{"id":2371,"date":"2014-03-07T14:58:01","date_gmt":"2014-03-07T19:58:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=2371"},"modified":"2014-03-10T22:27:06","modified_gmt":"2014-03-11T02:27:06","slug":"how-many-sallys-does-it-take","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2014\/03\/how-many-sallys-does-it-take\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many Sallys Does It Take . . .?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sally Silvers, Sally Gross, and Sally Bowden share a program.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Melissa<\/a>

Melissa Toogood and Dylan Crossman in Sally Silvers’s Confected Size<\/em>. Photo: Karen Robbins<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cSally.\u201d Seldom has an evening of dance been more appropriately titled. The performances presented by the Construction Company at the University Settlement on Eldridge Street showcased choreography by three vintage Sallys: Sally Gross, who was involved with Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s; Sally Bowden, who emerged in the 1970s, and Sally Silvers, who broke into New York\u2019s downtown scene in the 1980s. (How Sally Hess escaped recruitment is a mystery.)<\/p>\n

Pared down and thoughtfully structured, the works by Bowden and Gross suit the intimacy of the Settlement House\u2019s studio theater. These are small dances you need to look at closely to observe how subtly they change and grow. Bowden stays in one spot for a long time in her new Shift. <\/i>A smallish, handsome, sturdy woman wearing earrings, striped socks, and lively striped trousers below layered knit shirts, she begins by swaying forward and back, facing on a diagonal and occasionally shifting her gaze to look intently past one shoulder. Tinkly piano music starts to play, and percussion feeds in underneath (the music was credited in part to Toubab Krewe and to Marianne Milde).<\/p>\n

\"Sally<\/a>

Sally Bowden in her Shift<\/em>. Photo:Karen Robbins<\/p><\/div>\n

Gradually Bowden expands her swaying, changes the patterned swing of her arms, gets her hips moving. She\u2019s always grave, always intently focused. \u00a0She builds up complexity and then prunes it down again. She changes her facing and the timing of her gazes. High childish voices seep into the music. Then a fiddle and percussion. When she first lifts one leg off the floor, it seems like a major change. Niluka Hotaling provides a bit of rosy light when Bowden begins to travel around the space, stopping to corkscrew her legs around each other. But the basic feeling of swinging keeps going, powering all that has happened.<\/p>\n

Gross is a different sort of dancer\u2014slim, terse in her movements\u2014elusive despite her firmness. In her new, aptly titled Not Everything Is Seen<\/i>, she enters from behind the audience, hitting a pair of claves together. The beat isn\u2019t very loud, and it hesitates at times.\u00a0 Everything she does is quiet and deliberate. She decides to go to the studio\u2019s back wall and press the two sticks against it. She puts a black jacket on over her gold one. She sits on a chair and firmly but softly repeats words, only some of which I understand. I hear \u201ccuckoo\u201d and \u201cserviette\u201d and something that sounds like \u201clezolo\u201d (\u201claissez-la?\u201d). These and the clear gestures that accompany them encode things she\u2019s not showing and that we are perhaps not to know: a collection of hints\u2014ours to interpret.<\/p>\n

\"Sally<\/a>

Sally Gross in her Not Everything Is Seen<\/em>. Photo: Karen Robbins<\/p><\/div>\n

A duet and a trio that Gross made in 2011 are equally succinct, but more forthright (that may not be the best word).\u00a0 Both of them ask us to contemplate rearrangements of simple, clear moves, with occasional sly surprises. In Two<\/i>, Jamie Di Mare and Tanja Meding begin facing us, side by side, stepping forward and back without moving from their spot. Their feet are in synch, but their sharp gestures differ. A beam of light stretches across the floor; Robert Poss\u2019s score suddenly emits a sudden nasal sound. Every move the women make together or separately prints itself on your brain\u2014even the surprise of a dive to the floor or a flurry of arm movements. Briefly, each woman holds one hand before her face in a way that suggests a mirror, but without any hint of vanity. Sometimes we are alike, says the dance, and sometimes we are unalike, but we are more alike than not, and we work well together.<\/p>\n

\"Tanja<\/a>

Tanja Meding (L) and Jamie Di Mare in Sally Gross’s Two<\/em>. Photo: Karen Robbins<\/p><\/div>\n

