Finding a Common Language with Uncommon Dancers

Hyltin, Mearns, Melnick, Mitchell, and some viewers. Photo: Ian Douglas

The New York dance ecosystem is big. It contains several distinct groups that usually maintain a safe distance from one another; the main ones being ballet, modern, and Broadway. Lately, there's been more mixing between them than in recent memory, and it's primarily ballet stars dipping their calloused toes into other ponds. Broadway shows now star the Fairchild siblings, NYCB principals Megan and Robert, as well as his spouse, Tiler Peck. A number of ballet dancers have hatched their own small troupes to experiment with dance hybrid forms; they often employ their talented large company mates to perform (Troy Schumacher, Michele Wiles, Craig Salstein).

The most recent experiment began by Danspace Project director Judy Hussie-Taylor inviting critic/poet Claudia La Rocco to curate the space's spring platform, which is titled Dancers, Buildings and People in the Streets. A series of Dance Dialogues combine dancers from ballet and modern worlds. 

starts and fits, no middles no ends: 8 unfinished dances featured NYCB stars Sara Mearns and Sterling Hyltin paired with, respectively, Cunningham alum and independent success Rashaun Mitchell and Jodi Melnick, a luminous presence who has danced with numerous descendants of the Trisha Brown tree, including Brown herself, and choreographed as well.    

Sara Mearns. Photo: Ian Douglas

It was no surprise that given the venue—fertile turf for post-modern creativity—the ballerinas looked somewhat out of place at first, in warm-up type clothing (by Reid Bartelme) and sneakers. It was not until they moved in their own classical language that they seemed to relax, doing what they've trained their whole lives to do, and that includes not looking ungraceful or untrained.

Melnick and Mitchell comported themselves as distinctively as they have in their own projects. Melnick's every move is purposeful and linked to her next; she rarely inserts breaks into what read as structured improvisations, but which are probably carefully choreographed. She maintains an alert but broad focus that never reads as a specific emotion, until she is coached by Hyltin to do so in a hilarious Somnambula coaching session. 

Mitchell did a masterful improv with four chairs hanging from his body. He is a rare combination of subtle and strong, at times nearly ruthless, as when he ran headlong toward one of the viewers sitting in the performance area. (Two of these viewers were a critic and choreographer who could not resist exchanging whispers during much of the early stages of the performance, and by their location became chatty set pieces.) And—huzzah—he was asked only once or twice to support his female collaborators, two of whom spend a lot of time being lifted or steadied by men.

Mearns is the moment's leading ballerina. Her utter abandon and emotional outpouring in NYCB performances are made possible by her technical prowess, without which she couldn't be free to communicate all that she does. She is fearless and emotionally giving in the many ballets in which she now stars. Stripped of distance and formality, she became even more human. She walked without grace—like a Neanderthal, as a viewer behind me put it—particularly in her first costume of sneakers and multi-colored workout tights. When she changed into a sparkly beige romper and soft ballet slippers, she took on several layers of glamour that more typify her presence. She flashed her split extensions, shapely feet, and pliable back, releasing into a deep back arch with a slowly blossoming port de bras. She had transformed from ape to angel, grinning with happiness.

Hyltin is another radiant principal, quicksilver and delicate in her ballet roles. She seemed reluctant to diverge from ballet steps during improv sections, quoting some Balanchine here and there. One of her costumes, a short leather circle skirt, felt odd. But she hit her stride while coaching Melnick as La Somnambula, a NYCB rep staple. After Melnick stole the show by responding exaggeratedly to Hyltin's spoken notes—"more pain, now bump him," evoking a moan and a hip check—the ballerina demonstrated the proper way, and why she is a highly respected and beloved dancer.

These are fun experiments, mixing and matching modern and classical stars to see what results. It humanizes the mythic ballerina, and reminds us of the numerous gifts of modern artists. It does raise a timeworn issue: is it right to give these international stars opportunities that any of a hundred under-exposed modern dancers might truly appreciate? But who can blame La Rocco for putting together these dream lineups.    

