Here's what I learned from last night's performance of the LA-based dance company BODYTRAFFIC at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre, as part of this year's Chutzpah! Festival:
1. I'm definitely not a fan of the choreography and dramaturgy of Barak Marshall (see my take on his Harry, as danced last year by BJM). His brand of dance-theatre--which for some reason seems to have legions of devotees--is too insistently vertical and repetitively gestural in its movement style and too normatively patriarchal in its narrative ideology for my tastes. Both elements were fully on display in And at midnight, the green bride floated through the village square..., which was given pride of place on last night's program; five or six very similar-looking unison sequences are punctuated by a few pantomimed or spoken word scenes between the men and women, all of which culminates in a wedding and a most abrupt ending.
2. The work of Hofesh Shechter, however, I could watch all day. His Dust, atmospherically lit and beautifully choreographed, sends six dancers (three men and three women) skittering across the stage like insects, or else masses their shaking, twitching bodies together like groupies at a rock concert. The piece's sensual suggestiveness is the opposite of Marshall's literalism, as much about the spaces between the movement as the movement itself. Having just written elsewhere about the non-representational uses of text in dance, I also appreciate the way that Shechter combines projected and voice-over text with his own original musical score and of course his distinctive choreography to create a total immersive environment, in which feelings of kinesthesia are complemented and even enhanced by the acoustic and the visual and even the haptic. At one point, early on in the piece, the stage remains dark for at least a full two minutes, with only driving music playing. And yet I sensed that more was going on in that time than during all of the fully illuminated scenes in Marshall's work. (Shechter was actually at the theatre last night to acknowledge the audience's applause--quite a coup for Chutzpah! AD Marie-Louise Albert.)
3. The dancers of BODYTRAFFIC are superb. Not only are they able to deal with the wildly disparate styles of Marshall and Shechter, but they can also pull off the exuberant, deliberately showy, and borderline kitschy jazz homage crafted by Richard Siegal in his o2Joy. An unabashed crowd pleaser, the work highlights what was abundantly evident throughout the evening: this is a technically accomplished company with lots of personality to boot.
P.
Showing posts with label Barak Marshall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barak Marshall. Show all posts
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Chutzpah! 2013: Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company
The third and final of the dance offerings in this year's Chutzpah! Festival showcases the return of the acclaimed Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, in the North American premiere of If at All, the latest evening-length work by Artistic Director Rami Be'er.
Be'er favours dramatic openings, often solos by female dancers that begin in silence. Such is the case here as the curtains part to reveal a long-limbed, raven-haired beauty in a square of white light centre stage, and with a plié that just won't quit. Slowly, she makes her way upstage, pausing under an illuminated orb that resembles a full moon. She bends deeply at the knees once more, clasping her hands in front of her and circling her arms about her torso in ever-widening arcs, as if she is stirring a cauldron.
What is conjured from this opening is another of Be'er trademarks, and what for me makes his work so compelling kinesthetically and emotionally: the full company bursting onto the stage full throttle to anthemic music, closing ranks in a circle, before breaking off into separate (and often separately gendered) group formations that showcase Be'er's full body choreography in recurring patterns of unison and canon movement, often supplemented by his own lighting and costume designs.
In the case of It at All, the sequence that really grabbed hold of me at the beginning was the one featuring the seven male company members who, clad in full blooming grey skirts, one by one break out of the circle and fall to the ground at the lip of the stage in front of individual orange floor spots (except for the man furthest stage left, who had no floor spot in front of him, and who remained motionless on his side until the very end of this sequence). Eventually the men raise themselves onto their elbows and knees, their faces now square with the floor spots, and begin to repeat a few simple movements with their arms that involve variations of support and release at the joints, and that through successive serial additions become mesmerizing. Indeed, the patterns gradually become faster, more complicated, the men rolling stage right to the next floor spot as each takes a vertical solo turn upstage before returning to the line (maybe because I'm teaching it on Friday, I was reminded a little bit of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's famous Rosas Danst Rosas here).
