{"id":5266,"date":"2017-10-01T12:21:34","date_gmt":"2017-10-01T16:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=5266"},"modified":"2017-10-02T08:41:39","modified_gmt":"2017-10-02T12:41:39","slug":"from-belgium-a-love-supreme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2017\/10\/from-belgium-a-love-supreme\/","title":{"rendered":"From Belgium, A Love Supreme"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Love Supreme <\/em>by Salva Sanchis, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker\/ Rosas comes to the U.S.<\/p>\n

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A Love Supreme.<\/em> (L to R): Thomas Vantuycom, Bilal El Had, Jason Respilieux, and Jos\u00e9 Paulo dos Santos. Photo: Maria Baranova<\/p><\/div>\n

Overtures are rare at New York Live Arts. You get your ticket, visit the restroom, maybe buy a drink. The creators of A Love Supreme<\/em>, Salva Sanchis and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, warm us up in a more intimate way for what is to follow. A half hour before the performance is due to start, saxophonist Tony Jarvis and bass player Nathan Peck infiltrate NYLA\u2019s small lobby, dueling amid those waiting to get in, occasionally moving apart to get even closer to, say, a chattering group of friends or an attentive listener. The jazz spirit, the freedom within limits, the camaraderie unfasten us from our usual dance-performance expectations. And after we\u2019re seated and told to turn off our cell phones, we sit for what seems quite a while in the dark, cooling down, getting easy in our skins.<\/p>\n

The name of the dance is identical to that of the music we\u2019ll be hearing. If this were 1965, we might be in France, nursing drinks and waiting for John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones to play their epochal A Love Supreme <\/em>for us. Where the hell are they? Patience.<\/p>\n

Consider the backstory. In 1957, Coltrane had had a spiritual awakening, and despite intermittent tumbles back into alcohol and heroin addiction, he was ready to praise God for lifting him out of that abyss. In 1964, over five intense days in seclusion, Coltrane wrote several themes for A Love Supreme<\/em>, mapped out the rest, and divided the piece into four sections: Acknowledgment, Resolution, Pursuance, Psalm. The opening four-note theme corresponds to the syllables of the suite\u2019s title.<\/p>\n

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Salva Sanchis and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s A Love Supreme<\/em>. (L to R): Jason Respilieux, Bilal El Had, and Thomas Vantuycom. Photo: Maria Baranova<\/p><\/div>\n

In 2005, Sanchis danced in De Keersmaeker\u2019s original adventure with the quartet\u2019s recording when De Keersmaeker\u2019s Belgium-based company, Rosas, premiered it. He collaborated on the choreography for this version as well\u2014 responsible for the movement vocabulary, while De Keersmaeker devised the overall structure. Like the musicians, the four dancers performing at NYLA improvise on that vocabulary, as well as executing set movement passages. To unite them intimately with Coltrane\u2019s original plan, each responds to one of the musicians: Thomas Vantuycom to Coltrane, Robin Haghi to pianist Tyner (Bilal El Had alternates in the role with Haghi), Jason Respilieux with bass player Garrison, and Jos\u00e9 Paulo dos Santos with percussion master Jones. When a musician drops out of the recording, the corresponding dancer rests or leaves the stage.<\/p>\n

We first see the dancers in dimness, lit only by a single overhead lamp. No music. They move sinuously but also articulate such details as a minimal, crisp headshake. They lean on one another. They form a chain and pull against that restriction, breaking away into individual statements. Three of them lift a fourth. Four of them tangle. Perhaps they\u2019re sketching out their game plan.<\/p>\n

Then everyone leaves but Vantuycom. For what seems a long time, he just stands there, his hands at his sides. He\u2019s concentrating on something. Remembering? Planning? His first moves are minimal changes of direction. Then, suddenly, he steps into a big, slow spin, stops, and raises one arm forward, his hand turned sideways as if to push back a door. While he\u2019s dancing meditatively around the space, he often shifts his focus, making us aware of his awareness of the place in which he finds himself. Darker tracery on the gray floor looks like a drawing: curved outlines against intersecting straight ones. Is this a mapping of what we\u2019ll see in full later?<\/p>\n

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Jos\u00e9 Paulo dos Santos. Behind him: Bilal El Had. Photo: Maria Baranova<\/p><\/div>\n

