Bits & Pieces
Demo: Now 2020
with Damian Woetzel, Jon Boogz, Robbie Fairchild,
Lil Buck, Lauren Lovette, Roman Mejia, Dario Natarelli,
Melissa Toogood, Brooklyn Rider quartet, Kate Davis, Alberta Khoury
Eisenhower Theater
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
March 2, 2020
There wasn’t the familiar sparkle. This series of highbrow vaudeville acts usually comes to a sizzling climax. Not this time. I don’t think the coronavirus can be blamed. Moreover, the program got off to a good and snappy start with “1.2.3.4.5.6”, a rhythmic phrase danced, recited and clapped by three men (Lil Buck, Robbie Fairchild, Dario Natarelli) and one woman (Melissa Toogood). Then our host and curator, Damian Woetzel, appeared and was his suave self, giving the evening a spoken introduction. What followed, though, seemed random fragments. Even variety shows need substance.
Some of the fragments were by well-known masters (Merce Cunningham, Alexei Ratmansky) and others by newcomers. An excerpt from “Antic Meet” with movement by Cunningham and sound by John Cage was danced by Toogood to much the same effect as New York City Ballet’s Lauren Lovette achieved in her own “Angels of the Get Through” to a Caroline Shaw score. Of course, the somewhat enigmatic Lovette wore toe shoes and the earnest Toogood didn’t, but both women were balletically stretched and anatomically folded. There were no anti-anatomic modern-dance motions such as contractions and spasms even from Toogood.
A young man from NYC Ballet, Roman Mejia, put in several appearances in somewhat different guises – as a bravura danseur, as an elegant danseur, as a street kid, as a tambourine toting gypsie. Mejia is short, has pleasant features and a great jump to which he can add true lift. But he was accompanied by a guitarist gal (Alberta Khoury) and the adoring way she trotted after him and her eyes gazed at him looked silly. Had all of Mejia’s diverse styles clicked consistently, this program would have made him a star, but he still needs to perfect his polish. Natarelli, a young male tapper, danced to the “I Have a Dream” speech of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Collaborations abounded in the program’s choreographic and musical credits. The six-count opening number was “based on” a rhythm by Steve Reich. Its choreography and “improvography” were by Michelle Dorrance and the four performing dancers. The former NYC Ballet star Robbie Fairchild did tap as well as ballet and, in “Horizontal Duet”, did partnering. The piece had been “adapted” by his partner, Toogood, from an original by Pam Tanowitz to improvised music. Sometimes it took longer to read the credits than watch and listen to the fragments.
There were just a few of the sparks I expected from jooker, hip-hopper, classicist Lil Buck in his gym shoes. He seemed hooked up between an anode and a cathode as the dance current passed through his body. Buck rivets our eyes in ways other street dancers such as Boogz do not. The singer Kate Davis and the Brooklyn Rider foursome (Johnny Gandelsman, Colin Jacobsen, Nicholas Cords, Michael Nicolas) were both lyric and rhythmic in Caroline Shaw’s “And So” composition. This Demo’s concluding number, “ A Story”, music by Kate Davis and movement by all the dancers, didn’t tell much of a tale. Would that the opening “1.2.3.4.5.6” had been repeated as the finale.
copyright 2020 by George Jackson
