Intentions
and Integrity
The DC Contemporary Ballet Festival
Takoma Theatre
Washington, DC
Friday, May 21, 2004
by
George Jackson
copyright 2004 by George Jackson
published 24 May 2004
Discovering
a new house for dance doesn't happen every day, especially when the new
turns out to be historic as well as practical. The Takoma Theatre is a
two-story structure of yellow brick, with Grecian temple trimmings outside
and in the lobby. It dates from 1922/3 and for many years served as a
movie palace, a modest one in terms of size but a leader in featuring
talkies. Today, it stands adept to dance productions of a small to a medium
scale. The stage is wide and just deep enough. Sight lines are excellent,
though the lighting cues could have been more subtle. Sound, both live
and recorded, was ample. Located in the far north of town, the theater
is eminently accessible, having its own adjacent parking lot and being
a few steps from Metro's Takoma Station on the Red Line. Congratulations
to the festival's artistic director, Robert Bettmann, and its technical
director, Charles Rhynes, for bringing dance into an unfamiliar yet hospitable
space!
Bettmann, in his program essay, dodges definitions. Audiences, though,
want to know whether they'll recognize anything on stage as "ballet"—dancing
bodies that display the textbook aspects of line, turn out and articulation
taught in ballet class. To these eyes, the program's opening and closing
pieces were balletic, but not the 9 dances in between.
Three women wearing toe shoes and clad in gauzy black danced the opener.
They used their pointes conventionally, to balance and reach upward, but
they also crouched low like caryatids bearing great burdens and one woman
in particular sank to the floor to writhe. A hand to the brow in arabesque,
as if experiencing a headache, seemed a signature pose for this trio,
these three Sorrows, of Casey Lynn Maliszewski's Because Regret is
for Forever. Exposition of the theme to a droning rendition of a
well known Albinoni adagio was somewhat schematic.
The other ballet, the closer, was a meticulously crafted male solo—Monologue
of Narek. There was no need to know Narek's story to recognize him
as a heroic figure who encounters challenge and emerges both victorious
and wise. Roudolf Kharatian's choreography used a broad pallet of classical
bravura steps to show how the hero is tested. Flattened stances lent an
Oriemtal sensuality, and contemplative poses a mythic aura. The music,
by Terteryan, suggested nature's forces and might have been played on
ram's horns and wind gongs. Washington Ballet's Jonathan Jordan danced
the technically difficult passages with fine, swift clarity. However,
to fully show the hero's inner life, he needs to relax a little and open
his true center.
Male solos abounded on this program. In Prelude / Frustration in a
Martini, to Bach, Vincent E. Thomas used his angular anatomy and
the color contrast between an ethereal white shirt and earthy skin tones
to create a cubist portrait of a sinfully unsatisfied being. Jason Hartley
showed off his athletic prowess in Nocturne Monologue and Underneath,
pieces familiar from previous showings. There is little meaningful connection
between Hartley's favorite moves—crawls, lunges. dives, flips—other
than that he does them well, very well. Underneath has a walk-on
for his non-dancer wife, Carissa, in which she seemed more comfortable
now than last month at the work's Washington Ballet premier.
Heather Pultz's three studies—the women's trio Nike's Dream,
and the female solos Mobile and The Gaze—showed
her drive for movement continuity. I wish she had stopped a while here
and there to explore some of the tensions her movement generated. Pultz's
costume designer, Masha Freyblim, came up with some unusual off-colors
but had the habit of adding loose cloth trimmings that distracted from
her strongly shaped gowns and from the choreography.
Gesel Mason's Black Angel had an excess of ingredients—spoken
text, video, music, assorted dance movement, a crowd of walkers. What
stood out was Ari Frankel's opening text, a late 20th Century urban ghetto
version of Milton's Lucifer complaining to God. Too few ingredients for
its duration were in Rafael Perdomo's Let My Soul Soar, a belly
dance with a native American twist for a couple that once in a while indulges
in strained lifts.
There was live music by Osman Kivrak for To Be Good To Me, a
domestic duo that in a more loosely balletic vein resembled the late Clark
Tippet's Some Assembly Required. Two violinists, Kivrak and Teri
Lazar, stood on stage, playing away while Robert Bettman and his partner/collaborator,
Stacey Price, danced out their squabbles and then went separate yet nearly
identical ways.
The many new choreographers on the program faced similar problems. How
to choose a dance vocabulary that has consistency, yet doesn't become
boring. What role should music play? Few of these dance makers entered
into conversation with their composers. There is, though, just one way
to learn, and that is to keep trying.
Photo: Gesel
Mason.
Originally
published:
www.danceviewtimes.com
Volume 2, Number 19
May 24, 2004
©
2004 George
Jackson
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Clare
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George Jackson
Jean Battey Lewis
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Tehreema Mitha
Alexandra Tomalonis (Editor)
Lisa Traiger
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