One Night Stands
Summerfest
July 15-16
ODC Theater
reviewed by Rita Felciano
Summerfest’s
two one-night stands (July 15 and 16) were designed
to give less experienced choreographers an opportunity
to showcase work. A new wrinkle this year, the idea
was that these artists would attract a limited audience,
but one made up of the truly curious. Also, since there
never seems to be a shortage of fresh voices clamoring
to be heard, the organizers could present twice as many
artists as would otherwise have been possible. Each
evening was to feature six choreographers, primarily
in premieres, but since one of them—fortunately one
of the better ones, Erica Rebollar
[pictured at right]—brought two works, and one choreographer
dropped out, the field was left to ten relatively untried
dance makers.
While it was gratifying to see promising work by unknown
choreographers, and some accomplished pieces by artists
who are getting a handle on the task of shaping material,
a few works were so poor that one wondered how they
could possibly have been sponsored by Summerfest. Artists
are chosen on the basis of videotapes; how could there
have been such a discrepancy between what must at least
have looked promising on tape and what was seen on stage?
The revelation of these two evenings came from the Spanish-born
but American-trained Rebollar. An exquisite dancer with
the softest of descents and rebounds, an ability to
shift weight and direction with great precision, and
a knack for creating tightly constructed pieces, Hunter/Hunted
and Hope Code took advantage of a varied training
which must have included Asian as well as more conventional
Western styles in addition, probably, to martial arts
and yoga. The deep lunges with one leg straight out
to the side, the open body postures and the filigreed
hands looked as though they stepped out of a traditional
Asian dance drama. Yet the speed, the force of attack,
and the complex way of layering material were assertively
of today. In Hunter/Hunted, set to a percussive
score by David Karagianis, Rebollar deftly shifted back
and forth between embodying the hunter and her prey.
She gradually tightened the noose until at the end the
two merged, as her fingers clenched the imaginary mirror—an
image with which the piece had opened.
Hope
Code, to Gaelic music and sound design by Charlie
Compagnia, was but slightly less interesting, simply
because Rebollar used her wide-ranging vocabulary in
a somewhat similar fashion. In both works she expanded
from a circumscribed area into a wider space only to
return to it; both pieces also opened and closed with
a singular image—the hand clenching mirror, for the
first; arms, stretched up into a source of light, for
the second. It will be fascinating to see where this
talented artist takes her choreography which at this
point is still tightly connected to her own physical
training.
Erin Mei-Ling Stuart premiered an attractive
ensemble work for five dancers, Type/Set, which
used a Christopher Keyes click-clack score based on
the sound of typewriters. Stuart last year presented
her first full-evening program, and a number of those
pieces appeared to have fed into this latest endeavor.
Stuart works with a sly sense of humor; it’s not quite
confrontational, but has a clear edge to it. She also
seems to have an ongoing fascination with stopping flow,
freezing her dancers momentarily as if they're caught
by a strobe light. Or she poses them like fashion models
on runways. It gives her dancers an out-front, very
public quality.
Determinately multi-focused and non-narrative in Type,
she set her dancers loose into individual trajectories
which may or may not intersect. When the dancers did
meet, the encounters were almost accidental, except
you realized Stuart’s shaping hand in setting up a very
tall dancer (the gorgeous Ann Berman) against a tiny
one, or in a circle that seemed to materialize out of
nowhere. And just when all that frantic activity appeareds
to be headed toward a dead end, Stuart brought back
a motif of folding hands, or slowed everyone down into
simple walking patterns, or had them run a finger up
their legs as if lifting a skirt. Its ability to fill
the stage with constantly pulsating action with only
five dancers was not the least of Type’s attractive
traits.
Christy
Funsch’s Excitation Modes, which she premiered
last year at Dance Mission Theater, is a fleet, loosely
constructed affair that afforded the additional pleasure
of hearing live music by the San Francisco Guitar Quartet.
The musicians, seated at the four corners of the stage,
created an aural ambience which swelled and contracted
and in which music and dance took turns in the spotlight.
This was fragile choreography which started introspectively,
a quartet of dancers entering with waves of unison port
de bras until one broke off to pursue an individual
path. When these somnolent creatures circled one of
their own, the latter remained quite indifferent to
their presence. Some sections were performed in silence;
the dancers appeared to listen to something inside themselves.
They were distant from each even when they finally paired
off into duets. The choreography was filled with a sense
of giving in, of letting go, of not pushing. At the
end the tiny Funsch, with her colleagues moving around
her, seemed caught in a world not even she quite recognized.
Kegan Marling’s rowdy nine dancer Tails
was the most outré of this eclectic collection
of Summerfest premieres. Marling, who first made an
impression in this year’s Bare Bones concert
in a duet choreographed by Jane Schnorrenberg, is a
stunning dancer. Evidently he is also something of a
would-be shock-the-audience choreographer, except that
he delivers his “deviant’s” choreography—as he
likes to refer to himself—with such broad strokes
that he blunts its impact. Costuming the dancers in
black lace/red underwear parodies of formal dress, Marling
sent them into tango’s dark underbelly, exploring its
sado-masochistic overtones. Though the choreography
is rough, even kinky—lots of yanking, throwing, and
rolling on the floor—every once in a while you came
up for a gulp of air in the shape of some straight forward
tango dancing. Water sounds were ingeniously mixed with
Oliver Nco’s “Messages from Orion, Part 1.” Despite
its abundant energy and considerable spunk, Tails
ultimately felt dull. It needs more of an edge.
Brittany Brown’s duet Recollection,
unfortunately danced in dowdy blue flower dresses with
inserted panels, recalled Aristophanes' idea that love
is the result of a single being having been split into
two; the two halves are for ever searching for each
other. Brown partnered Emma Stewart in a series of catch
and escape maneuvers in which Brown frequently ended
reaching into the void. At one point Stewart raced off
stage only to return to leap into Brown’s arms. The
piece was quite ingenious in the way it explored connectedness
through cantilevered balances, interlocking body parts,
dynamic sculptural formations and a wonderful sense
of give and take between the two partners.
Brief Couplets' In Violent Times
showed its dead pan choreographer Susan Donham torn
between a tall fierce Jennifer Patrick and a slouchy,
folded in on herself Charlotte Mayang. Quietly amusing,
this simple clearly designed work was not without poignancy.
Also programmed were works by Carmen Carnes
Buemann, Sing Me Home/Sick Blues;
Abigail Hosein’s septet I dreamed
of silver birds, Marisa Pugliano’s
seven and a half and Nora Chipaumire’s
Kaffir.
copyright 2003 by Rita Felciano
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