skybetter and associates at Joyce SoHo
March 31, 2010
skybetter and associates at Joyce SoHo, photo by Ramon Estevanell
Shortly after the conclusion of skybetter and associates’ program at Joyce SoHo on Saturday evening, a man in the audience said, “What a smart, efficient program.” He was right. At just under an hour long, the company – founded by Sydney Skybetter in 2008 – packed a great deal of flowing movement and sophisticated music into its program. The pieces were short in length but endlessly poetic, often exploring themes such as community and loneliness. Skybetter has that rare, admirable ability to create choreography that is soft-spoken yet powerful, deeply personal yet universally accessible.
The most striking example of this was Cold House You Kept, which illustrated the unstoppable unraveling of a community as the seven dancers gradually decreased to one. Gorecki’s string quartet in “Quasi una Fantasia” created a sense of urgency as the movement increasingly featured push-pull tension among the dancers. As the group decreased in size, one dancer clung sadly to another, while others rocked from side to side on the floor with their hands pressed to their hearts. The loneliness felt by the lone dancer on stage at the piece’s end was palpable.
Fugue State and Potemkin Piece also showed communities: the former was upbeat and carefree to the scherzo from Shoshtakovich’s “Piano Quintet” while the latter was more brooding, observant, and somber to a string quartet by Dvorak. Musicality shined through in both, particularly as the dancers emphasized nuances in Potemkin Piece when they plunged to the floor and then suddenly rose and circled their arms.
Dancers in The Laws of Falling Bodies, photo by Ramon Estevanell
All of the works featured highly physical partnering and striking spatial formations, but The Laws of Falling Bodies, making its New York premiere, stood out for so effortlessly doing so. This otherworldly piece tested gravity’s limitations as the dancers created lifts and balances that were delicately airborne before often tumbling to the floor. Bathed in golden light and situated in a spare, eerie atmosphere, the dancers repeatedly returned to a simple, one-legged balance with the other leg hovering above the floor, eager to launch into another haunting round of gravity-defying movement.
Woven throughout the program were three solos from The Personal, performed by Kristen Arnold, Bergen Wheeler, and Skybetter. To Schumann’s Dichterliebe or Schubert’s Schwanengesang, each dancer created spiraling, circling movement under a pool of light. Movement patterns were similar, but each dancer uniquely shared a quiet meditation with the audience. Their inclusion in the program created a nice balance between the ensemble and solo works, both of which highlighted the emotional depth, lyricism, and musicality of Skybetter’s choreography.
Deborah Hay: No Time to Fly
March 27, 2010
Deborah Hay, photo by Rino Pizzi
I really wanted to like Deborah Hay’s No Time to Fly, which opened at Danspace Project on Thursday evening. Hay, who danced with Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 1964 and was a member of the experimental Judson Dance Theater, has always been interested in investigating different levels of consciousness. Unfortunately, I found myself frustrated by her evening-length solo and unable to sink my teeth into her exploration of the ephemeral nature of dance.
Wearing black pants, a white collared shirt, and a beret, Hay gently shifted her weight, swayed, and stretched her limbs as she created different patterns along the floor of St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery. The dimmed lighting, by Hay’s collaborator Jennifer Tipton, cast a sleepy, mysterious haze over the space. Silence was broken by Hay’s whispered singing or chanting, or the occasional mouthing of inaudible words. She performed with a frustrating sense of hesitancy, never truly committing to one movement or another. If dance is fleeting, why approach it with such delicate caution? The result was a string of evanescent movements that were gone all the more quickly because they were performed with apparent tentativeness. I hope the solo was fulfilling for Hay as an exploration of dance’s “ephemeral existence” – as the program noted – but as a performance it lacked commitment and intention.
Dance, no matter how fleeting, can potentially have a lasting impact for both the viewer and the performer, but perhaps the performer has to believe in dance’s enduring, non-ephemeral abilities for this to be true.
