{"id":1571,"date":"2013-04-22T18:07:42","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T22:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=1571"},"modified":"2013-04-22T18:09:20","modified_gmt":"2013-04-22T22:09:20","slug":"life-eats-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2013\/04\/life-eats-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Life Eats On"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre, Baryshnikov Arts Center, April 18 and 19, 2013<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Ivonne<\/a>

Ivonne Batanero in Rosie Herrera’s Dining Alone<\/em>. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

Anyone who has ever felt fragile or off balance might be heartened by Rosie Herrera\u2019s Dining Alone.<\/i> Here\u2019s one of many memorable passages. A woman (Ivonne Batanero) holds a stack of white dinner plates; a man (Liony Garcia), crouching beside her, takes the plates, one by one, from the pile and places them on the floor to create a diagonal trail for her to walk on. She never looks down; he gauges where her foot is going to need the next plate. A pianist plays (Beethoven\u2019s \u201cMoonlight\u201d Sonata, I think). Batanero\u2019s voyage can make your heart beat faster, especially when, unburdened, she starts to walk backward<\/i> on the plates toward the corner where she began. When she reaches it, Garcia, who has been collecting the dishes, puts the whole stack back into her arms. Her legs buckle, and, just as you fear a catastrophe, the rest of the cast rushes onstage in time to catch her and save the plates before she hits the floor.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve ever felt alone, that\u2019s Herrera\u2019s theme. She also touches on aging and memory. Plus sensuality and greed. A young Cuban American based in Miami, she grew up in her father\u2019s restaurant watching people eat.<\/p>\n

Herrera has been hailed as an up-and-comer of consequence. Graduating from Miami\u2019s New World School of the Arts, she has danced in cabaret, knows hip-hop, and sings opera. Dining Alone<\/i> stirs up memories of Pina Bausch\u2019s works, but Herrera\u2019s approach to dance theater, in addition to being more modest in scale, is lustier, and she links a series of scenes together by common elements (such as plates and eating). When a man dressed as a waiter (counter-tenor Raymond Storms) sings an unearthly aria, he\u2019s carefully polishing cutlery.<\/p>\n

The elaborate opening set-up prepares you for evanescence. As spectators enter the Howard Gilman Space at BAC, they\u2019re greeted by the sight of a silent dinner party in progress, with ten invitees seated on either side of a long table that stretches away from the audience. Pianist Fernando Landeros, sitting at the back of the performing area, plays some American Songbook classics, such as Gershwin\u2019s \u201cSweet Embraceable You\u201d and lesser works like \u201cPart of Your World\u201d from Disney\u2019s The Little Mermaid. <\/i>The party-goers are frozen in mid gesture\u2014some conversing excitedly, some staring around, some eating. Although they are life-sized photos stiffened by some kind of backing, some appear almost eerily three-dimensional. Guest artist Octavio Campos, the very-much-alive host seated at the head of the table, is devouring his dinner and chatting animatedly at times, although we can\u2019t hear him. Silver-haired, handsome, wearing black pants, white dinner jacket, and a white shirt open at the neck, he presides over a vanished past.<\/p>\n

Gradually he becomes minimally more audible, identifying what we\u2019re hearing now as the slow movement from Rachmaninoff\u2019s second piano concerto offering to sing a bit of it (or perhaps the cheesy pop song, \u201cAll By Myself,\u201d that\u2019s based on it). He lifts his wine glass: \u201cBon Appetit!\u201d Suddenly he looks confused, and, in a startling coup de th\u00e9\u00e2tre, the three large objects behind him turn out to be fans, and, in an instant, their fierce wind blows the remembered guests into flat shapes on the floor.<\/p>\n

Another surprising, dreamlike event occurs seconds later\u2014after hurrying figures have cleared the darkened stage and David Ferri has restored his fine lighting. Campos, who has been running around the space in increasingly smaller and slower circles, holding out the skirts of a white evening gown that\u2019s attached to his chest, runs toward a cluster of people. Suddenly a woman (Leah Verier-Dunn) is wearing the dress, and he has disappeared. How did that happen?<\/p>\n

\"Liony<\/a>

Liony Garica and Katie Stirman assist Melissa Toogood, while Ivonne Batanero manages the plates. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

