5.1.08: Ragamala’s "Sva (Vital Force)" at the Southern Theater

Ragamala’s Minneapolis concert marking the company’s fifteenth season opens with “Ardhanareeshwara Stotram,” a dance of the dual creation divinity, Shakti/Shiva. A statuette in a delicately curved posture, draped in colorful silk and adorned with gold bangles and flowers in her hair, Aparna Ramaswamy also shows a coiled, grounded strength in her stamping feet and flashing eyes. The dance follows a hymn, showing Shakti’s bracelets in one line and Shiva’s live snake jewelry in the next, Shakti’s mercy and Shiva’s dreaded power. Ramaswamy is alternately rose and diamond; the weaving, playfully darting dance of her head and eyes contrasts with her sudden jumps and lunges.

Classical dances (such as Native American fancy dance or ballet), if not ossified, embody a culture’s ideas of beauty and divinity. Watching this new creation in the classical Indian tradition of bharatanatyam, choreographed by Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy (mother and daughter cofounders of Ragamala), it’s hard not to wonder how differently Western history might have turned out if we had imagined our gods this way, or dared to represent them in the body of a young woman dancing (Western classical dances show royal couples or noble abstractions rather than gods). But while the classical ideals of other cultures might have immediate appeal, only deep education can bring us inside those ideals, showing us their roots and their dark side. So we might envy bharatanatyam’s curvy, swaybacked stance, so different from ballet’s ramrod uprightness, or covet the dancers’ bright clothes and red-painted feet, but it’s hard to know the meaning or true cost of those items.   

The Ramaswamys aren’t primarily interested in showing the dance of another place and time, though. Their work is firmly grounded in Indian classical tradition, but the result could be called American contemporary dance in the truest sense—dance of the multicultural America, the meeting-ground America. This is best seen in the other two pieces in the concert. Here we see Ragamala’s trademark crosscultural collaborations—sometimes unlikely combinations that turn out, under the Ramaswamys’ intelligent guidance, to have deep sympathies. “Yathra (Journey)” joins bharatanatyam with Indian music played by a sitar and cello duo, with projected motion drawings by Terry Rosenberg in the background.

Along with fusion, kaleidoscopic complexity of composition is another contemporary element in Ragamala’s dance. Dancers come in from all corners of the stage, meeting and joining in a unity splintered by a new dancer’s sharp entrance. The part speaks for the whole: a brief frieze of women with longing hands stands in for a history of grief. “Yathra” is a quietly moving, beautifully oblique piece, one that any American audience can grasp intuitively.

“Sva (Vital Force)" yields an even more immediate connection. Here, Ragamala’s stellar dancers perform alongside the Tokara Wadaiko Ensemble. Japan’s Taiko drumming does not partake of the tradition of drummers as crazy guys who lurk in the corner: this is unapologetically buff, bare-arm, samurai drumming, played on big drums whose hits reverberate in all the empty spaces of the body (my heart is still echoing). And here, Ragamala joins bharatanatyam’s classical style to a certain modern force. I’m not sure what to call it—democracy? women’s rights? freedom under the law?—but whatever it is, it had opening night’s sold-out crowd straining forward. It’s not that bharatanatyam alone needs this modernity—more that any classical dance needs this modernity to reach today’s American audience. Ragamala shows a way into the twenty-first century for all classical forms. The thrill that the dancers feel in their own strength and grace rolls across the audience; their happy and powerful beauty is one we understand and aspire to.

This concert’s vital choreography, skilled collaborators, and outstanding dancing all make it easy to see why Ragamala’s been on national and international tours for the past eighteen months, and why they’re booked well into next year. It’s also a reminder of how lucky we are to have Ragamala here in the Twin Cities.

Sva (Vital Force) continues at the Southern Theater through May 4.

Photo credit: Ed Bock

4.10.08: Marc Bamuthi Joseph: the break/s at Walker Art Center

Let’s start with the overview, so we can get on to the good stuff. Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s world premiere the break/s, a "mixtape for the stage” as the subtitle describes it, is an impressive extension of hip-hop as an art form. Wheeling through speech, rhythmic spoken word, dance, beat-box, and mixed beats and mixed film, is a story at once personal and universal, a story about identity, race, and love—an important story for our time.

“I am becoming one of them,” Joseph worries—“them” being the people who don’t get it, the fence-builders, the bland and blind majority. “I want a Lexus and justice,” he tosses off, cutting to the heart of a paradox of black success. There’s more, lots more, but let him tell it. You should go see the break/s if you like hip-hop. You should go if you want to know more about hip-hop. You should go if you think hip-hop is not a vehicle for those high art ideas and emotions, because you will be converted, and the sooner the better. You should take friends, you should settle in, you should open your eyes and let this ride take you.

The audience will help. This is a noisy, ready audience; this is an audience in the know. The woman behind me moans “I like that,” and finishes Joseph’s sentences—“if you don’t commit to spinning on your head, you will break your neck”—then moans again, with barbed wire in the soft part of the sound. I want to know what she knows. I want to be her. But not in the world beyond the theater, where my white life is probably the easier one—which revelation leaves me not locked outside her experience, not buying it on Amazon, but finding my own sources of smaller but similar emotion, my own slightly less experienced growl and purr. All Americans have black in them, as Ralph Ellison observed. Not that there aren’t still differences—and at times Joseph opens them up. (“What do you think of white people in hip-hop?” asks his collaborator Soulati [Tommy Shepherd] to nervous laughter before the show begins.) But the break/s is a place for that black and blue streak—everyone’s, anyone’s.

While the audience lulls and awakens your social self, stellar design does the same for your senses. Joseph credits a host of people with backing his mostly solo performance (live music provided by Soulati and DJ Excess), but the result is never muddled. At times, single elements stand out: a plane of blue light that slides up from ground to ceiling, a projection of static that covers the entire stage like a skin. At times, the design—light, set, music, video—is that good kind of too much that causes you to close your eyes when biting into an especially delicious dessert—but you can’t close your eyes because Joseph is dancing.

Sensory overload, evoking emotional overload, evoking life. The design helps to reveal some of the inner workings of hip-hop as well: What we call “soul” is a pitch-perfect juxtaposition of tragedy and comedy, of dark and light. Soulati builds his vocal music from a series of loops, each as he records it becoming a history that he works with and against. And what is a rhyme in spoken word? Rapid-fire, it can be a bullet, too-much hitting home because you don’t have time to get your defenses up. Slower, a rhyme is a tag, touching ground, a little “hello, I’m here” that humanizes the verbal landscape the way graffiti humanizes the urban landscape. The break/s reveals hip-hop as a style that deals with and evokes a too-fast life journey through a landscape of extremes.

There’s more than a bit of journey, of the Odyssey, in the break/s. Like Odysseus, Joseph roams around the world seeking home. He’s understood, misunderstood, loved, ignored, brought low, and raised high everywhere he goes. Like that wily hero, Joseph’s a great storyteller, a complete performer. Joseph even has a son he wants to go home and be a father to (Telemachus) and a woman he wants to love (Penelope), but his own striving identity keeps him away from her. Over and over Joseph starts over with “this story begins in the middle”—in medias res, the standard beginning of any epic, because if you went back and started at the real beginning, it’d take you forever to tell this story.

