{"id":4826,"date":"2017-02-07T19:10:53","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T00:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=4826"},"modified":"2017-02-09T18:20:13","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T23:20:13","slug":"from-london-to-new-jersey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2017\/02\/from-london-to-new-jersey\/","title":{"rendered":"From London to New Jersey"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Richard Alston Dance Company at Montclair State University’s Peak Performances, February 2 through 5.<\/p>\n

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Nicholas Bodych lifts Liam Riddick in Richard Alston’s Mazur<\/em>. Photo: Marina Nevitskaya<\/p><\/div>\n

What seems different? I\u2019m sitting in the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University, waiting for the Richard Alston Dance Company to begin dancing. Having for some years attended events presented at Montclair State\u2019s Peak Performances series, I\u2019m now part of a full house of excited people, many of whom seem to know one another (for weekend performances, a charter bus runs from Manhattan, but this is Thursday). An audience in this theater has not always, in my experience, filled it, and I could never quite understand why the modest price of a ticket ($20) and the free pass to undergraduates at the university weren\u2019t luring more people to see the high-quality, often cutting edge theater, music, and dance performances engineered by Peak Performance\u2019s executive director, Jedediah Wheeler.<\/p>\n

What else is new? A handsome brochure\u2014a magazine really\u2014with articles about the 2016-2017 season. The London-based Richard Alston Dance Company, however, is not<\/em> new to Montclair audiences, having appeared there in 2012 and 2014. This year it offers a world premiere, Part II of Alston\u2019s Chacony<\/em>, which was commissioned by Peak Performances, and Chacony <\/em>as a whole boasts two musical groups\u2014surely a first. For Part I, the Repast Baroque Ensemble plays Henry Purcell\u2019s Chacony in G Minor (ca. 1680) from the pit, and when Part II begins, members of the Shanghai Quartet, who have been sitting in semi-darkness at the back of the stage, are suddenly illuminated and begin to play the Chacony from Benjamin Britten\u2019s 1945 String Quartet no. 2 in C Major, an homage to Purcell, whose Chacony (another way of referring to the musical form \u201cchaconne\u201d) Britten arranged centuries later.<\/p>\n

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Jennifer Hayes and Ihsaan de Banya in Part I of Richard Alston’s Chacony<\/em>. Photo: Marina Levitskaya<\/p><\/div>\n

All ten members of the company are onstage when the curtain goes up, clustered by gender. They\u2019re all wearing long, handsome, open-at-the-bottom red coats (by Peter Todd) over white garments, but will return for Part II minus the coats, in easy-going contemporary grays, beiges, and whites. Since this work is the last of four on the program, the audience has become acclimated to Alston\u2019s musicality and to his preference for big, fluid, spacious movements that involve a dancer\u2019s entire body at once. His style is also essentially peaceful; no hurricanes or inner tempests take these people over. During Part I, they may leave the stage and return, but when all five couples are assembled, their dancing skeins harmonious cats-cradles over the stage.<\/p>\n

Part II brings out their diversity, and Britten\u2019s music, unlike Purcell\u2019s is dark and calculatedly unruly, its texture sliding between stormy and frail. Britten played music with Yehudi Menuhin in the German camps of World War II, just after these were liberated, and his composition reflects some of his horror. Alston has chosen to bring out the individuality of his dancers in this section, as if they, too, were on a voyage of discovery.<\/p>\n

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Elly Braund and Liam Riddick in Part II of Chacony<\/em>. Visible at back: Honggang Li, violist for the Shanghai Quartet. Photo: Marina Levitskaya<\/p><\/div>\n

James Muller enters alone and dances quietly to Britten\u2019s legato opening passage; suddenly he falls. Others return: Ihsaan de Banya with Oihana Vesga Bujan, Liam Riddick carrying Elly Braund. Riddick is alone when the cello urges him into more assertive dancing, but for while, he and Braund seem, subtly, to be leaders. They\u2019re in the foreground, moving differently from the four other couples dancing in unison behind them and not noticing when their companions leave. A duet between Monique Jonas and Muller is tender, dreamy. In this quietly changeable atmosphere, these last two look at de Banya before leaving him alone onstage; Bujan enters and goes to him. Near the end, Britten\u2019s music becomes stronger, more confident, and the dancing of the remaining cast members (Nicholas Bodych, Jennifer Hayes, Nancy Nerantzi, and Nicholas Shikkis) presages that. The last image, after these two pairs have embraced and separated, is of all ten dancers holding hands and advancing slowly toward us.<\/p>\n

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Nicholas Bodych (kneeling) and Liam Riddick in Richard Alston’s Mazur<\/em>. Photo by Marina Levitskaya<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the finest works of the evening is Alston\u2019s duet for Riddick and Bodych entitled Mazur <\/em>after the seven Chopin mazurkas that accompany it. Jason Ridgway plays these marvelously on a piano set in a far corner of the stage. The choreography makes few obvious references to Chopin\u2019s Poland and the mazurka as a dance form beyond the occasionally flexed foot or rhythmic stamps. In part because of the accompaniment\u2019s suite form, there are breathing pauses amid the dancing. This comradeship goes beyond the handshake that we see. The two men are intensely aware of each other; dancing in unison seems to involve scrutiny and permission. In the solos that both perform, each seems to be telling the other a story. And when they dance as partners, the ways in which one leans on or lifts his friend suggest that they cherish these moments together, as if the music were a stream along which they travel.<\/p>\n

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Ihsaan de Banya in Stronghold<\/em> by Martin Lawrance. Photo by Marina Levitskaya<\/p><\/div>\n

