AMERICAN DANCE GUILD HONORS CELIA IPIOTIS, JOAN MILLER, RONALD K. BROWN WIT/H LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Review by Noah Witke Mele

The American Dance Guild’s 2024 Performance Festival at the Alvin Ailey Citigroup Theater is a delightful celebration of modern dance, old and new. The six dances presented in Friday night’s program run the gamut of style, tone, and energy, bringing together young contemporary choreographers with modern dance mainstays.

The evening opened with Xiang Xu’s Nocturn In Between, a duet whose playful choreography
is delivered with a poignant somberness, with the two dancers mirroring movements and articulating
their hands with sharp quiverings.

Aftermath, choreographed by Catherine Meredith, and performed by an ensemble of 9 talented young women, is a lushly dramatic modern composition of swirling gauzy black skirts and pulsing undulations punctuated by moments of eerie stillness.

The next installment from Claire Porter whose fabulous comedic monologue Sexy Grammar depicts a librarian giving a rather scandalous presentation on how “in grammar one composes oneself” as piece by piece her clothing is doffed in a delightful burlesque until she wears only a lacy bodysuit and strings of
pearls.

Following was H.T. Chen’s composition, Heart of Grace, stripping down traditional lion dance
to focus on the movements of performers whose bodies are often obscured by elaborate costuming
and puppets. The second act began with Eternal Now, choreographed by Young Soon Kim, a starkly
lit duet of gentle intimacies and weight sharing that eventually evolves into a trio of partnerings that
always ends with one of the dancers left out.

Finally, She Rides A Tiger by Tina Croll, features a quartet of women whose contemplative and angular movements brought the evening to a gentle close.

Alongside platforming performing artists the ADG honors modern dance innovators with
lifetime achievement awards at the festival. This year’s honorees include choreographers Joan Miller
and Ron K. Brown, along with Eye on Dance founder Celia Ipiotis, who—on Friday
evening—presented clips from her historic PBS series Eye on Dance. The program brought together
dancers, choreographers, and other industry professionals to speak candidly about their lives
and practices to an enormous general audience.

Altogether the ADG Performance Festival is not to be missed. It is an excellent way to see modern dance, in all its forms, in conversation with its history.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Noah Witke Mele