“Twin Pines”
Keely Garfield Dance
Danspace Project
Saint Mark’s Church
New York, NY
January 21, 2012
by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2012 by Kathleen O’Connell
At the beginning of “Twin Pines,” dancer and veteran choreographer Keely Garfield nestles up against a tree stump—one of the half-dozen or so scattered around the performance space in mute testimony to some sort of arboreal apocalypse—and lays her head down on its raw top. Anthony Phillips, dressed in black, sits on another stump nearby testing the weight of a very real ax. Ever so softly, Garfield begins to sing the opening verse of the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry, Baby.”
By the time she gets to “I don't know why but I keep thinking / Something's bound to go wrong” you don’t need to know anything about Chekhov’s gun to know that sooner or later that ax is going to go off, and it won’t be pretty. But you giggle anyway. And when the other cast members—Phillips, Brandin Steffenson, and musician Matthew Brookshire—join in the refrain, you can’t help but giggle some more. Don’t worry, Baby? What have you been smoking?
January 26, 2012
January 22, 2012
January 19, 2012
Who Could Ask for Anything More?
"The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "Le Tombeau de Couperin", "Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux", "Who Cares?"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
Lincoln Center
New York, New York
January 17, 2012
by Mary Cargill
copyright © 2012 by Mary Cargill
The New York City Ballet's winter season opening night had no gimmicks, no so-called theme, no major debuts. It was "just" an all-Balanchine evening, and pretty pink-and-white Balanchine at that. But it had some enjoyable, entertaining, and magnificent performances. The evening opened with a belated Christmas ballet, "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", danced by Megan Fairchild and Daniel Ulbricht. These dancers, always technical marvels, found ways to give a hint of depth to their characters. Fairchild's first solo was danced with a rather deadpan face, without any eyebatting cuteness, but her sweeping movements hinted at the human feelings underneath the celluloid. This made her gleeful smiles while dancing with the little soldier so much more moving, because we could see her heart come to life. Ulbricht was crisp and clean, landing in beautiful fifths. He also slightly modulated the exuberance, so that his jumps gradually became higher and grander as if his heart, rather than his legs, were propelling him. There were moments of incredible delicacy too, when he landed softly on his knee from a jump while extending his arm to the doll. This delicacy gave the often coy ballet its true place in the Balanchine canon of lost love.
January 17, 2012
Back to the Ancien Régime
“Snow White”
Company XIV
303 Bond Street Theatre
Brooklyn, New York
January 8, 2011
By Michael Popkin
Copyright 2012 by Michael Popkin
Even though Company XIV’s “Snow White” opulent costumes, sets, dances, and props all allude heavily to the baroque style of Louis XIV (like the company’s name), it doesn’t look or feel pretentious. Director Austin McCormick keeps the story moving, and the circus and vaudeville at the heart of the show doesn’t take itself too seriously.
January 12, 2012
January 09, 2012
Me, Myself, and I
"Too shy to stare"
Davis Freeman
2012 COIL Festival, PS 122
The Old School
New York, NY
January 5, 2012
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2012 by Martha Sherman
“Too shy to stare” was all about Me. Davis Freeman’s mind-twisting performance installation, opening PS 122’s COIL Festival at the Old School this year, put me front and center in each of seven scenes. Dancers wearing my photograph on their faces did private performances in rooms lining two eerie corridors. Each scene evoked different states – loneliness, sensuality, the animal natures of being human. Although the dancers’ bodies provided a medium for approaching each state, in every performance, the lens – for me -- was my own face.
January 07, 2012
Hot Pepper
Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech
chelfitsch Theater Company
Japan Society, New York
January 6,2012
by Tom Phillips
The scene is a featureless white room with a table and four chairs in an office building, where temporary workers take their lunch. Three temps in their mid-twenties are literally writhing in discomfort over their assignment: to organize a farewell party for a fourth.
"Does anyone have an opinion? asks the man, trying to determine what kind of restaurant they should go to, and how much they want to pay. But no one is willing to offer a real opinion, and no one seems to care much about the departing worker, Erika. So the conversation devolves into what kind of food each of them would like at their own farewell party, which could come at any time. In the end they decide that instead of their own feelings or desires, they should rely on dining tips from a popular Japanese magazine, "Hot Pepper."
So begins the chelfitsch Theater Company's take on Japan's young adults, the generation that grew up in the period of Japan's economic collapse and its long, continuing aftermath. Unable to start a real career amid the economic uncertainty, they drift from one temporary position to another, resentful of those with established lives but unable or unwilling to demand anything for themselves.
They act this out in a unique choreography devised by director Toshiki Okada – standing off-balance and constantly shifting position, bending and rocking, gesticulating with hands and feet, with or without reference to what they’re saying. One woman talks energetically as she walks balanced back on the heels of her pumps, then sits down to relax with her chair tipped precariously to the rear, feet propped against the table. She uses a fan to flip through the pages of the magazine. “Hot Pepper” is the sort of material you don’t really read, just breeze through.
“Air Conditioner,” the second of the three skits, shows us the life of some of the older, permanent workers. A man and a woman exchange bitter complaints over the arctic temperature in the office, and he suggests the solution is for her to call the police. But his body language – bending over, pulling his tie erect and trying to look up her skirt – indicates a different solution. At one point he blurts “I could help you with this problem, Makiko!” but that’s as far as he gets. She pulls her skirt down over her knees, and they repeat their aimless griping to no effect.
