Sunday August 23rd, 2015 – I like everything about the CURRENT SESSIONS: I like the idea, I like the venue, I like like the relaxed yet attentive audience…and I’ve liked just about every work and dancer I’ve ever seen there. Alexis Convento and Allison Jones continue to put together strong programs and to offer their audience a chance to experience the work of new and mid-career choreographers in an intimate setting, with first-class lighting and sound.
In their presentations, the CURRENT SESSIONS particularly like to welcome mixed-media danceworks, and he first half of tonight’s program featured three such pieces, if one includes the lighting effects of the Niall Jones work. After the interval, pure dance took over. It was an evening of contrasting moods, with some very impressive individual performances.
In the opening work, Ashley Robicheaux & Artists offered Spaces Part II: “We, two”. My fascination with this piece began even before the dancing started, as Kane Mathis appeared and began to play his 21-string Mandinka harp. Mr. Mathis was within arm’s reach of me as he played, producing other-worldly sounds. A film commences, showing closeups of the hands and eyes of the two dancers – Ashley Robicheaux and Holly Sass. The two women emerge from the shadows, wary and seeking. They perform a mirror-image duet which evolves into intense partnering. One lifts and twirls the other; an emotional spasm is quietened. They rush about; an eventual embrace leads to the renewal of intense struggle. Passions ebb and flow, and in the end one girl pulls the other offstage as the music fades.
Joe Monteleone//Monteleone Dance‘s MK Ultra Sound derives its inspiration from Project MK Ultra, a covert CIA project involving mind control using psychotropic drugs which ran from 1953 til 1973. In the dancework, Mr. Monteleone and Shelley White dance a stylized duet against visual projections, including a woman’s face upside down. The soundscape ranges from static with a heavy beat, thru spoken ‘instructions’, fragments of song, the story of the IIlluminati. Complacency settles on the dancers: in a trance, they seem lulled into security. The movement then becomes more agile and expressive, finally calming to the sound of breathing. At last the woman seems to break down. In flickering light and shadows, the couple watch the ultrasound images of a fetus. Fleeting tenderness, then a fade to black.
Dancer Noel Genet sets the stage for his solo Solitude and Excess Features, choreographed by guest artist Niall Jones. Wearing trousers and a lace shirt, Mr. Genet first performs a spastic solo in place to the sound of silence. In a mélange of movement, the dancer reclines, rises, collapses, is weighted down, dances in the dark, writhes on the floor, jogs in place, crawls and shimmies, dances with his shadow, and concludes with an oddly graceful solo. Mr. Genet, utterly self-absorbed, gave a compelling performance; his sense of deadly earnest was soon evoking laughter from the audience. This quirky piece seemed at times like improv, but clearly it had all been thoroughly mapped out. The low-key levity of Mr. Genet’s performance sent the audience forth for intermission drinks in a congenial mood.
A deep throbbing hum heralds the arrival of Jeff Docimo//Isodoc Dance Group for an excerpt from Mr. Docimo’s Cut Crawlers. Clad in black, the five dancers crawl furtively into the space, which they explore with wary curiosity. The piece seems wrapped in shadow, with ominous thunder underscoring the mystery of this lost tribe. Amara Barner’s solo is outstanding, as is Mr. Docimo’s – which has breakdance elements impressively woven in. These two later have a duet, showing off the choreographer’s athleticism. Throughout this work, a sense of structure was amply evident: both in movement and emotional resonance, Cut Crawlers was impressive.
For her solo Bonjour Tristesse, Marissa Brown//Lone King turns with compelling rightness to the poignant music of Frédéric Chopin. Ms. Brown is seated in a folding chair, her eyes gazing intently at an unoccupied antique armchair across the diagonal from her. As the comely Ms. Brown rises from her reverie, her dancing is contemplatively physical, making excellent use of the space as movement and stillness alternate. At last, overcome by the music, she returns to her seat and to her obsession with the armchair: who had sat there? Where has that person gone? What has the dancer lost in losing that person? A beautiful and resonant work, expressively danced.
LoudHoundMovement (guest artist) closed the program with Brendan Duggan’s trio A Rib Where Her Voice Had Been, performed by Matthew Ortner, Holly Sass, and Shelby Terrell. First one woman and then the other vocalize softly. One woman dances a solo whilst the second dances a slow, almost imperceptible waltz with the man. The stage brightens, and to the sound of a big heartbeat motif, the dancers engage in a brisk trio, grasping and eluding one another and sometime lapsing into stand-still plastique. There’s a passage of 2-female partnering, with lifts and carryings; then they speak to each other in sign language as the man reclines. After he awakens, with a breakish solo, the women revert to their soft singing and then all evaporates into silence.
Oberon's Glade 