{"id":4071,"date":"2012-02-28T06:00:26","date_gmt":"2012-02-28T10:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=4071"},"modified":"2012-03-18T15:49:16","modified_gmt":"2012-03-18T19:49:16","slug":"4071","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=4071","title":{"rendered":"Crystal Pite’s Futuristic Choreography"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rachel Straus<\/p>\n

Seeing The Matrix<\/em> in 1999 made my heart sink. It wasn\u2019t Keanu Reeves\u2019s acting that depressed me; it was the advances in live action animation. In the final battle scene, Reeves and Hugo Weaving engage in mortal combat. With millisecond timing, they evade each other\u2019s rocket-force punches by bending their head to their feet (like a slinky) and by levitating into the air (like a twister). How, I thought, can dance compete with this technological display of bodily virtuosity?<\/p>\n

Then, ten years later, I saw Crystal Pite\u2019s Dark Matters<\/em>. Her choreography augured a new movement style, a Matrix<\/em>-esque sense of physical wonder. On January 24 at Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC), Pite\u2019s choreography enthralled the audience. At the end of The You Show<\/em>, made in 2010 with her company\u00a0Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM<\/a>, Pite and her eight dancers received a standing ovation.<\/p>\n

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Photo by Chris Randle<\/p><\/div>\n

Pite\u2019s style is not lyrically based (like Isadora Duncan), predicated on the balletic idiom (as with George Balanchine), psychologically motivated (in the case of Martha Graham) or in rebellion against concert tradition (Judson Dance Theatre). Its subject is the futuristic body\u2014that\u2019s faster and more intricate than machines. In the beginning of The You Show<\/em>, Peter Chu falls backward in slow motion onto the floor; he folds like an accordion. Later Cindy Salgado undulates her prone body off the floor\u2014in a blink of an eye. These moments don\u2019t look like stunt work. They are part of a skein of movement, which occurs in inner-space pitch darkness (thanks to lighting designer Robert Sondergaard). They create a dream-like world, which seems only possible in the imagination.<\/p>\n

Because Kidd Pivot is celebrating its tenth anniversary, has been a resident company at K\u00fcnstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt since 2010,\u00a0and is only now giving its New York performance debut, Pite has become something of c<\/em>ause c<\/em>\u00e9l\u00e8bre <\/em>for New York dance-interested\u00a0audiences. In describing her style, writers often allude to her seven years dancing in William Forsythe\u2019s Ballet Frankfurt. But it\u2019s reductive to see Pite\u2019s work as merely a derivation of Forsythe\u2019s. While Forsythe\u2019s performers looked loopy and frenetic in recent works presented in New York (Three Atmospheric Studies<\/em> and I don\u2019t believe in outer space<\/em>), Pite dancers never look out of control. Rather than resembling epileptic victims, they resemble Marine fighters.<\/p>\n

In the program notes, Pite writes how The You Show<\/em> derives from her \u201cfascination with familiar storylines of love, conflict and loss, and the body\u2019s role in providing the illustrative shapes of those stories.\u201d\u00a0While some observers might find Pite\u2019s relationship theme as captivating as her movement vocabulary, I did not. The three sets of duets, and one group dance, all ended the same way: the significant other leaves the beloved. These departures began to feel a bit pat. What was not pat was Pite\u2019s definition of a relationship in section two, titled \u201cThe Other You.\u201d In the duet, Eric Beauchesne and Ji\u0159\u00ed Pokorn\u00fd are the same people. Pokorn\u00fd pushes his alter ego, Beauchesne, around. He resembles a ventriloquist with his dummy. The duet, to an array of atmospheric and classical music, including Beethoven\u2019s Piano Sonata No. 14 in C Sharp Minor, seemed to reveal a deeper message: The dancer fights each day with her self. The enemy isn\u2019t the other person; it\u2019s the voice that says, \u201cI want to rest!\u201d<\/p>\n

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Photo by Michael Slobodian<\/p><\/div>\n

Pite makes fun of this dancer-as-fighter conceit in the last section of The You Show<\/em>. There, Jermaine Maurice Spivey dons a red cape and becomes a super hero. Later he fights Tron<\/em>-style with his mate (Sandra Mar\u00edn Garcia). Their mechanized armor is composed out of three dancers who weld their bodies to either Spivey or Garcia’s. The result is that Spivey and Garcia’s body mass quadruples to resemble armor-clad gladiators. Audience hooted with laughter, when they recognized that Pite was satirizing her combative style. But after this scene, Pite returned to her ardent tone. Four women danced Pite\u2019s electric-shock gestures and buttery, spiraling, back bending floor-to-standing phrases with total seriousness. Their commitment to pushing their bodies beyond what most dancers deem possible is what made Pite\u2019s The You Show<\/em> entirely captivating. It\u2019s what makes Pite’s choreography part of the zeitgeist, where conversations about the the blending of man and machine abound.<\/p>\n

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