BATTERY DANCE FESTIVAL 42

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Mary Seidman

Battery Dance Festival celebrated its 42nd season this week, featuring 43 companies over seven days at Rockefeller Park, Battery Park City.

The August 17 performance was dedicated to honoring several Turn of the 20th Century American modern dance pioneers: Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn, and Loïe Fuller.

A tribute to the memory of NYC contemporary choreographer Jennifer Muller’s (1944-2023), company The Works, opened the evening celebrating her undeniable creativity with Miserere Nóbis (2014), a dance prayer for the common good in an age of conflict and loss. Nine dancers, “angels” dressed in black loose pants, bras, skull caps, and red socks, appear, slowly, passionately, guarding their hearts to choral music (Samuel Barber’s Allegerie: Miserere), carving shapes, expressing vulnerability and awe, at times moving together as one body. Shapes evolve into arching upper bodies and bent arms that resemble birds in flight.

The dancers turn their backs to the audience, facing the skyline of Manhattan and the Hudson River, like a flock of birds on stage while a real life flock of Canadian geese flew spontaneously overhead, offering the most natural set design possible, and also, perhaps, the spirit of Muller soaring with them.

Catherine Gallant’s company, Dances by Isadora, presented under a new sky a new restaged and re-imagined quartet to Chopin’s Valse Brillante. Two women in blue; two in green chiffon dresses (costumes by Ivana Drazic), waltz, swirl, turn, hop, and skip, in graceful, soft patterns, upper body and arms pushing against space as the lower body springs from step to step. Then, in silence, Ms. Gallant curves and arches through space with wide welcoming arms, summoning the spirit of Isadora to the stage. The last section, danced to tragic music by George Theophilus Walker, depicts grief as six dancers in gowns of beige, peach, and grey, slowly promenade while a seventh dancer in white enters, cradling a lost (symbolic) child, lurching, grieving, falling forward and back until the group helps her rise, finding hope facing forward to the future.

Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance performed two separate solo dances: American Elm and Piece for a Northern Sky. Both were inspired by the style of Loie Fuller (1862-1928). In American Elm, a collaboration with composer Matthew Burtner (costume construction by Mary Jo Mecca and textile painting by Gina Nagy Burns), Sperling swirls her body and arms extended with poles, treelike limbs painted on the white draping tent dress. Percussive sounds mimic nature as she creates abstract waves, wind, motion of the trees. Piece for a Northern Sky, again with a white tent dress, but this one painted with black horizontal shapes, creates the mystery and majesty of planetary rotation in endless turns, swirls and designs.

The mid section of the evening was dedicated to The Mother and Father of American Modern Dance: Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn and the Densihawn company, through the dedication of producer Audrey Ross. Floor Plastic (1916) by Ted Shawn, danced by members of the Limon2 company with music by Edward MacDowell, displayed dancers lined up facing stage right on their knees, rising to arch, and contracting, arms pressing space, showing what was possibly the early inspiration for Martha Graham’s technique ( an early member of the company).

Incense, (1906), a classic, choreographed by Ruth St. Denis and beautifully performed by Katherine Crockett, is based on the Hindu ritual of puja, where the individual worships the deities. With eloquent, vining, wispy arms, Crockett evokes the spirit and essence of incense.

Choeur Danse’ (1926) by Ted Shawn, brings three women on stage in Isadora styled white dresses, ending with leaps on the last note of the music by Vladimir Stcherbatcheff. The Cosmic Dance of Siva (1926) by Ted Shawn, shows a male dancer in golden Egyptian-like garb, balancing on one leg endlessly before lunges, fast paced steps and stomping, finally ending in the same balance pose as he began.

Lastly, Christine Dakin appears in Waltz/Liebestraum (1922) by Ruth St. Denis, in a green and purple chiffon gown (her design inspired by St. Denis) that fluttered and billowed in the wind as Dakin’s exquisite technique and emotional connection to the music transformed her into the wind itself.

Tribute to Ukraine channeled Isadora Duncan’s “freedom dances:” March Heroique (1916) and Varshavianka (1905), delivering the essence of Duncan’s spirit and determination. In the opening, Tchaikovsky’s strong, commanding, militaristic score brings seven dancers in royal blue dresses on stage with right arms circling as attitude skips and leaps pull them across stage on the diagonal. At one point, in unison, slow, arduous lunges with weighted arms moving in space from low, to medium to high, depict the effort required of this nation to continue to hold and wave its (imaginary) flags.

 In Part 2, to music by Rene Aubrey, slow, weighted walks and eventual collapses to the ground by the group are contrasted by a female figure in red, representing all bereaved Ukrainian women, who find the strength to carry on after terror and loss and lay flowers at the graves of their loved ones. The vibrant, determined Ukrainian National Anthem brings the piece to a close as a dancer enters carrying and waving a real Ukrainian flag.

Others enter, fall back in pain, rise, fall, and continue to carry the flag and wave it in homage to the brave and continued efforts of this nation fighting for its freedom. The dance roused the audience to its feet in support of the valor and determination of the Ukrainian people and in awe of this inspiring work by Lori Bellilove.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Mary Seidman