No End in Sight
As in the collaborative premiere from Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth. The rest of the program made up for that, though.
by Margaret Putnam
published Saturday, February 26, 2011
Close Up and Personal
presented by Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth
Hardy and Betty Sanders Theatre
Fort Worth Community Arts Center
1300 Gendy Street
Fort Worth, TX 76107
click here for a location map
Even the silly title was off-putting: iAm uAre. And that was just the beginning. Everything about this ridiculous piece—performed Friday night at Hardy & Betty Sanders Theatre as part of Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth’s "Close Up and Personal"—raised my hackles.
Quasi-theater-art that included the obligatory video projections, text (spoken in sophomoric intonations) and pedestrian dancing—called for "Edit! Edit!" No chance of that since it was a “collaborative” effort by choreographer (and company director) Kerry Kreiman and the dancers.
Even worse, it seemed to have no end.
As best as I can remember, here’s the gist of it: with a cello at her feet, Sara Donaldson explains how new technology allows her to hear her own music, and how it could also play with reality. As she sits at stage left, characters of her imagination appear, or rather, many alter egos. There is Jessica Thomas, in 17th century regal dress and a preposterous, towering headpiece of buttons, tinsel, star, do-dads and Velcro-taped cell phone who says sweetly, “I eat. I sleep. I breathe. I love my amazing, beautiful dress.” It’s just zany enough and expressed in the right, lilting tone, that she almost draws you in. Her other asset is that she dances with a languorous grace.
The rest of Ms. Donaldson’s alter egos include a warrior woman from Zeno, a belly dancer, a CIA agent and a Miss Manners offshoot in purple wig and flounced dress made of newspaper. They all have their silly things to impart, and do it in endless repetitions, both in movement and text (“I think, therefore I am”; “I Google, therefore I am”; “I eat, therefore I am.”)
Fortunately, iAm uAre was not the whole show. The best included four solos, a duet and an ensemble piece. In seenunseen, the barely visible figure of Thomas appears wearing a billowy red slip over flesh-colored shorts. Facing the side, she bends and sways, moving faster and faster. As she does, her strawberry blonde hair falls loose past her waist, giving her even more the suggestion of a mysterious creature tossed by the sea.
In Two, a dim light captures Courtney Mulcahy hunched over a bench. The light disappears, and next Ms. Mulcahy is stretched out prone. The dance continues in that way, with little glimpses of her body in changing positions. Eventually, the light stays steady, and Ms. Mulcahy leaves the bench to take on some of the same angled poses. At the end, the stage turns dark, and when the light comes on, the bench is bare. Simple, but effective, it works like a shadow-box of movement.
In Claroscuro, Claudia Orcasitas gets dressed in front of us, putting on a white blouse, taupe-colored skirt and apron, and then takes on the appearance of a field maiden in a painting. The rock she lifts is almost too heavy for her, but the water bucket that she dips her face into gives her fresh hope, and she leaves carrying it on her shoulders.
Blind Faith is just a snip of a dance, where choreographer and dancer Tina Mullone makes her way from the far edge of the stage in a diagonal path to the other side, using arms to initiate spiraling loops and plunging arabesques.
Against a video background of bare trees, guest artist Ellie Leonhardt’s The Well Interruption brings dancers together in a calm, almost Zen-like forest setting. A dancer rolls on the ground, flanked by a cluster of three and of four. Eventually, all fan out, and as the images on the screen flicker like leaves, the dancers curve their arms and sway. At one point, they group together to shoot out limbs at all angles, a striking tableau. At the end, one rolls on the floor, and comes to a halt at the feet of waiting friends.
What all these dances have in common is a hint of mystery and atmosphere and a clear sense of purpose. That atmosphere comes to the most beguiling fruition in Ms. Orcasitas’ Madre Luna where Jacqueline DePetris and Ms. Thomas—one dressed in a white top, the other in black—suggested lunar opposites that separate and reconnect without ever losing curiosity for the other.
