Stephen Petronio’s melancholy, disturbingly beautiful new Architecture of Loss is, I’m pretty sure, fraught with more stillness and more silence than any of the works he’s made over the last couple of decades. The word “architecture” in the title tells us that he’s not trying to show us mourning as a response to loss; he’s showing us loss as absence and the evanescence of supporting … [Read more...]
So, Ludwig. . .
Ludwig van Beethoven must have had more stamina than he’s usually credited with. If you research his Fantasy in C Minor for Piano, Orchestra, and Chorus, Op. 80, you find that its first public performance in 1808 ended a program that lasted four hours and included among its nine items the premieres of Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth symphonies (conducted by the 38-year-old composer), his Fourth Piano … [Read more...]
Hail and Farewell
In January, 2011, one-and-a-half years after Merce Cunningham died, the second half of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s two-year Legacy Tour began in Hong Kong. It ended at 10:00 P.M. on December 31 in New York. The immense crowd of spectators in the Park Avenue Armory applauded and cheered the dancers for many minutes, as if keeping them onstage, bowing over and over, not only showed them how … [Read more...]
Walking With Merce
So long, Roaratorio. Goodbye, Biped. Farewell, Second Hand. And Pond Way, Split Sides, Rainforest, it’s been great to know you. Pardon the tears. New Yorkers may see scraps from these works in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s Events at the Park Avenue Armory on the last days of 2011. Then silence and stillness. Or, as Cunningham’s longtime collaborator, composer John Cage, might remind us, a … [Read more...]
Home Is Where The Dance Is
What do we crave from the thirty dancers who make up the Alvin Ailey American Dance Company? That they be gorgeous, sleek, limber, powerful, virtuosic—sassy when the choreography calls for it, soulful ditto. They do not stint. They can knock dancing into the stratosphere or into our laps. Sometimes they turn the wattage up too high—forgoing subtleties for the highest, the biggest, the baddest, the … [Read more...]
Going with the Flow
In 2000, I saw Lar Lubovitch’s Men’s Stories: A Concerto in Ruins at the Angel Orensanz Center on the Lower East Side. The former synagogue with its dark wood paneling, high blue vault of a ceiling, and stained glass windows gave the nine superb dancers who rushed in and out of it a slightly mystical aura—as if they’d channeled the ghosts of rabbinical students maddened by their studies. The … [Read more...]
The Sculpture Dances
The star of Gideon Obarzanek’s Connected isn’t someone whose autograph you’d ask for, nor would you wish he/she/it would friend you on Facebook. The most compelling presence onstage during Chunky Move’s early November season at the Joyce was a kinetic sculpture designed by California artist Reuben Margolin. Obarzanek, the director and choreographer of the Melbourne-based company, has always … [Read more...]
Life as Brushstrokes on a Page
Eighteen or so men and women stand motionless, spaced out on a slanting white floor with one truncated corner. All of them wear long, full, white skirts made of a translucent fabric. The men are bare-chested, while the women wear flesh-colored tops. But wait! Are they motionless? As a drawn-out, piercing sound breaks the silence, you’re suddenly aware of shifts in the dancers’ bodies. These shifts … [Read more...]
Bearing the Past, Traveling On
Some people aver that dance and politics don’t mix well. Others claim that dancing is inevitably political in some sense—yielding or countering dominant views about gender, power, race, or identity that may be inscribed on the body. Occasionally, a choreographer wants to speak out, to raise awareness and awaken consciences through dance. In his or her own way. When Jane Comfort dealt with the … [Read more...]
Merce Redivivus
Stand in a summer field at dusk, and you’re surrounded by a silence that only seems silent. Intermittently a bird calls, a wild apple falls from a tree, a sudden wind ruffles leaves. In the distance, a figure bends down to pick something. On a busy city street, it’s almost impossible not to be in motion and enveloped by motion and noise. The soundscape is dense with the whoosh of traffic, human … [Read more...]