Last thoughts: we have to talk a little about the dance before I send you off to see this show. Hip-hop has none of the pretended lightness of ballet. Instead, the ground is a mother, giving force to the continual elasticity of the dancer, giving energy that finds its way out in a continual elaboration of joints and muscles. In the break/s, dance breaks out periodically, then is cut off; truth demands that the dance be denied at times, that neither we nor Joseph are allowed to feel its saving conversion all the time. We have to wait for it, need it. Joseph evokes the runaway slave, and hip-hop is recognizably a dance of escape. Again unlike ballet, hip-hop holds no points in air, no platonic ideals of the steps performers touch or miss. Instead, what you are trying to do is shake it loose—work free from the cruelty of the moment into the love you know is out there. Through the break/s, Joseph lets us feel that cruelty, and that release.

the break/s continues at the Walker Art Center  through April 12.

4.4.08: James Sewell Ballet at O’Shaughnessy Auditorium

James Sewell Ballet’s spring concert opens with a work by dancer and artistic associate Penelope Freeh. Freeh is one of the Twin Cities’ most underrated choreographers, and her “Table Waltz” compels viewing by its detailed exploration of flex and point, the awkward and lovely sides of sensuality, from a froggy jump of immature wanting to the breathtaking romance of a round-her-partner’s-shoulder twirl. Freeh is presenting her work in this summer’s Fringe Festival in early August; don’t miss her razor-edged but beautiful ballet explorations.

I wish I could like the evening’s new work, “Social Movements,” because James Sewell’s ballet, set to music and concept by Steve Heitzeg, comes with such a stock of good intentions. But good intentions, alas, often weigh down artistic work. With section titles such as “Protest,” “Green,” “Displacement,” and “Equality,” you know you’re in for some heavy-duty sincerity, and sure enough, with the exception of the playful “Green,” “Social Movements” sinks under its painful literalism. Sewell’s best technique here is playing his sleek, graceful dancers against encroaching forces of ugliness and constriction. The effect of this technique isn’t negated by its obviousness: When the dancers’ buoyant stage-leaps crash against a wall of dark-clad figures, you can’t help but feel something. Sewell also sneaks in some lovely little bits of courtship dance. But overall, “Social Movements” loses its artistic force in stale polemic.

A more unalloyed pleasure in the extraordinary JSB dancers comes with the live improvisation “If This Then What.” Sewell takes a few cues from the crowd (opening configuration, music on or off to begin with), and out come the dancers, with no preconceived idea of what they’re doing. But these dancers show the best of contemporary ballet training: weightless in jumps and swan-graceful, they’re also strong and unafraid to be awkward for effect, working their complex coordination for every last twist of a flow of energy through the body. Improvisation isn’t typical ballet territory (it’s much more common in modern dance), but JSB dancers take it on with humor and appetite. The night I saw it, “If This Then What” didn’t produce a dance masterwork, but it did bring the dancers closer to the audience, at the same time that their skills set them apart from most of the rest of us.

The last work in this concert, JSB dancer Sally Rousse’s “By the Gypsy River Banks,” is also concentrated on the dancers. In this somewhat internal work, the dancers search through blindness and sight, sometimes almost turning from the audience in their quest for a cure, a method, an answer. Hefted upside-down by the partners, legs over the men’s shoulders, the women trail one arm on the ground. An enigmatic ritual of death and healing goes awry; the dancers sit on the floor, lost. But one woman gets an inspiration: she arranges the rest in a circle around her, dances for them, and starts them dancing too. There is no answer or cure, only a path, a how. Their how is ecstasy, a free-flowing dance companionship that spreads from the stage over the audience in a felt release. What a lovely way to be returned to our own lives—with the energy of these beautiful dancers.

James Sewell Ballet’s spring concert runs at the O’Shaughnessy Auditorium through April 13

3.13.08: Beyond Ballroom Dance at the Southern Theater

Ballroom dance aficionados and devoted fans of Dancing with the Stars will find much to love in Beyond Ballroom Dance Company’s latest concert. All the dances are here, all the flourishes—head-snapping waltzes, swivel-hipped Latin dances, dramatic hands, sudden but dreamy lifts—all performed by some of the best local ballroom dancers. But those unfamiliar with ballroom might not find this concert the most convincing introduction—at least in the first half of the performance.

Beyond Mariusz Olszewski’s pyrotechnic turns, the finer points of ballroom technique get lost on a novice. Close and intricate partnering, which is so difficult, can slip by unnoticed, while ballroom’s oddities catch the eye: super-dramatic, verging-on-abusive relations between partners; exaggerated male and female roles, the women vixens or princesses, the men gigolos or courtiers; the oiled smoothness of each swiveling, hyper-extended step; occasional bursts of day-old humor. It doesn’t help that the two longer pieces in the first half (a short dance skit for pregnant Julie Jacobson is the third) both ignore their medium, treating ballroom as if it were a clear glass, not a particular form with a particular history. Scott Anderson’s “Time of the Season,” set to a collage of seventies protest music, opens with a seemingly non-ironic waltz set to Edwin Starr’s forceful “War” (“what is it good for”). The dancers even line up with smiling salutes at one point. Gary Pierce’s “Lilac Wine” suite is much surer, but it still utilizes ballroom clichés without much awareness. Both pieces also look under-rehearsed, with bobbles and awkward partnering marring the smooth surface.

Luckily, Jean Marc Genereaux (of So You Think You Can Dance) comes to the rescue in the second half with “Puppetmaster.” Genereaux takes a simple scenario of character dolls and the woman who thinks she’s manipulating them, and breathes life into it. The costumes—simply sleek in the first half—also come to life, with a sparkly white bolero jacket for one dancer-doll, an over-feathered rock tutu in black for another, an innocent white debutante dress, and a see-through shirt worn with an eye-mask. Like any good ballet choreographer, Genereaux’s aware of his form, and he choreographs to its id. The deb doll’s sweet floating waltz is ballroom’s dream of love, while the rock doll’s acrobatic spin with the masked bandit is ballroom’s equally enthralling nightmare. Genereaux sets broken-doll awkwardness against smooth partnering and breaks up the machismo of the male dancers, all without leaving the ballroom medium. This is one path to follow in transferring competitive ballroom to the concert stage: choreography that works with, not simply glides over, the form itself.

Beyond the concert itself, part of the fun of attending this concert is seeing the local ballroom crowd in all their finery—and seeing them take their impromptu turn on the stage at intermission. (If you go, put on your dancing shoes and brush up on your foxtrot.) Watching amateur couples, skilled but natural, made me think that concert ballroom has a lot of territory left to explore if it can shed its competitive clichés—another possible choreographic path. Let’s hope Beyond Ballroom will explore both ways in future.

Beyond Ballroom Dance continues at the Southern Theater through March 16.

2.9.08: Louis CK at the Pantages

Ladies and gentlemen of America, for the duration of this Morning After post, I would like you to imagine . . . to imagine that this review of Louis CK’s show at the Pantages last night . . . to imagine that this review is being read to you by the next President of the United States . . . the junior senator from Illinois . . . Barack . . . OBAMA!

[applause.]

Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, these are certainly uncertain times.

[applause.]

Uncertain times when an MSNBC guest host can be censured by a senator and a presidential candidate because that reporter used language more appropriate to a sit-com or an Entertainment Weekly article than a discussion on the marketability of the former first lady’s daughter . . . uncertain times, when the suspension of that same MSNBC guest host, a guest host who dared to use the phrase “pimped out” in a two-minute segment on the Clinton’s new marketing strategy, when that suspension is deemed to be insufficient by our former first lady, when that first lady chides the fifth estate with a letter that reads,  “Nothing justifies the kind of debasing language that David Shuster used and no temporary suspension or half-hearted apology is sufficient.”

