{"id":1466,"date":"2013-03-16T16:02:49","date_gmt":"2013-03-16T20:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=1466"},"modified":"2013-03-17T16:55:30","modified_gmt":"2013-03-17T20:55:30","slug":"heat-and-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2013\/03\/heat-and-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"Heat and Ice"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Annika<\/a>

Annika Hyv\u00e4ren (L) and Natasha Lommi in Tero Saarinen’s Scheme of Things<\/em>. Photo: Sakari Viika<\/p><\/div>\n

I regret not having been able to see Carte Blanche, the Norwegian National Dance Company, perform Corps de Walk<\/i> at the Joyce Theater. In this piece by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar, the dancers, I read, have whitened hair and wear blue contact lenses. What better illustration of the Nordic mini-festival\u2019s name: Ice Hot?<\/p>\n

The other participants were the Tero Saarinen Company and\u00a0 Danish Dance Theatre. If Saarinen\u2019s\u00a0 Scheme of Things <\/i>tells us something about his Finnish homeland, that may because of his fascination with light, which in far North countries is an all-or-nothing affair for much of the year. His 2002 solo Hunt<\/i>, programmed with Scheme of Things<\/i> at the Joyce, and his miraculous Borrowed Light (<\/i> seen\u00a0at Jacob\u2019s Pillow in 2006 and 2012 and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2007) are both, in some sense, dialogues between light and darkness. The superb lighting designer Mikki Kunttu creates the landscapes that express those opposites, whether interior or exterior.<\/p>\n

\"Jarkk<\/a>

Jarkko Lehmus (foreground), Pekka Louhio, and Mikko Lampinen in Scheme of Things<\/em>. Photo: Sakari Viiko<\/p><\/div>\n

In Scheme of Things<\/i> (created for Nederlands Dans Teater 1 in 2009, and transferred to Saarinen\u2019s company two years later), the stage is a place of shadows and glare, of beams piercing darkness. Rows of amber lights intermittently blaze on a tall narrow wall, behind which the six dancers disappear from time to time. These people seem to be caught in a trap of their own making\u2014perhaps just the snares of modern living. At the beginning of the piece, they\u2019re upstage with their backs to us, jerking themselves about in various ways or racing here and there.\u00a0They wear everyday clothes by Erika Turunen, unless you count the severe, long-sleeved black gown worn by tall Annika Hyv\u00e4rinen. The music collage (featuring Biosphere, Jeff Buckley, Trey Gunn, Higher Intelligence Agency, and Jarmo Saari) does little to calm them down, although they occasionally freeze in their tracks, as if the temperature has plummeted or their inner circuit boards have shorted out.<\/p>\n

Two standing follow spots in the near corners of the stage (manned by clearly visible crew members) lure these people. As a group, they sneak up on one of the lamps and snatch at the moving beam as it slants to the floor. They cluster around Jarkko Lehmus and pluck at the air around him, as if they\u2019re catching stuff that emanates from him (a sound like that of a train clatters by).\u00a0 When Maria Nurmela approaches the other light and stands staring into the distance, the others watch her closely.<\/p>\n

\"Jarkko<\/a>

Jarkko Lehmus pulling Annika Hyv\u00e4rinen’s dress. Photo: Sakari Viiko<\/p><\/div>\n

But no one is truly at ease for long. The dancers thrash and slash about. They caress their own bodies with slippery unease. A crash of sound sends them toppling to the floor. Hyv\u00e4rinen and the much smaller Natasha Lomi wrangle. Mikko Lampinen dances as if possessed. Lehmus staggers and twitches; you can imagine a storm of tiny insects stinging him. Strange events ensue. Hyv\u00e4rinen yanks a shirt off Lampinen; he\u2019s wearing an identical one underneath it. She pulls that off too. And another. Her own long gown is made of some immensely stretchy material. The others (including Pekka Louhio) surround her and start pulling at the fabric, their shadows looming on the back wall. A sleeve stretches a yard beyond her hand; eventually she\u2019s caged within her own garment.<\/p>\n