Everybody Dance Now! Or just stand there.

Earth to Annique (in Gatekeepers): you can come down now! Photo: David Andrako

This fall, two organizations have opened within one block near the BAM Harvey Theater, BRIC House and Theater for a New Audience. BRIC's new headquarters is on the location where it was previously based along with Urban Glass (which also has new digs in the complex) and is an impressively varied multi-use space, including "the stoop"—an amphitheater like open atrium with step seating, a gallery space, a tv studio, a rehearsal space, a cafe area, and a 250-seat flexible theater.

Ron Brown shows the way to his company and community dancers
 in On Earth Together. Photo: David Andrako

The good news is that the mood was celebratory at one of Evidence's first week of performances (and the first ever dance in the theater). The theater was pretty full, and the audience eager to embrace the company. It presented an older work, Gatekeepers (1999), to music by Wunmi (who also designed the costumes), and the latest version of a growing Stevie Wonder tribute, On Earth Together, begun in 2011 and now nearly an evening-length work in itself. The twist this time around: dancers from the community were smoothly incorporated into several of the numbers. Their ages ranged wildly, from elementary school-aged to grandparent-aged, but all danced enthusiastically and with composure. Some looked nearly ready to substitute for one of Brown's excellent regular company dancers, including the ever-magnetic and silky Annique Roberts, who became Brown's partner in the final movements. She clearly inspires him, as she does us. 

The bad news? The sight lines are wanting in the chosen bleacher-style setup, at least for dance. Seated behind an average height person, I had to lean forward to glimpse the dancers' feet. Hopefully, the arrangement can be tweaked to fix this drawback, but it wasn't enough to dampen the crowd's exuberance. And the stage is perhaps half the size of the just-big-enough Joyce, where Evidence often performs. The run continues this week with Torch (2013) and On Earth Together with a different group of community members. 

Huggin' it out in Way In. Photo: Ian Douglas

Way In, at Danspace Project, by Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener, also included non-professional performers. It they wanted to—not that they do—this pair will never be able to shake the fact that they were stellar dancers with Merce Cunningham. Fortunately, the skills they honed with Merce are now like a superpower, summoned at will to astound us mortals. Technique aside, they have an intellectual and conceptual curiosity that is catalyzing some fascinating and varied work (Interface and Nox). Here, they chose to work with lighting and set designer Davison Scandrett and writer and ex-dance reviewer for the NY Times, Claudia La Rocco. (Question: Why did they collaborate with La Rocco? Answer: So she couldn't review the show! *rimshot*). Jokes aside, La Rocco has always been unsparingly honest with her opinion in reviews, and here she takes a risk in exposing herself physically to what is most likely an audience very familiar with her point of view. 

The piece begins somewhat tediously, with Scandrett lying on a dolly, awkwardly wheeling hand-written signs (turn off phones, emergency exits, etc) to La Rocco, who coyly holds them up like a boxing ring "girl," and exaggeratedly imitates a bored airline attendant. The set, by Mitchell, Riener, and Scandrett, played a major role—pink lace fabric formed a false ceiling over the stage, and walled off the altar area. It created a perfumy bordello feel, and the resulting compartments were lit to delineate on and offstage. Light was shone through the lace to capture its textural pattern in shadow. 

The work is so stuffed that those who crave technique are rewarded, as are those who care more about ideas. Riener and Mitchell's focus, flexibility, and control are peerless; in one section, Riener relevés on his incredibly articulated metatarsals and ever so slowly rotates 270º, tracking Mitchell as he slinks around the perimeter, close to viewers. You can hardly see Riener moving, so great is his finesse, and even though his laser gaze directs you to watch Mitchell, it's impossible to stop watching Riener. Backgrounding the first half, over Muzak-style early music (Rameau and Lully) we hear a monologue (spoken by La Rocco) shifting between descriptive and postulative: what do we expect to see? How important is technique? After awhile, the verbiage devolves into noise, but the mere juxtaposition of the two "teams" and their respective activities calls into question many tenets of performance that have been raised since there was dance, and more frequently since the Judson movement.

