Accolades

Metro DC Dance Awards DanceMetro/DC
Sunday, October 3, 2010, Kennedy Center Millennium Stage and
Wednesday, October 6, 2010, Harman Center for the Arts
Washington, D.C.
By Lisa Traiger
Copyright 2010 by Lisa Traiger

Accolades, applause and air kisses all around made the two evenings of awards to Washington, D.C., area dancers, choreographers and their allied artists a Sally Fields love fest. Dancers, choreographers, and audiences realized they all really, really liked one another. Wednesday at the Harman Center for the Arts, a fashionably dressed Liz Lerman sagely declared Peter DiMuro, awards producer and Dance/MetroDC director, the “Mayor of Dance.” I’m not sure if that’s like Mayor McCheese of HappyLand, but both evenings everyone left smiling. So while Chicago may have a former dancer and possible future mayor in Rahm Emmanuel -- if the election goes his way -- DiMuro is, for the moment, D.C.’s unofficial dance politico. In this capacity, DiMuro declared another dance first: denoting NBC4 weather guru Chuck Bell the region’s only “Dance Meteorologist,” for serving as one of three celeb judges of the first (annual?) “Quit Your Day Job” dance-off.

All in good-natured fun, five amateur teams competed for a performance slot on the Harman stage. The winner, Team Joy from Joy of Motion Dance Center, assisted by choreographer Nikki Gambhir, rocked the concept in Bollywood-fusion style. But the real joy was exhibited throughout the two nights of accolades recognizing the just-anointed best and brightest in the D.C. region’s dance community.

Founded ten years ago by technical director/producer Cheles Rhynes and his Mason/Rhynes Productions, the Metro DC Dance Awards were intended to recognize dancers, choreographers, teachers and companies for what Rhynes felt was often unheralded work. A decade later, now under the sole direction of Dance/MetroDC, a service affiliate of Dance/USA, the event has become both a season kick-off and a veritable love fest for the non-profit dance community. Stalwarts like The Washington Ballet and newcomers get to rub shoulders, share the green room, stage and after party. And Wednesday at the Harman everyone got to dance, from the five amateur teams who entered the “Quit Your Day Job” contest, to the audience, welcomed by fabulous bboys, flygirls and hip hoppers of Urban Artistry, joined by scantily clad women of Next Reflex Dance Collective. They danced up, down and through the aisles to the pulsating sounds of dj Baronhawk Poitier.

Earlier in the week, Sunday’s Millennium Stage program included a sweetheart performance by CityDance2 of Eric Hampton’s “Girlfriends,” created in 1992 and featuring doowop music by the Platters, The Jaynettes and The Dixie Cups. Though often considered a classicist, Hampton had a funny, slightly subversive streak, which explains the Chuck Taylor sneakers, Judy Hansen’s loud shirts and pedal pushers and the goofy faces. Staged by Harriet Moncure Williams, the work feels fresh again, in an era -– unimagined by Hampton –- when “Going to the Chapel” can mean (in a few locales) marriage equality. But it’s simply a fun-and-games piece, sent up with panache as danced by Sydney Ignacio, Kate McDonald, Kaitlin Madzelan, Margaret Strawley and Daniel Zook. Edwin Aparicio’s flamenco troupe showcased his powerful presence accompanied by exquisite partner Genevieve Guinn, a foot-pounding chorus of ladies and an excellent quintet of musicians –- Carlton Ashton, Jose Oretea, Richard Marlow, Bahzad Habibzai and Alfredo Darquea.

