New York Notebook—Dorrance and Ailey

Josette Wiggan-Freund and Joseph Wiggan in the Nutcracker

There are some compositions that are basically siren songs for dance makers, which simply must, at some point, be choreographed to, rocky shore be damned. There’s Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Ravel’s Bolero, and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, which suffers most in redundancy due to the work’s seasonal nature. Over the past couple of weeks, I caught the last two treated by, respectively, Lar Lubovitch for Ailey and Michelle Dorrance/Hannah Heller/Josette Wiggan-Freund for Dorrance Dance. 

The Nut, a Joyce commission, is a joyful, hip, brief addition to the canon. (Its official title is a paragraph, not likely to be printed in full—a wink acknowledging that it will be referred to as the Nut.) Mostly tap danced, with some sneaker-shod street moves, it uses Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn’s “Nutcracker Suite,” a jazzy, brass-heavy, uptempo selective rendition that dares you to sit still. The abbreviated party scene quickly introduces Clara (Leonardo Sandoval)—tall, awkward, with childlike wonder, in a teal chiffon dress. Her parents are real-life siblings and tap power duo Joseph Wiggan and Josette Wiggan-Freund in a killer, swingy half-waistcoat (costumes by Andrew Jordan). Drossy’s arrival signals the shift into fantasy, where the toys and rodents grow, and the rats‚—led by a crisp, snazzy Heller—multiply and intimidate the humans, throwing what look like cheese balls.

Dorrance/Van Young Transform the Guggenheim Into a Giant Instrument

Photo: Matthew Murphy

No other building in New York City can compare to Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim. The spiral ramp that forms the rotunda may pose logistical problems when installing an exhibition, but who among us hasn't daydreamed of rolling from the top to the bottom on the ramp, ideally free of visitors? The museum is currently showing Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim, which is essentially a selection of core works elucidating the museum's mission, essentially the history of modern 20th century abstract art.

Michelle Dorrance and Nicholas Van Young. Photo: Matthew Murphy

Michelle Dorrance and Nicholas Van Young, plus her company, were given free rein on Feb 16 to turn the rotunda into a giant instrument, with the full-house audience as participants. Dorrance is known for her imaginative tap choreography, but here the company for the most part wore street shoes (at least I think that's what they were, as I watched at a distance from the top level). As Dorrance whacked a drum, dancers pushed boxes on the ground (that comprised platforms when assembled), tracing figure 8s, and slapping or stomping on them to create sounds. A pair lay on the floor and posed in various shapes which read clearly from on high.

The performers hit together red plastic sticks, and mock dueled one another. A trio stood mid-level and sang out into the atrium. They then ran down the ramp for a circuit, repositioned themselves against the railing, and sang again. Just below me, a team with longer plastic tubes whacked them against the railing in rhythmic patterns. 

Photo: Matthew Murphy

Van Young stood at the ground floor's center and conducted us, the audience, in alternating rounds of claps, varying in speed and pattern. It was remarkable how quickly people picked up what he was doing, and what we needed to do in response. He and Dorrance hit some spheres floating in the small pool (which I always forget is there), creating yet more types of sounds. Wooden platforms for tapping were dragged in, and the dancers carried their tap shoes out, laced them up, and made a cacaphonous barrage of reports which bounced around the rotunda. Dorrance's ingenuity emerged not only in the tap routine she performed solo, but in the simple yet effective section where most of the company marched in a looping line, each step resonating loudly.

The event is part of the Works & Process Rotunda Project, which intends to activate the main gallery space. Dorrance/Van Young certainly left no area unused, showing the potential of the iconic space when in the hands of visionary creators. The next work in the series will be in September by ABT principal Daniil Simkin. 

Dorrance Dance in ETM: Double Down

Demi Remick, Caleb Teicher and Warren Craft. Photo: Jamie Kraus

Forgive me, tap purists, but I often find tap dance performances like homework. Sure, I can appreciate the intricate rhythms made by the feet, but the shows can veer from outright show-biz to introverted, or to contained throw-downs between two dancers onstage. So along comes Michelle Dorrance and her skilled troupe of hoofers, with collaborator Nicholas Van Young, whose ETM—electronic tap music—helps craft a fully integrated, entertaining program of varied dynamics and segments, called ETM: Double Down, at the Joyce through this weekend.

