Fresh
Tracks
Fresh
Tracks
choreography by Jeremy Laverdure, Daniel Linehan, Felicia Ballos, Jonah
Bokaer, Yuka & Yoko, Malinda Allen
Dance Theater Workshop
New York
November 26 & 27, 2004
by
Nancy Dalva
copyright
© 2004 by Nancy Dalva
"Fresh Tracks," says the organization web site, is "Dance
Theater Workshop's longest-running series of new dance and performance.
Featuring works by emerging choreographers and performance artists selected
through open auditions... the six artists selected possess unusual potential
and striking imagination."
This is a lot to live up to, and I am not really sure that I wish to be
struck by someone's imagination. (Novelty is over-rated.) But what this
series indisputably offers is a chance to see several choreographers in
one night, catching up on someone whose work you might have seen before,
and covering a bit of the waterfront you have left untrammeled. On this
bill, there seemed to be some sort of cultural agenda, so that you didn't
so much get a whiff of the zeitgeist as a contrived slice of it. A politically
motivated solo (Malinda Allen). A drama-tinged narrative duet (Jeremy
Laverdure). A character portrayal (Felicia Ballos). A silky Butoh meets
Yoga item (Yuko and Yoko). A quirky self-portrait (Daniel Linehan). And
someone with "an appetite for indeterminacy," and an interest
in technology.
This last would be Jonah Bokaer, the only choreographer whose work I
had seen and heard about before (at Danspace at St. Marks, at a DanceForms
computer workshop at DTW, and with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company,
of which he is currently a member). I went to see what he would do here,
and I was not disappointed. His solo, called "RSVP," transpired
as a series of phrases he performed in diagonals of light, no light, and
shifting light, so that how much you saw of any given segment seemed random.
(Hello, "Winterbranch," that signal Cunningham dance where Robert
Rauschenberg slashed the night with blinding lights!) In addition, the
score, a sound installation by Bokaer engineered by Loren Kyoshi Dempster,
felt random, as it involved people playing music on their cell phones
from throughout the audience. (Hello, second generation! Dempster is a
superb cellist, not that that was called on here, whose father, the composer
Stuart Dempster, has worked with Cunningham.)
What a pleasure to see not the anxiety of influence, but the blessing
of influence. Bokaer has precision, clarity, and command. And of course
technique, always a boon to the viewer as well as the performer. The structure
of his brief piece was clear, yet complex—Forsythian in its tendency
towards linguistics, Merceian in its tendency towards choreography, and
its potential for complexity.(Later, I found myself wondering what it
would look like with more dancers.) It only fell apart at the very end,
when Bokaer just stopped dancing, rather vaguely, and spoke into a cell
phone—a gimmick he didn't really need. But he is young, and has
plenty of time to make endings.
An
appetite for indeterminacy turned out to be helpful all around, as two
of the other pieces on the bill weren't seen as intended. In any event
involving more—or-less neophytes—including any whose goals
might seem to me dubious—I look for choreography that fulfills the
maker's intentions, a gap between desire and execution being the hallmark
of the amateur. In other words, no matter what something is and whether
it is worth doing, I hope it is done well. However, two of dances night—the
third and the fifth—were impossible to appreciate on their own terms.
On opening night. After a lengthy pause, during which the audience grew
restive, Felicia Ballos gamely, and without announcement, performed her
"Fragile Lodging" without a video component which (I was told
by a publicist) was integral to the piece. As it was, she seemed to be
portraying a little girl or adolescent (gum chewing and attitudinous,
so perhaps the latter) teetering about playing grownup. Her tiptoed, lurching
progress towards a pair of pumps set downstage hinted at a narrative,
but it was impossible to tell more than that she is a plastic mover with
an interest in role play. Her opening, which involved sudden exits and
entrances with quick backstage cross-overs, was mysterious. One assumes
the video component would have set the scene.
Later, "Yuka and Yoko" performed despite an injury to the
former. They are a beautiful elegant, gold-clad duo who interestingly
combine elements of East and West, claiming Yoshiko Chuma as a mentor.
Only after the conclusion of "Shaa kHa," a duet with a serene
yet fluctuating dynamic—stillness and motion; repose and force—could
the audience see Yuka Kikuchi's injured ankle, whose bindings she had
masked with her long skirt. Until she was helped up by Yoko Sugimoto (by
default the main mover) and hopped offstage, it appeared that she performed
seated and facing upstage by intent. That the dance was "reconceived,"
as the program put it, so successfully was a credit to the choreographers,
but it would have been interesting to see what they really had in mind
in the first place.
You might have thought Jeremy Laverdure was also operating under unintended
circumstances, because at the beginning of his duet with Tracy Dickson,
who is a woman, called "Esperanto," he announced that it was
the piece was originally intended for a man, and that we should imagine
her as such. He also requested that we imagine a different size stage
(smaller, with a slice of visible space really a wing), an ornate red
curtain, and added that we could, if we liked, also pretend that he was
someone else. This last remark certainly was a clue that the announcement
was a high-concept ruse, but I think you could have told from the material
itself, suited as it was to the performers and their respective strengths.
It was a very feminine-masculine affair, and the choreographer's preface
acted as a distancing device. Throughout, as, frequently to RKO Pictures
Orchestra musical swells, they romanced each other, one wondered about
their dynamic. If this were two men, you thought, would one be subjugating
the other? Would one be perhaps unduly dominant? What do we usually take
for granted in a duet like this, and should we?
Malinda
Allen, too, wanted us to think, but her text was integrated throughout
her piece—rather like the way Tricia Brown uses text and movement
in her "Accumulation With Talking." That is, the text—which
here was about the viruses, as themselves and as metaphor—and the
dance occupied the same space, but did not rely on one another. One was
reminded, too, of Neil Greenberg, who has mined this kind of material
with such graceful consequence, and also uses projections of words. (Here,
they were on the floor.) Allen is a very strong dancer, and compelling
to look at, but not much in the way of a choreographer. With material
like this—her own ferocity, her flexibility, her balance, her uncanny
extensions and articulate ankles, and her message—that doesn't seem
to much matter.
The other soloist on the program, Daniel Linehan, mines his body for material,
rolling on the floor, stopping partway through somersaults, and so forth,
but edits himself keenly. He is slight, pale, and frenetic, and accompanies
himself with his own breathing, mewing, and such, in a little orgy of
self-revelation that, because it is strict, is never cloying. His was
the oddest dance on the program, the one most likely to attain cult status
should the choreographer, in fifty years, find himself the father of a
modern dance company. Who knows?
Meanwhile, what I really want to see on a program like this is a choreographer
whose work I want to see again. That I did, and more than one, and I'll
be back.
Photos:
First: Felicia Ballos in her "Fragile Lodging" Photo
by: Julieta Cervantes
Second: Allen Body Group, Malinda Allen in "Antigen" Photo
by: Julieta Cervantes
Volume
2, No. 46
December 6, 2004
www.danceviewtimes.com
Copyright
©2004 by Nancy Dalva
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Dale Brauner
Mary Cargill
Christopher Correa
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Nancy Dalva
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Jane Simpson
Alexandra Tomalonis (Editor)
Lisa Traiger
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