A Splendid Bouquet of Dance
“Bach Cello Suites,” “Dances of Isadora Duncan – A Solo Tribute,” “Bzzz,” “The Barbarian Nights, or First Dawns of the World (excerpt)”
Fall For Dance Festival
Boston Ballet, Sara Mearns, Caleb Teicher & Company and Cie Hervé Koubi
New York City Center
New York, NY
October 1, 2018
Perhaps the best attribute of the Fall For Dance Festival, this year in its 15th season, is its ability to expose viewers to works and artists they may not otherwise see or know to seek out. On opening night, Program 1 did just that, offering the audience aesthetic purity in the New York premiere of Jorma Elo’s “Bach Cello Suites,” a joyful taste of the past with Lori Belilove’s “Dances of Isadora Duncan – A Solo Tribute,” a hip reimagining of tap in Caleb Teicher’s world Ppremiere of “Bzzz,” and exhilarating rawness and acrobatics with Hervé Koubi’s “Barbarian Nights, or the First Dawn of the World.”
Elo’s work, danced cleanly by the Boston Ballet to live accompaniment by cellist Sergey Antonov, was a sequence of five duets, each of which presented a different emotional flavor before they each dissolved into group dances. The differences among them were subtle, and it took focus to discern some of the more subdued loveliness of each couple’s dance, but for those seeking elegance and classicism the work was palate-pleasing. There were intricate interactions with many crossed arms in the first duet, weaving the dancers into turns and out into balances, baroque twists in the hips for the group dance that followed, and meticulously timed and precise accenting placed on jumps and pauses in the subsequent scenes. Not all of it was unique – having dancers prolong pauses between movements seems a common feature in choreography to Johannes Bach’s slower passages – but it was still a solid opener for the night.
Belilove’s work after Isadora Duncan, which followed after a brief pause, began with Sara Mearns standing on a pedestal, dressed in a pink Duncan-style tunic while Cameron Grant played Frederic Chopin’s Prelude No. 4 on the piano sharing the stage. Perhaps predictably, Mearns managed to make that mere stationary presence (her only real movement was to toss a pink wrap over her shoulder) powerful. The work proceeded to numerous dances to music by Chopin, Johannes Brahms and Franz Liszt, each varied with props and accessories like flower petals, hair pieces, capes and scarves. Through all, Mearns adopted the more Duncan-style approach to movement, abandoning balletic turnout and removing classicism, and fully embracing the frolicking skips and somber pauses, along with the spirit of the music. The dancer, once again, proved herself to be a remarkable artist, even if Mearns was still best when she tried less to be the freedom-seeking Duncan and more the deep drama-filled Mearns.
Caleb Teicher and Company’s “Bzzz,” a world premiere commissioned by the festival and created by Caleb Teicher with the dancers’ involvement, was the show-stopper of the night, with its expert beatboxing by Chris Celiz and even more apt tap dancing from the cast. The juxtaposition of dance with the hip-hop flavor of the accompaniment, and the peppering of the choreography with hip-hop and modern embellishments, presented tap as a reimagined dance form, one distinctly of the present moment. It had everything – dance-offs, movement dialogues, humor. Who knew tap could be so 21st Century-cool?
The night closed with Hervé Koubi’s reimagining of the origins of Mediterranean culture, ancestral fears of strangers and “hidden refinement of “barbarian” society,” according to the bill. From the beginning, when the ensemble of thirteen shirtless men emerged from behind the rising curtain in glittering head masks it seemed the work was designed to outshine the rest of the performances and give the audience the night’s wow-factor. It came close to the mark. Once the masks, which, while initially dazzling quickly became a distraction, came off, the focus fell on the athletic and expressive dancing. The steps, riddled with impressive aerial flips and breakdance-rooted upside-down spins on the dancers’ hands, were physically impressive, but also emotionally layered. There were scenes showing huddles, suggesting the primal origins, and restless movements across the stage, all to cosmic music full of beats and chimed. While impressively masculine and expressive, it wasn’t my favorite of the night’s works, but it was a deserving round-out to the night’s splendid assortment of dance nonetheless.
copyright © 2018 by Marianne Adams