The story ends with “Farewell Speech,” in which Erika appears to tell her colleagues how much they have meant to her. She singles out one for her kindness in allowing her to use a dab of detergent. Then she proceeds to act out the story of her last day on the job, which began with her accidentally stepping on a crying, dying cicada on her doorstep. Fortunately, a stray cat came along to eat the squashed bug, so she wouldn’t have to clean it up with disposable chopsticks when she went home that night. A lucky day for Erika. And thank you all so much for everything.
Okada’s triptych is a dense combination of dialogue and gesture, set off by subtly shifting light patterns, and a background sound score that moves from traditional Japanese music through contemporary pop into a skittering jazz saxophone that wails through Erika’s final monologue. It was first presented in 2009, and the longer it lasts the more of an indictment it delivers to a nation that has stranded its youth in an economic and social limbo.
And what nation is that? In the dying days of 2011, I spent a few days in Zuccotti Park, occupying Wall Street. And many of the young protesters I met were over-prepared, underemployed young people who were unable to start a real career, drifting from one temporary gig to another ….
"Hot Pepper" continues through January 14 at Japan Society
Copyright 2012 by Tom Phillips
Photograph by Julie Lemberger
January 05, 2012
The End
“Park Avenue Armory Events”
Merce Cunningham Dance Company
Park Avenue Armory Wade Thompson Drill Hall
New York, New York
December 31, 2011
by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2012 by Kathleen O’Connell
At 9:00 PM on New Year’s Eve, just two and a half years after the death of its founding choreographer, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company gave its last-ever performance, and brought to an end both its valedictory Legacy Tour and fifty-eight years of legendary dance-making. The company—still dancing with disciplined power and intensity—marked its passage into history by mounting one of its trademark Events in the Park Avenue Armory’s colossal Wade Thompson Drill Hall, and presented it six times over three evenings. However much one might have ached for a last glimpse of vanishing repertory instead—please, just one more “Roaratorio,” one last “CRWDSPCR”—a newly-minted Event was the right choice. It paid fresh homage to Cunningham’s embrace of contingency and immediacy and to his enthusiasm for collaboration across artistic disciplines. It laid a feast of still-remarkable choreography before us. But most of all it celebrated the company’s fourteen dancers, splendid to a one as soloists and magnificent as an ensemble. They well deserved the honor: Cunningham’s work will live on in some fashion or other, but it’s hard to believe that we will again see it performed by dancers so attuned to its requirements and so palpably, touchingly alive in their commitment to its rigorous beauty.
January 04, 2012
New Dances/Student Dancers
New Dances: Edition 2011
Peter Jay Sharp Theater
New York, NY
December 15, 2011
By Carol Pardo
Copyright ©2011 by Carol Pardo
Process was the point of the annual New Dances performances. New Dances exists to bring together professional choreographers and the students of the Julliard School’s Dance Division, one choreographer to a class, with every student taking part. This year’s choreographers were Monica Bill Barnes, Alex Ketley, Pam Tanowitz and Alexander Ekman. The result? Four large scale works, enlivened by the earnestness and stamina of youth, in which the group outflanked the individual, and the students illustrated their own trajectory, from first year to fourth.
December 29, 2011
More Revelations
"Arden Court", "Cry", "The Hunt", "Revelations"
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
City Center
New York, NY
December 24, 2011
by Mary Cargill
copyright © 2011 by Mary Cargill
Robert Battle's first season as the director of the Alvin Ailey Company began with a complete triumph, as he acquired Paul Taylor's sublime "Arden Court". The Ailey dancers attacked the quick, difficult, and witty choreography with their unique physicality, and captured the uplifting, joyful spirit of the Taylor Company. It was like watching champagne bubbles do an aerobic class. The dancers did seem to tire a bit towards the end, but more experience will surely help their pacing. It was an inspired choice for the company.
December 26, 2011
One May Smile and Be a Villain
"newyou: I think you might be in deep denial"
Johannes Wieland
Merce Cunningham Studio
New York, NY
December 21, 2011
By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2011 by Martha Sherman
Don’t trust these smiles. As if to claim a new day, the johannes wieland company brought back a 2008 work “newyou” to the Merce Cunningham Studio, but the work was still filled with the same old cynicism. More a performance piece than a dance, Wieland told the tale with five dancers and a score of walk-on redheads, all grinning enthusiastically. It’s all lies; not a smile – or a statement – is true. This is a lonely, flashy crowd of performers, hoping to con yet another audience, or maybe to fool themselves for a little while.
December 17, 2011
A Last Tango in Brooklyn
“Roaratorio”
Merce Cunningham Dance Company: The Legacy Tour
The Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn, New York
December 7, 2011
By Michael Popkin
Copyright ©2011 by Michael Popkin
Cunningham’s “Roaratorio,” based on John Cage’s “Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegan’s Wake,” took Joyce’s nearly unintelligible and completely unrestrained prose and turned it into lucidly beautiful, orderly and restrained theater. Cage, reciting the 2,500 (or so) place names in Joyce’s novel over a sound track of roaring of water, street sounds, babbling voices and background noises all shot through with the faint melody of a fiddle playing a Celtic reel, first made Joyce’s words audible. Cunningham made them flesh.