◊ Margaret Putnam has been writing about dance since 1980, with works published by D Magazine, The Dallas Observer, The Dallas Times Herald, The Dallas Morning News, The New York Times, Playbill, Stagebill, Pointe Magazine and Dance Magazine.
http://www.theaterjones.com/reviews/20110225235939/2011-02-26/Contemporary-DanceFort-Worth/Close-Up-and-Personal
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Review in the Fort Worth Star Telegram
BY MARK LOWRY
Special to the Star-Telegram
FORT WORTH -- If you've been hankering to sample what North Texas has to offer in the way of modern dance, Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth's spring concert, "Close Up and Personal," is a great starting place.
It's a box of assorted choreographic chocolates, if you will. And if it doesn't always feel cohesive, that's not necessarily the point. The spotlight is on the variety of styles, ideas and forms of area choreographers.
Solo work is represented in Jessica Thomas ( seenunseen from 2010), Courtney Mulcahy ( Two, a premiere) and Tina Mullone ( Blind Faith, premiere). Whereas Thomas uses her long red hair as an expression of emotion and movement (reminiscent of Margie Gillis) and Mulcahy gives a dramatic look into the cyclical life of a woman suffering from a mental disorder, Mullone goes for something less introspective with a more traditional and athletic dance that is no less profound.
Comedy comes with Sarah Newton's delightful postmodern jig, (premiere), using kicks and head bobs with modern choreography in a fun duet with Mulcahy. On the sillier side is Lori Sundeen Soderbergh's Safe (premiere), with scenes that capture the absurdities and frustrations of the airport and airplane experience.
Denton choreographer Ellie Leonhardt's premiere of The Well Interruption is an exciting ensemble piece, using asymmetric groupings of eight dancers, sometimes working in unison, other times separately, with strong use of extended limbs to create angular geometric shapes. Perhaps the idea is for the dancers to reflect the swaying bare tree branches in the backing video (by Dave Bithell).
The evening's standout was Claudia Orcasitas, dancing the story solo Claroscuro, originally created for San Marcos Ballet. She enters the stage, puts on her peasant clothes and finds a love-hate relationship with a wooden pail.
Then, in the premiere of Orcasitas' Madre Luna, Jacqueline DePetris and Thomas give us an expressive, beautifully danced duet.
The program's final work, the company's premiere of iAm uAre, came too late in the program to be reviewed.
http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/02/25/2878508/contemporary-dancefort-worths.html#tvg
Special to the Star-Telegram
FORT WORTH -- If you've been hankering to sample what North Texas has to offer in the way of modern dance, Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth's spring concert, "Close Up and Personal," is a great starting place.
It's a box of assorted choreographic chocolates, if you will. And if it doesn't always feel cohesive, that's not necessarily the point. The spotlight is on the variety of styles, ideas and forms of area choreographers.
Solo work is represented in Jessica Thomas ( seenunseen from 2010), Courtney Mulcahy ( Two, a premiere) and Tina Mullone ( Blind Faith, premiere). Whereas Thomas uses her long red hair as an expression of emotion and movement (reminiscent of Margie Gillis) and Mulcahy gives a dramatic look into the cyclical life of a woman suffering from a mental disorder, Mullone goes for something less introspective with a more traditional and athletic dance that is no less profound.
Comedy comes with Sarah Newton's delightful postmodern jig, (premiere), using kicks and head bobs with modern choreography in a fun duet with Mulcahy. On the sillier side is Lori Sundeen Soderbergh's Safe (premiere), with scenes that capture the absurdities and frustrations of the airport and airplane experience.
Denton choreographer Ellie Leonhardt's premiere of The Well Interruption is an exciting ensemble piece, using asymmetric groupings of eight dancers, sometimes working in unison, other times separately, with strong use of extended limbs to create angular geometric shapes. Perhaps the idea is for the dancers to reflect the swaying bare tree branches in the backing video (by Dave Bithell).
The evening's standout was Claudia Orcasitas, dancing the story solo Claroscuro, originally created for San Marcos Ballet. She enters the stage, puts on her peasant clothes and finds a love-hate relationship with a wooden pail.
Then, in the premiere of Orcasitas' Madre Luna, Jacqueline DePetris and Thomas give us an expressive, beautifully danced duet.
