New!
"Oh, Brad. They're dancing in the galleries!"
Liz
Lerman Dance Exchange
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
October 25 2003
By
Lisa Traiger
Copyright ©2003 by Lisa Traiger
"Oh, Brad! They're dancing in the galleries!" And why shouldn't they? Dance, that is. In the galleries. In the streets. On stages. Off stages. Anywhere there's a space for people to gather and move, to create a community of body and spirit, there should be room for dance. That's what I've learned from Liz Lerman.
Saturday
one of Washington's august spaces for contemporary art, the Hirshhorn
Museum and Sculpture Garden, opened its doors and its galleries for Lerman's
Dance Exchange to dance in, to explore the art and the art spaces. And,
oh my, what an hour it was.
read
article
BORIS WILLIS CAN MOVE
Borris
Willis Moves
(Presented by Dance Place and The John F. Kennedy Center for the
Performing Arts)
Dance Place
Washington, DC
October 25-26, 2003
By Mary Tisa
Copyright © 2003
Mary Tisa
Boris
Willis is an intensely physical artist. His work explores physical relationships,
his unique movement vocabulary pushes the limits of the human body, and
his duets are held together by a compelling physical attraction that is
especially effective when he dances with founding member Cynthia McLaughlin.
While Willis’s physical power is what distinguishes him as a performer,
his young company is not yet at his level. At times, underneath the flying
foot work and the daring contact improv freezes, a distracting lack of
cohesion mars the flow of the pieces and the connections between the dancers.
At present, the company's strength is that it brings a much needed voice
of immediacy to contemporary issues of the world and matters of the human
heart.
This time
out, the program consisted mainly of duets and trios, a safe choice for
Willis at this stage of his company's development, perhaps, but I wanted
to see his whole company fill Dance Place's tiny space with his trademark
movement. His dancers, four women, have a certain angular, locked quality
to their movement that keeps them from emulating Willis’s mesmerizing
juxtaposition of weightless release and tight athletic power. These young
dancers also lack the haunting emotionality that is key to providing an
internal context to the difficult issues Willis explores in his work.
However, they brought a precise execution of Willis’s faster and
quirkier choreography, exhibited in the lighthearted and compositionally
complex Soy Chai Latte.
read review
What's On This Week?
November
6-7:
Dana Tai Soon Burgess & Company: Tracings
6-Nov-2003 at 7:30
7-Nov-2003 at 7:30
In honor of the 100th anniversary of the Korean Immigration to America,
Dana Tai Soon Burgess & Company premieres its new evening length work,
Tracings, in which Burgess’s personal heritage is expressed through
his trademark style of fluid line and unique fusion of movement. Props
as well as visual projections of Burgess’s family are a used to
examine the meaning journey has not only historically but in contemporary
consciousness as well. 7:30
Terrace Theater
Kennedy Center
2700 F Street, NW: 202-467-4600
November
7:
Native Trails: An Evening of Native American Song & Dance
Experience an evening that features the “fast-paced, visually extraordinary”
music and dance of America’s native tribes as well as a pre-performance
discussion at 7 pm with Dr. Carolina Robertson, Professor of Ethnomusicology.
8 p.m.
Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
University of Maryland
301-405-2787
November
7:
Ndere Troupe
The Ndere Troupe expresses the richness of their native Uganda in a culturally
aware evening of music and dance. 6 p.m.
Millennium Stage
Kennedy Center
2700 F Street, NW: 202-467-4600
November
8-9:
Nejla Y. Yatkin & Guests
Nejla Y. Yatkin presents a program of new choreography that
is rich in its fusion of live music, dance, text, and video. This interesting
aesthetic which the New York Times has rendered somewhere “between
narration and abstraction” will also include a reconstruction of
Jose Limon’s Chaconne.
8-Nov-2003 at 8 pm
9-Nov-2003 at 4 pm
Dance Place
3225 Eighth Street, NE: 202-269-1600
November
8-9:
True to Form
This important performance features the next generation of artistic
voices, as six local choreographers come together to form a program rich
in styles ranging from Brazilian jazz to modern ballet. Stefan Sittig,
Michele Morris, Kimberly Tapper, Ann Behrends, Emily Crews, and Mikael
Manoukian premiere six works in a two night run that promises to be diverse
in style and hopefully refreshing to the eye.
8-Nov-2003 at 8 pm
9-Nov-2003 at 7 pm
The Jack Guidone Theater
Joy of Motion
5207 Wisconsin Ave, NW: 202-362-3042
November
9:
Black Burlesque
This evening of music and dance collaboration brings the richness of African
culture alive. In addition, further learning is available at a post show
question and answer session. 7:30 p.m.
Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
University of Maryland
301-405-2787
November
9:
Krasnoyarsk National Dance Company of Siberia
This culturally specific performance includes traditional Siberian costumes
as well as native village dances. 4 p.m.
Center for the Arts
George Mason University
703-218-6500
—Mary Tisa
|
|
|