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TAYLOR GORDON |
(Cedar Lake’s “Glassy Essence” - Since my camera wasn’t working I borrowed one of Matt’s photos already posted on the Winger here.)
Over the past week I have been at the theater every single night – not performing, but watching, and writing.
With my second career (dance being the first…ideally…) starting to blossom, I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of dance writing lately, both for print and for the web, and both features and criticism. I’ve been lucky enough to see a LOT of great performances with my pen at hand recently, where before I would never have even considered looking for entertainment. Most of my life I was trained to believe that ballet was the only option, the ideal option, in the dance world. But now that I’ve joined the New York City dance scene from a position besides “student” – now being professional and a writer – I’ve had my eyes open to a slew of other opportunities just as exciting as pure ballet.
Here’s just a sampling of some of the works I’ve been to over the past week…I go through spurts of time where I hardly make it out of the studio or away from my laptop to see anything, and then I have periods where I can’t get my hands on enough tickets to the theater…like now!
There are so many performances I could include here…Ballet Tech,The Kirov, Rebecca Kelly Ballet, Yasuko Yokoshi, and more…but here are a few in detail…
*Cedar Lake’s Glassy Essence was very cool. I missed the Blogger Preview fellow Winger Matt and others posted about, but got to see it last weekend. You can see other blogger reviews here from Matt, Evan, Philip, and Tonya. And the Times review here.
An excerpt from MY review on ExploreDance.com:
As the dances come out and step off the dance floor into the crowd it’s like they purge from a magic mirror. Suddenly an idolized image becomes real. The dancer is a person, not a fixture on an untouchable stage. And yet they remain in their own reflective world, refusing to make eye contact but sifting through the audience with high sensitivity. The audience revokes as if the dancers’ auras cast them aside…
(Petronio’s “Beauty and the Brut” photo by Chris Woltmann)
*Stephen Petronio’s Company at the Joyce a few weeks ago was also great, in a different way.
My review excerpt (full review here):
His style changes throughout the evening, keeping the eye intrigued. A common theme is his juxtaposition of movement versus stillness, where a single dancer holds a pose as if anchoring down the nearby storm of legs and arms. His dancers often cringe and repulse as if a weighted marble were traveling through their bodies. It falls out of nowhere, slips through the path of their veins, gains momentum, and rolls out a fingernail or toe for eternity.
(Take’s “Looking for Water” photo by Phil Echo)
*I also went to a blogger preview of Take Dance, a company founded by former Paul Taylor dancer Takehiro Ueyama. Their performances will be at the Miller Theater at Columbia University May 15-17 at 8pm. He also has a piece in The New School’s spring performance at Ailey next weekend.
It was such a nice morning. Take’s choreography is very free and released, with lots of swinging and throwing of the body. All the dancers looked like they were enjoying themselves so much. It seemed so natural for them, almost to the point that they were so comfortable it seemed they good be improvising just from their own internal impulses of movement. I wanted to get up and move! Everyone was extremely gracious, and we even got pieces of bamboo symbolizing good luck as a departing gift.
It was interesting to see the process as well, as they worked through lifts and tough spots in between running the pieces. Being that close to the dancers was cool too, because you could share their energy entirely, feeling the landing of their jumps through the floor of the Duke studios.
With the obsession of our culture with behind the scenes action (“the making of…” special features on DVD’s, outtakes, blogs, etc) it seems so right that dance companies reach out like this and expose their process. Through open rehearsals like Take’s or online outreach like Cedar Lake’s glassyessence.com, the creative internal processes of the dance world are starting to spread. Isn’t it what happens behind the curtain what makes life interesting for us artists?
Writing about dance has given me new ways of accessing performances and thinking about these issues surrounding dance. Does anyone else find it easier to understand abstract movement when translating to words? I’d be interested to hear about other people’s opinions and experiences at these and other performances!