These men are marvels. The music is a terror, a cauldron of interflowing sounds, a thicket with a wind blowing through it. Forget any hot, easy associations you have with the word \u201cjazz.\u201d The four slip into unison, decide to venture on different paths, face different directions. Like the musicians, they calm down to back up a soloist; at one point, dos Santos and Respilieux work side by side and in synchrony at the back of the stage, while Vantuycom dances alone. Haghi watches him closely, while also at times reflecting the pair\u2019s moves. Pretty soon Vantuycom rests, and Haghi takes a solo.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a loose springiness to the men\u2019s dancing. They rarely vault high into the air, just leave a momentary space between their feet and the floor. We can begin to identify steps\u2014this twist, this upward reach of both arms, this droop over; it\u2019s a rich and variegated vocabulary but not an ornate one. The musicians\u2019 aural flights are often reflected in the dancers\u2019 bodies; we can, if we wish, link a ripple in a guy\u2019s torso with a flutter of the sax. The tasks of the men we see require a constant alertness to one another. We sense them considering which open space to pass through, when to be drawn into someone else\u2019s pattern; occasional mutual grins tell you that a slight surprise paid off. The music\u2019s dynamics are echoed by such moves as an off-balance suspension that\u2019s caught before it causes the dancer to fall. Or maybe he does fall, but, with amazing speed and liquidity, is up and going again.<\/p>\n

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In mid-air: Thomas Vantuycom channeling John Coltrane in A Love Supreme<\/em>. Photo Maria Baranova<\/p><\/div>\n

Jan Versweyveld\u2019s lighting changes startlingly at the beginning of what I believe to be the third section. The lights almost go out, then come on again. The stage looks bleak, but the dancers cast shadows. Jones\u2019s ferocious drums lure dos Santos into his solo. All the solos\u2014Respilieux\u2019s answer to Garrison\u2019s bass follows before long\u2014are remarkable; the men riff imaginatively off the themes without transgressing. (It\u2019s interesting to consider that the musicians\u2019 long-ago improvisations, are, so to speak, written in stone, while at every performance, these terrific dancers have the freedom to respond differently to them). Vantuycom dancing Coltrane is a marvel. A tall man who moves with a powerful softness, he loses himself in the saxophone\u2019s wild melodies and caressing heat.<\/p>\n

This is the penultimate sentence in Coltrane\u2019s liner notes to the 1964 recording: \u201cMay we never forget that in the sunshine of our lives, through the storm and after the rain \u2013 it is all with God \u2013 in all ways and forever.\u201d Psalm, the last section, embodies that, but also celebrates Coltrane\u2019s relationship to his music and to the musicians with whom he worked. What was sketched out in the silent opening of Sanchis and De Keersmaeker\u2019s A Love Supreme<\/em> reappears in full emotional color. We recognize the ways in which these eight men support one another across decades, collaborate to make the music, to make the dance. The first time three dancers raise Vantuycom\/Coltrane, he\u2019s prone and spraddle-legged in the air. The next time they bear his weight he\u2019s soaring as the harsh lights go out.<\/p>\n

A Love Supreme <\/em>was shown at Philadelphia\u2019s Fringe Festival before coming to New York. The group goes on to perform it at Ohio State University\u2019s Wexner Center, Princeton Unversity\u2019s Lewis Center for the Arts, and the Walker Center for the Arts in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

A Love Supreme by Salva Sanchis, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker\/ Rosas comes to the U.S. Overtures are rare at New York Live Arts. You get your ticket, visit the restroom, maybe buy a drink. The creators of A Love Supreme, Salva Sanchis and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, warm us up in a more intimate way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5268,"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":[893,35],"tags":[963,2798,2805,2806,2800,2804,2802,2797,2803,133,2799,2796,2801],"class_list":{"0":"post-5266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music-and-dance","8":"category-new-dance-from-abroad","9":"tag-anne-teresa-de-keersmaeker","10":"tag-bilal-el-had","11":"tag-elvin-jones","12":"tag-jan-versweyveld","13":"tag-jason-respilieux","14":"tag-jimmy-garrison","15":"tag-john-coltrane","16":"tag-jose-paulo-dos-santos","17":"tag-mccoy-tyner","18":"tag-new-york-live-arts","19":"tag-robin-haghi","20":"tag-salva-sanchis","21":"tag-thomas-vantuycom","22":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5266","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=5266"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5277,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5266\/revisions\/5277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}