The program's final work, the company's premiere of iAm uAre, came too late in the program to be reviewed.
http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/02/25/2878508/contemporary-dancefort-worths.html#tvg
Sunday, January 9, 2011
The Well/Interruption to be premiered at CD/FW show
Friday February 25, 2011 at 8pm, Saturday February 26 at 2pm and 8pm
at the Sanders Theatre at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, 1300 Gendy St., Fort Worth, 76107 (corner of Lancaster and Montgomery across the street from the Amon G. Carter Museum of Western Art)
TICKETS: $15 General/$8 Students & Seniors. Cash at the door or advance payment using PayPal here.
at the Sanders Theatre at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, 1300 Gendy St., Fort Worth, 76107 (corner of Lancaster and Montgomery across the street from the Amon G. Carter Museum of Western Art)
TICKETS: $15 General/$8 Students & Seniors. Cash at the door or advance payment using PayPal here.
 |
| CD/FW company member Jessica Thomas will perform her solo "seenunseen" photo by Milton Adams |
The intimacy of the black box theatre at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center illuminates the motion, emotion, and energy of dance in a tangible way. This diverse repertory program reveals the dancers' characters in a variety of circumstances from the humorous to the deeply personal. Special guest Ellie Leonhardt (Denton) will premiere a new group work featuring projections. CD/FW company members Jessica Thomas (The Colony), Claudia Orcasitas (Fort Worth/Peru), Courtney Mulcahy (Euless), and Sarah Newton (Dallas) will present a mix of solos, duets, and group works. In addition, CD/FW artistic director will work in collaboration with the CD/FW company members along with photographer Milton Adams, costume designer Crickett Pettigrew, lighting designer Nikki DeShea Smith, and composer Sara Donaldson to create a new group work inspired by the increasingly fluid boundaries between fantasy and reality in our electronically-driven lives.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Taboo You
It's too bad the National Performance Network's amazing Dallas showcase was one-time only.
by Ellie Leonhardt
published Sunday, December 12, 2010
It's too bad the National Performance Network's amazing Dallas showcase was one-time only.
by Ellie Leonhardt
published Sunday, December 12, 2010
photo: National Performance Network
The National Performance Network held its 25th anniversary annual meeting in Dallas this weekend. As part of the conference, two performance showcases, called "Taboos in the Night," were given at the beautiful but in-need-of-renovation Majestic Theatre in downtown Dallas.
All of the pieces presented on Friday and Saturday night were recreations of projects/performances of dance and theater that will be remounted at theaters in 15 cities across the country. This showcase gives the presenters a chance to relive memories of these pieces as well as educate new presenters to the quality and style of work that NPN likes to support.
Pomo Afro Homos kicked it off Friday with a “remix” of Fierce Love: Stories from Black Gay Life. The lively, moving and entertaining stories of identity told by the black queer performance ensemble uses humor and dramatic pauses to help the audience ask deep questions about stereotypes, one’s first sexual experience as a definition of the self, relationships struggles, and death of a loved one. Many of the scenes are short vignettes of duets, solos and trios that use movement, sound effects, imagination and song to help support the script’s message. The piece closes by asking the audience to ponder why “people bundle up their pain and go silently into the night.”
The message is centered on the healing of one’s community and one’s acceptance and the embrace of one’s identity. The language and cultural references offer a poetic and often abstract window into the characters’ innocent struggle to find, accept and celebrate being a black gay man in San Francisco.
The second piece on the show was Elia Arce’s First Woman on the Moon. This piece was promising, but needs more editing and rehearsal as the transition between ideas took up as much time as the ideas themselves.
The last piece on the Friday was Pat Graney’s Faith (premiered in 1991). Graney is a choreographer based in Seattle who, for the past 15 years, has created an innovative program called Keeping the Faith (which brings Graney’s work to women and girls in prisons). It is clear that Graney is an artist who thinks deeply about life and art.
Faith is a dance split into four sections, inspired by Caravaggio and Michelangelo’s paintings, the writing of Roshi Juiyu Kennett, Francesco Clemente and the animation work of Rybczynski. All of the influences are evident in the work, but the most obvious reference is how the images of the paintings are transferred to the stage: The first of the four sections shows the cast of seven women frequently moving slowly to a new position on stage to stop and pause in the familiar Renaissance shapes.