As the dance progresses, the amber lights on the rear panel go out intermittently, come on again, decrease in numbers. What message are they sending? Scheme of Things<\/i> is fascinating, troubling, enigmatic. The characters that the splendid performers embody move violently but without apparent malice. They understand order and community but seethe within it.<\/p>\n

\"Tero<\/a>

Tero Saarinen in his Hunt<\/em>. Photo: Laurent Philippe<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ve seen Saarinen perform his Hunt<\/i> several times, and I can understand why he says he may soon stop dancing the piece that he choreographed over a dozen years ago. He faces the score of Igor Stravinsky\u2019s formidable Sacre du Printemps <\/i>alone\u2014as both the hunted and the hunter. The weapons may be memories and the depredations of time. Or anything we struggle against or hide from.<\/p>\n

He begins moving slowly and deliberately in Kunttu\u2019s hazy light. He\u2019s bare-chested above a filmy white skirt. When the music\u2019s deep pulsing begins, he bends to touch the floor, to smooth it (erasing his tracks?\u00a0 following another\u2019s?).\u00a0 A semi-circle of lamps placed on the floor adds to the impression that the stage is a liminal arena, a place where transformations happen. Saarinen arches his body, opening himself to a ray from above; he bathes in a pool of light.<\/p>\n

The music is his territory too. He doesn\u2019t dance to<\/i> it in the narrowest sense of that term, but it marks his path and informs his decisions. He\u2019s still moving smoothly, close to the ground, when the music emits a huge crash, but shortly thereafter, he\u2019s jumping forward on his knees. The solo is an ordeal, but not a mindless one. Saarinen runs and leaps, turns and falls, but you see him thinking, wondering.<\/p>\n

\"Saarinen<\/a>

Saarinen receives his world. Photo: Sami Kulju<\/p><\/div>\n

The only living being onstage, he becomes a canvas for a flood of images. The object resembling a cloud that slowly descends above him is a full, white skirt of many panels (designed by Erika Turunen) Once he has fastened it about him, Maria Liulia\u2019s images are projected onto it and onto his face and body.<\/p>\n

When he stands facing us, moving his arms, the montages flash on and off in time to the second part of Stravinsky\u2019s relentlessly building music. They crawl up and down his body, depending on how he moves. Multiple pinwheels feather him; they seem to contain his tiny image, seen from above, at their coiled centers. As the music for the sacrificial dance pushes toward its violent end, he rushes, collapses, rushes on. The flashes of a strobe light capture him in the air.<\/p>\n

The lights, the music, the projections have bombarded him; he\u2019s exhausted, but he\u2019s flying.\u00a0 That\u2019s a dancer for you.<\/p>\n

\"Flying<\/a>

Flying into the light: Tero Saarinen in Hunt<\/em>. Photo: Sakari Viika<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Danish Dance Theatre doesn\u2019t proclaim its Danishness. Tim Rushton, who has directed it since 2001, is British. The current members of the excellent troupe he has built hail from Greece, Italy, Sweden, Portugal, the United States, Brazil, and Russia; only one, Maxim-Jo Beck McGosh, was born and raised in Denmark. But as dancers, they have, inevitably, become a community, and, in Love Songs<\/i>, Rushton wants us to know that. Privacy isn\u2019t an issue. Whoever\u2019s not dancing may sit on one of the chairs in a row at the back of the stage\u2014lounging, chatting, taking in the scene. Another option is standing around, watching one another with interest. While Fabio Liberti is showing off his mobile hips, Beck McGosh strolls around him, inspecting him.<\/p>\n

\"Danish<\/a>

Danish Dance Theatre in Tim Rushton’s Love Songs<\/em>. Photo: Bj\u00f6rn \u00d8rsted<\/p><\/div>\n

