Weekend Review: Kyle Abraham & Gallim Dance
December 14, 2011
Kyle Abraham's "Live! The Realest MC", photo by Paula Court
Choreography from two young, emerging choreographers – Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion and Andrea Miller/Gallim Dance - was on display over the weekend, and both offered compelling, deeply personal works.
At the Kitchen, Kyle Abraham’s Live! The Realest MC was a coming-out story inspired by the tale of Pinocchio and the tragic death in 2010 of Tyler Clementi, a victim of bullying. As a black, gay man immersed in the hip-hop community, Abraham’s journey is a quest for acceptance. Although a cast of six supports Abraham, he is clearly the star. Wearing a gold sequined shirt, he rises from the floor in a self-conscious, awkward solo of spasms, jerkiness, and tension. Later, set against a film of a dusty sidewalk in an urban neighborhood, Abraham’s movement shifts fluidly – not to mention brilliantly – from anger and anxiousness to a place of calm.
The other dancers are strong performers, but the choreography for them lacks the entrancing quality of Abraham’s solos. And the work’s structure – solo, ensemble, solo, ensemble – is frustrating. A trio for Abraham, Chalvar Monteiro, and Maleek Malaki Washington, however, is intriguing, suggesting how forced masculinity and femininity can be. Yet the most powerful part of the piece was a gripping monologue for Abraham, in which he plays both the victim and the attacker. “He hit me…they held me down!” he repeatedly shouts while sobbing with shaking arms. It was startling and painful to watch after some of the piece’s funnier moments that addressed gender roles in hip-hop. In the end, Abraham reaches acceptance on his own terms, removing a black jacket to once again reveal a shirt of sequins.
Arika Yamada rehearsing Andrea Miller's "Mama Call", photo by Emily Terndrup
At the JCC in Manhattan, Gallim Dance, led by artistic director and choreographer Andrea Miller, presented two works that marked the culmination of the company’s year-long residency at the JCC. Seven Circles, a work in progress that will be developed into a full-length piece at the Joyce in 2012, was a refreshing addition to the company’s repertoire. It tackled intimacy, limitations, and vulnerabilities – themes explored in some of Miller’s previous works, but this new piece did so in a more experimental and improvisational vein. The dancers move slowly and gawkily against the stage’s back wall, entangle with one another, and perhaps test to what extent they can trust one another. Later, Francesca Romo and Troy Ogilvie shout gibberish without understanding each other.
In Mama Call, Miller reworked excerpts from previous repertoire to examine the idea of home. A community comes together and dissolves, a couple yearns for something out of reach, and an individual emerges from a processional march (inspired by the processionals that Miller has witnessed in Spain, as explained in a post-performance Q&A), reborn and renewed. All of these vignettes demonstrate the rawness and emotionally charged physicality of Gallim, along with the uniqueness of each of the company’s skilled movers.
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Laura Peterson’s “Wooden” at HERE
November 8, 2011
Edward Rice, Laura Peterson, and Janna Diamond in "Wooden", photo by Steven Schreiber
There is something irresistibly appealing about the idea of dancing out of doors. For a dancer, sinking your feet into moist soil or feeling sand between your toes is a refreshing change from the smooth surface of a dance studio’s flooring. So with eagerness I headed to HERE last Friday to see Laura Peterson’s Wooden, a dance installation that cycles through three environments inspired by natural architecture. The visually stunning set, which included a bed of growing grass, elegant pieces of driftwood suspended from the low ceiling, and wooden benches that served as seating, transformed HERE into a verdant space. It was an environment deserving of daring movement that would respond and react to its surroundings.
Sadly, what filled the space wasn’t nearly as inspiring as the space itself. In Part 1: Ground, three women and one man in simple blue and gray costumes (by Candice Thompson) created circular patterns as they dashed back and forth across the grass. Set to Soichiro Migita’s score, which sounded like a mixture of wind and sand, the dancers’ movement across the grass went on for what felt like an eternity. With no real precision or focal point, it was exhausting to watch, and perhaps even more exhausting to perform: their bodies were covered in sweat and blades of grass.