The music for Stronghold<\/em> is nowhere near as nostalgic. This piece by RADC\u2019s associate choreographer and rehearsal director, Martin Lawrance, is set to a composition of the same name by Julia Wolfe. The sometimes repetitive wrangling and whining and calming down and singing together of eight double basses (not played live!) have inspired a more contemporary vision of society\u2014one in which people may wrench themselves and others around. In Part I of two, they often come from, or return to a line, across the back of the stage, making occasional contacts. The company\u2019s souvenir program offers possible definitions of the title: \u201ca fortress, a protected place, an area dominated by a particular group, a place of survival or refuge.\u201d There seems to be little contention among these people. In Part II, de Banya is listed in the program as being the (or \u201ca\u201d) Watchman. No literal drama involving warning of potential danger emerges\u2014at least not that I could discern\u2014but de Banya dances marvelously in Stronghold<\/em>, his slender, leggy body an undulating whirlwind of motion and of resistance. And when the performers leap, bent aggressively forward, it\u2019s the air that they\u2019re attacking.<\/p>\n

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Vidya Patel and Liam Riddick in An Italian in Madrid<\/em>, choreographed by Richard Alston. Photo by Marina Levitskaya<\/p><\/div>\n

The program in the Alexander Kasser Theater opened with Alston\u2019s An Italian in Madrid<\/em>\u2014like Stronghold <\/em>and Mazur<\/em>, making its first appearance in America. This time, the music is by Domenico Scarlatti, and although all ten of the pieces are sonatas for keyboard, the first three (K.146, K. 284, and K. 39) are played on an accordion, as recorded by Teodor Anzellati; Ridgway plays the remaining seven on the onstage piano. It\u2019s very odd to listen to music that I first heard on a harpsichord squeezed out (with virtuosity) on an instrument that can make even a clipped note sound like a sigh. Alston\u2019s musical choices are made clear by his semi-scenario. Part I of An Italian in Madrid<\/em> is laid in Naples, the composer\u2019s birthplace, where de Banya as Scarlatti plays around with RADC\u2019s five women dancers, clad in pretty, wind-blown dresses by Fotini Dimou and lit by Karl Oskar S\u00f8rdal. Stealing a kiss is a possibility.<\/p>\n

Part II is set in Lisbon, where Scarlatti travelled to instruct the young Princess Maria Barbara in music and attend her betrothal to the Spanish Prince Fernando (later accompanying her to Madrid, because she couldn\u2019t bear to be without him). Now Ridgway tackles the piano, with lustrous results. The excellent Riddick, identified by his commanding manner and his vest, plays the suitor and guest dancer Vidya Patel is his bride-to-be; the remaining dancers (all barefoot) play their courtiers. What\u2019s interesting (and a bit puzzling) about the casting is that the charming Patel is primarily a dancer in the North Indian Kathak style, and she is costumed in an outfit that might pass muster in a Mughal court. You see hints of Kathak, too, in her dancing (certain cat-like jumps for instance). But the premise is that these young people from different kingdoms, not from different cultures, are getting acquainted. Patel dances for Hiddick; then a chair is brought in for her, and she watches him dance. Sweetly and slowly, they move together.<\/p>\n

I admit to being confused too by Alston\u2019s characterization of Scarlatti in Part II. Perhaps he wanted to point him up as an outsider in Lisbon, but his position as the princess\u2019s teacher, a 34-year-old with quite a reputation as a composer, is not entirely clear.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of coming and going and juicy dancing in Part II of An Italian in Madrid <\/em>(even though he\u2019s in Lisbon). Alston, as usual, gets under the skin of the gorgeous music that he uses and creates movement that refreshes one\u2019s spirit. If there\u2019s a flaw in this piece, it\u2019s that Scarlatti carries him forcefully along. Especially in Part I, I may see a luscious passage and think, \u201cstay there a few more seconds,\u201d but the choreography has moved on and daren\u2019t dally. My ears tolerate that in the music\u2014delight in it\u2014but my eyes crave an occasional rest in which to consolidate the beauty I\u2019ve just seen.<\/p>\n

When Chacony<\/em>, the last piece of the evening, ended on opening night, the audience gave the company and the dances a very well-deserved standing ovation. Their way of saying, \u201cWelcome back to Montclair.\u201d Indeed!<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Richard Alston Dance Company at Montclair State University’s Peak Performances, February 2 through 5. What seems different? I\u2019m sitting in the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University, waiting for the Richard Alston Dance Company to begin dancing. Having for some years attended events presented at Montclair State\u2019s Peak Performances series, I\u2019m now part […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4829,"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":[109,35],"tags":[2063,897,2528,2525,895,2518,2527,2522,2520,2517,2526,2529,2523,2521,2524,2519,169,700],"class_list":{"0":"post-4826","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-contemporary-dance","8":"category-new-dance-from-abroad","9":"tag-alexander-kasser-theater","10":"tag-benjamin-britten","11":"tag-domenico-scarlatti","12":"tag-elly-braund","13":"tag-henry-purcell","14":"tag-ihsaan-de-banya","15":"tag-james-muller","16":"tag-jennifer-hayes","17":"tag-liam-riddick","18":"tag-martin-lawrance","19":"tag-monique-jonas","20":"tag-montclair-stt","21":"tag-nancy-nerantzi","22":"tag-nicholas-bodych","23":"tag-nicholas-shikkis","24":"tag-oihana-vesga-bujan","25":"tag-peak-performances","26":"tag-richard-alston","27":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4826","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=4826"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4841,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4826\/revisions\/4841"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}