The Way Out of Way In. Photo: Ian Douglas

The non-dancers were both ungraceful enough in contrast to the Riener & Mitchell that it was hard to resist feeling resentful toward their presence onstage, presumably intentionally. (I should add that nearly anyone would be ungraceful compared to those two.) This particularly held true toward the end, when Riener & Mitchell moved behind the scrim to change from their sleek black unitards and rehearsal clothes that they'd layered on, into silver, dollar-print trunks and pink lace jumpsuits. Onstage, the other two played catch-the-rolling-gumball for a long time. A dialogue between them played, and again became noise. (They also lay like odalisques, drank tea, and ate cake.) No doubt it was intended to ask what kind of movement constitutes performance, because the gumballers clearly were "performing." 

But we were given plenty of virtuosic dance by the trained ones, who had a sort of throw-down. They repeatedly ran at one another from opposite ends of the sanctuary, clashing like elegant wrestlers, lifting each other with effort. They circled the stage, doing bold assemblé jumps. Mitchell promenaded in arabesque led by Riener's hand in his mouth. Down to their trunks, they moved like powerful boa constrictors, sliding their legs up the columns into splits, bending and twisting in yoga poses, slipping into mid-stage splits done as close as shadows. They danced as one at times, their shared histories and understanding becoming rich fuel to add to their Cunningham superpowers. 

In the finale, Scandrett moved a bunch of spotlights into place around a mic. La Rocco changed from her jeans into a long taffeta skirt, untied her voluminous hair, pulled white tulle netting over her head, and began intoning into the mic like a priestess. "Why did you come here tonight? What did you expect?" Her speech echoed increasingly until it was unintelligible. Riener and Mitchell, sweaty, by now had squidged their way across the sanctuary, up the steps, and were posed fawningly at her feet, like sweet putti, before standing at attention. It seemed like they might be married, but perhaps it was more marking the union of collaborators, of ideas. But it was an odd, kitschy ritual capping a show that did indeed pose a boatload of questions—many old, some new—about a way in. 

Rashaun Mitchell's Interface

Silas Riener standing on Rashaun Mitchell. Photo: Stephanie Berger

Interface, choreographed by Rashaun Mitchell with the performers, at Baryshnikov Arts Center, Mar 14. 

Title applies to:

• The dancers relating to one another
• Their interior (mental) and exterior (physical)
• Facial emoting vs. felt emotion
• Portions of the body in different actions, like the old game of "exquisite corpse"
• The dancers and the audience
• Our reaction to their performance
• The projections of spliced halves of two dancers' faces
• The graphic b/w set panels abutting one another
• All elements converging in that space at that time

The dance:

• Rashaun Mitchell, Melissa Toogood, Cori Kresge, and Silas Riener all danced with Cunningham. These alumni are a uniquely talented, ready pool of superdancers now dispersing throughout myriad performances. Seize on chances to see these great artists.  
• The dancers make various faces indicative of different emotions. Do they feel how they look?
• Start: they stand in four corners of the white marley like boxers in a ring, shoulders skew, then limbs jut out at angles
• They converge in the center, reaching up like children stretching
• Mitchell is pulled in a split by the others; he runs around the perimeter and sometimes hides and watches from the edge
• Near the end, one dancer carries two others; they alternate roles
• Facing outward, they circle, link elbows, and rotate in a circle, making exaggerated faces
• A remarkable site-specific work using BAC's windowed theater

Melissa Toogood's wild solo:

• She unties her long hair, which drapes over her face most of the solo
• Seated in a pike, she shudders violently, pulls her legs into a butterfly, and tickles her feet with her hair
• Kicks and stomps desperately
• The others crawl under the painted set panels almost as if to take refuge from her fury
• Mitchell grabs her ankles and spins her, face down, in circles, faster, until only her hands are brushing the ground