Michelle Dorrance. Photo: Christopher Duggan

ETM refers to a set of primitive looking foot-square platforms connected by cables—like a giant octopus that morphs around the stage, its tentacles shifting so as to hang onto its prey. The dancers pick up the devices and move them, and then trigger their programmed sounds with their toes, as if hitting a piano key. (The motion reminds me of Tom Hanks in Big!, when he goes bonkers on the giant piano keyboard.) The emitted sounds evoke the xylophone, bells, chimes, piano, and are supplemented by an onstage band on drums, standing and electric bass, keyboard, and in the second half, soulful vocals by Aaron Marcellus.

Each segment varies in dynamics, so there are plenty of quiet moments mixed in with the more physical tap numbers. Dorrance's diverse and multi-skilled company includes Nicholas Van Young, Byron Tittle, Caleb Teicher, Leonardo Sandoval, Warren Craft, Elizabeth Burke, and Ephrat Asherlie (who performs b-moves in sneakers). They frequently work together incredibly intricately—at moments, each dancer plays one note in a musical phrase. A number featured larger platforms with metal grids on one side, against which the dancers scraped their shoe plates for a unique sound. Dropped link chains added a cascading thudding sound.

Dorrance's stage invention emerges in the way she situates or works a group of dancers around a soloist—in a traveling semicircle, with the chorus' backs to the featured dancer, or upstage on varied-level platforms, mingling with the band members. Her personal tap style is focused, her body somewhat contracted, with exaggerated knee lifts to precisely place each tap. Each of her company members has her/his own flair, but they work seamlessly as a team to realize some fascinating ideas that expand the art of tap.   

Marth Graham Dance Company Finds a Groove

Misty Copeland & Lloyd Knight, At Summer's Full. Photo: Brigid Pierce

Martha Graham Dance Company is celebrating its 89th year with a two-week run at the Joyce, with the theme Shape&Design. Misty Copeland guest starred on the opening night gala program in At Summer's Full (1940), a joyful dance that is part of Letter to the World, with new costumes (the originals were destroyed in Hurricane Sandy). While Copeland is not a native Graham dancer, her natural luminous stage presence and fully-articulated lines sang the choreography beautifully.

Michelle Dorrance's Lamentation Variation. Photo: Christopher Jones

The new Lamentations Variations show how a good idea can develop into a grand one. A film clip of Graham performing it leads off, a reminder of how fully integrated for her were form and message. Liz Gerring's displayed the drama she can squeeze out of simple stage formations. Michelle Dorrance's played on the snappy and jangly rhythms of the music, which included her own tapping. Kyle Abraham's tender duet articulated difference and harmony. Sonya Tayeh maximized the visual impact of the muscular dancers' limbs and feet, akin to So You Think You Can Dance, for which she has choreographed. This modular Lamentation series, which recruits new choreographic talent to the troupe, also demonstrates how small blocks can build a substantial edifice—much as Graham Company has done since its renascence.

Steps in the Street. Design by Frank Gehry. Photo: Brigid Pierce

Hewing to the season's theme of shape, Frank Gehry designed visual elements for Steps in the Street, Graham's classic war-time suite. The projected result is an animated illustration, a sort of volcano-shaped massing of lines that swiveled and blurred but remained secondary to the vibrant urgency of the womens' actions. Despite the mixed combined result, the attempt to enliven the repertory is admirable. Experimentation is once again a driving tenet.

Dance-theater artist Annie-B Parson was commissioned to create a premiere, The Snow Falls in the Winter. Her work is based on the Ionesco play The Lesson, and it fits surprisingly well within the Graham canon. Much of the movement is mime, or stage direction-type bursts (such phrases comprise part of the ample spoken text), but Parson puts the highly-trained dancers' skills to use in deep lunges, layouts, and extended legs held high (XiaoChuan Xie even waves a hand fan with her foot at one point). Technique aside, the company is comfortable with dramatic demands. 

In a direct line to Graham's work, Tadej Brdnik repeats some of the Minotaur's steps from Errand into the Maze, which had preceded Snow Falls on the program. The short-act tempo makes for lively viewing. Various props are clues to an admittedly absurdist affair—children's furniture, mics, a mysterious package, a dropped book, the fan. The Eagles' "Hotel California" is, intriguingly, played backwards (music is credited to David Lang), lending another element both familiar and disarming. 

Annie-B Parson's The Snow Falls in Winter. Photo: Brigid Pierce

Andonis Foniadakis' Echo, created last year, was performed again. The dance intrigues with the choreographer's opulent, circular movement style, enhanced with long flaring column skirts for all. PeiJu Chien-Pott was ravishing and forceful, buzzing like a live wire and swinging her long ponytail like a lasso, ready to rope anyone nearby. But the work runs too long, indulging a recurring and extended male duet (Lloyds Knight and Mayor) to the point of exhaustion. 

