Life as a Modern Dancer

RAWdance’s Portal into (Un)familiar Space

Nick Wagner and Jhia Jackson, foreground. Erin Yen, Claire Fisher, ArVejon Jones, and Juliann Witt (upstage). Photo by Hillary Goidell.

 

RAWdance’s Portal into (Un)familiar Space

By Garth Grimball

Site-specific dance often prioritizes site over specific. And, as a priority, the site often exists as an absence rather than a presence. This site is not a theater. This site is a unique influence on the dance.

The former is arithmetic: non-theater site + dance = site-specific work

The latter is geometry: dance = site/movement + π r ¹

RAWdance’s premiere Portal exists somewhere in between.² Performed at the Transbay Joint Powers Authority’s Salesforce Park, September 3-5, co-director Katerina Wong explores “a space to process and reflect” with a cast of six dancers. Portal begins with a signature RAWdance group number. Claire Fisher, Jhia Jackson, ArVejon Jones, Nick Wagner, Juliann Witt, and Erin Yen pop in saturated colors against the evening greens of the park’s foliage. The movement plays with lines, canon, and balancing motifs.

From there the audience split to follow tour guides around the park to experience 5 performance installations. While the prescripted guidance guarantees a complete viewing of each section, it negates the rare freedom available in public parks. Were the audience allowed to roam freely, the experience of the installations would tune into the frequency of the surroundings. Catch a glimpse of a dancer like a seagull swooping past. Notice the distance between bodies like the skyscrapers cluttered around the elevated park. Instead the work feels very frontal, like being in a theater, but you’re not. You’re outside.

Claire Fisher and Erin Yen. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

There are moments of eco-bliss. “Kindred,” a duet performed by Fisher and Jones, happens on a hill under fantastical lighting by Thomas Bowersox. Green LED specks shimmer across the trees as Fisher and Jones shift between static and languid. The duet ends with the dancers falling and rolling down the hill, leaping up to roll again. THIS. THIS MOMENT. This moment could ONLY happen in this exact setting. This moment is site-specific. It is breathtaking.

The other installations have echoes of site-specificity. Wagner backs into a tree causing the branches to shake and the tree is part of the dance. The gravity of Witt’s feet sliding against the soil evokes the special meeting of solid and moisture.

The finale happens on the park’s Amphitheater Stage. Michael Wall’s soundscape and Ephraim Colbert’s media projections blend into a calming vibe. The dancers, now clad in white, partner each other in rotating combinations. Jackson stands out in her commitment to the choreography; her focus imbues the weight sharing with an evergreen present. Portal closes with the dancers running in loops down the amphitheater’s stairs. The moment aims for release but lands as a task. Processing and reflecting begets more processing and reflecting. RAWdance continues the process.

Photo by Jim Watkins.

^{1 Note: this reference to geometry is purely metaphorical. Discussing the practical applications of Pi x r-squared to choreography is beyond me.
2 Algebra?}

 

Garth Grimball is a dance writer and artist based in Oakland, CA. He hosts the Reference Desk podcast and is the co-director of Wax Poet(s) performance collective.

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Juilliard’s “New Dances” Showcases Strings and Socks

Juilliard’s “New Dances” Showcases Strings and Socks

By Garth Grimball

Alicia Graf Mack, dean and director of Juilliard Dance, introduced the department’s “New Dances” program with now-familiar caveats: dance rehearsals followed public health guidelines; in-person and Zoom process; casts of no more than 8 dancers; no touching or partnering; lastly, within restrictions creativity flourishes. If only that were true of this program. The dancing is virtuosic and passionate. The dances are bland and long.

Four choreographers, Tiler Peck, Sonyah Teh, Bobbi Jene Smith, and Matthew Neenan, created original works on the students of the Juilliard Dance Department. Are there obstacles this new generation of dancers can’t handle? 

Dancing for camera - check. Creating work under the confines of health precautions antithetical to dance making - check. Ignoring the swamp-face from strenuous activity in a mask to the point of seeming like it’s totally natural - check. Their verve and commitment to dance inspires.

Peck’s “Broad and Free” builds vocabulary out of attitude turns, enveloppé​, and port de bras above the head. The choreography follows Caroline Shaw’s piano and violin composition, never going against the music, but cruising in the wake of its melancholy. The structure and staging have the forward-facing unison common to competition dances. At one point the music slips into a mazurka and Peck quotes Balanachine’s “Stravinsky Violin Concerto.”

For “End, Middle, Beginning” Sonya Teh brings the viewer into the piece with cinema-verite-style filming. The camera moves through the wings onto the stage and out into the audience. For the rest of the piece the viewpoint is mostly static with crossfades as transitions. Group floorwork interrupted by standing solos define the dance. The interruptions lack the punch of creating a ceiling and breaking it, feeling more like a knock on the attic door. The somber music of Son Lux dulls Teh’s creative ideations on the Graham-Gaga lineage.

Speaking of Gaga, Bobbi Jene Smith’s “Ways of Listening” is a parade of solos overflowing with the pelvic floor and energetic mania endemic to the technique. Smith’s choreography and staging is the most dynamic in its use of the theater space. Thankfully she goes against the Nico Muhly cello (more strings) solo played live on stage. “Ways of wanting to be heard” is a more apt description of the dance. Soloists center the action while the rest of the cast stand still observing. The lunges, turns, gestures, and leaps become shouts into the void because of the static listening. Smith breaks the only-8-dancers rule in her climax. Twenty one bodies fill the stage in a tightly structured mix of unison and variations.

Matthew Neenan’s “The Solo 7,” set to String (!) Quintets by Mozart, has the idiosyncrasies of a dance made 10 years ago. Remember between 2009 to 2013 when every contemporary dance had the “flick” gesture (arms unfurl out and snap quickly at the wrist)? “The Solo 7” is of the era when ballet choreographers decided to incorporate the “flick” and other contemporary dance gestures into classical vocabulary. The dance has three costume changes: muted pedestrian, monochrome floor-length dresses, unison brown and black ensembles. The sartorial variation has little effect on the mood or tone of the piece.

Other than being set to strings, all of the dances have one commonality: socks. When did the mid-ankle length sock become the contemporary dance uniform, like pointe shoes to ballet? Each dance used the exact same type of socks, no variation in length or material. I love dancing in socks. It’s comfortable. Socks signify a coziness that contradicts the groundedness of modern dance, the connection to the earth. The Juilliard dancers move with precision and abandon. But through the screen and through the socks, the weight of a body floats away.

New Dances: Edition 2020-21 is available to stream for free on the Juilliard YouTube channel for 1 year.

 

Garth Grimball is a dance writer and artist based in Oakland, CA. He hosts the Reference Desk podcast and is the co-director of Wax Poet(s) performance collective.

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