![\"Davalois](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/AJ-DD-005-160308_Petronio_bigDaddyDeluxe_005.jpg\")
Davalois Fearon and Nicholas Sciscione in Stephen Petronio’s new Big Daddy (Deluxe)<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n Stephen Petronio\u2019s five-year project, Bloodlines<\/em>, pays homage to his heritage in the most loving and laborious of ways. He introduced it last year by having his dancers learn and perform Merce Cunningham\u2019s great 1968 RainForest. <\/em>This year, for the company\u2019s season at the Joyce Theater, they tackled a work by a choreographer closer to Petronio\u2019s generation: Trisha Brown\u2019s Glacial Decoy <\/em>(1979). Petronio joined her company\u2014the first man to do so\u2014the same year that marvelous dance was being made, and he stayed with her for seven years. Cunningham\u2019s revolutionary ideas about space, time, and dance plus Brown\u2019s surprising choices and extraordinary approach to movement nourished Petronio\u2019s own style without defining it. Speaking to Chicago Tribune <\/em>writer Laura Molzann about his choreography in relation to Brown\u2019s, \u201cMy work is more punctuated rhythmically, both with stillness and with tension. Trisha\u2014as you\u2019ll see with \u2018Glacial Decoy\u2019\u2014is more like smoke. And mine is like hot steel.\u201d<\/p>\n Glacial Decoy<\/em>, Brown\u2019s first work for a proscenium stage, was true both to her bent for dealing with architectural realities and her impish wit. Choreographed for four women (with the possibility of a split-second surprise visit by a fifth), the piece first makes you think about the difference between onstage and offstage, with the initial two dancers appearing, one at a time, from the wings and disappearing back into them. Then two other dancers perform close together in the center of the stage for most of the next part. The final section introduces the coming together of all four, performing the same long spate of dancing and separated enough that (because the movement travels from side to side) one of them will disappear into the wings and only re-emerge when the others travel far enough in the opposite direction to bring her into sight and shunt a colleague temporarily offstage. Glacial Decoy<\/em> is not just a dance that plays with the traditions of the proscenium stage; it\u2019s a dance that becomes wider than the stage on which it\u2019s being presented.<\/p>\n Emily Stone (L) and Cori Kresge in Trisha Brown’s Glacial Decoy<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n Robert Rauschenberg designed the costumes and the set, and they\u2019re in striking contrast to each other. His huge black-and-white photos travel across behind the dance. Images feed from stage right into four side-by-side \u201cpositions,\u201d so that each image is seen four times before it \u201cdisappears\u201d stage left. These beautifully composed pictures of shabby, everyday life (but without people) were taken in the Florida keys, I believe. The camera examines tilted bike handlebars, laundry on a line, a mailbox by the side of the road, the head of a marble statue shot from above, a truck, a doorway, and the like. Objects rust, vines grow around them.<\/p>\n Dancing in front of this long train of sights and gorgeously lit by Beverly Emmons, the performers appear as alien as butterflies. Rauschenberg\u2019s costumes are translucent, pleated white bells that hang from just below their necks; smaller bells form the slip-on sleeves. Wearing these, the women conspire against the hard edges of the subjects in the photographs; because of the complicated fluidity of the dancing, the fabric is always in motion. (For some reason, the costumes don\u2019t look quite as full as I recall the originals being, and as photos show them.)<\/p>\n Oh, that dancing! It\u2019s as wild as that in Petronio\u2019s choreography, but gentler, more peaceful. It plays games with itself. Movements large and small appear simultaneously on the performers\u2019 bodies within a span of seconds. Like smoke, indeed. Head, arms, legs, hips, shoulders\u2014they all seem to have minds of their own, but have decided to get along. A springy step is less about going into the air than an upbeat to a soft descent. The dancers gallop without emphasis, loose-limbed and quietly free.<\/p>\n Emily Stone (L) and Cori Kresge in a rare moment of contact in Trisha Brown’s Glacial Decoy<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n It must have been difficult (and perhaps enlightening) for Petronio\u2019s dancers to come down from his slash-and-burn approach to complexity, even with the astute coaching of Diane Madden (co-artistic director of the Trisha Brown Dance Company) and Lisa Kraus from the original cast. Talking to Siobhan Burke of the New York Times<\/em>, Petronio dancer Emily Stone recalls Kraus saying of a movement, \u201cDo it and get off it.