![\"Doug](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/AJ-Elkins-GTSL8uSldm3nw0yYudXWIBaU0XQF8Abs-BpvXaXdqR4OF8rn9gGkkjPjm-grsaLsj-z5MzzVHikPJtsZMIhRWk.jpg\")
<\/a>Doug Elkins’s Scott Queen of Marys<\/em>. L to R:, Cori Marquis, Javier Ninja, Efrat “Bounce” Asherie,\u00a0 Alexander Dones, Donnell\u00a0 Oakley. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n Every January without fail, New York offers a smorgasbord of dance. The Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) convenes in town, and the table is laid for it in every available performing space. The first two weeks of the month are also a time when dancers, choreographers, and dance enthusiasts can catch up with what they missed and sample what they\u2019d like to see more of.<\/p>\n On January 7, the folks who pushed their way into the Joyce Theater (bundled up against the frigid weather and hailing one another with calls of \u201cHappy New Year!\u201d) confronted an unlikely pairing of dances. The third edition of Gotham Arts Exchange\u2019s Focus Dance Festival opened with a program shared by Vicky Shick and Dancers and Doug Elkins Choreography, Etc. Shick\u2019s Everything You See<\/i> (2013) invites you to watch a colony of gentle, diverse people going about their intriguing business, occasionally meeting up, and always aware of one another. They have tasks to be undertaken and feelings to share. Elkins\u2019s 1994 Scott Queen of Marys<\/i> is as tautly organized as a parade, and as elegant; everyone involved knows the drill, even though individuals may break away for displays of prowess or humorous engagements with one another. They are very aware of us, the viewers; they almost dare us not to admire them.<\/p>\n Vicky Shick’s Everything You See<\/em>. Olsi Gjeki (L) and Wendy Perron. Photo: Anjola Toro<\/p><\/div>\n Shick\u2019s idiosyncratic movement style is fluid and complex; a movement may set off ripples that pursue quirky paths through a dancer\u2019s body; small gestures punctuate larger, more full-blown dancing. Awkwardness takes on beauty.\u00a0 Elkins, an early-days breakdancer with a postmodern sensibility mingles familiar styles in unusual ways. In this particular dance, traces of highland reels yield to voguing and hip-hop moves, although all his performers clearly have all-purpose dance training. There are plenty of ripples in his movement, but all are precisely designed. As are the floor patterns. He\u2019s a master of, say, three-part counterpoint engineered for maximum clarity and contrast.<\/p>\n I wrote about Shick\u2019s beautiful piece in some detail, when she premiered it at Danspace St. Mark\u2019s last April (https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2013\/04\/both-sides-now\/<\/a>).\u00a0 The difference between the earlier performances and those at the Joyce is engendered by the diverse locations, as well as by the exigencies involved in a shared program. In St. Mark\u2019s Church, the audience sat on the two long sides of the space, and the dancers moved on either or both sides of Barbara Kirkpatrick\u2019s \u201cwall\u201d of seven irregular panels of screening. Spectators could see one another through two layers of dancing. On the Joyce\u2019s proscenium stage, a single, subtly draped expanse of scrim divides downstage from upstage, and everyone in the audience has the same perspective; whatever happens behind the scrim, picked out by Carol Mullins\u2019s fine lighting, has that \u201cmeanwhile-in-another-room\u201d feel.<\/p>\n Everything You See<\/em>. (L to R, back row): Marilyn Maywald, Laurel Tentindo, Lily Gold, Heather Olson. (Front): Donna Costello (L) and Jodi Bender. Photo: Anjola Toro.<\/p><\/div>\n Everything You See<\/i> is so full of interesting happenings that you may note different things each time you see it. At the Joyce, I suddenly catch Jodi Bender and Donna Costello pulling off their blouses and exchanging them, dancing as they go; somewhat later, they\u2019re back in their original attire (also by Kirkpatrick). If at St. Mark\u2019s, Lily Gold upended herself to stand on her forearms for quite a while, I don\u2019t remember it; now it catches my eye. Shick\u2019s use of form is understated. Amid all the peaceful investigations, it\u2019s almost surprising to see Olsi Gjeki and Costello echo the I\u2019ll-just-hold-your-leg-awhile moment that Marilyn Maywald and Heather Olson enjoyed some minutes ago. Watching the piece, I experience all over again the pleasure of watching Jonathan Kinzel and Shick dance thoughtfully, side by side in unison, or Shick and Wendy Perron, resting on the floor, exploring ways of bringing their limbs into contact, or Laurel\u00a0 Tentindo and Gjeki pulling against each other. A slightly different dance. Still beautiful.