{"id":1607,"date":"2013-05-05T11:07:25","date_gmt":"2013-05-05T15:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=1607"},"modified":"2013-05-07T10:27:50","modified_gmt":"2013-05-07T14:27:50","slug":"awaken-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2013\/05\/awaken-to-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Awaken to Life!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen Petronio Company at the Joyce Theater, April 30 through May 5, 2013<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Dancers<\/a>

Dancers in Stephen Petronio’s Like Lazarus Did (LLD 4\/30)<\/em>, Emily Stone center. Photo: David Rosenberg<\/p><\/div>\n

Over a hundred black-clad members of the Young People\u2019s Chorus of New York City form a V around the corner of the Joyce Theater\u2014some on 19th<\/sup> Street, some on 8th<\/sup> Avenue; over a hundred pairs of eyes focus on composer Son Lux (aka Ryan Lott), who, shielded by a parasol, is playing guitar alongside trumpeter C.J. Camerieri and violinist Rob Moose. \u201cCome out!\u201d sing the kids in sweet harmony to a burgeoning crowd of spectators\u2014most of whom have come to the Joyce to see Stephen Petronio\u2019s world premiere, Like Lazarus Did (LLD 4\/30). <\/i>\u201cCome out!”\u00a0 Their voices are quiet, but urgent.<\/p>\n

Meanings float around above the pavement we share. \u201cCome out\u201d in order to proclaim you\u2019re gay. Come out from the darkness into the light\u2014whether that darkness is death, ignorance, or the womb. Emerge from the sepulcher, Jesus!\u00a0 You, too, Lazarus! \u00a0Phoenix, rise up from those ashes! \u201cCome out!\u201d is also what I\u2019ve been saying to the place in the grass where daffodils should be pushing up to confirm Spring.<\/p>\n

It may not be entirely coincidental that we\u2019re seeing this glorious new work of Petronio\u2019s in the year that honors the 100th<\/sup> anniversary of the Stravinsky-Nijinsky ballet The Rite of Spring<\/i>; although the Chosen Virgin danced herself to death, she was responsible for another kind of renascence: she made the crops grow.<\/p>\n

\"Janine<\/a>

Janine Antoni in her “living set.” Photo: Paul Ramirez Jonas<\/p><\/div>\n

Petronio wants us to experience LLD<\/i>\u2014at least in part\u2014as an installation. We must enter the theater by climbing stairs and descending the left aisle to our seats along a pathway of light. In addition to handing out programs, ushers give us little cards that query in gothic letters, \u201cShould I look among the living\/ Should I look among the dead\/ If I\u2019m searching for you?\u201d This is a pretty deep question. The choreographer lies supine at the edge of the stage; he\u2019s dressed in a white shirt and black suit, but he\u2019s barefoot. The red velvet front curtain, lit to jewel-like splendor by Ken Tabachnick, is draped up at the bottom and its hem sits just a foot or so above his head. High above the right side of the audience hangs the kind of stretcher used for lifting the injured or dead to a waiting helicopter. It appears to contain a mossy bed, on which its designer, artist Janine Antoni, lies motionless. Above her are suspended plaster replicas of dancerly legs, skeleton legs, heads, arms, and more. Who will rise?\u00a0 Who will die?<\/p>\n

A large cadre of the young singers enters to fill the left side of the U-shaped balcony; the chorus\u2019s founder-director, Francisco J. Nu\u00f1ez, conducts them from the other end of the balcony, across the house. The rest of the chorus members fill both aisles, framing us, containing us. They echo words that Son Lux calls out, such as \u201cI want to die like Lazarus did.\u201d Meaning, perhaps, that expiring not long before Jesus walks in, needing a miracle, is a good way to go. Many of the words that infiltrate Son Lux\u2019s eerily beautiful score (played by Camerieri, Moose, and the composer on piano, percussion, and electronics) were drawn from slave songs of the early 19th<\/sup> century, when the hope of resurrection made the labor easier to bear.<\/p>\n

Refresh, revive, resuscitate, reincarnate, make new. These processes have clearly been on Petronio\u2019s mind. \u00a0For the opening scene of LLD<\/i>, Petronio has recycled and refurbished the white costumes that Tara Subkoff designed for his 2003 Underland. <\/i>He has also reconstructed solos made for other company dancers in years past and refurbished them for individuals in the current group. Compositional devices like accumulation and retrograde come into play; perhaps he first became expert at these during his years of dancing with Trisha Brown.<\/p>\n

\"Joshua<\/a>

Joshua Green in Like Lazarus did (LLD 4\/30)<\/em>. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

Not all of this is visible in the dance of course. In his program note, Petronio refers to \u201cour dancing flux,\u201d and anyone watching the maelstroms he creates on stage, doesn\u2019t have time to think about the process behind the work. But although he\u2019s a voluble choreographer, he\u2019s not a facile one, and although his dancers are virtuosos, they dance like celebrants in a carefully designed rite, never holding a pose so you can admire its beauty and as apparently effortless as we imagine angels to be.<\/p>\n

