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Listen Well, Children

August 19, 2012 by 4 Comments
Ryan Redmond and Travis Walker upend Benjamin Behrends in McIntyre's Ladies and Gentlemen. Photo: Taylor Crichton, courtesy of Jacob's Pillow

When Trey McIntyre Project unveiled its new Ladies and Gentlemen in Jacob’s Pillow’s Ted Shawn Theater (August 8-12), you could feel a sunny haze of nostalgia settle over the audience. I’m betting that a good percentage of the spectators could have raised their voices along with the recorded score—songs from the epochal 1972 album Free to Be. . .You and Me, instigated by Marlo Thomas. Maybe—as parents strong on feminism—they’d played it for their kids (the proceeds from the LP went to the new organization that Gloria Steinem, … [Read more...]

08/19/12 8:59 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

Stepping Into Dreams

August 18, 2012 by 2 Comments
Adele Nickel in Liz Gerring's she dreams in code. Photo: Taylor Crichton, courtesy of Jacob's Pillow Dance

The six dancers in Liz Gerring’s she dreams in code move as if tracking along known paths—or maybe it’s the animals being tracked that they resemble in their supple physicality and intent focus. Premiering last fall at the Baryshnikov Center and shown in Jacob’s Pillow’s Doris Duke Studio Theater August 15 through 19, Gerring’s wonderfully poetic work creates an ambiance through stage design, sound score, dimly heard words, and choreography; together, they make you think of dreamscapes. Movement patterns recur in fragments, canonic … [Read more...]

08/18/12 5:15 PM | filed under: Postmodern New York |

Shadow Presences, Tangible Absences

August 9, 2012 by 3 Comments
Jonah Bokaer in his Curtain. Photo: Liza Voll, courtesy Jacob's Pillow Dance

The back story:  Jonah Bokaer and David Hallberg were working together on a duet—the postmodern dancer-choreographer and the adventurous ballet virtuoso, the dark-haired guy and the blond one. Hallberg broke his foot shortly before the piece was to premiere at the Avignon Festival. Steps were taken. The show went on. Now I’ll shut up and talk about Curtain as it was at Jacob’s Pillow, August 1 through 5. Bokaer’s brief program note encourages viewers to engage with what’s there before them, rather than what’s not there. This … [Read more...]

08/9/12 3:34 PM | filed under: postmodern views |

Making Ballet New

August 1, 2012 by 5 Comments
Julie Fiorenza and Kirk Henning in From Foreign Lands and People. Photo: Christopher Duggan

While works of talented choreographers whose heritage is in modern dance pop up in parks, churches, lofts, barns, and theater like mushrooms after a good storm, gifted new choreographers working in the ballet idiom are rarer and therefore get a lot more attention. Remember the fuss surrounding Eliot Feld when he began choreographing in 1967 while still performing in American Ballet Theatre?  Remember the excitement aroused by Christopher Wheeldon’s debut? Or Benjamin Millepied’s first ballets? These days, ballet companies commission … [Read more...]

08/1/12 5:01 PM | filed under: new ballet |

Men Dancing: Then and Now

July 25, 2012 by 4 Comments
Robert Swinston (front) and Germaul Barnes in The Men Dancers: From the Horse's Mouth (dress rehearsal). Photo: Taylor Crichton

Eighty years ago, when Ted Shawn assembled the all-male company that toured the U.S. with him during the 1930s, he aimed to eradicate the notion that dancing was for sissies (the polite, if bullying term for boys whose masculinity was in doubt). Almost all of those who joined Shawn’s Men Dancers were graduates of Springfield College’s Physical Education Department, and he toughened them further in those Depression years by having them hammer, hew, and dig to make the Massachusetts farm known as Jacob’s Pillow into their headquarters. … [Read more...]

07/25/12 8:03 AM | filed under: contemporary dance |

My Hand, Your Head, Por Favor

June 25, 2012 by 1 Comment
Nayane Diniz and Murilo Borges in Mimulus's Por Um Fio. At back, Fabiana Dias and Rodrigo de Castro. Photo: Christopher Duggan

The man leads. Right? In the social and ballroom dances of Europe and the Americas, the man always leads. Still, when you watch couples who are adept at, say, the Argentinian tango or the Viennese waltz, the man and his partner seem so bonded that you can envision them as complicit equals. Never mind that his right hand pressing on her back and his left arm pulling at her right arm are guiding her; power is disguised as a shared adventure. The Mimulus Dance Company presents a different vision of what happens when two people dance together. … [Read more...]

06/25/12 7:05 PM | filed under: New Dance from Abroad |

Forty Years of Magical Thinking

August 24, 2011 by 4 Comments
Building a Bower: Les Yeux et l'âme. Photo: Deen van Meer

Labels like “ordinary” and “everyday” have often been pasted onto Trisha Brown’s movement, especially when someone is alluding to her early work as a member of the iconoclastic Judson Dance Theater. But when has anything she’s ever made been ordinary? Walking may be ordinary, but getting a dancer (to whom she was married at the time) to walk down the side of a very tall building is not your usual stroll (Man Walking Down the Side of a Building, 1970). Many people have rummage sales, but what choreographer stages one underneath a … [Read more...]

08/24/11 12:36 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

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