The choreographer, pulled every which way. Photo: Stephanie Berger

Silas Riener's solo:

• Folds his arms into triangles and holds them next to his head, like wings
• Contorts his face in varying emotions
• One leg folded into a rétiré, he rises glacially on the other (magnificent) foot, pulling himself taut vertically
• Stepping forward and then back, he arches backward dangerously deeply
• He pushes through splits, showing more remarkable flexibility 

Production notes:

• The inventive site-specific visual design is by Mitchell with Fraser Taylor and Davison Scandrett (who also designed the lighting) 
• Taylor designed the b/w silkscreen rectangular prints that  slide like barn doors alternate with exposed windows on two walls of the Gilman Space at BAC
• Video by Nicholas O'Brien is projected on the windows: spliced faces, animated biomorphic shapes
• Music by Thomas Arsenault, mixed live, varies from moos to rumbles to bells

Nox—Epitaph for a Restless Soul

Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener. Photo: Robbie Campbell

After Merce Cunningham company disbanded on New Year's Day, we were all so busy mourning and feeling sorry for ourselves that we didn't necessarily notice his dancers moving on with things. In the wake of Rashaun Mitchell's Nox, a collaboration with fellow alum Silas Riener, at Danspace Project last week, it seems now like a revelation: that dancers with immense skills, at once specific and broadly applicable, are now free to forge new artistic paths.

This epiphany was manifested in a meditation about writer Anne Carson's brother dying and being remembered in an accordion book epitaph and translated poem by Catullus; the performance "is a replica of it, as close as we could get," according to Carson. Riener seemed to embody the spirit of the lost soul, appearing in blindingly lit doorways and sprinting across the balcony and stage in abject recklessness. He tried to meld with the church walls, pushing on the immobile plaster pillars like Sisyphus in an absurdly unwinnable battle. His shadow drifted eerily past externally-lit stained glass windows. Riener tumbled down the sanctuary risers, or crawled down them arachnid-style on his elbows and knees. He seemed to be trying to cleave his body from his spirit, and very nearly achieved it, from what I could tell. During these exorcismic attempts, Mitchell largely observed him at a short distance. "I prowl my brother," intoned Carson, precisely.

Mitchell began the piece by entering, circling the stage periphery, and sitting on the the floor just in front of us, back to us, his bearing quietly powerful. He perhaps represented the family, or the rest of us—helpless voyeurs; catching Riener's falling body (and vice versa), interacting with him for spans and yet never completely connecting. Riener was fully present and yet in another psychic universe. He has that alchemical balance of being in complete control of his impressively skilled movements, and yet on the very edge of abandon. A memory of him similarly tearing up the stage in Merce's Split Sides last winter at BAM is forever branded in my brain.

Davison Scandrett designed the lighting, which with the inside-out staging, pushed into all corners and garretts of the church. Carson and artist Robert Currie scrawled magic marker drawings on two overhead projects, reminiscent of elementary school. They drew images of Mitchell and Riener, pinned to the wall where the projectors shone, in some futile attempt to capture them. Chunks of text were spoken, layered with Benjamin Miller's haunting sound score, mixed live. Carson's visible presence as an "artist" was conceptually at odds with her recorded/live readings. Her role as a big catalyst for literary/choreographic collaboration in recent years should be noted, particularly in light of her program bio, which says this well-known writer "teaches ancient Greek for a living."

In the searing, chaotic finale, Mitchell gave Riener "CPR," essentially dribbling his ribcage off the floor repeatedly. Riener folded into himself, grabbing his legs like alien objects. He rolled over the tops of his toes, arching into a backbend supported on the other end by his face, spirit nearly anarchically liberated. Mitchell could only watch, riveted as we were, and comfort him in his torturous transition.