Ech. Been neglecting the blog again, but had a pretty good excuse, namely some big life changes (good ones). Didn’t see much over the summer anyway, but have quite a few things lined up in the next few weeks, so expect more-regular blog postings, for the short term anyway. 😉
Just wanted to put up a quick post on BU’s Dance Showcase 2010 that I attended last night. This was one of those events that I was compelled to go to for personal reasons and wasn’t particularly looking forward to, but fortunately turned out to be wholly enjoyable. I knew nothing about BU’s dance program and too little about the local modern dance scene, but the performances left me much more interested in both.
The production’s unifying theme was a bit muddled: some of the performances were choreographed and performed by BU faculty or students, but others seemed to have little connection. The evening opened with BU instructors’ Ann Brown Allen and Micki Taylor-Pinney and colleague Lynn Modell‘s light-hearted “Why are you (still) dancing?”, a work that revelled in the pure pleasures of dance and performance, free from emotional angst, the obsessions of technical perfection, and self-consciousness. The spoken A Chorus Line moments proved to be rather extraneous, as the work itself, which included an entertaining section involving the three women cavorting over, on, and around a red sofa, was eloquent enough on its own.
DeAnna Pellecchia and Ingrid Schatz‘s explored the relationships between women in two works in progress intended to be part of a larger work, to moody music by “Janis Brenner and friends” and Sigur Ros. The two form a compelling team, and although the physical centerpieces of both (a pair of spotlights that were carried around in the first work and a blank upstage wall in the second) were hardly new, the images were often striking: the silhouette of one dancer towering high over the other, or the two flattened against the wall and madly squirming away from it, at once like babies being birthed or zombies rising from the grave. The second piece, “Glass Jaw”, was less successful when it came to the actual dancing, as it relied heavily on too-typical Martha Graham-esque use of the floor, but their no-holds-barred physicality was violently compelling. Definitely looking forward to seeing the completed versions.
Boston-based choreographer Margot Parsons premiered two works, the first, “Stirrings”, a memorable duet which Christine McDowell (I think that’s who it was; the Asian one) in particular gave a compelling intensity, alternately standing with back straight and eyes tilted upwards, and exaggeratedly marching with arms swinging, back bent, and eyes down, providing the work with the ecstasy and mystery of a religious rite. The second work “Journee” was a much less showy solo that, as solos often seem to do, meandered and bordered on being far too solipsistic. Another choreographer I’m looking forward to seeing more of.
It wasn’t immediately clear why Boston Ballet II were “guest artists”, but they contributed two crowd-pleasing moments. “From Zero 2 Five in 43”, choreographed by Boston Ballet member Jeffrey Cirio, was a rather exhausting but magnetic non-stop whirl of virtuosic leaps and turns. Lawrence Rines was the standout here, with his beautifully long lines. The excerpt from Peter Martins’ “The Waltz Project” was a fun piece of fluff, and Rebekah Hostetter made an engagingly ditzy dancer in white sneakers and purple leotard.
BU alum Stephanie Creary provided the trio “Timed Release”. The gesture-based choreography nicely combined straight lines, such as with the dancer standing and extending one leg to the front parallel to the floor or with body tilted and arm extending above the head, with softer movements, such as a patting, wave-like motion of the hands and arms. The work’s simple repetitions fit the abstract improvisatory score, by Ai Isshiki and Sakiko Mori, well.
A duo (by circumstance; the third was apparently unavoidably delayed) from the summer teen outreach program, Reach, ended the evening with a confection, a lively Krump work that fully demonstrated the liveliness and humor one associates with the genre.
Nine Dots Boston 