[pause for a knit brow denoting quiet inner contemplation]

Yes, these are uncertain times. Now, I’m not with you today to excuse Mr. Shuster. I’m not here to excuse the scourge of prostitution, or the uncertain role of the now very adult Chelsea Clinton, or even the use of negative language on behalf of anyone in the marketing departments of either campaign! In fact, I am not here to excuse negativity on behalf of anyone . . . ever!

[applause.]

As you all know, I’m all about positive vibes, and, of course . . . CHANGE!

[applause]

No, ladies and gentlemen, I’m not here today to excuse David Shuster for accidentally calling Chelsea Clinton a whore. No, I’m here to tell you this: that last night, at the Pantages theater, the greatest stand-up comic working today came to Minneapolis. Louis CK, a man who has written both jokes and several very mediocre movies for Chris Rock! Chris Rock, of course, the greatest black stand-up comic working today!

[applause.]

You see, in these uncertain times, Mr. CK stands for something very important . . . something possibly much more important . . . than the audacity of hope.

[crowd gasps.]

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. CK stands for making the inappropriate joke at the appropriate time. He stands for turning America’s bullshit meter up to 11! He stands for saying what you mean, and meaning what you say!

[applause]

Even if that language would be upsetting on a show like Countdown or even Hardball. But Louis CK is not controlled by the culture of fear or the purveyors of false positivity! Last night, at the Pantages Theater, Louis CK, echoing great American comics of the past, comics like George Carlin and Lenny Bruce . . . last night, Louis CK bravely talked about the three most offensive words in the modern American language. But before I go any further, I'd like to give those who are easily offended by words an opportunity to plug their ears. For the three most hated, disgusting words are: faggot, cunt and . . . nigger.

[crowd looks around nervously.]

Ladies and gentlemen, I know, I know, if you use those words, even in a comedy club, losing your job and being publicly humiliated are not enough for the hounds of the PC witch hunt . . . no, you’re supposed to be deported to the island of Elba after your utility to the sanctimonious pundits on both the left and the right has expired. As the junior senator from New York said yesterday in her letter to the corporate bosses at MSNBC: “Nothing justifies that kind of debasing language . . . and no temporary suspension or half-hearted apology is sufficient.” I am here today, ladies and gentlemen, to argue that nothing justifies that kind of debasing language . . . except laughter. Deep, penetrating laughter . . . laughter that lets the message swoop in under the radar of our performance-enhanced outrage reflex. Laughter that swoops in under the vigilance of America’s suppressive superego and settles on top of the vast American heart. Last night, Mr. CK redirected our superego, redirected that petty outrage reflex that’s been built up by the mongers of special interests. Last night, he bravely told the crowd, “I am most offended when I hear the ‘n-word.’ No, not “nigger”—when I actually hear ‘the n-word.’”

[scattered laughter, but mostly crickets.]

Now, on the advice of my polling team, I’ve done my best to avoid talking about race during this campaign, but last night, Louis CK pointed out that people who use the n-word are just white people who want to use the word nigger. And you know what, ladies and gentlemen? Louis CK is right!

[crowd begins to panic.]

Last night, when Louis CK said, “When people like Nancy Grace use ‘n-word’ they’re making me say the real thing in my head. Why don’t you say it? Don’t make me say it!” Oh, and I also laughed—very, very deeply—when Louis CK pointed out how easy white people have it, at any time in history, even in the year two, when Louis said he would have no problem visiting if he had a time machine, even though he really didn’t know what was going on, but he could probably show up and the maitre d’ would say, “Yes, sir, we have a table waiting for you.”

[crowd laughs against its will. The older, Hillary–demo crosses their arms.]

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I laughed because it was a very funny way to shatter a taboo subject. And I laughed because, at least in public discourse, the list of taboos gets ever longer, while everyday the hysteria over who offended which group by making allusions to which taboo gets louder. Our news outlets don’t devote a quarter of the time to the daily casualties in Iraq as they do to the questionable comments of Don Imus, Bill Clinton, and now this hapless MSNBC guest host. Ladies and gentlemen, Louis CK is angry at the way things are, but not going from town to town, and talking about a warm and fuzzy place. He’s going to town to town acting as our bullshit mechanism. He’s stumping against careless language and hard-to-pin-down lies. His jokes circumvent the misleading politicians and subvert the endless marketing spin. Not by preaching like David Cross or Janeane Garafalo or Al Franken . . . no, by making us laugh.

And I hope he doesn’t change. 

1.9.08: "Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People: Everyone" at the Walker Art Center

Miguel Gutierrez’s intensely lovable, crowd-pleasing “Everyone” is a great kickoff to the twentieth year of the Walker’s alternative performance showcase, Out There. What makes this modern dance import from New York such a happy experience?

There are the aptly named Powerful People, Gutierrez’s cast of eight—eight individuals of different sizes, different looks, different styles, all attractive in their distinctive flaws, who dance and play with such energy and abandon that you can’t help feeling affectionate toward them. There are many lovely moments; for example, when the curtain finally opens approximately two-thirds of the way through the show (did I mention you’ll be sitting at the back of the stage, watching the dancers perform from the stage space?) and the performers go out into the seats, “flying” in extended arabesques all over the theater, making the McGuire space look like a toy playhouse. Or there’s the breathless moment when the performers come running straight at the audience. Or the lovely kaleidoscopic patterns in one section, corps de ballet in sneakers and T-shirts. Or—well, there are many others, but I’ll leave you to discover them on your own.

What I want to bring to light is one of the mechanisms of delight that Gutierrez employs, repetition. Each section of this performance is a loop, often of tightly structured improvisation, running over and over before moving on to the next loop. (An example: The dancers stand on one foot for a long time, then at a certain signal strenuously leap to the other foot. Each leap, direction, and ending pose is the dancer’s choice.) This may not be the greatest strengthener of overall form—the sections don’t always seem related to each other—but on the smaller scale, it works so well that any overall flaws can be overlooked. How does it work?

The first couple of times you see one section, you’re just figuring out what you’re seeing (classical ballet usually repeats twice and goes on). In the next few repetitions, you might find yourself becoming impatient and irritable: “Well, all right, move on,” you might find yourself thinking. But Gutierrez and the Powerful People don’t move on. Instead, they keep going, and something else happens to your mind. You start watching not the gist of the movement but the individual parts—seeing, almost in slow motion, the articulation of one performer’s hand, the readiness in another’s face. You see beauty in the dancers, in their movements. Then you start understanding the game the performers are playing, the rules for each section, and your eyes trace potential outcomes. Will she jump this way or that way? How will he get out of the box he’s in?

Finally, you begin to want to play along with the dancers—it looks like fun, and more than fun, it looks like experience, real life. And that’s when Gutierrez moves on. Performance can do a lot of different things for us; Gutierrez chooses to entertain at the same time that he suggests it’s necessary for us to move and act. “Everyone” works as a powerful reminder of the activity of life.

“Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People: Everyone” continues at the Walker Art Center though Jan. 12.

12.20.07: Loyce Houlton’s Nutcracker Fantasy at the State Theatre

Ah, The Nutcracker—once the first notes spring from the orchestra and the curtain rises on the first scene, we are enchanted. With so many versions of the classic Christmas story, Minnesota Dance Theatre’s Nutcracker Fantasy is easily the one to see in the Twin Cities. Everything announces its preeminence: the jewel-toned, deeply detailed sets and costumes; the exciting light changes; the skilled orchestra conducted by Philip Brunelle; the well-trained and perfectly rehearsed dancers; the audience’s ohhs, ahhs and spontaneous applause. From start to finish, this Nutcracker never lifts its spell.

