FALL FOR DANCE Program 2

Dance has always told stories, but successfully speaking to contemporary audiences through theatrical dance is still elusive. Both literary adaptations and more abstract works with a message have long relied on program notes or previous familiarity to make sense on the dance stage – and often we walk away, the experience leaving us without a trace.

KnoName Artist/Roderick George showed us it’s not only necessary, but eminently possible, to make an indelible mark. Venom started out seeming like it would be a fun romp, with a spinning disco ball hanging from the rafters, with evocative fragments of disco music drifting in and out. But then the dance evolved into a dreamy, slow-motion meditation through beautiful male bodies conveying sensitivity, longing, and more through sustained spiraling movement, spliced with eye-popping athletic lyricism. George contemporized the whole in the in-between:
every dancer in the all-male presenting cast seamlessly dancing on a floor covered in dirt or grass (think of Pina Bausch) traversed through multiple genres, balletic, modern, and African-diasporic language to create a contemporary statement on both the (in)visibility and the humanity of marginalized people. The program note confirmed, rather than explained, what we experienced, with a touch of the personal revealed.

When there’s a piano onstage, I always wonder… why is it there? Will dancers and musicians interact? In Boston Ballet’s Ein von Viel, a male duet accompanied by the excellent Alex Foaksman, the reason was “human connection,” but there was little interaction between any of the performers; it seems more like a showcase of their individual talents. Jeffrey Cirio is always fun to watch, his precision mirrored nicely by Yue Shi; each has an easy command of the technique required of them. Nonetheless, the choreography, with its simple side-by-side balletic dancing with angular arms, sometimes in canon, left no significant afterthought for the
audience to dwell on.

Ahhhh Complexions Contemporary Ballet: the gorgeousness of the dancers is always front and center. Their steely technique – classical ballet, on fire – is always something to behold. These dancers manage to convey fierceness, vulnerability, and affability, all at once, staring at us (or each other) as they slice, dice, and whip around – always in control. Directors Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson have created distinct language that flows from the Balanchine, Arpino, and Forsythe lineage – an extreme, precise, hyper-extension of ballet vocabulary. Less
appealing is a structure that relies on little ingenuity to move dancers on and offstage.

Sometimes, it seems the steps can be danced to any music, in this case, a compilation of songs by U2. That relationship is less important than the 100% the dancers give every second they are onstage in Dwight Rhoden’s Crying Out Loud. Those concerns aside, for decades Complexions has answered the call to diversify and elevate who we see on the stage, again and again.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Nicole Duffy