Kate Martel, Janna Diamond, Laura Peterson in "Wooden", photo by Steven Schreiber
After the space was reconfigured during intermission, the audience sat on benches placed over the grass while the dancers performed on solid ground in Part 2: Trees. Prickly, sharp twitches of the body and static noise replaced the lushness of Ground, and evoked a dry, desert atmosphere. Yet edgy movement isn’t so believable when the dancers don’t throw themselves into it with full force. The section was frustratingly light – not nearly as powerful as it could be, even with driftwood dangerously rotating inches from the dancers as they hovered beneath it on the ground.
While the program notes indicated that Part 3: Corridor was a return to the first environment, it felt like an extension of the second section. Hazy and unfocused, it again left me itching for something stronger, something more immersive. That never happened, but if you have to be stuck indoors, at least real grass and trees can make it feel like you’re miles away.
Wooden continues through November 12th at HERE: 145 Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. Tickets are $20.
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I Believe in Forsythe’s “Outer Space”
October 28, 2011
William Forsythe's "I don't believe in outer space", photo by Dominik Mentzos
I’m still processing William Forsythe’s I don’t believe in outer space, which opened at BAM on Wednesday evening. For the first twenty minutes or so, I worried that it was going to be a repeat of Decreation, which I reviewed in 2009. That work was irritating, but the harsh and jarring qualities of the piece were ultimately a commentary on how we communicate with one another. And so with outer space, it initially felt and looked quite similar, with exaggerated voices, chaotic interactions, and disorienting sounds. But as the piece progressed and mixed hilarious use of lyrics from Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” with profound reflections on mortality, I was deeply moved. And how satisfying to watch as the various threads from the work came together and cohered. Just when it ended – after a poignant scene in which the audience heard Dana Caspersen’s natural voice (as opposed to her exaggerated ‘character’ voices earlier in the work) – I wasn’t quite ready to let go, and clung to the final moments of outer space for as long as I could. Forsythe’s work has always challenged me, and has even bothered me at times. Outer space was no exception. But it struck a chord more so than previous Forsythe works that I’ve seen, perhaps because it so smartly – albeit still messily – blended humor with sadness.
A final thought: The New York Times review says that the characters we see are “freaks”, possibly meant to be laughed at, and that Forsythe creates a “hellish anti-world”. Freaks? No, I’m certain that the characters we see are us. We laugh because we recognize ourselves in these characters. And Forsythe’s “hellish anti-world”? That’s our world.
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Ballet Maribor’s Radio(head) and Juliet
October 23, 2011
Edward Clug's "Radio and Juliet", photo courtesy of 6-Prime
Take Shakespeare’s tragic love story, add music by the influential band Radiohead and some slick choreography, and what do you get? Radio and Juliet, choreographer Edward Clug’s 2006 ballet for the Romanian company Ballet Maribor. Performed on Friday and Saturday at NYU’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, the ballet drew dance and Radiohead fans alike, eager to see what would happen when Shakespeare is added to the mix.
Clug is both brave and foolish for marrying the two. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has been choreographed so many times that to add another version to the books – one that the choreographer thinks will be unique – is ambitious. And Radiohead is so universally appreciated (or perhaps detested, but I fall into the former category) on its own that it’s difficult to imagine the band’s music paired with the world’s best-known love story. Can the work of two distinct, global, and expressive artists not only compliment one another but also enrich each other? The answer in this case is overwhelmingly no. Radio and Juliet felt gimmicky: people love the tale of star-crossed lovers, and they love Radiohead. So they’ll love the two together, or at least, fill up a theater, right?
There are a few distinguishing factors in this version. The story begins with Juliet awakening to find Romeo dead beside her, and evolves in a flashback. The cast of seven includes one woman and six men, all of whom seem to represent masculinity more so than any particular character in Shakespeare’s play. And Juliet’s poison – both comical and strange – is a lemon, whose juice drips down her neck and burns her tongue. Initially, the ballet barely resembles Romeo and Juliet, but there are some familiar moments staged from the story, such as the violent death of Mercutio to Radiohead’s Sit Down. Stand Up, and the meeting of Romeo and Juliet at the masquerade ball, in which the men wear hospital masks.
