By Rachel Straus
In Jeanette Stoner’s eery “Distant Past, Ancient Memories,” which premiered at her loft studio in downtown Manhattan (Jan. 23-26), the choreographer seems to be summoning forth a ghost. As was the case with Martha Graham’s mythologically inspired dances, which drew from Carl Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious, Stoner creates a dreamlike landscape in which her protagonist (Chase Booth) seems to recall his past and witness its unfolding on the stage before him.
Heightened emotional states—particularly pain and terror—unfold through movement tableaus, performed by a chorus of six male dancers who move at a remove from the watchful eye of the bald and muscular Booth, cloaked in black velvet. Drama is achieved not only by Booth’s menacing figure, as he stands like the undead in the velvet drapery which pools around him like a spiral of coagulated blood, but also by the sharp, flood of light created by Zvi Gotheiner. Amos Pinhasi later appears and circles Booth. As Pinhasi does so, Booth slowly crumbles like a vampire brought to light.
While Pinhasi, dressed in contemporary slacks and shirt, remains outside the action, six young men, dressed like Greco-Roman warriors, become embroiled in it: They swim though a dark river, created by the black drapery that once cloaked Booth. Their spear ritual turns into the chaos of war, and then they appear to die. Like Graham’s mythological dances of the 1940s, these characters inhabit a brutal world where their fate seems to be decided by another more powerful.
Stoner, who danced with the abstract, multi-media choreography Alwin Nikolais (who disdained Martha Graham’s story telling style), seems to be pushing farther afield from her former employer’s aesthetic. While her earlier works on the program, such as “Green” (1978) and “Ladder” (2009) are conceptual snapshots, evidenced by the simplicity of the titles and the referential movement describing each title, in “Distant Past” a much larger vision is being formulated. This dramatically intense, new work needs polishing, but it deserves to be developed further and seen again. There is something fearsomely vivid about “Distant Past.”
“Wall,” the other premiere on the program, is like “Distant Past” imbued with a sense of dread. In the brief work, Peter Davis is repelled and attracted to a wall directly to the right and in front of the audience. When he eventually reaches it and slides along its surface, he seems to absorbs it, like a man who has succumbed once again to drink. The tension Davis produces in his body is enhanced by the fact that he moves in silence. This work evokes loneliness. It’s difficult not to read the solo as a choreographer confronting the boundaries of her craft in the space that she lives, works and performs in. Walls can bring a sense of safety, they can house creativity, and they can imprison.
Like many choreographers who have persevered, Stoner has bore witness to many U.S. dance movements: the high drama of Martha Graham, the abstraction of Alwin Nikolais, the anti-virtuosity of Yvonne Rainer, the minimalism of Lucinda Childs, the fusion dancing of Twyla Tharp, and the formalism of Balanchine and Cunningham. Stoner’s work incorporates aspects of each of these movements, but she doesn’t appear to be a direct descendent of any them. Perhaps it’s because her work never entered the mainstream dance world. There is something to be said for being on the outside of the concert dance machine, which grinds many a choreographer up. In “Distant Past, Ancient Memories,” Stoner is drawing on narrative, dream, and the psyche. She is choreographing with a broader stroke and with the maturity of an artist who has witnessed much dance history.
Fall for Dance Festival: Recapping Program 1, 2 and 5
Wednesday, October 17th, 2012By Rachel Straus
The seventh annual Fall For Dance Festival came to a meaty close on October 13. Program five at New York’s City Center trafficked in high testosterone, thanks to China’s LPD-Laboratory Dance Project’s No Comment (2002) and Yaron Lifschitz’s Circa (2009), which is also the name of the Australian acrobatic troupe. In both works the body was treated like a battering ram.
Circa by Justin Nicholas Atmosphere Photography
In Circa, the performers used not only their fellow artists’ thighs and shoulders, but also their faces, as launching pads for balancing in midair and jettisoning across the space like Evel Knievel. In No Comment, the men continually fell to the floor, as though blown down by an invisible hammer. As a finale, they stripped to their waists to reveal their glistening muscular torsos. Like fight club winners, they took their bows. But their message—sex objects who pulverize themselves are cool—confounded me.
