rainbow" as they come…"blue-eyed soul" as they go…having green eyes myself (and a good portion of Scotch-Irish boiling blood mixed with renegade Cherokee and runaway slaves).  Excited, I arrive at BAM for Karole Armitage’s African Ballet Itutu’s premier knowing little of her four-year-old company.  Her style is the culmination of a 30-year international dancing career that spans "punk" ballet and Cunningham with a good amount of Post-modernist experimentation thrown in along the way.

The evening-length work of five parts is described as “the combination of sacred and secular images, diverse rhythms, and the use of multiple languages.”  In addition, “Armitage’s classical abstractions and traditional African dance translate the polyrhythmic music into a poly-visual form” [BAM news release]… OK.

Itutu opens with Burkina Electric softer Afro-pop sounds center stage against Philip Taaffe backdrops of abstraction of West African symbols of wisdom and spirituality. These many backdrops are backlit and front lit with vibrant colors and flown in and out creating a multi-dimentional environment behind the dance.  Armitage establishes a mood as the classically trained dancers move in and around the band members who also sing, dance and act in a more traditionally African style throughout.  The opening of the ballet is a very sexy concept with great execution.  I am mildly optimistic about this collaboration.

Maï Lingani (vocals/dancer) is the linchpin of most of the work as she can create moods with voice, body and emotion.  She is aided by her talented counterparts from Burkina Electric with Wende K. Blass (bass guitar) and Vicky and Zoko Zoko (vocals/dancers). The score by Lukas Ligeti (son of György Ligeti) is nuanced with an understanding and appreciation for African rhythm and harmony.  Although he doesn’t appear onstage in the work, his introduces various African instruments for Bukinababé rhythms with an Afro-pop sound.

In the five scenes, Amitage vacillates between creating a mood and executing a movement idea.  Mostly, the sections begin abruptly with little transition or over arching structure to the work.  Scene after scene play with some variation, but without enough development to keep it interesting.  Dragging frequently after the opening scene, I find myself focusing on the great performances like a beautifully executed pas de deux between Megumi Eda and Zoko Zoko.  There, initial meeting brings Eda’s head into Zoko Zoko’s hand.  Her eyes open and a power struggle ensues. The concept of seeing the male African form on the female Asian form is nothing new. The duet is more subtle than suggestive.  In their variation of this duet, Zoko finds himself compelled by Eda’s subtlety, only to repeat the phrase and place his head on her hand.

The work continues scene after scene with little connectivity or real movement invention with the exception of a few beautifully executed duets with somewhat dated partnering and no real fusion between the African and the ballet.  Then there were the pseudo vogue, ballet jazz walk scenes across the floor?  What the*#&$*!   In another random moment, Zoko Zoko appears upstage suspended in a box high above them all and behind the backdrop for a visually stunning dead end.  Enough said.

Fortunately for the audience, all of the dancers have beautiful lines and a strong sense of contemporary ballet and throw themselves into the repetitive and rudimentary African steps.  The company, as a whole, performs sharply and with enthusiasm. Armitage creates strong male roles for Leonides D. Arpon and Luke Manley.  However, I feel that Marlon Taylor-Wiles is underused in this fusion work where he could have clearly done more as a bridge between the two styles.

As a moving dreamscape, the work is visually stunning like a psychedelic trip through AfroBallet-Pop Dancelandia.  But, if you are sober, as I am, it is very very slow for African or ballet dance, self indulgent in structure and propped up as a work by the collaborators around Armitage.  What I yearn for with every sinew in my multi-ethnic soul is to see stronger choreography from any ethnicity.  If you can take it and make it better, as the Japanese dance crews did for group precision and ingenuity in Hip Hop, then more power to you.  If not, leave it alone.

The collaborative elements in the production are of value for the multi-ethnic cast who have the opportunity to present their artistry.  Itutu showcases one the most talented and beautifully diverse collections of classically trained dancers on BAM’s stage in 2009 (Brava Armitage!), gorgeous iridescent images of Phillip Taaffe as a chimerical backdrop inspired by adinkra symbols of Ghana (Brava Armitage!), culturally appropriate costumes of Peter Speliopoulos for African dance and classical lines, and the energetic/eclectic/electric pop sounds and dancing of Lukas Ligeti’s score with a live song/dance blended performance of Burkina Electric (Brava Armitage!).  If Karole Armitage were a dance impresario like Diaghilev, “Brava!” is all I could say.

Yet, as a female choreographer she needs more personal risk and less borrowed mood.  It is not that every work has to have some explosive and "ejaculatory climax" of a classic/patriarchal structure (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, dénouement).  Female choreographers often subvert this structure in favor of our own series of increasing peaks of excitement throughout.  Yet, when Armitage advertises an "African Ballet," I am expecting something exciting to happen before the curtain falls.

Choreographically for me, this work is one long, drawn-out tease.  This is not ballet class where the only time I feel like I am dancing is in the grande allegro.  If the biggest dynamic change in movement happens during the finalé (a coming together at the end of an African ballet) then what do you call the preceding 60 minutes of the ballet?  Warm up?  Across the floor?

This is 2009, if you want to appropriate the whole of African dance culture in a visually stunning way, you must at least make it authentically your own for your company or it becomes just another attempt to spice up blasé Western choreography with anything from African culture that is not nailed down.  I am really looking for Armitage to challenge the dancers to improvise if the music is not consistent and not just overlay it with slow ballet steps on faster African music.  In African dance/music, the music culturally dictates the length and time of the dance and some times the movement itself.

Where is the sense of the "Godhead" or the sacred as advertised?

Where is the fast paced petite allegro from ballet?  Could we have seen those amazing dancers beat their feet to that syncopated West African sound?  What would that have looked like?  

Armitage should have asked for choreographic dance collaboration and then credited her dancers.  I am sure that her talented group could have brought the dynamic cultural and physical change that was missing.

Why can’t more classical movement transfer to African trained dancer/musicians from ballet and vice versa?  Could better or even contemporary African dance steps challenge Armitage’s company, a company comprised with very diverse dancers?  If it is billed as "contemporary," I would hope to see boundaries pushed in both ballet and African dance and perhaps even a true melding of the two creating a new form, which has not existed before Itutu.  And, if it is classical, what exactly is the storyline?

To see something new and different in the arts creates a watershed moment that last a lifetime for the audience. To see the same cultural three-card monte game played at a higher level is merely an entertaining ruse. 

I always have one dream. I dream it every night.  It is combining the beautiful lines of the classically trained dancer with a form closer to my choreographic heart of contemporary African dance and the financial production capacity to do it right.   Beautifully financed and produced as Itutu is, when a choreographer steps into the territory of the "colonizer" in 2009, they’d better be pushing more than prettier baubles.

I waited a week to write this review hoping I would calm down, but the lukewarm attempt to combine the classical and the Afrocentric in choreography still boils this lass’s blood.  Appropriation….  

Yes.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Sasha Deveaux
Performance:  Armatige Gone! Dance, Itutu 
Choreographer: Karole Armitage
Music Collaboration:  Lukas Ligeti with Burkina Electric of Bikina Faso
Set: Phillip Taaffe
Costume: Peter Speliopoulos
Venue: BAM, Brooklyn, NY
Show Date:  November 4, 2009 @ 7:30pm
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