Open Rehearsal: Pontus Lidberg’s “Labyrinth Within”
May 18, 2010
Pontus Lidberg, photo by Lasse Lychnell
Ever wonder how dances are created? Are you curious about the questions artists ask as they create? Joyce SoHo opens its doors for work-in-progress rehearsals with its Artists-in-Residence. Next up is Pontus Lidberg on Monday, May 24th at 2 PM.
Labyrinth Within is Swedish-born choreographer Pontus Lidberg’s new creation for camera. Lindberg has been developing the work over the last three years and it is finally taking shape this spring and summer. The project takes off from the worldwide success of his 2007 dance-film The Rain. The new creation features some of the world’s foremost artists in their fields, including Pulitzer Prize Award-winning composer David Lang, world-renowned cellist Maya Beiser, New York City Ballet principal dancer Wendy Whelan, and the choreographer and director Pontus Lidberg. The cast also includes stellar dancers from the US and Sweden: Gabrielle Lamb and Giovanni Bucchieri. The end result of the project will be a new dance piece created for the camera, as well as a chamber version of the same choreography for stage.
During the open rehearsal, in addition to screened excerpts of The Rain, sections of Labyrinth Within will be shown and rehearsed. A Q&A with the artists will follow the open rehearsal.
Monday, May 24th from 2 to 4 PM at Joyce SoHo: 155 Mercer Street between Houston and Prince. FREE with reservation: call 646.792.8377.
DOORKNOB COMPANY: We Are Here After
May 15, 2010
DOORKNOB COMPANY in We Are Here After, photo by Corrine Furman
DOORKNOB COMPANY transformed Joyce SoHo into a frigid winter land on Thursday evening in the world premiere of We Are Here After, choreographed by company co-founders Shannon Gillen and Elisabeth Motley. It was not a pristine, sparkling winter scene, but rather a harrowing, immersive environment in which Gillen and Motley, along with Janna Diamond and Xan Burley explored the mysterious afterlife and the fragility of fragmented memories. Shifting from past to future in a series of dream-like narratives and events, the four dancers and three on-stage musicians that make up Colonna Sonora created an intensely unpredictable journey into the unknown.
Xan Burley and Shannon Gillen in "We Are Here After", photo by Corrine Furman
Before the eerie, sometimes jarring sounds of Colonna Sonora flooded the snow-covered space, a dancer laid perfectly still, and later it became clear that another was buried under a large pile of snow. The former seemed to be sleeping, while the second dancer – who was discovered by the first – looked dead. Their colliding worlds raised questions about the connections between life and afterlife, while fluid time-travel throughout the work blurred the lines between the two. Indeed, the compelling dancers – all dressed in white street clothes – individually and collectively navigated through a constantly shifting world, always struggling to find their way. Just when it seemed like they were on the verge of settling into their environment, harsh noise or an abrupt change in the delicate lighting (designed by Amanda K. Ringger) signaled a shift as they encountered new terrain. All four dancers were deeply committed, but Shannon Gillen, in particular, was startlingly absorbed in her performance, pulling the audience right into her world and her experience.
Combative duets flowed into desperate digging amidst the snow; a white tree draped in white lights blinked slowly as Motley plugged and unplugged the cord; and the dancers and musicians swayed to White Christmas, which dissolved into choppy memories and awkward embraces as Motley gasped and made kissing sounds into a microphone. These and other vignettes – enriched by the musicians’ astute playing – revealed the fragile spaces between memory and the unknown, and the sense of loss and yearning and dizzying uncertainty while wandering through a cold, strange world.
New York City Ballet’s All-Robbins Program
May 10, 2010
Wendy Whelan and Gonzalo Garcia in "Opus 19/The Dreamer", photo by Paul Kolnik
After last week’s all-Balanchine program, New York City Ballet presented three of Jerome Robbins’s ballets on Friday evening. Opus 19/The Dreamer is one of his most breathtaking works – always a pleasure to watch and always something newly discovered. While 2 & 3 Part Inventions and I’m Old Fashioned have some charming moments, there are definitely stronger works in the company’s repertoire that could have been included in the all-Robbins program. Yet, what was most apparent throughout the performance was Robbins’s use of quirky gestures: sometimes they added delicate humor, while elsewhere they looked silly or – at least in 2010 – very dated.