It is Be'er's ability to combine this kind of highly structured group movement with more free-flowing solos and duets that makes his work so unique. Not that everything last night was perfect. I think the piece as a whole was too long, and there were some awkward transitions. But it's a credit to the folks at Chutzpah!--and a boon to local audiences--that Vancouver continues to remain a tour stop for what is perhaps the best known contemporary Israeli dance company after Batsheva.
If at All continues tonight through Saturday at 8 pm, with an additional 2 pm matinee on Sunday. It is preceded by Zion, a courtship duet by Barak Marshall (of BJM's Harry fame), and danced winningly by local talents James Gnam and Rebecca Margolick.
P.
Be'er favours dramatic openings, often solos by female dancers that begin in silence. Such is the case here as the curtains part to reveal a long-limbed, raven-haired beauty in a square of white light centre stage, and with a plié that just won't quit. Slowly, she makes her way upstage, pausing under an illuminated orb that resembles a full moon. She bends deeply at the knees once more, clasping her hands in front of her and circling her arms about her torso in ever-widening arcs, as if she is stirring a cauldron.
What is conjured from this opening is another of Be'er trademarks, and what for me makes his work so compelling kinesthetically and emotionally: the full company bursting onto the stage full throttle to anthemic music, closing ranks in a circle, before breaking off into separate (and often separately gendered) group formations that showcase Be'er's full body choreography in recurring patterns of unison and canon movement, often supplemented by his own lighting and costume designs.
In the case of It at All, the sequence that really grabbed hold of me at the beginning was the one featuring the seven male company members who, clad in full blooming grey skirts, one by one break out of the circle and fall to the ground at the lip of the stage in front of individual orange floor spots (except for the man furthest stage left, who had no floor spot in front of him, and who remained motionless on his side until the very end of this sequence). Eventually the men raise themselves onto their elbows and knees, their faces now square with the floor spots, and begin to repeat a few simple movements with their arms that involve variations of support and release at the joints, and that through successive serial additions become mesmerizing. Indeed, the patterns gradually become faster, more complicated, the men rolling stage right to the next floor spot as each takes a vertical solo turn upstage before returning to the line (maybe because I'm teaching it on Friday, I was reminded a little bit of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's famous Rosas Danst Rosas here).
It is Be'er's ability to combine this kind of highly structured group movement with more free-flowing solos and duets that makes his work so unique. Not that everything last night was perfect. I think the piece as a whole was too long, and there were some awkward transitions. But it's a credit to the folks at Chutzpah!--and a boon to local audiences--that Vancouver continues to remain a tour stop for what is perhaps the best known contemporary Israeli dance company after Batsheva.
If at All continues tonight through Saturday at 8 pm, with an additional 2 pm matinee on Sunday. It is preceded by Zion, a courtship duet by Barak Marshall (of BJM's Harry fame), and danced winningly by local talents James Gnam and Rebecca Margolick.
P.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
BJM at 40
Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, now simply known as BJM, is celebrating its 40th anniversary as a company. Currently touring the country in celebration of that milestone, the troupe (which since 1998 has been under the artistic direction of Louis Robitaille) arrived in Vancouver this weekend as part of DanceHouse's current season, presenting a mixed program that roused last night's audience to an ecstatic standing ovation, but that frankly left me nonplussed.
Much has been made of BJM's evolution, over the course of its history, from a ballet to a contemporary dance company. And yet what the three pieces presented last night most demonstrated to me was a surprisingly tenacious adherence to some pretty basic classical conventions, especially with respect to the gendered dynamics of partnering. From what I could see, in BJM's world, female dancers mostly exist to be lifted and male dancers to do the lifting.
Indeed, in Cayetano Soto's Fuel, which opened the evening, when the women aren't being pushed and pulled by the men, they are reduced to animatronic dolls, spinning robotically in place. Things got mildly interesting for me when, near the end of the piece, the strict opposite sex partnering that had dominated to that point is interrupted by an intense and athletic male-male duet. But otherwise I kept finding myself staring into the bright lights directed at the audience from an industrial massing at the back of the stage.