Skybetter Performs at Joyce SoHo & Online
March 25, 2010
Sydney Skybetter, photo by Ramon Estevanell
Sydney Skybetter’s Brooklyn-based company, skybetter and associates, makes its Joyce SoHo debut tonight with the New York premiere of The Law of Falling Bodies, three repertory works, and the world premiere of Fugue State, which was developed during the company’s recent creative residency at Joyce SoHo. Performances by this young, talented company sold out fast, but luckily, each performance will be live-streamed for free! If you don’t have tickets, tune in tonight, tomorrow, or Saturday at 8 PM (or for all three!) to watch skybetter and associates from the comfort of your home. Plus, tonight’s performance includes a post-show discussion.
Dancing Across Borders
March 16, 2010
Philip Glass and Sokvannara Sar at the Vail International Dance Festival, July 2008, photo by Erin Baiano
What are the chances that a sixteen-year-old Cambodian boy with no classical ballet training gets invited to New York City to study at the School of American Ballet – all expenses paid – and then goes on to dance professionally at Pacific Northwest Ballet? According to former New York City Ballet principal dancer Peter Boal, there’s a one in a thousand chance that it could work, and amazingly, it did. In the feature-length documentary Dancing Across Borders, which opens on March 26th at the Quad Cinema, first-time film director and long-time arts patron Anne Bass captures Sokvannara (Sy) Sar’s journey from the Cambodian countryside to New York City, and eventually to the stage of Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet.
Bass first saw Sy in January 2000 on a trip to Angkor Wat, Cambodia. He was performing in a temple with a traditional Cambodian dance group and left a strong impression on Bass. With the help of the World Monuments Fund and an agreement from Sar and his parents, Bass arranged for Sy to come to New York and audition at the School of American Ballet (SAB). Although he was not accepted – with no prior training, he was considered too old to begin studying there – SAB teacher Olga Kostritzky agreed to give Sy private lessons. Dancing Across Borders began as a video record of Sy’s progress for Bass (who sponsored all of Sy’s training) to send to his parents back home, but after encouragement from friends, Bass developed it into a full-length documentary.
Sokvannara Sar in Cambodia
The film includes footage from Sy’s training – SAB accepted him after a few months of studying with Kostritzky – that captures his remarkable improvement and painstaking persistence over the course of five years. Interviews with former New York City Ballet dancers Peter Boal and Jock Soto, who taught Sy at SAB, spoke highly of his charm, stage presence, and captivating jumps in spite of having no classical background. Excerpts from Sy’s performances in Balanchine’s La Source and La Sonnambula along with his solo in Benjamin Millepied’s On the Other Side at the Vail International Dance Festival reveal his refined technique and emotional maturity.
In addition to being fully immersed in the world of ballet, Sy had to learn English and continue his schooling at the Professional Children’s School, where he received his high school diploma. On camera, he seems charismatic, relaxed, curious, and eager to try anything that comes his way. At the same time, he voices his struggle to identify his true home and uncertainty about where he belongs. His family and childhood friends are in Cambodia, while his career and training are in the United States. Bass seems aware of this conflict, too, and explained that it would have been okay for Sy to return to Cambodia if he was no longer interested in pursuing ballet. Yet, the film does not explore their relationship in depth nor raise the possibility of Sy exploring interests outside of ballet. In a way, his path in America was made clear for him from the start: classical ballet training with the goal of earning a place in a professional company. It’s a rigorous world for anyone, let alone a foreigner coping with a language barrier, no prior training, and no family nearby.
Bass gave Sy an incredible opportunity, and he embraced it with dedication and enthusiasm that were undoubtedly critical to his success and eventual spot in the corps de ballet of Pacific Northwest Ballet. But it remains unclear whether he will be satisfied with dancing in America or instead prefer to return to his family in Cambodia. At twenty-six, Sy has experienced two vastly different worlds. The journey from one to the other is elegantly captured in Dancing Across Borders, but only Sy can decide where he belongs.