Although the intention was to tell the story from Juliet’s perspective, most of the ballet focuses on the men who, while wearing black pants and open jackets, assert themselves in disconnected, aggressive, and often mechanical strings of movement. Juliet, in a corset and ballet slippers, moves with delicacy, rarely appearing alone but rather in the company of men. There is little insight into Juliet’s experience, besides the fact that clashing families and warring men overshadowed her life and conflicted with her desires, which we already know from the play.
Edward Clug's "Radio and Juliet", photo courtesy of 6-Prime
At its worst, the ballet relies too heavily on approximately ten Radiohead tracks for emotional expression and lets the characters rush through their angular, William Forsythe-influenced movement without any feeling at all. Shouldn’t such angst-ridden characters pause and reflect on their circumstances rather than depend on propulsive music – and often gut-wrenching lyrics – for expression? It was irritating to see the first pas de deux for Romeo and Juliet set to How to Disappear Completely, in which Thom Yorke sings, “In a little while, I’ll be gone, the moment’s already passed.” The music shouldn’t be telling the story, but rather deepening it.
Ending abruptly, it seemed like Clug either ran out of choreography or couldn’t find an appropriate Radiohead track for the conclusion. But the suddenness spoke volumes about the mismatched influences in Radio and Juliet. Together, Radiohead and Shakespeare were limiting, and the production suffered because of it. Pulling inspiration from many threads is, in theory, a good idea. But when tied all together without first determining how they align and augment one another, the outcome is flawed.
A Memoir by NYCB Dancer Jock Soto
October 2, 2011
I just finished reading Every Step You Take, the new memoir by former New York City Ballet principal dancer Jock Soto, which goes on sale to the public on October 4th. Throughout the 90s, Jock was one of my favorite dancers to watch on stage at NYCB, and his partnership with Heather Watts – and later with Wendy Whelan – was spectacular. So I’ve enjoyed reading the “back story” in Soto’s new memoir, which ties together his childhood growing up on a Navajo reservation in Arizona (he is half Navajo, half Puerto Rican), his early years scraping by in New York City, and his personal and professional relationships that shaped and influenced his career as a dancer.
For dancers and dance fans, the book offers insights into the creative process and struggles he faced as a dancer, including bad reviews from critics, injuries, being a perfectionist, or difficulty in the rehearsal process. For non-dancers, Soto reveals many personal challenges: being the gay son of a macho father, choosing to leave the reservation (and his entire family) to try and make it in New York, and how he grappled with retirement from performing at age 40, in 2005, and thought about life after NYCB. In addition to photos from his professional and personal life, each chapter of the memoir includes a related recipe that marked a pivotal moment in Soto’s story (he is passionate about food, and co-authored a cookbook with NYCB dancer Heather Watts in 1998). The recipes cover a lot of territory and reflect his surroundings, growth, and the people that impacted his life: the first is for “Mama Jo’s pork chops” with poblano peppers (Soto’s mother was a powerful influence in his life, and not just because of her cooking), later is the “accidental adolescent’s grown-up version of Hamburger Helper”, and later, a bagel and caviar sandwich inspired by George Balanchine’s favorite – an English muffin with lots of sweet butter and black caviar.
Jock Soto, photo by Luis Fuentes
Soto’s writing is honest, straightforward, and full of reflection and contemplation. Coming to terms with his upbringing, his escape from his childhood to pursue his career, and his professional life after performing, Soto clearly has embraced his many identities. He writes, “I can now say with complete confidence that I am one very happy, very lucky Navarican-Puertojo-desert-born-New-York-bred-gay-recently-engaged-part-time-cook-fledgling-choreographer-proud-first-time-home-owner-recently-published-author-retired-dancer-ballet-teacher.”
Every Step You Take, by Jock Soto, goes on sale October 4th.
