Monday, July 26, 2021

Brian Brooks at Jacob's Pillow—Seeking the Human Touch

 

Evan Fisk, Zack Gonder, and Stephanie Terasaki of Brian Brooks / Moving Company in
Closing Distance at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival 2021. Photo by Jamie Kraus


Brian Brooks / Moving Company’s three works at Jacob’s Pillow recently could represent time stamps of periods over the last year and a half. The opening piece, Flight Study (2021) was created primarily during Covid. The eight dancers often moved in a cloud while remaining isolated. Their movements were small in amplitude, traveling little; a foot slid forward a few inches, seemingly propelled by a mere breath. The dancers lay on the stage, taking turns arising to varying heights, evoking waves rolling onto the shore (enhanced by their navy rompers, by Karen Young). Bryce Dessner’s score for strings evoked emotions from anger to contemplation, at times propelling the dancers forward and back. Alone, but together, manipulated by some force as great as the ocean, or perhaps, chillingly, a global pandemic.


Brooks took the stage to perform Quiet Music (2021), a solo to Nico Muhly’s music which provided a change of dynamic as well as time for his company to change costumes in the now de rigeur intermissionless, under-an-hour program. Brooks can often treat dancers—most notably himself—as machine-like vehicles with which to conduct kinetic experiments involving endurance or repetition. Hopping on one leg for minutes at a time, or running relentlessly, or walking on others’ body parts to avoid contact with the floor. Here, there is no such dogma, simply fluid movement traveling from an eeling hand through the torso and head, or a languid arabesque to stretch the body briefly. In a long-sleeve shirt and pants, Brooks assumed an everyman presence somewhat reluctant to explode beyond the confines of his body’s invisible bubble.


The final work, Closing Distance (2020), was made just before Covid hit, and that’s clear in the dancers’ physical interactions and unity in moving as one organism in close ensemble passages. Caroline Shaw’s intriguing score, Partita for 8 Voices, begins with spoken phrases: “To the side, left around…” Are these directions for the dancers? Because they are circling around one another, pushing another’s arm to cause a reaction, clustering around one dancer and clutching her arm, forming a caterpillar-like creature by linking hands with elbows. A performer lowers herself to the floor, which is echoed by each successive dancer like a time-stop photo. 


In a key duet, Carlye Eckert floats her hands over a man’s body, eliciting a reaction that resembles the effect of a magnetic field. Even six feet away, as she pushes the air between them, he reacts as if she has cast energy. A closely arranged trio moves essentially as one, with a slight lag between mimicked moves. In the final section, the performers lie parallel to one another, rising a bit, then higher and higher, like a chart of the evolution of homosapiens. They coalesce in a group before lying down to succumb to the invisible force field wielded by Eckert once more. The music, sung by Roomful of Teeth, enchants with closely spaced harmonies, ethereal at times. Young also designed the white-hued costumes of variously fitted and shaped separates.


This program’s breadth symbolized the roller coaster we’ve been through lately, from a pre- and post-pandemic state of normal physical interaction, to being together yet isolated. It departed from many of Brooks’ previous presentations in some ways—less systematic scientific experimentation, and no deliberate choice of signature set or color design typical of years past, perhaps because it was performed on the Leir stage, in front of Massachusetts' verdant Berkshires. But it displays a humanity that beats in the heart of dance, in its varying complexity and potential for expression.


Tuesday, July 20, 2021

NYCB Shares Stories at SPAC

The Concert. Photo courtesy NYCB

The Concert. Photo courtesy NYCB

Another sign of cultural life reviving! New York City Ballet returned live to the stage on a mild evening in July with a brief stint at its upstate home, Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC). It presented two programs of excerpts with commentary—one of story ballets, which I saw on July 14, and another of Balanchine's abstract works. It was great to see the company in the vast, dramatic, tree-framed setting of the Amphitheater, with similar grand stage dimensions to the Koch, and the casual structure of the program allowed the company to ease back into preparations for a full season of performances.

The wide-ranging "Short Stories" program was moderated by principal dancer Maria Kowroski, who demonstrated a genial speaking presence to go with her in-depth, personal knowledge of the dances. The three sailors (Amar Ramasar, Spartak Hoxha, Lars Nelson) in Jerome Robbins' Fancy Free discussed the nature of their characters, and each shared a move from the dance that encapsulated a characteristic (although three rounds of questions seemed a bit much). Teresa Reichlen and Tyler Angle (with a shaved head!) performed the white swan pas de deux from Swan Lake. Reichlen's stage demeanor is consistently stoic and secretive, and in this case, served to provide some welcome gravitas to the performance, isolated from the context of the story.

Such context was also missed in the next segment, the Rose Adagio from The Sleeping Beauty. Meaghan Dutton-O'Hara debuted as Aurora, no small feat given the short amount of rehearsal time (weeks) in which to cram for being partnered by four men in one of the most difficult passages in classical ballet. The lack of rehearsal time showed in some off-balance partnered promenades, which no doubt will be smoothed out with more practice. Associate Artistic Director Wendy Whelan came onstage to give some notes, including the advice to take one section at a time so as not to be overwhelmed, and to "be the rose," firmly planted and growing tall and proud. Another segment from Beauty followed: the opening of the Bluebird pas (Sara Adams and Spartak Hoxha), which felt suitably antic and exuberant given the plein air setting. 

A duet from Midsummer Night's Dream also matched the al fresco ambience. Miriam Miller fell for the donkey-headed Lars Nelson, who only had eyes for his grass. And the "Mistake Waltz" from Robbins' The Concert elicited chuckles from the audience, and reminded us of the humor that he often deployed. The finale, a segment from The Firebird featuring Reichlen and Ramasar, once again revealed the sense of occasion that Reichlen brings to the stage to magically train our collective focus. Full costumes helped to signify some of the context of each story segment, which were accompanied by piano scores—whose arrangements at times were by nature sketchy—played by Alan Moverman and Nancy McDill.

While NYCB's 2021 run at SPAC can barely be called a season, it was a welcome return of live arts after such a horrendous year and a half. The company recently released its full schedule for the 2021-22 season at the Koch Theater, another welcome reminder that New York's cultural life is ramping up for, hopefully, a return to normal.