What happens in The Nutcracker? You probably know the story: Young Marie, her strange uncle or godfather Drosselmayer, the nutcracker doll, the Christmas tree growing, et cetera. But what is all about? A girl on the edge of childhood proves her courage and her ability to love by saving a young man (the transformed nutcracker). As her reward, she’s taken to the kingdom of a beautiful princess, where she watches dances from various nations. It’s a coming of age story. But what’s more unusual, is that it is a girl’s coming of age story, full of mystery, power, love, and kindness. MDT’s version, choreographed by Loyce Houlton, showcases this aspect of the ballet. In the Sugarplum Fairy’s kingdom Marie meets characters from her own real life—most notably her mother transformed into an alluring Arabian dancer, who promises Marie that she too will have this strange power when she grows up. The Snow Queen, rising in a flawless lift a moment after Marie’s smaller lift, signifies Marie’s adult strength and beauty. At the same time the ballet is full of children—past, present, and future, all knit together.

I saw some wonderful performances on opening night (casting varies). Mathew Janczewski makes a happy, friendly Drosselmayer, his apparent pleasure in the role spilling into the audience. Kylie Potuznik was an outstanding Rat Queen, her needle feet and skyscraper extensions truly frightening. The Spanish dance, with Eve Schute and Maxamillian Neubauer, might have been the best of the very good divertissements, with Schute and Neubauer both hitting every single step and Neubauer throwing off some flawless tours (spinning jumps). Flower Queen Elayna Waxse’s musicality and the corps de ballet’s technical excellence made the Waltz of the Flowers especially lovely. I wish I’d seen MDT’s own Caitlyn Fitzpatrick and Sam Feipel as the Sugarplum and her Cavalier, but not because guest artists Leticia Guerrero and Gleb Lyamenkoff were anything less than stellar.

The Sugarplum’s grand pas de deux—it always makes me cry. For me it’s the essence of ballet. It’s beauty and perfection on stage, with Tchaikovsky’s haunting music full of foreboding, reminding us of what we already know—life is never like this. But the fact that we can rise in the midst of our mortal trouble and make such a picture of happiness—it’s heartbreaking and wonderful.

And then it’s over for another year. Carnival music succeeds, there is laughter, applause, and we go home. It’s just as well, we can’t take too much of this rich experience. But, for a few hours at least, what a holiday present it is.

Loyce Houlton’s Nutcracker Fantasy continues at the State Theatre through December 24.

12.15.07: The Metropolitan Ballet's Nutcracker and The Rat King at Northrop

With The Nutcracker—The Rat King, the very young local company Metropolitan Ballet takes on a full-scale traditional Nutcracker but with a twist. “Full-scale” means an evening-length production, with an orchestra, guest artists for the leading roles (Marie/the Sugarplum Fairy, here the same character, her Cavalier, and several others), and everything you might remember from your childhood Nutcrackers. The twist is a little harder to explain, but it seems that Marie’s coming-of-age-story is paired with another coming-of-age-story—this time of a young rat prince who turns from evil to good.

 

Like all Nutcrackers, this one has its high points: a charming Chinese scene with dancers peeking around long colored silks (created by guest choreographer Shen Pei), three good doll dances, the most talented male child dancer I’ve ever seen, an acrobatic Russian dance (created and performed by another guest, Slavko Billy), a very clear demonstration of Marie’s purity of heart in choosing the nutcracker over Drosselmeyer’s fancier toys, and a creditable performance by the Kenwood Symphony.

 

Unfortunately, the performance also betrays the lack of a firm directorial hand and strong artistic vision (Metropolitan Ballet founder Erik Sanborn directed and created most of the choreography). Costumes are a mishmash of periods and styles—heavy brocades, barely visible in the dim overhead lighting, sharing space with skater dresses and completely contemporary dresses for the littler girls. The choreography blends some time-honored traditional versions, mostly for solos and duets, with muddy crowd scenes of uncertain musicality. At its worst, in the snow scene, the choir necessary for that piece actually appears on stage in its black and white looking like a bunch of Puritans behind the snowflakes, which meanwhile is missing all the mystery and drama of the music. This lack of large-scale vision and firm direction is also apparent in the dancers and dancing: I saw plenty of bobbles, indicative of insufficient rehearsal; heard clattering pointe shoes; and spotted a few other miscues—a dancer with a red tag on her costume, a dancer caught off guard by a lighting miscue. Meanwhile, the plot twist isn’t developed enough to add much; it merely dilutes the existing story, turning Marie from a valiant heroine to a sweet, but ineffective, girl.

 

I’m not sure how I feel about Sanborn’s recourse to imported guest artists. On the one hand, this allows him to show a good grand pas de deux (the climax of the ballet) with beautiful deliberation from Violeta Angelova and sure partnering from Momchil Mladenov (although I must add that he’s headed for injury if he doesn’t start putting his heels down on his landings).

 

On the other hand, what does this create on the local level? My favorite thing about Metropolitan Ballet (at least in these large-scale productions) is the opportunity it gives to the many local ballet dancers who don’t fit in the limited rosters of James Sewell Ballet or Minnesota Dance Theatre—dancers generally not of the first rank but with ability and discipline. They are worth seeing and would be more so if given more opportunities to perform. It’s common practice to import Sugarplums and Cavaliers, but they cast these local dancers in the cold—more so than imported professionals do to their fellow professionals at MDT. I’d rather see a few local dancers step up to the roles—given time, I think they could. Overall, if Sanborn scaled back and consolidated his efforts on what remains, we’d have a better Nutcracker altogether—and one with a homegrown holiday spirit.

 

Nutcracker—The Rat King, Dec. 16, 2 p.m., Northrop Auditorium

12.7.07: Ethnic Dance Theatre's Nutcracker! at E. M. Pearson Theatre

The simple premise of Ethnic Dance Theatre’s Nutcracker! is that all the various characters and nationalities in the story are represented by authentic folk dances. This makes the story more literal and less highbrow. In her dream the girl heroine meets real representatives of various nations rather than their aestheticized and stereotyped versions, while her own family goes from bland bourgeois to distinctively German. With less fantasy than in most Nutcrackers, this approach still yields some magic. The rats perform a deliberate and strangely menacing tiptoe Georgian dance; the snow scene, filled by tall, gliding, divinely smiling Russian women in long fur-trimmed dresses, is beautiful and mysterious, as a snow scene ought to be. And German dances add interest to the party scene, which can be a bit of a snooze.

Except for some virtuoso moments provided by John Czichray’s Cossack doll and Lynn Petros-Winn’s Appalachian rag doll and Tajik dance, this is a homemade performance. Not that it requires too much indulgence from the viewer; it’s more that off the beaten dance track at the E. M. Pearson Theatre, featuring none of the usual dance suspects (except Stuart Pimsler Dance and Theater company member Cade Holmseth as the Nutcracker), this Nutcracker feels like a break from the routine scene, a hometown show rather than ambitious art. What could be more appropriate to the time of year? The holidays are a homemade time, when we decorate our houses, make food, gifts, and ornaments, sing together, entertain, perhaps even dance. We look back to traditions that for the rest of the year we forget. Folk dance, for many Americans, is a completely lost tradition, and it’s good to see it kept alive by Ethnic Dance Theatre.

The interested can analyze folk dance. Rhythmic footwork is nearly universal across folk dance—feet and ground making the first drum. Some steps in folk dance show up in ballet as well, but with a change. The Cossack’s high jumps, the Georgian arm positions, the Tajik dancer’s fast turns—all are lightened in ballet, as if ballet were the folk dance of angels. Whether you focus on differences between forms or similarities across forms, one conclusion’s unavoidable: dance has deep and complex roots.