<\/p>\n Elkins\u2019s Scott Queen of Marys <\/i>has been through a renovation process. On this tenth anniversary of its first performance on the Joyce stage, the piece has, of course, a new cast\u2014also new lighting by Amanda K. Ringger and new costumes by Naoko Nagata. Mio Morales\u2019s score remains\u2014with its driving beat, occasional distant street voices, raucous jazz, and what cold be distant bagpipes\u00a0 played underwater. I don\u2019t know to what extent the choreography has altered.<\/p>\n Javier NInja (b. Javier Madrid) in Doug Elkins’ Scott Queen of Marys<\/em>. Behind him: Donnell Oakley. Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/p><\/div>\n Certainly the cast is more uniform in its skills. You\u2019d have to be super attuned to stylistic quirks to know that although Ephrat \u201cBounce\u201d Asherie has a background in modern dance and ballet, her turf is breaking, hip-hop, and house, or that Joshua Palmer has performed primarily in contemporary dance performances and in Cherylyn Lavagnino\u2019s ballet choreography.<\/p>\n Elkins\u2019s title itself is a mash-up. Originally dedicated to the memory of Scott MacDowell and Jay Dorff,\u00a0 it references Mary Queen of Scots, her \u201cMarys\u201d (four ladies-in-waiting famed in a ballad of adultery and execution), and Scottish dancing.\u00a0 If there is a \u201cqueen\u201d in Elkins\u2019s piece, it\u2019s Javier Ninja (b. Javier Madrid). Like the others, he wears black, side-striped athletic pants, but their form-fitting tops are black or red with mauve patches, while his is mostly yellow. And while the dancers begin in silhouette again a glowing, emerald-green backdrop, snaking their clasped hands through unison patterns, Madrid is the one\u2014the slinky, rubber-jointed master\u2014who, in a virtuosic solo can bring his wreathing arms shockingly far behind his head and snake his slim body uncannily and strut like a fierce-eyed runway model.<\/p>\n Often the dancers, eight in all, enter in pairs, holding hands, their feet busy with springy Highland steps. It\u2019s beguiling how they can, for example, slide from that narrow vertical stance\u2014 their arms at their sides\u2014into swinging their hips and shoulders and snaking their arms as they strut along. They acknowledge no discrepancies between forming into two lines for a seconds-long reel and dropping low for a breakdance spin. Kyle Marshall, Asherie, Kellie Ann Lynch, and Donnell Oakley engage in clambering and twisting over and around one another in a business-like manner, but there\u2019s more than a hint of voguing competition when Madrid and Palmer strut their stuff, eyeing each other, as well as us. The audience applauds a smart face-off between Madrid and the taller Marshall. All the performers (that includes Alexander Dones and Cori Marquis) move expertly through the terrific array of patterns and upsets that Elkins has so ingenuously designed.<\/p>\n Joanna Kotze’s IT HAD HAPPENED, IT HAPPENED, IT IS HAPPENING, IT WILL HAPPEN<\/em>. Foreground: Stuart Singer. At back: Kotze (L) and Netta Yerushalmy. Photo: Ian Douglas<\/p><\/div>\n Elkins breaches the fourth wall at the Joyce by his performers\u2019 challenging gaze toward the audience. Downtown at St. Mark\u2019s Church,\u00a0 Joanna Kotze in her IT HAD HAPPENED, IT HAPPENED, IT IS HAPPENING IT WILL HAPPEN <\/i>breaches it by proximity, or by introducing the possibility that the performers may touch you\u2014yes, you, sitting in the front row. On January 10 and 11 during APAP, Kotze repeated the work that premiered at Danspace Project St. Mark\u2019s at the end of last May and won her a \u201cBessie\u201d Award for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer.<\/p>\n Kotze, familiar to New York audiences for her dancing in works by Wally Cardona, Kimberley Bartosik, Netta Yerushalmy and others, has a BA in architecture and credits the late Georges Perec\u2019s fascinating and daring book Species of Spaces and Other Pieces <\/i>as an influence on IT HAD HAPPENED<\/i>. . . .\u00a0 The church, laden with past history and future possibilities, becomes transformed by movement, sounds, and light. The audience sits in single rows of chairs on three sides of the space, with other spectators finding seating on the carpeting platforms behind the rows or on the floor at one end of the nave. Kotze\u2014tall, slim, and leggy\u2014 begins affirming rectangularity by pacing the perimeter of the performing area. She\u2019s doing this even while Abby Harris Holmes of Danspace is introducing the evening, pointing out the exits, and telling us to turn off our cell phones.<\/p>\n Unless you\u2019d read interviews and publicity material, you mightn\u2019t know that one of Kotze\u2019s focuses in making this trio for herself, Netta Yerushalmy, and Stuart Singer (all wonderfully individual performers) was to bring past, present, and future into seamless proximity. You do, however, sense in the performers\u2019 attitudes hints of remembering and planning ahead, and the unexpected, seemingly unmotivated variety of their activities affirms that Koyze has groomed the vagaries of thought into artful formality.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>