This was the case in I’m Old Fashioned, a 1983 ballet that paid tribute to Fred Astaire. His duet with Rita Hayworth in the 1942 film You Were Never Lovelier was the inspiration for the work, which begins by showing the filmed dance on a large screen. Following a theme-and-variation format, three couples and a corps of eighteen swayed romantically to Morton Gould’s commissioned score, with occasional moments of old-fashioned, exaggerated humor in the duets and solos. Tyler Angle and Jenifer Ringer were divine in their intentionally clumsy duet, while Rebecca Krohn and Adrian Danchig-Waring were wonderfully elegant. Yet, Astaire and Hayworth’s duet was choreographically more interesting than Robbins’s interpretation, and the concluding section – in which the full cast danced in front of the filmed excerpt – was irritatingly sentimental.
New York City Ballet in I’m Old Fashioned, photo by Paul Kolnik
Fortunately, 2 & 3 Part Inventions offered a spare, simple exercise for eight dancers, all of whom made debuts in this performance. Like Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, this ballet is unfussy and straightforward. Set to Bach’s “Inventions and Sinfonias” for piano (played by Nancy McDill), the piece premiered in 1994 at the School of American Ballet’s annual workshop. On Friday night, the young cast’s clear formations and disciplined movement reflected the uncomplicated music, which ranges from meditative to cheerful. While remaining mostly academic and formal, there were also playful moments, such as when two women clasped hands and pretended to climb up and down a wall. Ashley Laracey filled her solo with lovely lyricism and expression, and Kathryn Morgan, Chase Finlay, and Daniel Applebaum made strong impressions throughout the work.
Wendy Whelan, photo by Josef Astor, Dance Magazine 2003
In Jorge Luis Borges’s short story The Circular Ruins, the narrator reveals the dreams of a man on a quest and at one point says, “In the dream of the man that dreamed, the dreamed one awoke.” This quotation came to mind during Opus 19/The Dreamer, an otherworldly, hauntingly beautiful 1979 work set to Prokofiev’s mysterious “Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major”. Gonzalo Garcia added a breezy quality to the opening section in which he remained distant from the community of twelve women and men that tiptoed behind him. As he dreamt up an ethereal being, Wendy Whelan mysteriously emerged from the swirl of blue-gray costumes, only to suddenly awake from her own sleep and dance with wild abandon as the dream’s momentum built. Garcia and Whelan were alternately mesmerized by one another and swept into each other’s worlds, seemingly longing for something just out of reach. After the whirlwind of gorgeous movement that suggested a restless dream, the ballet ended with remarkable tranquility as Whelan and Garcia rested their heads in the other’s palms. Borges’s story concludes, “He understood that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him.” This was true in Robbins’s timeless work, as well, for both seemed to be the dreamers.
Jesse Zaritt’s “Binding”
May 7, 2010
Jesse Zaritt in "Binding"
On Wednesday evening at PS 122, the 7th annual soloNOVA Arts Festival opened with Binding, a solo performance conceived and performed by Jesse Zaritt and directed by Basmat Hazan. Zaritt is an arresting dancer who most recently performed in Faye Driscoll’s There is so much mad in me at Dance Theater Workshop, and spent five years as a member of Shen Wei Dance Arts. In his own work, shown in the intimate downstairs theater at PS 122, Zaritt took the audience on a quest for love and connection. It was a lonely journey, and often a mysterious one filled with quiet pauses and violent repression.
Zaritt’s gaze continuously shifted between an internal focus and an outward acknowledgment of the audience as he moved fluidly across the space, often rising and falling to the floor with ease. The set design (by Daniel Zimmerman) of a blinking light, a web of white mesh screens featuring murky projections, and a ramp with a lawn-chair lattice suggested a cross between a bedroom and an otherworldly escape. Interactions with the surroundings were a key part of Zaritt’s performance as he crawled, leaped, and clung to the ramp throughout the work. But a force greater than himself – perhaps his own demons – took control of Zaritt in the form of a black fabric cut-out of a body. After dancing tentatively with it, he curled the fabric into a ball and pounded it into the floor. Later, he stretched his white shirt tightly over his head to create an ominous mask. He flailed about, either attempting to break free or giving in to the repression.
Binding never dug below the surface of the demon’s oppressive qualities, and the result was an ongoing exploration that never led to a realization – at least not for the audience. Zaritt is a gorgeous dancer with a striking presence. His movement was rich, but the content was rather thin.
Binding will be performed again on May 7th, 12th, and 15th at 9:15 PM, and on May 8th at 4:15 PM at PS 122 – 150 First Avenue at 9th Street. Ticket information for this and all of the soloNOVA Arts Festival performances is available online or by calling 212.352.3101.
