{"id":6502,"date":"2019-08-11T13:33:28","date_gmt":"2019-08-11T17:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=6502"},"modified":"2019-08-12T10:56:45","modified_gmt":"2019-08-12T14:56:45","slug":"borne-on-the-winds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2019\/08\/borne-on-the-winds\/","title":{"rendered":"Borne on the Winds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Members of Gallim in Andrea Miller’s Boat. <\/em>Photo: Grace Kathryn Landefeld<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The tall,\nrobust, gray-haired man standing outside Jacob\u2019s Pillow\u2019s Ted Shawn Theater\nduring intermission is explaining his reaction to Andrea Miller\u2019s Boat <\/em>to two attentive listeners. The\nmembers of her company, Gallim, he says, never stand still! He can\u2019t get over\nthat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not\nentirely true, of course. The eight marvelous dancers who make up Gallim do\npause in their dancing or stand and watch their colleagues dance. But what he\nmay have noticed in Boat <\/em>(and can\nalso be seen in Miller\u2019s new True, very<\/em>)\nis that the dancers often appear not to be in charge of their actions. They\nseem buffeted by strong winds, flung into the air, knocked to a ground already\nunsteady beneath their feet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miller created Boat <\/em>in 2016 in response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis, caused by the massive exodus of people fleeing a disastrous civil war.  Her dance tells no stories of sons and brothers, mothers and children. Instead it shows through its structure and movements how people respond to violence, how they may help one another or gather to stay afloat. The very fact of, say, a man (Anthonio Brady) watching four women dance, before three of them leave, at which point he joins the remaining one (Allyson Hooks) tells you something. He wants to learn a little about them first; either that or he is politely waiting for Ashley Hill, Haley Sung, and Georgia Usborne to leave before he communicates with Hooks.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Anthonio Brady and Haley Sung in Boat. <\/em>Photo: Hayim Heron<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The set is a silky blue-gray back curtain (devised by Miller in collaboration with Vincent Vigiliante) that ripples at times like watery waves. The soul-shaking music that we hear during the opening segment is the \u201cGloria\u201d from the Berlin Mass<\/em> of Estonian composer Arvo P\u00e4rt. <\/em>The remaining sections are set to P\u00e4rt\u2019s Fratres <\/em>for violin and piano and his Salve Regina. <\/em>To Fratres<\/em>, Dan Walczak and Sean Lammer  run in a circle, holding onto each other; one man\u2019s hand covering the other\u2019s eyes. They may separate, rest, get up, and run again. But in the end, Lammer is alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the \u201cSalve\nRegina,\u201d the backdrop stops its billowing, but all eight dancers hang onto one\nanother and stare down, as if at the brink of a whirlpool.  Their cluster elongates into an unsteady\nchain. Four huddle together while the other four race around them. They fall,\nrise, reach, leap, sway in place. But in the end, someone has fallen, some\npeople have left, and the \u201csea\u201d is rippling again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These\nperformances of Boat<\/em> were dedicated\nto \u201call those who are still enduring and persevering in their hopes of life,\ndespite suffering oppression and inhabiting despair, and to all who are\nbuilding new harbors and homes for their hearts to host.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Allysen Hooks and Gallim colleagues in Andrea Miller’s True, very. <\/em>Photo: Grace Kathryn Landefeld<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

True, very <\/em>is billed as a world premiere, and it is,\nbut it\u2019s also an edited anthology of Miller\u2019s works dating over the past ten\nyears since Gallim made its debut at Jacob\u2019s Pillow. One excerpt bleeds into\nanother or overlaps with it. Drawn from eight pieces by Miller, these dances are\nset to music by groups such as The Doors and Balkan Beat Box, as well as to a\nChopin piano piece.  Three musical\naccompaniments are by Will Epstein, and a fourth is by Epstein and Tony Gatif\n(from a film?). Joanna Newsom wrote one piece. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miller, a\nmuch-honored choreographer, who has created numerous works for other companies\nbeside her own, developed her style from sources that passed through her distinctive\nsensibility and were transformed by it. \nShe got a BFA from Juilliard. She spent two years in Israel performing\nwith the Batsheva Dance Ensemble. So: ballet, modern dance, and the gaga\ntechnique developed by Ohad Naharin.  