Occasionally, women in dark velvet dresses would diverge into a solo against the group and then be lifted or carried across the stage to then softly, with a few subtle pauses, lie back down onto the ground. The phrase of the pausing coordinates with the breath of the singers in the choral style mass composed by Arvo Part. The use of levels, diagonals, and shapes with soft lines is repeatedly lush and soothing to the eye. The first section of the dance, choreographically, is by far the most successful and could stand on its own.
The second section of Faith involves the manipulation of small red physioballs. The dancers playfully manipulate the shapes and relationships made in the first section by using the red balls to add new elements such as sliding, rolling and running to the movement vocabulary. In the third section, the velvet dresses reappear with no sleeves as a soloist, downstage left, caresses and puts on a pair of red high-heeled shoes.
The dance continues to evolve the movement shapes from the first section, and the playful speed and momentum of the second. As the harshness of this section evolves, it is clear that the shoes manipulate the dancers in a uniform manner. The symbolism of the shoes suggests that the women feel a special power and sexiness by wearing these shoes (designed by men), yet as this section progresses it is also these shoes that cause the women’s neurosis. As the dancers break off from the unison striding, the women take turns lying on their backs shaking and writhing as if to try to get the shoes off or as if the shoes have an electric power over her body. At the end of this section the same soloist mentioned above presents a gesture of her right hand erratically touching the side of her face. The expression on her face is a cross between confusion, pain and delirium.
As the lights go out on the soloist, the music begins to fade into a whispering man saying the Lord’s Prayer. Graney uses the prayer to segue to the last section of the dance in which the bodies of the women lay in a clump upstage left. The bodies are lit by a warm sidelight that slowly reveals naked curvy bodies moving in a meditative slowness. The movement vocabulary and pacing quickly reverts back to that seen in the first section. As the dancers face upstage the line made by the symmetrical shape of the torso is striking. The unique shape of the women’s hips shows how under the velvet dress and behind the sexy walk we are all unique, and it is in this beauty of the body that we are most connected to our spirit and faith.
With lack of traditional modern dance movement phrases, Graney presents several false endings and finally settles on bring the women in red high heels back onstage while one woman is left nude on the floor appearing to repent her sins by kneeling and gently touching her face. Graney pulls her audience through a narrative of subtle mazes, processes, and evolutions of women’s rolls and collective experience. Though this piece does not present a direct narrative, as do the other pieces on the showcase, I imagine that the women in the prison system are able to see Graney’s work and can relate deeply to the self-expression and thoughtful dance/art creation.
The Saturday night performance showcased two hybrid dance/theater works. Both of these pieces had an American theme. The first was Jane Comfort’s take and deconstruction of the Tennessee Williams’ play The Glass Menagerie. As the program note states: “it utilizes fantasies and movie scenes to underline the play’s subtext of desire and memory.” This quote, in a nutshell, sums up what was presented on stage.
The highlight of Comfort’s work, excerpts from Faith Healing created in 1993, is a movement scene between the characters of Laura and O’Connor in which the actors begin mouthing the lines of Lois Lane and Superman, as sound from the Superman movie plays over the speakers. The actors begin to reenact the part of the movie in which Superman takes Lois Lane flying.
The characters run around the stage in a large circular pattern, as if they were little kids trying to get up the momentum to take off. Eventually the pair lands center stage on their bellies over two stools. They have their arms and legs outstretched and because they have become static it appears for a brief moment like they are flying. The use of Comfort’s humor is evident with the next crescendo of the music―the characters lift the left sides of their bodies as if turning like an airplane would.
The audience can’t help but laugh in the delight and freedom the image provides. Even though Comfort’s deconstructions are often intelligent, the energy of any Williams’ text or concept could not stand up to the next piece on the program.
Word Becomes Flesh is a powerful performance written and directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph. The recreation of this work from 2003 is defined as a “choreopoem.” It fuses text, hip-hop, music, gesture, dance, monologue, spoken word and autobiography. The version seen on Saturday is a one-man play transposed to a group of five young African-American male performers. The text, rich with poetry and breath, delivers Joseph’s diary told to his unborn son. The actors convey the transformative process with clarity and expansive emotion. Frequently, the unborn son’s heartbeat is heard as the actors speak over, around and through the sound.