The Nutcracker! continues through Sunday at E. M. Pearson Theatre at Concordia University.

11.29.07: Zorongo Flamenco Dance Theatre's Sol y Luna at the Southern Theater

Flamenco is a mature art form: it deals in burnt emotions, passion and rage kindling in flamenco’s throaty singing, mercurial guitar playing (smooth, then harshly strummed), and hard beating dance. In Sol y Luna Zorongo immerses the audience in flamenco culture, providing a program of technical excellence and vivid feeling with (thank goodness) no storyline to get in the way. But good as all the performers and musicians are, the evening belongs to two: Domingo Ortega and Susana di Palma.

Domingo Ortega, a Spanish guest artist, is a flamenco virtuoso. He can simply keep time (which is all that most of us can do), but he prefers to delay, to hit not the dull center of the beat but the sweet spot just before late, the fat, the pink of the beat. He can keep up with anything, slamming his heels as fast as the guitarist can strum, but Ortega’s not merely following the music: he appears instead to be leading it, fully in command. His arms and upper body create aggressive arcs and stances as if he was born angry, and he never loses track of his upper half in the frenetic motion of his feet. But Ortega’s virtuosity isn’t limited to flamenco technique. He is, for lack of a better word, a virtuoso seducer. He held the opening night audience breathless, hanging on every teasing leaving-off and reeling at every pyrotechnic blast, swooning over his bad-boy attitude and silky black knight-white knight suits. Watching him, I got the feeling that when the word gets out, Ortega will have a Sunday audience full of women in their underwear, and he won’t care.

Susana di Palma is an artist of a different stripe. An older performer, she still has sharp technical skills, but she keeps them a bit in reserve, bringing out a fast sequence just for the fun of it (or so it appears). What di Palma places first is her dramatic versatility and the freedom that versatility yields. Like James Sewell ballerina Sally Rousse, di Palma has a girlishness that yet never belies her age and a wisdom that never shrivels into cowardice or sentimentality. In her one solo di Palma creates such a complex character on stage—a woman who hears the music and can’t help herself, a showoff who’s half making fun of her own excess, a bawdy woman intent on hiking her skirts up as far as they’ll go, a woman crying over her heart’s wildness. She held the audience spellbound, almost afraid to disturb her with applause.

Sol y Luna is a great chance for audiences not only to become acquainted with flamenco but also to see two top-flight performers. You can take the kids, but I suggest a date instead. Flamenco’s adult fare: it takes a little living to appreciate the smoky artistry here—artistry of heartbreakers and the heartbroken.

Sol y Luna continues through December 2 at the Southern.

11.16.07: TU Dance at The O’Shaughnessy

That TU Dance put on an excellent show last night won’t surprise anyone familiar with the work of this modern dance/ballet company. No, the question with two-year old TU Dance isn’t whether you’ll see great dancing, or whether the audience will pop up at the end in a well-deserved standing ovation, but how much risk and vision choreographer Uri Sands will find in his new works, and which dancers will emerge from technical virtuosity into individuality.

First, the choreography. I don’t know whether Sands has gained in choreographic confidence and finesse since TU Dance’s debut or whether I’ve gotten better at seeing into his work—probably a little of both—but I find him a more interesting dance thinker these days. His crowd-pleasingly beautiful moves are still there—big jumps, long lines, soaring lifts—but the beauty seems more complex, labored over, and earned. In The 6 Beginnings, I got the feeling Sands was trying to reinvent the classical dance body, moving from a streamlined and upright shape with active legs and decorative arms to a four-square shape, a splay, with arms and legs equally active. This shape is awkward, chunky, its moves scrambled—so when it attains peace and grandeur, as when women race towards men and leap into still lifts, arms stretched up like elm-limbs, or when four men sit comfortably upright as Lincoln on his Monument, perched on the backs of four women, it’s breathtaking.

I would love The 6 Beginnings if it had a more substantial underlying structure than simply six sections, each titled with a “pre-” word (preoccupied, precipitate, etc).

. . . And Let Go, one of two premieres here, is a short duet set to a relaxation tape (complete with therapeutic synth and repeated injunctions to “let go”), and it’s a gem: Sands makes the most of his same-height dancers (Nathan Trice and Eva Mohn), creating a partnering of equality, the two swirling around each other as we are repeatedly told to “let go.”

The second premiere, Beverly, is Sands’s pure motion piece for the evening, his high-energy close. I hope Sands will someday create a work in which soul thinks as deeply as modern ballet thinks in his other works, but Beverly is certainly enjoyable. Even Shapes and Gaits, the older piece in this evening, looked subtler and more complex than when I saw it last.

The dancers all are superlative; Sands and his co–artistic director (and wife) Toni Pierce-Sands are to be commended for ferreting out such interesting dancers from the local scene and elsewhere. The company’s diverse, too—still not as diverse as I think Sands and Pierce-Sands would like, but showing an impressive mix of cultural origins and body types, from the long and graceful Ned Sturgis to the gymnastic fireball Alanna Morris. Eva Mohn’s the reliable standout here, with her liquid coordination and palpable love for what she’s doing, and she doesn’t disappoint in this concert. Whether other dancers shine seems to depend on what choreography they get. This summer I was impressed by Berit Ahlgren’s elegant rigor, but this fall it was Luke Melsha and Marciano Silva dos Santos who caught my eye. Tall and graceful Melsha, still in college but already a commanding performer with a roguish sense of humor, stepped in for the missing Bernard Brown, doing so well you’d never have known it wasn’t his part from the beginning. Silva dos Santos stood out in Beverly, finding the sweet spot in the beat more surely than any other dancer. Toni-Pierce Sands also performs; her excellence is well-known, but she’s still a discovery every time she moves.

TU Dance performs through Sunday at The O'Shaughnessy.

10.26.07: James Sewell Ballet at The O’Shaughnessy

This fall marks the start of James Sewell Ballet’s fifteenth season in the Twin Cities. (The company was established three years before that in New York City.) In honor of the anniversary, JSB put on an ambitious concert, more rigorous and less sentimental than any I’ve seen previously, and more clearly marking the origins and current direction of Sewell’s talent.

The evening began with two dances from the 1898 Petipa ballet Raymonda—a short, elegant pas de trios and the famous wedding variation. While the guest dancers of the pas de trios performed well, it was Emily Tyra’s wedding variation that clearly showed the appeal of the classical. A variation is a short dance, generally a solo, in which a character—in this case a vain and beautiful princess—is developed through a few characteristic steps (here, light hand claps and a vivacious pose with one hand supporting the back of the head), the rest of the dance being classical (and difficult enough to command applause). The variation gives us a brief glimpse into a world of nobility, beauty, wit, and eternal youth; this view into a higher world is the endless appeal of classical ballet. Tyra’s only flaw is in her musicality, but as she showed spot-on timing elsewhere in the concert, this seems more a matter of confidence than of ability. In a brief greeting after the piece, Sewell promised to give us our “tutu fix” regularly; I hope we’ll see Tyra try on more variations in the future.

From this beginning, Sewell took two different directions in the other two pieces (both his own choreography). In Schoenberg Serenade, Sewell pursues the steps and positions of classical ballet but takes, as a variation does, a few liberties in order to show character and reflect the music. The music is all-important here: Schoenberg Serenade is the type of dance known as “music visualization,” in which the choreographer recreates the music through the dance (rather than using the music as backdrop for a story or theme). “Music visualization” is generally a derogative term, but there’s no shame here; we must all be grateful to a choreographer who will illustrate Schoenberg’s formidable composition, bringing out both its overall form and its wit. I loved Sewell’s inventions here—particularly an arabesque that begins ecstatically but then crumples, just as the music does.