Her\ndancers are virtuosic at looking awkward; their bodies can manage all kinds of\nexperiments and what some might consider distortions.  They can look like dolls jerked into motion\nor some species of superfish, flicking and swimming through a fluid atmosphere.\nYet you never doubt their control. And you never doubt their humanity. That is,\nyou could no more do what they do without intensive training, yet what it\nbuilds on is the multi-tasking that makes up your days (brushing your hair,\nsay, while talking on the phone, and slipping your feet into your shoes, or\nshrugging your way out of a sweater while running and looking at the sky for\nsigns of rain).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ashley Hill braced by a hidden helper on Sean Rosado’s feet. Photo: Hayim Heron<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The work samples woven into True, very <\/em>are Big Bang <\/em>(2019), On Stage, Off Stage Soloes <\/em>(2019), Pupil Trio and Duet <\/em>(2008), To Create a World <\/em>(2019), (C)arbon <\/em>(2018), Snow <\/em>(2007), Bruce <\/em>(2010), and Extra Time <\/em>((2019). The music itself has undergone some changes. Chopin piano music is permeated by spoken text from the prologue of Ruggero Leoncavallo\u2019s opera Pagliacci. <\/em>\u201cI have accepted. . .\u201d we hear, a terrible scream, and more. This segues into the music of Balkan Beat Box that Miller used for Pupil<\/em>. During\u00a0 this, Sean Rosado, Walczak, and Brady wear frilly collars and form a prissy, tip-toeing band.\u00a0 Hill dances a solo from To Create a World <\/em>wonderfully but drags herself away when others invade the stage. Epstein\u2019s music for (C)arbon <\/em>may be what\u2019s accompanying Gary Reagan as he performs a mind-altering solo, but I can\u2019t swear to it. Tall and skinny, he bends and twists his bony spine, spreads his legs, backs away from. ..what?. He falls into a split as the lighting turns the floor red; he rises, looking skyward, as if sucked up by an unseen force. But he ushers us into a now all-red world in which Hill, Hooks, Sung, and Usborne wear glittery little dresses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Andrea Miller’s True, very: <\/em>Anthonio Brady assisted by Sean Rosado (L) and Sean Lammer. Photo: Grace Kathryn Landefeld<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I give up on trying\nto relate what I see to what I hear. Watching the dance is like being at a\nparty at which all the guests are unfamiliar to you and you\u2019re trying to\ndiscern what they\u2019re telling you and why. I\u2019m happy because everything is so\ninteresting and unexpected, but also a bit nervous. Brady, wearing a shimmering\nnet t-shirt and shiny pants gets dragged in by Lammer and Rosado and hoisted so\nhe can lip synch the music we\u2019re hearing. Members of the cast line up on either\nside of the stage to watch Hooks struggle on the floor. And when was it that\nHill decided she\u2019d be okay if she could just huddle on Rosado\u2019s upraised foot? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what\nMiller has to say about it: \u201cA poetry of the real. Verismo dethroned\nromanticism. Really, really. The dusk of archetypical heroes. The dawn of\nstories about ordinary lives of flesh and blood. A sweaty movement.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll buy that.\nI guess. It gives me something more to think about and be grateful for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The tall, robust, gray-haired man standing outside Jacob\u2019s Pillow\u2019s Ted Shawn Theater during intermission is explaining his reaction to Andrea Miller\u2019s Boat to two attentive listeners. The members of her company, Gallim, he says, never stand still! He can\u2019t get over that. It\u2019s not entirely true, of course. The eight marvelous dancers who make up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6505,"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":[109,6,1],"tags":[931,803,3183,3185,809,3128,1842,3186,3129,3188,116,272,2975,3187,3131],"class_list":{"0":"post-6502","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-contemporary-dance","8":"category-postmodern-new-york","9":"category-uncategorized","10":"tag-allysen-hooks","11":"tag-andrea-miller","12":"tag-anthonio-brady","13":"tag-ashley-hill","14":"tag-dan-walczak","15":"tag-gary-reagan","16":"tag-georgia-usborne","17":"tag-grace-kathryn-landefeld","18":"tag-haley-sung","19":"tag-hayim-heron","20":"tag-jacobs-pillow","21":"tag-ohad-naharin","22":"tag-sean-lammer","23":"tag-sean-rosado","24":"tag-will-epstein","25":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6502","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=6502"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6515,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6502\/revisions\/6515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}