"The Power of Movement"
with Dance of Asian America, Hope Stone Dance, Revolve Dance Company, Houston Ballet, Suchu Dance, Travesty Dance Group, Dominic Walsh Dance Theater, Urban Souls Dance Company, Psophonia Dance Company, Sandra Organ Dance Company, Houston Metropolitan Dance Company
Wortham Center
Houston, Texas
June 5, 2009
By Lisa Traiger
© 2009 Lisa Traiger
I Napoletani, Dominic Walsh Dance Theater
Dance luminaries were sprinkled throughout the Wortham Center’s sold-out Cullen Theater Friday, June 5. In the house: artistic directors from Washington, D.C. to Seattle, New York to San Francisco, and rumor has it that even illustrious, recently minted Houstonite Stanton Welch stayed through 11 pieces on an intermissionless program called, fittingly enough, “The Power of Movement.” The rangy dance sampler program in conjunction with the Dance/USA conference didn’t necessarily offer something for everyone –- it was heavy on modern dance of a certain late-20th-century ilk -– but it showcased enough to provide a taste of what the Houston dance community favors.
In a sampler program that toggled between culturally specific work, contemporary ballet and assorted styles of modern and post-modern dance, the awkwardly yet aptly named “Thousand Hands Goddess” was among the standouts for this newcomer. Part Chinese opera, part MGM musical with unintentional references to old-time Ziegfeld Follies numbers and Esther Williams movie extravaganzas, the 15 beautiful women of Dance of Asian America proved irresistible in this program opener. In their shimmery gold, midriff-baring costumes, their light-catching half-a-foot-long gold fingernails and filigree-like headdresses emphasized the intricate group interplay by choreographer Zhang Ji Gang who wove these women into intricate tapestries. Waves of silken movement threaded into cascades of canons and unified choruses proved mesmerizing. Interesting, too, these fine cultural dancers innocently, maybe unknowingly, traversed the narrow divide between high art and high kitsch, which proved once more that audiences can’t get enough of popular culture presented as high art -– so you think you can dance, anyone.
Another interesting standout, an excerpt from “I Napoletani,” by Dominic Walsh, formerly of the Houston Ballet, featured a tableaux vivant of sorts, the dancers -– male and female alike -- swathed in Travis Halsey’s and Walsh’s rustle of romantic tutu tulle, just this side of “Giselle.” Performed behind the haze of a scrim that surrounded the six dancers with a richly painted, gilded proscenium arch, the nugget allowed for a glimpse back to ballet’s beginnings heralded by its air of mystery, unrequited love, and unrepentant beauty. Yet intriguingly, Walsh referenced in his telescoping look back, a very contemporary –- really post-modern, in fact -– take on bridging past and present, borrowing from all eras and forms to push the art forward. Suggestions, even in this brief excerpt danced to a selection from Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater,” of ballet’s legacy can be read in the lean yet powerful dancers’ bodies. The awkward gawkiness of tutu’d dancers with turned-in bare toes, their backs hyper-extended, recalls the painting and sculpture of Degas, especially his beloved “Little Dancer, Fourteen Years Old.” Ballet references abound: a subtle sampling of Petipa’s “Swan Lake,” a dash of Balanchine’s “Serenade,” and whiff of Bourne’s all-male swans from his “Swan Lake”? Indeed. Walsh has crafted a choreographic mash-up that pleases both balletomanes and attention-deprived newcomers. The fine dancing, the women able to melt easily into the floor, and the gorgeous and expressive back of Domenico Luciano, made “I Napoletani” a dreamy keeper on this smorgasbord program.
As Odette’s whiteness of swans collected themselves upstairs, Houston’s powerhouse ballet company contributed something completely different downstairs: Dutch choreographer Hans van Manen’s 1997 “Solo,” a playful riff on virtuosity and personality that pitted curly haired Oliver Halkowich, puckish corps member Jim Nowakowski and handsome principal Connor Walsh against one another in a playful scamp to the arpeggios of a Bach violin suite. Somewhat of a piece d’occasion, “Solo” plays fast and loose with the Bach suite and with the nature of the male solo in ballet by underhandedly subverting the go-to tricks and leaps choreographers so favor. Van Manen allows the three dancers to emit more than their share of personality with huge grins, good-humored shrugs, a wink here, and a nod there. Amid the expansive ease of their technically precise phrasing they showed off pinpoint accurate pirouettes, turbo charged air turns, and other assorted virtuosic play to the complex Bach suite. Fortunately, no one reverted to outright mugging, allowing the piece with its mundane gestures to become an inside joke for anyone within shouting distance.
“Traffic,” presented by Travesty Dance Group, took advantage of Houston’s fabled bad traffic. An excerpt from choreographer Karen Stokes's “Hometown,” it navigated the rules of the road using sing-song chants and game-like structures accompanied by lines and circles of dancers cruising and scurrying in the space in congested clumps. A recorded drummed and chanted score accompanied the nine dancers in a peg-legged bobbling walk, rhythmic clapping, fists clenched in frustration. The fun came with the simple recognition that traffic is unavoidable, so it might as well be parodied.
Jane Weiner offered a glimpse of her work-in-progress “Village of Waltz,” featuring accompaniment by Peter Jones and Chris Howard. Weiner created a world wedding vernacular movement with a bit of contemporary release technique for her 11 dancers. Interchangeable pairs and groups rushed on and across the space caught up in the shifting community. There was a sense of continuity and a suggestion of meshing individuals and groups, but the piece hadn’t yet arrived at a satisfying endpoint.
Sandra Organ Solis’s “To the Thawing Wind,” a gentle, contemplative quintet, used Mark O’Connor and Edward Meyer’s rangy, twangy “Appalachia Waltz.” Seemingly an ode to the wide open, awe-inspiring spaces of the west, and borrowing its title from a Robert Frost poem, the work contained a sweet lyricism and tenderness but was no Graham/Copland “Appalachian Spring.”
Other works on the program included Urban Souls Dance Company in Harrison Guy and Walter Hull’s dramatic “Across the Waters,” a seering evocation of genocide using music and thematic material from the 2004 movie “Hotel Rwanda”; Psophonia Dance Company’s Pilobolus-inspired excerpt from “Virus,” featured four dancers costumed in phosphorescent painted unitards who evolved into moving microbes of lines and squiggles; the minimalist-inspired and arcanely named “How to Absorb the Colorama Format,” with Jennifer Wood’s Laura Dean-like incessant turns for Suchu Dance; Revolve Dance Company’s “Philosophy,” an uneventful work for ten to an Ani DiFranco song; and, closing the evening, Houston Metropolitan Dance Company’s “Tidal Intersections,” a landscape study in shifting waves and eddies for ten dancers and a Philip Glass score.
The surprises for me as a first timer in Houston included the number of larger group works with eight or more dancers and the lack of companies performing culturally specific works that would better represent the diverse Houston region. Where were, for example, the Hispanic or flamenco companies, or African or South American troupes, hip hop or tap? “The Power of Movement” did demonstrate a dance community on the rise with a cohort of technically proficient dancers and a group of choreographers –- some more adept than others -– willing to put forth work that reaches a wide range of audiences and tastes.
Photo: Amitava Sarkar
© 2009 by Lisa Traiger
Published June 12, 2009