The piece ends in a climactic moment when Joseph himself enters upstage and begins to move in the most magnificent way―slapping the floor, limbs flying, center strong and stable. (The other performers unfortunately do not match Joseph’s explosive movement quality). As Joseph dances, he tells the audience that his son is now 9 and reveals that his grandfather’s death is connected to his son’s birth. Joseph pointedly asks the question directly to his son: “Do you know who you are?” Joseph wants his son “to grow up like good music, I want you to last,” as one of the performers spoke earlier in the piece.
Muscle memory, myth, pain, change, transformation, what it means to be black in America, paradox, ignorance, hate, racism, cultural references are just some of the themes used to hit the audience with truth and identity of this honest and captivating story.
◊ Ellie Leonhardt is a Lecturer of Dance in the Dance and Theater Department at the University of North Texas.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Leading a traditional Marian Chace movement circle as a warm up for modern technique students
Photographs taken by Amanda Will. Dancers in photos: Jake Bone, Jessica Holt, Shannon Sauer, Tyler Patterson, Audrey Kennedy, and Katie Jennings
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Aikido...
Grasping at The Law of Attraction? Do This Instead and Enjoy Success
What is wrong with its seeking the pleasant and shirking the unpleasant? Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem. By flowing with life I mean acceptance — letting come what comes and go what goes. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That
Aikido - In The Flow
If you push someone what happens? Chances are they will push back. If you grab someone’s hand and pull them, what happens? They pull away from you. If someone is needy and is grasping at you for your love and attention, what do you do? Most people pull away. Grasping at something you want can actually stop you from having it. Repelling something you don’t want, can make it push at you even harder.
People grasp and repel in many arenas in life. They grasp at things they want. They grasp at receiving pleasure. They repel people and things they don’t like. What they don’t realize is that the constant grasping and repelling, not only creates the outcome they don’t want, but puts them in a lot of stress and drains their energy.
In personal development, grasping and repelling will stop you in your tracks. You can’ heal something you avoid looking at. If you avoid and deny that you have an alcohol problem, for example, the problem will persist, or get worse. It is only through shining the transformative light of awareness on something that it can heal and be integrated.
If you wish to manifest your hopes, dreams and desires and activate the Law of Attraction, the best state to do this in is being in the flow of life. You must allow what you desire to be, not grasp at it. Grasping at something implies that you don’t have it. If you don’t energetically have it first, you won’t have it in form.
When you allow both the good and the bad without grasping and repelling, you enter into the the powerful flow of the now moment that flows through self and all of life. You naturally move into a state of well being that is more aligned with your desires manifest, activating the Law of Attraction.
There is a powerful Japanese martial art form called Aikido. Ai means harmony. Ki means spirit. Do means ‘the way of’ or ‘the road to’. In other words, Aikido means ‘the way of harmonized spirit’. The key difference between Aikido and other martial arts is that you don’t repel or block a person attacking you, you flow with punch or kick, using the energy of their momentum for yourself.
Do this in your life and you will have more energy to manifest what you wish to manifest. Instead of resisting things you don’t like and pushing them away, simply allow them to flow through you and dissapate. This puts you in the universal flow of life as you move into living in the now moment.
Be aware of where you are grasping at things in life. Imagine having your desires manifest. Grow the sensation of your desires manifest in your inner world. Do this without grasping at them and you allow them to move from being to having. Grasping prevents the having. For example, if you wish more abundance in your life, imagine yourself being abundant. Imagine what you will buy, what you will do, and most importantly how good you will feel with your abundance. If you are grasping at it, it means you don’t yet have it. Let the grasping go and have it in your inner world (your thoughts, feelings and imagination). As you do this you open the door to having it in your outer world as well.
Living in the Flow has other advantages. One obvious one is that when you are not repelling or grasping at things in life, you have more energy, and less stress. You are more relaxed and because of this are able to get more done in less time. One can only surmise that living a relaxed, stress free life with more energy would be better for your health and longevity.
Want to increase your well-being and more powerfully activate the Law of Attraction in your life? Be aware of where you grasp and repel in your life. Consciously let the grasping and repelling go. Allow whatever is to be. As you do so, you begin to live in the Flow where all good things reside.
http://kristopher-raphael.com/grasping-at-the-law-of-attraction
Monday, November 8, 2010
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By Kristopher Raphael (Entries in the Handbook fro Planet Earth)
Wed, Jun 24, 2009