\u201d In other words, the next move should be forming as the first fades away. That may be what occasionally bothers me a little about Jaqlin Medlock\u2019s first appearance onstage. When she swings a leg into the air, she hints at a hair\u2019s-breadth finish to the move before letting that leg respond to gravity. I watch her and Tess Montoya with admiration but want to shake them gently to make their heads and shoulders relax a bit more. Stone and Cori Kresge are more at home in looseness. In any case, I love entering Brown\u2019s mind and body as I watch all four shiver and roll and smack the dancing around\u2014rarely touching, occasionally sliding into unison as if this were an unexpected event. And how typical of the choreographer that she could put a fifth dancer (Davalois Fearon) into a costume and bring her\u2014just once!\u2014 dancing on from stage right and soon cantering back where she came from. It\u2019s as if Brown were saying, \u201cDon\u2019t get hooked on four women; this dance spans even more space than you thought it did.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephen Petronio, flanked by Nicholas Sciscione (L) and Joshua Tuason in Petronio’s Big Daddy (Deluxe)<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n Somewhere, I think, Petronio used the word \u201cfamilial\u201d about this Joyce program, which includes the world premiere of his Big Daddy (Deluxe)<\/em> and a revival of his 1990 MiddleSexGorge. <\/em>The new work focuses on Petronio\u2019s own family of Italian descent\u2014with what seem like umpteen cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. etc. on hand to celebrate with enthusiasm any holiday occasion. For this, Petronio draws text from his own remarkable memoir, Confessions of a Motion Addict, <\/em>and speaks it from the stage. The original Big Daddy<\/em> (commissioned in 2014 by the American Dance festival) was a solo. The \u201cdeluxe\u201d edition features his company as remembered visions, personae, and the forces that drive a life.<\/p>\n When the curtain goes up, Petronio in a suit and tie (but barefoot) advances into a pool of light. And then\u2014a clever touch\u2014Joshua Tuason and Nicholas Sciscione appear from behind him and fan out to either side, the three of them gesturing briefly in unison. Son Lux\u2019s score, with its intermittently buried voice, breaks out: \u201cThis is. This is the. . .\u201d This is the story, says Petronio, moving to a lectern at the side of the stage, \u201cof my father.\u201d He plans to build it \u201cone word at a time.\u201d Ken Tabachnick\u2019s lighting brightens as the choreographer describes Petronio senior, with his movie-star aura\u2014a man who enjoyed cooking, a man who loved to ballroom dance with his wife and did it well (\u201cI had to wonder, when did they rehearse?\u201d muses Stephen, their younger son).<\/p>\n Stephen Petronio’s Big Daddy (Deluxe)<\/em>. Joshua Tuason surrounded by (L to R): Emily Stone, Kyle Filley (kneeling), Jaqlin Medlock, Davalois Fearon and Cori Kresge. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n The dancers rush onto the stage and create pictures that we can\u2019t always\u2014don\u2019t need to\u2014interpret. No point wondering if one trio (Stone, Kresge, or Sciscione) or another later one (Montoya, Sciscione, and Fearon) represents some aspect of family games. But you can certainly imagine the four women and Kyle Filley who cluster to support Tuason as mothering a son or fawning over a handsome patriarch. Anyway, the dancing doesn\u2019t strive to illustrate the words; instead it implies the changeable energy of the lives that gave Petronio his beginnings.<\/p>\n The text moves through two key moments\u2014the father\u2019s belated, carefully thought-through, ultimately generous response to Petronio\u2019s marriage to another man and his last moments in the hospital, when his second son, Stephen, made the decision for the palliative care that would ease his transition into death. Petronio sits on the edge of the Joyce\u2019s stage, telling us this. A few hours later, \u201cHe\u2019s gone, that\u2019s final.\u201d It is and it isn\u2019t. The father is as much in his son\u2019s bones as Trisha Brown\u2019s choreography, and that son is not embarrassed to let us know it.<\/p>\n Stephen Petronio’s MiddleSexGorge<\/em>. Peter Sciscione (R front) and (L to R): Jaqlin Medlock, Joshua Tuason, and Davalois Fearon. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n MiddleSex Gorge<\/em> is tied to the violent aspect of Petronio\u2019s movement style. It was kindled by the AIDs epidemic of the 1980s, when he participated in demonstrations by ACT UP (the AIDs\u2019 Coalition to Unleash Power). Here\u2019s what he says in a program note: \u201cThe anger forged into my language is utilized as a call to action.