Also Sunday, two works paid tribute to the birth centennial of long-time D.C. choreographer and dancer Pola Nirenska (1910-1992) and honored dancer and dance educator Seda Gelenian for lifetime achievement in Nirenska’s name. Later at the Harman, Lerman recalled Nirenska as a generous but tough teacher, understandably so if her difficult life is considered. Nirenska was fortunate to escape her native Poland, avoiding the fate that befell 70 of her relatives -– and six million Jews -- at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust. As a child, Maryland-based dancer Laura Schandelmeier happened to be Nirenska’s neighbor. In 1986, the Polish-born choreographer created, “Exuberance,” a solo for Schandelmeier. Like a fine wine that improves with age, or a wrinkled brow that displays its wisdom and character, Schandelmeier found the shadings in the work that enrich and deepen its emotive path. The Millennium Stage program closed with a new, site-specific work, “One or Ten or One Hundred,” danced on the Kennedy Center outdoor terrace in a slight drizzle Sunday. Creators Vincent Thomas and Dahlia Nayar Butler seemed an odd choice to channel the weighty, dramatic, European-bred dancer/choreographer. The initial papery light quality of a female quartet struck an off chord. Nirenska, known for the strength, determination, plastique and definition of her choreography, was lost in the work until the dance meandered to the open plaza across from the Watergate, where, amid a chorus of young, free-flowing mostly student dancers, the mature Rima Faber, a long-time Nirenska associate, stood her ground with passion and intensity. With assertiveness and definition, Faber’s pelvis and back held forth, her arms engulfing the moist air in staunch, slow semaphores enacting a ritual. The unadorned but intentionally bold attack finally recalled Nirenska’s determined spirit with Faber’s solo reflecting the choreographer’s final work, a Holocaust tetralogy, memorializing her own family along with the millions murdered at Hitler’s hand.

Wednesday at the Harman, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet provided another solemn note with “Meditation,” Balanchine’s first work created expressly for Farrell, his then-young muse in 1963. Farrell was originally partnered by Jacques d’Amboise, who served as a Balanchine alter ego, aging but inspired by the youth and beauty of his ballerina. Elisabeth Holowchuk and Michael Cook mined the Tchaikovsky accompaniment with aching abandon and danced the work admirably. Another recollection of lost youth, Liz Lerman’s “Blue Skies,” danced by stoic Thomas Dwyer to the Irving Berlin classic (sung by Willie Nelson), ended with a tribute to dance artists who passed on this year: Sherrill Berryman Johnson, Judith Jourdin, Larry Warren and Danny West all died this past season.

Andile Ndlovu, a Washington Ballet apprentice, contributed his contemporary solo, "Art of War," articulating his torso and shoulder girdle in powerful physical display. A Thillana for three women, contributed by Kalanidhi Dance, oddly opened the program, since this pure rhythmically involved form typically closes an Indian bharata natyam concert. Closing out the evening at the Harman, a youthful band of students from George Mason University’s dance department provided a fine rendering of a section from Mark Morris’s “Grand Duo” to music by Lou Harrison. With its muscular, uninhibited group fearlessly interweaving and tracing lines and circles, recalling the figures on Greek vases, “Grand Duo” provided a final note of uplift to end this pair of celebratory evenings.


Outstanding Overall Production – Large Venue: The Washington Ballet’s “The Great Gatsby”
Outstanding Youth Performance: Tappers With Attitude’s “Tap into the Energy”
Outstanding New Work: Christopher Morgan for "+1/-1"
Emerging Choreographer: Jakari Sherman’s “Trane” for Step Afrika!
Emerging Performer: The Washington Ballet’s Andile Ndlovu in “Barbara Liotta: Icarus”
Excellence in Lighting Design: Stefan Johnson for Daniel Burkholder’s “My Ocean is Never Blue”
Excellence in Costume Design: Reed Griffith, La Tasha Barnes and Rashaad Pearson for Urban Artistry’s “Digital Funk 5002”
Outstanding Overall Production – Small Venue: Dana Tai Soon Burgess & Company in "Hyphen" and "Island"
Excellence in Sound Design/Original Composition: Jakari Sherman for Step Afrika!’s “466(nine)4” at the Atlas Performing Arts Center
Outstanding Group Performance: Step Afrika! in “Celebrating 15 Years” at the Atlas Performing Arts Center
Outstanding Individual Performance: The Washington Ballet’s Maki Onuki in Edwaard Liang’s “Wunderland” and Step Afrika's Ryan Johnson in "The Great Gatsby"
2010 Founder’s Award for Innovation in Dance: Stephen Clapp and Laura Schandelmeier/Dance Box Theater
Outstanding Achievement in Dance Education: Lucy Bowen McCauley
Alan M. Kriegsman Award: Karen Bernstein
2010 Pola Nirenska Lifetime Achievement in Dance: Seda Gelenian

Urban Artistry, courtesy Dance/MetroDC
Laura Schandelmeier by Foster Wiley, courtesy Dance Box Theatre
Andile Ndlovu by Steve Vaccariello, courtesy The Washington Ballet

Published October 8, 2010
© 2010 by Lisa Traiger