Another Three<\/i> has more resonance. Three women (Di Mare, Meding, and Heather Lee) sit on a bench. They wear Depression-era dresses, and their hands are folded in their laps. Alex Mincek\u2019s music begins with a soft horn sound, lapping water, a bit of percussion (all played by Mincek on a saxophone\u2014live at the 2011 performances) A pattern develops on the bench\u2014a lean, hard habitat. Lee, who is sitting between the other two, falls forward onto the floor, Meding and Di Mare instantly swivel to face the back wall. When they face front again, they have shifted their places on the bench; when Lee rises and sits, she\u2019s no longer in the middle. Di Mare falls, and again the seating arrangement changes for her return. Meding tries something different (a small rebellion?), walking away and angling her arms around her body, bending and twitching for a while, before returning to the bench. Holding hands, one or the other leans precariously out from their small home base or falls backward, while her companions both restrain her and lean with her. The tensions between unity and separateness, calmly performed, acquire an enigmatic beauty.<\/p>\n

Silvers doesn\u2019t appear in her new Confected Size<\/i>, although she is very much onstage for a managed improvisation titled Live Choreography. <\/i>The first is a duet for two terrific former members of Merce Cunningham\u2019s company: Dylan Crossman and Melissa Toogood. Confected Size<\/i> gives off an aura of danger and romance. Video artist Ursula Scherrer creates grainy grayscale images of lines that slant and march and multiply in ways too complex to describe. Bruce Andrews\u2019s sound design collages snippets of music and sounds that can hint at disaster or shadowy cafes. The lighting projects the dancers\u2019 shadows among the moving shapes on the wall.<\/p>\n

\"Dylan<\/a>

Dylan Crossman and Melissa Toogood in Sally Silvers’s Confected Size<\/em>. Photo: Karen Robbins<\/p><\/div>\n

Toogood\u2019s first gesture is to move her hands up Crossman\u2019s face as they stand face to face. The complicated ways in which their limbs mesh or don\u2019t mesh, their charged meetings and partings often happen at top speed and amid high-energy dancing. He dips below the leg that she has lifted as a barrier or jumps repeatedly against it. She cradles him; he stalks her. As she hurries toward a corner with one arm stretched out, he, trying to keep up, rolls his head along that arm. In one sequence, she keeps unsuccessfully trying to maintain a balance on one leg; he, kiting around the space, arrives just in time to catch her before she hits the floor. They do this over and over. I wasn\u2019t surprised to discover in the program that Confected Size<\/i> is a \u201cminiature jumpstart\u201d for a piece that Silvers will premiere in November; its source is Alfred Hitchock\u2019s movies.<\/p>\n

The duet\u2014which Silvers tells us during Live Choreography<\/i> owes a lot to the director\u2019s North By Northwest<\/i>\u2014also figures in this choreographer-at-work item. <\/i>For it, Silvers invites two dancers, Erin Cornell and Olsi Gleci, to join Toogood and Crossman in the performing area. Building around an intricate portion of the duet, she asks the two newbies to insert themselves into its basic moves\u2014responding to them and affecting their outcome. Eventually, she instructs all of them to collaborate on making the constantly shape-shifting quartet travel across the room.<\/p>\n

As you may imagine, the performers have questions, and Silvers\u2019 suggestions may produce both interesting results and dangerous tangles. This is the sort of on-the-spot choreography that spurs those who are knowledgeable about dance to foresee difficulties and imagine solutions, and those unfamiliar with the choreographic process to learn that dancers are very smart people.<\/p>\n

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Sally Silvers, Sally Gross, and Sally Bowden share a program. \u201cSally.\u201d Seldom has an evening of dance been more appropriately titled. The performances presented by the Construction Company at the University Settlement on Eldridge Street showcased choreography by three vintage Sallys: Sally Gross, who was involved with Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s; Sally Bowden, […]<\/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":[6],"tags":[1100,777,548,1099,1097,1098],"class_list":{"0":"post-2371","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-postmodern-new-york","7":"tag-construction-company-studios","8":"tag-dylan-crossman","9":"tag-melissa-toogood","10":"tag-sally-bowden","11":"tag-sally-gross","12":"tag-sally-silvers","13":"entry","14":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371","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=2371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}