The dancers\u2019 casual behavior and informal, variegated attire (by Charlotte \u00d8stergaard) contrast to Thomas Bek and Jacob Bjerregaard\u2019s lighting, which is sometimes gaudy (four overhead lamps spill purple light at one point early on).\u00a0 Classic songs (such as \u201cMy Funny Valentine,\u201d \u201cCome Rain or Come Shine,\u201d\u00a0 \u201cAll of\u00a0 Me\u201d ) suit the rehearsal room, the iPod, and the nightclub equally well, and the Danish jazz singer Caroline Henderson (in recordings) delivers them marvelously.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a contrast between the informal behavior and the more formal passages. Rushton is good at getting his cast of twelve into, say, three lines, facing front, doing big, earthy, strenuous, things in counterpoint or unison. But for me, the best parts of Love Songs<\/em> are those in which he shows us the individuality of the performers. I like watching Luca Marazia, jitter along\u2014a small cheery fellow, very pleased with himself, but mostly alone. There\u2019s an appealing scene in which Alessandro Sousa Pereira and Emily Nikolaou dance lavishly together, until he brings her a chair to sit on, and\u2014 after a bit more togetherness\u2014grins and goes. Bj\u00f6rn Nilsson walks in and gives Nikolaou a big smacking kiss on the cheek; she slaps him.\u00a0 Oof!\u00a0 Ana Sendas orders him to sit and watch while she and Stefanos Bizas comply with a recorded voice that\u2019s giving advice on the dos and don\u2019ts of courtship. This sets off a scene in which two people\u2013many pairs of them\u2014 rush toward each other from opposite sides of the stage, kiss or hug, and race away again.<\/p>\n

\"Love<\/a>

Love Songs<\/em>. Ani Amit (foreground), Nassim Beki (former company members), and Erik Nyberg. Photo Bj\u00f6rn Orsted<\/p><\/div>\n

Rushton is so good at encounters that it\u2019s\u00a0 disappointing when his finely designed and rhythmically smart group passages of dancing\u00a0 don\u2019t tell you much about the people you\u2019re beginning to love. And midway through the piece, after the performers have gone back to the chairs and, in dim light, changed into slightly dressier outfits, he begins to insert a few familiar virtuosic lifts into duets. Is he being ironic? Or because now the workday is done and these people are ready to party, can happiness justify propelling women into the air?\u00a0 When Bizas hoists Sendas high\u2014even into one of those Russian-style lifts in which the man straight-arms the woman up to lie decoratively on her side over his head\u2014it\u2019s a shock.<\/p>\n

\"Ana<\/a>

Ana Sendas and Stefanos Bizas (in a performance of Love Songs<\/em> with live music). Photo: Bj\u00f6rn \u00d8rsted<\/p><\/div>\n

That\u2019s because many of the duets that occur in both parts of Love Songs<\/i> are so interesting choreographically and so believably sensuous.\u00a0 The encounter between Milou Nuyens and Erik Nyberg is one of those that make you feel the heat of body against body as the intimacy grows between them. However, even though Rushton veers momentarily into a clich\u00e9, he directs his terrific dancers astutely. They perform every step as if they understood its possible nuances, as if kicking a leg up or feeling the pressure of another\u2019s hand expresses something important about this day in their lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I regret not having been able to see Carte Blanche, the Norwegian National Dance Company, perform Corps de Walk at the Joyce Theater. In this piece by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar, the dancers, I read, have whitened hair and wear blue contact lenses. What better illustration of the Nordic mini-festival\u2019s name: Ice Hot? The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[669,668,672,670,671,666,667],"class_list":{"0":"post-1466","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-new-dance-from-abroad","7":"tag-carte-blanche","8":"tag-danish-dance-theatre","9":"tag-love-songs","10":"tag-mikki-kunttu","11":"tag-scheme-of-things","12":"tag-tero-saarinen","13":"tag-tim-rushton","14":"entry","15":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}