Kinetic Head, the only premiere of the evening, goes after a more technical concern (the inside of ballet): complex coordination, which is what allows you to pat your head and rub your belly (if you can), or play the piano with different rhythms for each hand, or (in dance) execute slow and generous arm movements over rapid footwork. Sewell pushes this in various directions in Kinetic Head—a crazy difficult solo for himself, two duets involving video doubles of the dancers, and complex ensemble work, sometimes in the dark with lit-up costumes. All of this doesn’t quite add up to one ballet. I enjoyed the two duets the most; the rest of Kinetic Head feels more like an exercise than an emotional experience. I find it a little hard to appreciate complex coordination from the audience. I know that it’s difficult to jump and drop your arms down at the same time, but the knowledge doesn’t translate to feeling. Still, I admire the dancers’ abilities and Sewell’s willingness to explore this strange territory.

Throughout, the dancers shine. Distinct—from Tyra’s long elegant lines to Penelope Freeh’s uncompromisingly sharp edges to Chris Hannon’s easy flow and more—yet uniformly excellent, Sewell’s dancers make a diverse, fun, and knowable company; by the end of the concert I felt attached to them all. From the company and dances he’s created, I see Sewell as a humanist, a lover of humanity and human possibility. We are lucky to have him here in the Twin Cities.

James Sewell Ballet performs at The O'Shaughnessy through October 28.

10.18.07: Arena Dances' "Ugly" at the Walker

“Ugly,” choreographed by Arena Dances leader Mathew Janczewski, with a new score by electronic-music star Morton Subotnik, is an ambitious piece. One hour long, with no intermission, “Ugly” screams big work, and not just because it’s a Walker commission. “Ugly” has a big theme—our obsession with set standards of beauty—which Janczewski develops in three sections, one of Elizabethan restraint and courtly moves, one of disco abandon and internet-dating frenzy, and one of Edenic near-nudity; elaborate costumes (the work of Angie Vo) and inventive sets (by Daniel Spencer) accompany each change. Unfortunately, “Ugly” isn’t as big as its desire. The show is certainly watchable, but it has few big moments, few chances for the audience to get caught up in the work.

“Ugly” begins well. The Elizabethan section, all brocade and bone, is icily orderly, but with the promise of passion in a few angry lifts and rucked-up taffeta skirts. Vo’s stiffly rustling costumes and Subotnik’s tinkly faux-baroque score add to the mood. Most importantly, Janczewski gives us characters here: a fierce and frustrated woman, a distant man, and a second woman, the light twin of the first or perhaps her soul. But this fascinating setup is discarded as Janczewski moves into the disco section.

“Ugly” is the first dance I’ve seen take on the seedy side of the internet-dating scene. With its degrading requests, its deceitful self-descriptions, and its porno approach to the body, internet sex provides an interesting counterpoint to the usual purity and purposefulness of the dancer’s body. Janczewski works this contrast. But he underlines what he’s trying to do a bit too much; the dance becomes too literal. The craft of the dance breaks down in this section as well. In trying to give us something ugly to look at, something perverse, Janczewski gets only as far as stilted, awkward, stamping moves—neither easy on the eyes nor fascinatingly wrong. A few solos and a strong male duet bring focus, but Janczewski relies mostly on his ensemble—an unfortunate choice, since the ensemble work feels vague and atmospheric.

This same fault harms the last section of the piece as well. Give Janczewski one or two brilliant dancers and he’s riveting. All his choreography for Amy Behm-Thomson (who always appears solo) is evocative, mysterious, and stellar. But give Janczewski an ensemble and he becomes dull, plot-oriented without the specificity necessary to carry a plot. (Some of the blame for this may belong to the dancers, few of whom have Behm-Thomson’s assured presence.) There are some nice moments in the last section. While three dancers sit on squares of turf, three other dancers leap into nasty sideways falls; later, one dancer starts the same jump, but lands softly, bruiselessly. Altogether, though, too little is carried forward from the first two sections to give Janczewski much to do or the audience much to look for in this last section.

Known for beautiful, floating, soulful dance, Janczewski plays against type in “Ugly,” trying to push his art in new directions. It’s a smart and brave idea. But rather than pushing his talent, Janczewski seems to have suppressed it. He can do a lot better than this; I’ve seen great work from him in the past, and I expect more in the future. This coming May Janczewski will remount an earlier work, “waterBRIDGE,” at the Southern Theater. With the pressure of “Ugly” gone, perhaps Janczewski will show us what he can do.

"Ugly" runs through Saturday at the Walker.

For more on "Ugly," read Lightsey Darst's preview of the work from the October issue of Mpls.St.Paul.

10.13.07: Cloud Gate Dance Theatre's Wild Cursive at Northrop Auditorium

For several years choreographer Lin Hwai-min and his company, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, have been exploring Chinese calligraphy as a source for a trilogy of dance pieces. The latest, Wild Cursive, draws on “wild calligraphy,” in which the artist is freed of the set shapes of the characters. Wild calligraphy, the program notes explain, “exposes the spiritual state of the writer in its expressive abstraction.”

With such an inspiration, I could easily imagine a choreographer filling the stage with unrelieved prettiness, one sweeping arabesque after another. But Lin envisions wild calligraphy not as arranged beauty but as virtuoso struggle: each line on the paper, each sustained sequence of movement (broken off with a sudden stop, as if the calligrapher has just lifted the brush from the paper) is a victory of artistic integrity over the contrary forces of the world—distraction, gravity, grief, applause. Not that Wild Cursive isn’t beautiful: it’s breath-taking, with the dancers winding sinuously as the tentacles of a sea anemone or driving into explosive leaps like the attack of a cheetah. But beauty is a byproduct of Lin and his dancers’ fierce devotion to following the path of each breath. True to its inspiration, Wild Cursive shows no stories, no characters, no meaning. But its continual ambition evokes thousands of stories and situations. Marathon runners or mothers, we all project ourselves into the world, all feel the struggle to be true to what moves inside us.

Without virtuoso dancers Wild Cursive would lose the suspense, the high-wire act of each pathway through space. Luckily, Lin has plenty of virtuosos on hand. He deploys them at first in loose, seemingly incidental groupings, twos and threes, and then arranges them with increasing specificity, consolidating from the improvised look of the first half of the piece to decided choreography, even occasional unison, in the second half of the piece. Throughout, the dancers not only glide smoothly, hold exceptional balances in difficult positions, and leap high, but they maintain mindfulness about the movement phrase, so that the audience never loses track of the drama of the brush curving over the page. Even in unison the dancers don’t lose their individual sense of breath. The standing ovation was richly deserved.

Lin’s work is also supported by stunning design. The stage is bare, except for long scrolls of rice paper that lower from above, creating at times a spare trio, at other times a forest. So slowly that at first I couldn’t be sure it was happening, ink drips down, following curvilinear patterns in the crinkled paper as the dancers do in space. White lights illuminate the dancers flatly, highlighting their whirling limbs, and sometimes sharpen the dancers into silhouettes as they stand or move behind the paper scrolls. A spare score of wind, waves, percussion, and night-sounds acts as the meter the dancers move with or stunningly against.