\u201d<\/p>\n He did indeed make an angry dance, also an erotic one, but neither of these qualities is depicted literally. The score by the British rock group Wire (their \u201cAmbitious Plus,\u201d remixed and lengthened by Paul Kendal and Wire) pounds out its beat while instruments wail and squeal above it , and voices roar from the terrific stew of sound and sink back into it: \u201cWhen it’s hot I feel ambitious\/ Fit for a princess\/ Hot on the heels of an angel\u201d And over and over: \u201cAre you hot? Are you hot?\/ Are you hot? Are you hot?\u201d Yes, they are. The men wear lace-up corsets over jockstraps, and the women are clad in subtly lacy black under-leotards (costumes by H. Petal). The two who begin the dance (Fearon and Montoya, as I recall), grab their crotches, pump their ribs, push their hips out. Even when dancers plant themselves briefly, feet wide apart, knees bent, the beat keeps pounding\u2014as if inviting them to get going again.<\/p>\n Jaqlin Medlock lifted by (L to R): Davalois Fearon, unidentified, Nicholas Sciscione, and Emily Stone in MiddleSexGorge<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n But the dancing is more complex than the above would imply. The solo performed by Gino Grenek, wearing cut-off pants wreathed in artificial flowers below his corset, creates such fluent arguments with parts of his body that you can\u2019t imagine how he keeps track of them. When people race onto the stage in groups and grab one another, the verb \u201cyank\u201d keeps coming to mind. No one just holds someone else\u2019s hand or leg or lifts another person into the air. Every grasp expects a struggle; no one ever relaxes, no one ever looks comfortable. Watching the tableaux that congeal from time to time, you can\u2019t be sure whether people are dragging one another down or helping one another up, or both simultaneously. Which is sort of what being in the middle of an epidemic is like. Or protesting publicly and being knocked down.<\/p>\n The superb dancers are individual within the language that Petronio has developed. As always, his choreography lets us get a good look at each of them: Sciscione or Fearon, suddenly alone onstage; Stone and Filley grappling together, while Matlock dances by herself; Montoya; Kresge; Grenek and Tuason, side by side, both in those flowered pants (channeling Petronio and Michael Clark in the 1990 version)\u2014their costumes an ironic combination of restraint and gaudy, burgeoning growth.<\/p>\n Empowering and weakening, restraining and freeing, living and dying. . . .who says a dance can\u2019t be about all that, and still be triumphantly beautiful?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Stephen Petronio Company premieres a new work and revives one by Trisha Brown. Stephen Petronio\u2019s five-year project, Bloodlines, pays homage to his heritage in the most loving and laborious of ways. He introduced it last year by having his dancers learn and perform Merce Cunningham\u2019s great 1968 RainForest. This year, for the company\u2019s season […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4074,"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":[109,199],"tags":[475,2014,675,753,1476,755,2013,1475,1477,2018,2015,2017,111,269,1470,2016,110],"class_list":{"0":"post-4073","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-contemporary-dance","8":"category-postmodern-views","9":"tag-beverly-emmons","10":"tag-big-daddy-deluxe","11":"tag-cori-kresge","12":"tag-davalois-fearon","13":"tag-emily-stone","14":"tag-gino-grenek","15":"tag-glacial-decoy","16":"tag-jaqlin-medlock","17":"tag-joshua-tuason","18":"tag-ken-tabchnick","19":"tag-kyle-filley","20":"tag-nichola-sciscione","21":"tag-robert-rauschenberg","22":"tag-stephen-petronio","23":"tag-stephen-petronio-company","24":"tag-tess-montoya","25":"tag-trisha-brown","26":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4073","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=4073"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4082,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4073\/revisions\/4082"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Emily](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/AJ-GD-005-160308_Petronio_glacialDecoy_005.jpg\")
![\"Emily](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/AJ-GD-001-160308_Petronio_glacialDecoy_001.jpg\")
![\"Stephen](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/AJ-DD-001-160308_Petronio_bigDaddyDeluxe_001.jpg\")
![\"Stephen](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/AJ-DD-002-160308_Petronio_bigDaddyDeluxe_002.jpg\")
![\"Peter](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/AJ-MG-005-160308_Petronio_MiddleSexGorge_005.jpg\")
![\"Jaqlin](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/AJ-MG-001-160308_Petronio_MiddleSexGorge_001.jpg\")