Petronio\u2019s works have nothing in common with those of Isadora Duncan, but both choreographers seem to conceive of the body as a kind of holy machine, in touch with the earth\u2019s processes. A powerful motor drives the whirling arms; slashing legs; mobile hips; and rippling, canting torsos. Amid the spins; the leaps; and the explosive, straight-up jumps that Petronio creates, you can divine a compulsion like the one Dylan Thomas hymns in his poem \u201cThe force that through the green fuse drives the flower.\u201d \u00a0You may find the choreography of LLD <\/i>relentless, with the dancers as intrepid, complicit, untiring heroes, but there\u2019s something exalted, white-hot about it.<\/p>\n

The beginning of the dance asserts order. The singers in the aisles have left. So has Petronio. The three musicians have gathered in a corner; the conductor and the chorus members in the balcony are on their feet. Nine of the company\u2019s ten members stand onstage, divided into three trios. You see every action in triplicate. Over and over, one person from each group dances toward the audience and then back to place, while those still at the back continue their interactions. The phrase seems to grow as the process continues; I begin to think each set of three is echoing what\u2019s been established and adding something new. Counterpoint develops.<\/p>\n

\"Joshua<\/a>

Joshua Green and Natalie Mackessy (center), Davalois Fearon (L), Barrington Hinds (background).
Photo: David Rosenberg<\/p><\/div>\n

But soon Petronio develops an idea that\u2019s particular to this dance. Intermittently, throughout it, people yield to weakness and collapse or lie down. Others catch them, cradle them, lift them, or pull them to their feet and into the ongoing tide of dancing. \u201cThese are my Father\u2019s children,\u201d sing the young voices. Joshua Green, Gino Grenek, and Joshua Tuason, who\u2019ve been carefully laid out by three others, revive and leave as Emily Stone and Natalie Mackessy dance close together, each in her own way. Small Mackessy collapses onto tall Stone, just as Davalois Fearon makes her first entrance. (She, Barrington Hinds, Jaqlin Medlock, and Julian De Leon are the first to appear wearing minimal black costumes\u2014sometimes veiled in brown\u2014by H. Petal; intricately cut and strapped, they bare much of the performers\u2019 mobile backs.) The smoke at the rear of the stage seems a little denser. \u201cAllelujah!\u201d call out the singers. A little later, to a thudding drum and cymbals, Nicholas Sciscione, Tuason, and Green treat Davalois as a colleague who needs lifting into the light.<\/p>\n

\"L-R:<\/a>

L-R: Nicholas Sciscione, Joshua Tuason, and Joshua Green support Davalois Fearon. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

The music collaborates wonderfully with this constant process of leaving and arriving, of succumbing and recovering. The disparate voices of piano, trumpet, and violin (along with Son Lux\u2019s singing) herald what needs to be heralded, sigh or shiver when appropriate, and jangle amid stormy electronic weather. Heavy piano chords sound when the dancers enter hand in hand, like a chain gang of diverse individuals. When the four women dance in unison, we hear words from Sojourner Truth\u2019s famous speech, \u201cAin\u2019t I a Woman?\u201d And just as stillness occasionally vies with movement, silence pits the music.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an enigmatic passage when Tuason stands alone, his back to the audience, in front of a white ribbon or rope that has descended from above. Lit from below, he undulates slowly, muscularly, gazing at it. Climbing doesn\u2019t seem to be an option. And when that scene is over, the lighting turns rosy, and the others re-enter in new costumes that include red kilts for the men. A drum joins in. The dancers cluster and fall and pass through in groups. The sung words turn apocalyptic: \u201cThe moon will turn to mud. The world will be on fire. The stars will fall. . .\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Nicholas<\/a>

Nicholas Sciscione reborn in the final moments of Like Lazarus Did (LLD 4\/30)<\/em>. Photo Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n

There have been solos before: Grenek writhing on the floor, Green smoothly pulling and twisting himself through invisible holes in the space around him. But the final solo, performed by Sciscione, sends an unambiguous message of rebirth. He\u2019s wearing only flesh-colored briefs, turning in circles while lying on the floor, rolling, twisting, pushing his butt up the way babies do, struggling as if on a difficult, pre-ordained journey. The chorus now slides into counterpoint. The male voices sing a variant of the words on the card: \u201cShould I look among the living? Should I look among the dead?\u201d The women echo Son Lux in a lullaby: \u201cSweet dreams; shut your eyes and dream.\u201d\u00a0 Finally Sciscione gets to his feet; he\u2019s taking teetering, tiptoe steps toward the back of the stage as the lights go out.<\/p>\n

Afterward, I climb up to the side of the balcony to get a better look at Antoni as she lies in her cradle. Until now, I\u2019ve only been able to discern her motionless profile. Almost everyone has left the theater. Her eyelids are fluttering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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