Next up was Closer, a pas de deux choreographed by Benjamin Millepied (aka Mr. Natalie Portman) for BJM dancer Céline Cassone, here partnered by the sturdy Alexander Hille. Cassone, with her shock of reddish-pink hair, is certainly a captivatingly graceful dancer, but she is hardly ever out of Hille's arms. And while the steps are both pretty and technically accomplished (proving that Millepied might not actually be such a surprising choice to head an institution like the Paris Opéra Ballet), the lack of expressiveness and emotional connection between the dancers (I saw Hille more than once look away from Cassone and out over the audience, as if wondering, like me, when Philip Glass's piano score would ever end) left me cold.
The evening concluded with Barak Marshall's Harry, a 40-minute dance-theatre piece composed expressly for the BJM company. Ostensibly the story of the eponymous title character's complicated love life, it actually begins with his death. The leitmotif of returning to Harry's graveside to offer spoken word commentary, which under most other circumstances would get me tremendously excited (the combining of text and movement being a focus of mine), ended up reinforcing my overall frustrated response to Robitaille's programming. That's because these scenes always devolved into couples bickering, the piece's overwhelming heteronormativity being just one of the obstacles to my enjoyment of it. Another was the jarring clash of tones, with scenes abruptly careening from whimsical to sombre as a war theme is suddenly introduced (the piece is loosely framed as a postmodern take on Greek drama, complete with capricious Gods manipulating events, but as with the sudden and bizarre allusion to Les Misérables, these winking references didn't always work). Don't get me wrong: there was some stunning dancing on display here, particularly to the Israeli folk songs that formed part of the eclectic score.
I just wasn't as wild about Harry--and the program of which it was a part--as everyone else seemed to be.
P.
Much has been made of BJM's evolution, over the course of its history, from a ballet to a contemporary dance company. And yet what the three pieces presented last night most demonstrated to me was a surprisingly tenacious adherence to some pretty basic classical conventions, especially with respect to the gendered dynamics of partnering. From what I could see, in BJM's world, female dancers mostly exist to be lifted and male dancers to do the lifting.
Indeed, in Cayetano Soto's Fuel, which opened the evening, when the women aren't being pushed and pulled by the men, they are reduced to animatronic dolls, spinning robotically in place. Things got mildly interesting for me when, near the end of the piece, the strict opposite sex partnering that had dominated to that point is interrupted by an intense and athletic male-male duet. But otherwise I kept finding myself staring into the bright lights directed at the audience from an industrial massing at the back of the stage.
Next up was Closer, a pas de deux choreographed by Benjamin Millepied (aka Mr. Natalie Portman) for BJM dancer Céline Cassone, here partnered by the sturdy Alexander Hille. Cassone, with her shock of reddish-pink hair, is certainly a captivatingly graceful dancer, but she is hardly ever out of Hille's arms. And while the steps are both pretty and technically accomplished (proving that Millepied might not actually be such a surprising choice to head an institution like the Paris Opéra Ballet), the lack of expressiveness and emotional connection between the dancers (I saw Hille more than once look away from Cassone and out over the audience, as if wondering, like me, when Philip Glass's piano score would ever end) left me cold.
The evening concluded with Barak Marshall's Harry, a 40-minute dance-theatre piece composed expressly for the BJM company. Ostensibly the story of the eponymous title character's complicated love life, it actually begins with his death. The leitmotif of returning to Harry's graveside to offer spoken word commentary, which under most other circumstances would get me tremendously excited (the combining of text and movement being a focus of mine), ended up reinforcing my overall frustrated response to Robitaille's programming. That's because these scenes always devolved into couples bickering, the piece's overwhelming heteronormativity being just one of the obstacles to my enjoyment of it. Another was the jarring clash of tones, with scenes abruptly careening from whimsical to sombre as a war theme is suddenly introduced (the piece is loosely framed as a postmodern take on Greek drama, complete with capricious Gods manipulating events, but as with the sudden and bizarre allusion to Les Misérables, these winking references didn't always work). Don't get me wrong: there was some stunning dancing on display here, particularly to the Israeli folk songs that formed part of the eclectic score.
I just wasn't as wild about Harry--and the program of which it was a part--as everyone else seemed to be.
P.
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