AMY PIVAR And SEAN CURRAN Together Again

Lifelong choreographers, performers, colleagues, and good friends, Amy PIvar and Sean Currán reunited in a jointly produced concert at the Jack Crystal Theater, NYU, Tisch School of the Arts. Together Again began with a video projection from 1988 showing these two in three lively duets, in sneakers, reminiscent of the 80’s scene. In the finale, they fall face to face towards each other … two pillars leaning on each other for support. 

Fast forward thirty-five years. They dance again, separate but equal, presenting two very personal works with similar themes of self reflection.

In Detraumatizing the Archive: Mu’u mu’u Pivar asks “What Was I Made For?”as she comes to terms with the effects her parents have had in her life. Curran’s Liederkreis asks “Who Will Remember Me?” as he faces semi retirement and aging. These two pillars in the dance community now lean on the audience to see, hear, and understand their personal journeys as we witness  their histories.

Pivar brings her life as a duel citizen of New York and Hawaii to the scene, her back to the audience, dimly lit, in the shadows, wearing a white mu’u mu’u, dancing hula movements to bird sounds.  Various decorative mu’u mu’us are lined up on the floor as she speaks in person about the history of Hawaii, the garment, and her mother’s collection of mu’u mu’u’s. She wraps herself and rolls along the path of the mu’u mu’us, as if in a cocoon or womb. Then unwraps and begins a delicate solo to Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” and after, tells the story of her mother’s detachment, depression, and confinement to her bed before her eventual death during COVID. 

The mu’u mu’s were found in her mother’s closet after her death and thus began the emotional excavation of her “protected amnesia.” Pivar describes  her mother’s influence on her childhood, artistry, femininity, adulthood, and aging dancer body.  She dresses and undresses in various mu’u mu’us while she dances forward and back, windy, breathy shapes; the currents of her life undulating through her body. She is trying to move on.

When Pivar describes her 94 year old “Renaissance man” of a father, the piece takes a comedic departure as she admits her only role in her father’s life now: ordering weekly groceries from his favorite Jewish deli, Zabar’s. She noodles on the floor, bound in a mu’u mu’u, looking now like a sausage, as  the voiceover expresses her collaboration with the Zabar’s clerk, acknowledging each item in the delivery package with dry acceptance. “Yeah, okay, uh-huh.” Very funny, but sad. 

In the final scene, she describes how pearls are made from sand, pressure, and trauma, (her other life as a jewelry-maker)? likening this process to our own lives: “trauma, pearl, trauma, pearl…” She carefully folds each mu’u mu’u, one on top of each, then lifts the pile neatly to her waist, receding into the dark, resolved for now. 

Sean Currán’s world premiere,  Liederkries, meaning “song cycle” co-choreographed by Benjamin Freedman, potently combines all the production elements. Spoken text by Meghan Dunne, (adapted from German born Heinrich Heine’s poetry) was sung live by the tenor Daniel McGrew; the pianist Peter Grouch performed Robert Schumann’s Liederkreis, Op. 24 (1839) while the lithe and eloquent Benjamin Freedman danced as the younger Currán.

These three gifted performers accompany Currán as he moves from one of six chairs to another, re-arranged periodically as his own “cycle” follows the music. Currán muses about life, career, aging, and death: “I busy myself in peace and contentment with art and music and dance;” and then asks finally “Who will write my elegy?” Who will remember me?” “In my heart, I’m still dancing.” 

These thoughts are embodied on stage by four talented artists, offering a dance of Currán’s self reflection, maturity, and perspective on his past, present, and future. 

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Mary Seidman