Artistic director Janet Eilber is succeeding in honoring Graham's legacy, enlisting artists to add to the repertory, resurrecting damaged sets and costumes, and engaging audiences with her pre-performance notes, which have become a familiar element at the company's performances. It's a positive takeaway as the Graham season closes on the eve of the first Paul Taylor's American Modern Dance season, which is promoting the incipient inclusion of works by choreographers who are not Paul Taylor—this year, Doris Humphrey and Shen Wei. To be continued.

October Culture Notebook

Here, culture highlights of the first part of a (good) crazy October in NYC.

From the last couple of Fall For Dance programs:

Dorrance Dance

• Dorrance Dance is an alpine gust of fresh air, not just in tap, but in the dance world. Choreographer/performer Michelle Dorrance pulls out individuals for solos, but in a diminution of the ego (the dominance of which can be alternately very appealing and a bore in many tap shows) can selectively highlight just the lower legs and feet a whole line of dancers. She places tap in more of a concert dance framework than the typical jam session throwdown. Women take the lead, rather than being marginalized. She has the potential to appeal to entire new segments of audience members.

Kyle Marshall in Mo(or)town/Redux

• Doug Elkins' adapted Mo(or)town/Redux, on the same program, made for an interesting contrast with the previous FFD's inclusion of ABT dancing The Moor's Pavane, by Jose Limon. Both have strong appeal: Limon's highly geometric, repeating quadrants underscore the rigidity of the court and the drastic consequences of broaching those constraints. Elkins lures us deeper from the outset with the music, Motown inspired tunes that immediately push emotional buttons. His Othello and Iago are far closer to guys we might know, and the movement is plush, powerful, dotted with hip-hop jargon, dynamic moves and lifts, and everyday noodling. The sheer pleasure and invention were reminders of Elkins' singular gifts in a city full of talent.

• Not entirely unrelated style-wise, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Faun, performed by the Royal Ballet's Rupert Pennefather and Zenaida Yanowsky, features the Belgian choreographer's snaky, rubbery, sometimes street-dancey vocabulary. But once the novelty of his unique movement wears off, it feels repetitive and somewhat limited. Perhaps it was the narrow emotional spectrum of this familiar romance. I wanted to  feel a bit more from these impressive dancers.   

The Rite of Spring by Martha Graham

• Just when you thought all the centenary-celebrating Rites of Spring were over, yet another one re-emerges: Martha Graham's, from 1984. Graham's vocabulary and theatrical emphasis are as appropriate to this Stravinsky score as you could hope for. The company members, in excellent fettle (10 women and nine men, whose challenging ensemble section showed their collective technical prowess), strode, jumped, and contracted their way through the iconic music. Xiaochuan Xie danced the Chosen One, achieving great pathos, youthful vulnerability, and strength, in contrast to the oak-solid shaman, played by Ben Schultz. The womens' wonderful costumes, by Pilar Limosner after Graham and Halston's originals, flattered as always. 

Suzanne McClelland, Internal Sensations (Rub), 2013 dry pigment, gesso, polymer and oil paint on linen, 49" x 59" 

And elsewhere:

• Suzanne McClelland at Team Gallery. Hurrah for Team Gallery, now representing Suzanne McClelland. The paintings in this show, titled Every Inch of My Love and up through Nov 17, may begin with words or stated concepts—symbols or representations of sensations, or objects (such as "ideal" men's measurements), or math. These letters or numbers can also detach from meaning to become marks on a canvas, interlopers in an abstract world of fascinating discrepancies, in which paint can drip sideways, down, or up. In a way, the works can sum up being human—with the gifts of cognition and speech—and the ability to abandon those brain activities in favor of a sumptuous visual experience.

• New York City Ballet's Contemporary Choreographers program. Alex Ratmansky's Namouna has memorable moments abound: smoking ballerinas, unfortunate bathing caps that render the dancers anonymous, the sprightly petite trio, Robert Fairchild's lost boy-becomes-man, and most of all, Sara Mearns' thunderous, daredevil solo. Rebecca Krohn danced the woman in white who captures Fairchild's heart. The slender Krohn is all line; with her cool demeanor, she sometimes coming across as an abstraction, even in Ratmansky's witty, often humorous ballet. Perhaps with time, this new principal will find the confidence to open her heart.