The crockery performs in a number of ways\u2014both passively and actively. When the dancers sit on the floor and, in perfect unison, put their individual plates on edge and spin them, the objects collaborate both aurally and visually. As they lose their equilibrium, they topple unevenly and continue to try to spin even as they\u2019re flattening out against the floor, their speed and clatter increasing until they stop dead.<\/p>\n

One of the loveliest sequences is one in which Melissa Toogood (one of the last and finest dancers in Merce Cunninham\u2019s company) performs a precarious supported adagio on a plate\u2014actually on two plates, but much of the time, she is standing on one leg and flourishing the other, turning and tipping, while Garcia and Katie Stirman help her to do whatever she wants, and Batanero places the second plate should she need to change feet. Once, when Toogood skids a plate some distance away, Garcia and Stirman carry her through the air in a big leap until she can touch down on the new surface. The image is a resonant one. You think of the tale of Sir Walter Raleigh laying his cloak over a puddle so Queen Elizabeth\u2019s feet would not get wet as she walked on. Toogood is wonderfully serene as her intricate dance gradually travels across the space.<\/p>\n

\"Liony<\/a>

Liony Garcia dines (alone?) on Melissa Toogood’s hair. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

Two of the more nightmarish fantasies also involve plates. Garcia sits at a small table, a solitary diner awaiting his meal. Toogood comes and sits down opposite him. But she\u2019s no dinner date\u2014at least not in the usual sense. She bends forward until her forehead touches the plate before her and strokes her long hair out until it reaches her companion\u2019s plate. Carefully twirling her dark locks around a fork as if it were pasta, Garcia dines on them, \u201ceating\u201d steadily as other activities commence. When the waiter comes to take Toogood\u2019s plate away, she walks with him, her head still connected to it.<\/p>\n

\"L<\/a>

L to R: Melissa Togood, Katie Stirman, and Ivonne Batanero deal with Snow White. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

Herrera is also aware of food as consolation or as voluptuous delight. Toogood, Stirman, and Batanero sit side by side at a long table facing the audience. In front of each is a large, snowy pile of what could be whipped cream. While the recorded voice of Disney\u2019s Snow White sings \u201cSome Day My Prince Will Come\u201d in a high, girlish voice, the three women plop their faces into the white stuff and come up, shaking their heads and shoulders deliriously, pause, and drop down for more. By the time they start lip-synching a conversation among Snow White and two of the dwarves about this handsome guy, their faces and hair are slathered in white. Batanero stays on to \u201cspeak\u201d with the voice of Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch<\/i> (Herrera\u2019s source for this and other elements\u2014such as the Rachmaninov), while Campos holds her tight. As she wriggles in sexy excitement, he licks and sucks the \u201ccream\u201d off her face and hair. \u201cDon\u2019t stop!\u201d breathes Marilyn.<\/p>\n

\"Octavio<\/a>

Octavio Campos licking Ivonne Batanero clean (mostly). Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

Dining Alone<\/i> has many such potent (and funny) images and some excellently apt music, whether recorded or played by Landeros. I can\u2019t identify the gorgeous song (Balkan? Latin?) sung by women\u2019s voices, as Verier-Dunn swoons around the small table top tilted for her by Garcia. There are a few irritating or unfulfilled moments, but the pleasures of experiencing Herrera\u2019s earthy, poetic, beyond-dada imagination outweigh them.<\/p>\n

The finale belongs to the plates. Garcia waits at his table, while unseen offstage hands roll one after another of them into the space. Some of them streak straight across and into the wings. Others embark on surprising curves. There are some near misses. Plates clatter into silence. The solitary eater puts his feet on the table\u2019s pedestal out of harm\u2019s way. This is your life, sir. Care for dessert?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre, Baryshnikov Arts Center, April 18 and 19, 2013 Anyone who has ever felt fragile or off balance might be heartened by Rosie Herrera\u2019s Dining Alone. Here\u2019s one of many memorable passages. A woman (Ivonne Batanero) holds a stack of white dinner plates; a man (Liony Garcia), crouching beside her, takes the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1574,"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":[199],"tags":[734,728,731,730,732,733,548,729,735,727],"class_list":{"0":"post-1571","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-postmodern-views","8":"tag-david-ferri","9":"tag-dining-alone","10":"tag-fernando-landeros","11":"tag-ivonne-batanero","12":"tag-katie-stirman","13":"tag-leah-verier-dunn","14":"tag-melissa-toogood","15":"tag-octavio-campos","16":"tag-raymond-storms","17":"tag-rosie-herrera","18":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571","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=1571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}