Visions of aggression and angst trumped visions of cooperation and kindliness in the three FFD programs of 12 dances from 12 international and national-based companies seen on September 28 and 30, and October 13. Perhaps the programming, spearheaded by artistic advisor Stanford Makishi, not only represented his personal preferences, but also reflected the times. The majority of the works were made in the past four years, and only two dated before 2002. This decade hasn’t been an easy ride; the dances reflects that.
The festival’s first program ended with Martha Graham’s Chronicle, which was made in response to rising European fascism before World War II. The first section of Graham’s 1936 work surprisingly echoed the last work in the festival: Deseo Y Conciencia (2011). In Deseo, flamenco choreographer-performer Maria Pagés donned a red costume that transformed into a shroud. Likewise, the gargantuan red underskirt worn by Blakeley White-Mcguire in Chronicle possessed the same import. Both women became symbols of mourning, evoking through their blood-red cloaks a fraught world.
Maria Pages. Photo by David Ruano
Blakeley White-McGuire. Photo by Michele Ballantini
The two most ambitious works, of the 12 viewed, were Pam Tamowitz’s Fortune (2011) and Christopher Wheeldon’s Five Movements, Three Repeats (2012). Both tendered subtlety, nuance and mystery. (Full disclosure: Fortune was choreographed on the Juilliard School dancers and I work at Juilliard.) In Fortune, Tamowitz set 21 dancers, costumed in hot pink and red unitards, against a field of greenish yellow. Here was a happy Mark Rothko painting. Though Tamowitz’s movement vocabulary is clearly inspired by Merce Cunningham’s, she doesn’t ignore the music as was Cunningham’s way. Tamowitz’s sharply sculptural patterning, full of pregnant pauses, reflected Charles Wuorinen’s stop and go Fortune (performed by a quartet Juilliard School musicians). In response to Wuorinen’s abrupt shifts in sounds, which instantly dissolve as though they never happened, Tamowitz evokes mini narratives, some absurd, others resonant of a city life, where pedestrians walk with laser-eye certainty.
Juilliard Dancers in "Fortune." Photo by Rosalie O'Connor
Also of note was Christopher Wheeldon’s Five Movements, Three Repeats, which was made for Fangi-Yi Sheu & Artists. Sheu, a former Graham dancer born and trained in Taiwan, is now based in New York. She is one of the great performers of our time. Her guests were none other than Wheeldon’s former colleagues at New York City Ballet: Tyler Angle, Craig Hall and Wendy Whelan. To a recording of Max Richter’sMEMORYHOUSE and Otis Clyde’s The Bitter Earth/On the Nature of Daylight, Wheeldon didn’t treat Sheu as some modern dance oddity among the City Ballet dancers.
At the beginning of every other section of Five Movements, Three Repeats, Sheu undulated her spine like a fern seeking light. Her pliable torso work was best picked up in Hall’s simultanesously-occurring solo that spiraled into the floor. Later on, Sheu and Hall folded their limbs into each other. Their duet featured a melding of their bodies, and organically blended central aspects of their different technical training (Sheu’s focuses on weight, Hall’s on ethereality).
Ms. Sheu and Mr. Hall. Photo by Erin Baiano
Though Sheu’s legwork is akin to the arrow-like esthetic favored by ballet choreographers, Wheeldon didn’t devolve to his usual histrionics: over-choreographing women’s leg extensions in the pas de deux. Consequently, Sheu did not become a human gumby. Instead, she partnered Hall’s weight as much as Hall partnered her’s. Wheeldon’s venture into making work for a modern-trained dancer is heartily welcome. The task seems to stretch him instead of over-stretching his female collaborators.
Tags:Blakeley White-Mcguire, Charles Wuorinen, Christopher Wheeldon, Chronicle, Circa, Craig Hall, Deseo Y Conciencia, Evel Knievel, Fall for Dance Festival, Fang Yi-Sheu, Five Movements Three Repeats, Fortune, LPD-Laboratory Dance Project, Maria Pages, Martha Graham, Max Richter, Memoryhouse, Merce Cunningham, No Comment, Otis Clyde, Pam Tamowitz, Stanford Makishi, The Bitter Earth/On the Nature of Daylight, The Juilliard School, Tyler Angle, Wendy Whelan, Yaron Lifschitz
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