FALL FOR DANCE PROGRAM 4

Review by Celia Ipiotis

In a delightful start to City Center’s Fall For Dance Program #4, Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet won over the audience with their presentation of segatam (to lift someone up) choreographed by Cameron sink Fraser Monroe, a member of the Tla’amin First Nation. Highly sculptural, the beautifully trained dancers eased through intriguing lifts and body bends that connected one dancer to the next over the score by the Indigenous composer Jeremy Ducher. 

In keeping with the concept of lifting up elders after they are no longer fully capable, the ballet begins with one dancer standing on the shoulders of the company members. He drops down and works through the many trails leading to communal gestures. Breath drives the choreography that braids together contemporary, ballet and folk forms. Finding ways to share movement, segatam ties groups into unison choruses that fan out to the edges only to gravitate back to the core. Skillfully managing the seven dancers, Monroe adroitly forms pleasing architectural structures flecked with novel gestural combinations.

One of today’s most sought after choreographers, Kyle Abraham brought MotorRover, a 2023 duet set to silence with Jamaal Bowman and Donovan Reed. Of course, with dance, there’s never such a thing as silence because moving bodies create a music of their own. Simultaneously teasing and adoring one another, the two dancers speak through a physical call and response. Easy bent knees travel over soft arms and free flowing torso. The milky fluidity dominates the easy going duet that evolves from a combo of club dance swagger and modern dance discipline.

An Italian company, CCN/Aterballetto directed by Gigi Cristoforetti, closed the evening. They giddily stepped into the US premier of Rhapsody in Blue by Iratxe Ansa and Igor Bacovich to Gershwin’s famous score. Before the strains of Gershwin explode, we hear the lone sound of Bessies Jones’ soulful voice call out. Fourteen dancers dressed in gumball colored shorts and sleeveless shirts stretch onto the stage  framed by an illuminated, hanging sphere by Fabio Cherstich. 

When the irresistible Rhapsody in Blue begins to wail, the athletic choreography accents the rhythms sending dancers flying in the air on the high notes and responding to the music’s sweeping crescendos. The dancers romp with the abandon and glee some feel when standing in the kitchen alone and madly dancing to a favorite piece of music.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Celia Ipiotis