At the end of Wild Cursive, when only one dancer is left on stage, her arms winding slowly and without pause as if the calligrapher is using up the leftover ink on her brush, two blades of black ink spill fiercely down the central scroll. In Lin’s brilliant view, the drive to be—for the artist, the drive to create—is unrepentant and unsatisfied, no matter what beauty it makes in its constant struggle.

9.19.07: BodyCartography's Holiday House #2

There’s a lot to be said about BodyCartography’s remount of its 2006 Momentum show, this time staged in the holiday house itself—the duo's own south Minneapolis home.

First, though, some background: BodyCartography (Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad) is a pioneer in the newly exploding field of dance film. Bieringa and Ramstad pursue a space-based, improvisational, and visually acute version of dance film, meaning that they don’t make a dance and then film it, but rather explore the space through movement, then cut and splice these improvisations together. This same process is active in their live work: what you see is improv within set limits, with certain set moments that themselves most likely arose from improv.

Why does it matter? Because what you see is at once brilliantly planned—lighting, angles, perspectives clear as cinema—and breakneck.

First, that cinema. Early on, you stand on the lawn, looking toward a side patio, but also up at the corner of the large old house. Bright maroon, with stained-glass details, the house juts out as if in an early scene from a horror film. Meanwhile, on the patio, someone is moving, limbs flailing, lit by tiny star lights.

Initially, it’s a bit frustrating to get only glimpses of movement, but then you begin to feel the pleasure of these stolen moments: a woman jumping on a mattress in a royal blue room, giggling, while another woman hovers, mostly out of sight. The performance ends in the alley behind the house, where projections and live dancers interact. At times the dancers run all the way to the end of the alley and you watch them jerking and jumping from a long way off; this isn’t a view you can get in the theater. Instead of the theater’s flatness, Holiday House has the three-dimensional grasp of reality—albeit a beautifully lit and planned reality. At one point a curious neighbor, not a performer, came around the side of one garage: transfixed by light, he became a performer. The pleasure of viewing is so intense here, so fun as to be nearly guilty.

Then there’s the dancing itself. The perspectives from which we view are planned, but the movement feels dangerously unhinged. Morgan Thorson and Otto Ramstad throw each other around within inches of the audience; Kristin Van Loon crashes her bike into every impediment she can find; three dancers fall to their knees over and over again. Outside the confines of a theater, within a house, where people generally follow certain proscribed paths, all this virtuoso flight feels especially and thrillingly risky. It’s as if BodyCartography and their dancers have just now discovered this house and are exploring it with no notion of its use or purpose.

In fact, the house, which is truly an odd one, seems increasingly bizarre as the performance goes on. Each space, each object morphs as the performers “misuse” it. Also, as you are led from room to room, some performers remain behind, lying or dancing, which gives the house a haunted feel.

But it’s difficult to say who’s haunting—you or the performers, who seem unaware of the audience. The wrongness of being in a strange house, watching its inhabitants as they enact their strange exploration—again, it’s a guilty pleasure, a thrilling risk. (There’s some literal risk here too. Holiday House #2 is only for those who feel comfortable ascending and descending strange staircases in near darkness. And don’t even think of wearing heels.)

One thing’s for sure: your own home will never feel so dull as when you return from BodyCartography’s Holiday House.

8.17.07: Shreds at Bryant-Lake Bowl

First, if you haven’t been to Bryant-Lake Bowl for a show, you should go. The tickets are cheap, and you can drink and eat good food while you watch. More to the point, some of the most interesting artists in town—from avant-garde duo Hijack to James Sewell muse Sally Rousse—perform new work on the BLB’s tiny, quirky stage. Shreds is no exception. Purest Spiritual Pigs leader Helena Thompson invited such local stars as Jaime Carrera, Hijack, and Dylan Skybrook to choreograph to the leftover bits from PSP’s latest record. The result was a lot of miscellaneous fun, unified only by the rhythmic grind of PSP’s music.

I say miscellaneous because a good chunk of the work here felt one-off, partial. There’s nothing wrong with this, and it may even be intentional (at the BLB, messing with audience expectations is de rigueur). Still, Jessica Cressey’s clever shaving-cream legs and Sarah Gordon’s mysterious cardboard signs left me wanting more. Hijack’s strenuously physical section—no props, no context to speak of, from a pair who routinely drag the kitchen sink into their work—felt too tightly wound to end as abruptly as it did. Susan Scalf and Natasha Hassett’s unsafe “Safety Dance” and Dylan Skybrook’s “In the Manner of Flowers” (more below) suffered from a lack of context, trailing into the forgettable despite some riveting moments.

But it will be hard to forget Jaime Carrera’s “Olvidame.” Carrera appeared in nothing but high heels and a long black Cher wig (leave the kiddies at home), which he swung back and forth and draped over himself in eroticized Cousin Itt fashion. Carrera—a muscular bundle with a paunch that he can entirely suck in or blow out to bun-in-the-oven size at will—then tried on a series of attitudes, from the bodybuilder’s studied crunch to the pageant queen’s cocked hip to the Madonna’s skyward gaze. Disquieting and creepy, yet mesmerizing and oddly lovely, “Olvidame” stood out from the rest of the evening’s offerings.

Dylan Skybrook’s “In the Manner of Flowers” was also a stand-out, though less so. Here, it’s Skybrook’s movement style, not what he did with it, that was notable. Skybrook is an oil-slick mover, someone who looks like he could do a wicked robot dance, but he applied this preternatural smoothness to pedestrian moves. Well, not quite pedestrian: he gestured like a silent-film star, then like a distraught street person predicting the end. He’s a preacher, a cartoon, a politician; he moved like your most demonstrative math teacher. All this strange, not-quite comprehensible communication fascinates, but in the setting of Shreds, there was no context to help us get further.

It’s good that Shreds left me wanting more. Thompson spoke of making Shreds a regular occurrence; that’s great. But I’ll also be on the lookout for longer work—split or full evenings—from these artists. I’d like to go further than "fun" and "interesting."

Shreds plays again tonight at the Bryant-Lake Bowl.

8.2.07: April Sellers Dance Collective

Put your name down on a few dance mailing lists and it will happen: you’ll be invited to a party/performance/ showing/gala/fundraiser. We press people typically don’t cover these events because they’re small, sometimes invitation-only, a little informal about the art, often insider territory, and because the liquor and money flow freely. (Yet we cover gallery openings.) But the party-performance scene seems to be heating up. April Sellers, the subject of this review, is a special pro at the arty party (she and Judith Howard won a Sage Award for their House of Big Love), but Three Dances’ annual birthday party performance (in March) is a fun and boozy spectacle, and Deborah Jinza Thayer and Rosie Simas have been accompanying their frequent showings with crudités, party games, and sometimes wall art. Even theater performances can feel like parties. Get to the Bryant-Lake Bowl (where you can eat and drink as you watch) on the right night and the enthusiasm of the avant garde dance crew will make you feel like you’re at a homecoming pep rally with some really interesting cheerleaders. Ballet of the Dolls seems to be trying to create a cabaret feel at their Ritz Theater—and succeeding (check out their French cabaret in late October). Even the Walker’s getting into the act with Faustin Linyekula’s November performance. All this is to say: don’t discount the dance party. Lighthearted and conversational, these events are an easy introduction to the sometimes hard-to-understand dance they promote. Bring a friend and a stack of small bills (for drinks and donations) and you’re all set.

