Fun Jazz show contrasts with beauty in brutality
Alchemy showed both the skeleton and the flesh of what makes a dance production straight from the root of the creative process. This Decidedly Jazz Danceworks’ (DJD) creation was a combination of works by the company’s eight dancers and the fifth dancer-choreographed production DJD has produced. True to the company’s name the show was steeped in jazz.
Alchemy is different from most dance performances in that it revealed the ideas behind the dance pieces. Backstage banter became part of the show. It began abruptly leaving the audience to speculate whether or not a microphone was accidentally left on. We caught glimpses of dancers drinking water behind the curtain and heard the inner monologue going through a dancer’s head during a quick costume change. The audience got to know a bit about the performers as well as their works through pre-recorded sound bites that were then danced to by each individual creator.
One disadvantage is that too little was left to the imagination but hearing about the pieces and how they were put together did work onstage. After hearing about the anthropomorphic inspiration of Danielle Wensley’s Something About They and Neigh — from the way horses stand up by using their hind legs — more could be understood about the origin of her movement. Dinou Marlett-Stuart’s Hot Fog with its goggle-wearing dancers spotlights quirky isolated movement and all was more delightful after hearing her piece’s inspiration came from the movements she and her young daughter created in their living room. In addition the story of Ivan Nuñez Segui’s first choreographic creation Ancestor outlined the richness that cultural identity can have in creating a specific work.
There was a segment in Alchemy in which a dancer puts the ideas of a choreographer into motion in a rehearsal-mimicking performance (in this case Malika Srivastava dancing the instructions from Deanne Walsh before performing the final piece in Fuguelike ). Alchemy was a magnifying glass that illuminated individual ideas and where their movements originated. The show was not just the finished product but the entire dance process from conception to final performance.
By contrast you probably wouldn’t want to speculate on what was happening backstage before the start of W&M Physical Theatre’s show Painted Bird choreographed by Melissa Monteros with Wojciech Mochniej . Amid the sound of birds when the house lights dimmed the audience suddenly heard a pained voice. The spotlight illuminated a dancer (Kelly McCann) in the middle of the theatre tied to a chair with tape pressing against her movements. The audience was left wondering whether or not to help the dancer until she finally brutally managed to untie herself.
The choreography in this dance was violent and fragile. Painted Bird like the book it is named after explored varying degrees of cruelty that created both beautiful and horrifying dance theatre. The dancers (which also include Hilary Maxwell Davida Monk and Lisa Hering) formed groups that cornered seemingly violated and isolated each other all through their onstage movements interactions and sounds. Three ladders heightened an otherwise empty space that became a world in which the characters appeared trapped. The movement itself was a broken lyric fragmented and unyielding with brutal repetitive choreography that surrounded this very physical piece.