April Sellers has the dance party down. She and her friends know how to decorate, dress, and greet: this is not your college kegger. And then there’s the dance. Gettable enough for the girls who’ve had one too many pinot grigios, Sellers’s work mines fairly simple stereotypes—the repressed girl, the natural woman, the fertility goddess—for all the postmodern postfeminist zest they’re worth. I’ve seen Sellers’s work onstage and in the wild (so to speak), and while her stage work is often more complex and more technically difficult, I prefer the ease of her work outdoors. Women Bathing, which Sellers showed last night, gained immeasurably from the sound of crickets in the background (even the enterprising beetle who crawled up my back added something).

And then there’s the nudity, which outdoors, at someone’s home, has a reality that stage nudity never attains. Sellers shines with the female nude. Never coy, never exhibitionistic, her playful nudes will make you laugh at the same time as they inspire you with the beauty of flesh. And there’s a slight, but not at all bitter, political edge: watching Sellers and Judith Howard kick and thrash out of their togas in Sap Rising might make you think of how repressed we still are, but it’s more likely to evoke a simple pleasure in their freedom.

Enjoying dance in someone’s backyard, drink in hand, is apt to make you feel a little of that freedom yourself. There’s no rule stating that serious art has to take place only in serious settings. We do have a prejudice against mixing play and art—but, thankfully, it’s a prejudice that April Sellers and many others are challenging.

7.26.07: The FootHolds Project at the Ritz Theater

There are a lot of artists in this town who make work constantly but quietly. Because they’re not affiliated with a large organization, you don’t notice them. Then, suddenly, the quiet artists put on shows of work ranging across years, and you wonder where they’ve been all that time.

Jim Lieberthal is one such artist. His FootHolds Project concert includes work from 1984 to 2007, as well as a new work created for him by Germaul Barnes. At its best, Lieberthal’s choreography is quirky, interesting, built around vignette and gesture rather than story and long dance phrase. Lieberthal’s work is full of animals and characters: in 1984’s “FlashCard Menagerie,” Bernard Brown lies on his side, finning his feet elaborately; later he sneaks, slump-shouldered, around the stage. In a harlequin costume, he’s a human fly or an architectural figure. Lieberthal’s good, too, at the short drama, at getting it right in a moment. The second section of “FlashCard” is the Ariel-protagonist’s agony, but it’s brief (perhaps thirty seconds), ending in a sudden fall and blackout. What else do we need?

Lieberthal’s premiere, “Cri de Coeur,” shows the same expertise in moments. Blackouts highlight action, the lights falling and lifting again suddenly; dancers enter unexpectedly, a man dragging a woman onstage. Later, the woman (Debra McGee Weatherup) springs up from the floor in a sudden fierce embrace, her legs around the man’s waist; after a blackout, they’re revealed in the same position, but she’s already fallen a little away; a second blackout and lights up finds her on the floor. In “Cri de Coeur,” Lieberthal gives a good sense of the interruptedness of modern life. The dancers—a lot of them, seemingly more than necessary—come and go like traffic, their connections intense but fleeting.

Lieberthal’s work gets muddier when he mixes ballet with his modern dance. Where his modern’s sharp and alert, his ballet’s unfocused and at times even unmusical. It’s clear that he likes the gorgeous lines of ballet, but the lines don’t feel earned.

Barnes’s work for Lieberthal, “Doing or Not,” has Lieberthal pouncing and posing around stage while dramatically reciting an Ogden Nash poem about sins of commission versus sins of omission. For most dancers, this would not work. But Lieberthal is that rare person who seems born for the stage in all respects. His Gumby-body, his malleable face (from innocent to tempter in 0.3 seconds), his absolute confidence untainted by vanity or self-consciousness—he is a kick to watch, and it’s too bad we don’t see more of him in this concert.

Lieberthal’s brilliance as a performer gives a clue to his choreography: he’s a dancer’s choreographer. His dancers range from the forceful, mature Weatherup to the ballerina Julia Tehven to livewire Bernard Brown to Kelly Radermacher, with her black hole-dense presence, to the young swan Alexandra Baldwin, and more. It’s clear Lieberthal loves them all. What finally holds about this concert, when the bows are being taken, is the heart of people like Lieberthal and his dancers. Dance is so hard. These dancers practice four to seven days a week, two to six hours a day, and all they get is one weekend of light, three evenings of our applause. (The pay is minimal, if in fact there is pay at all.) We, on the other hand, just walk in and, for a small sum, soak up all this effort of theirs so easily. We are living on their generosity.

The Footholds Project runs through July 28.

6.24.07: Time Track Productions' The Closer I Get, the Less I Believe It at the Ritz Theater

Time Track Productions makes stage images no one else can. This, for instance: a dancer (Kari Mosel) stands, dances, spins. Around her, others dance, some in brilliant close-up, others far off, while fireflies flicker across the space. What you see is a collage, self on self, not feverishly busy but beautifully full, as if you were looking into a web of memory. How do they do it? To choreographer Paula Mann’s muscular, whole-hearted modern dance, animator Steve Paul adds layers of video projected onto scrims before and behind the dancers. Where other companies use animation as a backdrop or highlight, the wife-and-husband team of Mann and Paul integrate animation into the fabric of the work. They’ve spent, they say, two years creating this latest work, and the work and the close partnership are apparent. Dance and animation work together, neither so busy as to overshadow the other, and result in stunning moments such as Mosel’s firefly dance.

But The Closer I Get, the Less I Believe It is not a technique showcase. Mann and Paul use their unusual collaboration to explore virtual reality, the realm of simulated humans and simulated experience. A story winds through the performance: four ordinary humans, seeking fun, excitement, or connection, wander into a funhouse in which their memories are re-enacted and their fantasies of happiness fulfilled. But during a saccharine rendition of the Carpenters’ “Top of the World,” something goes wrong, a la Westworld, and the creepy robot humans get out of synch. And then everything gets confusing. Concept-laden, heavy with irony, the show goes on, the performers grimacing and mugging inexplicably, until the “what just happened?” end. The irony is particularly crushing, as it prevents us in the audience from judging for ourselves. When we’re allowed to simply look into the funhouse, to be seduced by its beautiful images or put off by its ultimate distance, we’re active and implicated. There’s even some meta-play with the idea that the theater itself is a type of virtual reality. Most of the time, though, the funhouse comes to us mediated by Mann and Paul’s idea that we should distrust the pleasures it offers.

Still, there are moments when Mann and Paul lift the screen of irony. The funhouse barker (Nora Jenneman), who has appeared before only as a distorted face, shows up in a crowded mall, standing still, talking to herself about her loneliness. Meanwhile, a woman with baroque blonde hair moves before this projection. She reaches up and takes off the blonde wig, revealing the close-shorn head of the barker. Here the fake and real blend, shot through with longing. In the dance, too, emotion comes through. The performers differ in acting ability, but they all dance with strength and wild abandon, particularly the whirlwind Mosel.

Visually stunning, rich in ideas, but also frustrating, The Closer I Get concludes a trilogy of work on technology and human life. It will be interesting to see what Mann and Paul turn to next.

6.14.07: TU Dance at the Southern Theater

After TU Dance’s spring concert is over and the dancers have gone, the Southern Theater stage seems bereft, empty, orphaned—but the dance goes on in the viewer’s eyes, afterimages of motion flickering over the ordinary world outside. There are beautiful involutions of partnering where bodies twine around and transform each other, and sky-catching leaps echo with a suspension of time. Choreographer Uri Sands (co-artistic director of the company, along with Toni Pierce-Sands) at times adds dramatic edge to his muscular and lovely movement, creating a lift in which a dancer climbs the air with her flexed feet, or piling severe but elegant poses reminiscent of Egyptian art. Sands can be funny too: In “Waiting,” he and Jason Jacobs ham their way through a Tom Waits song as if they were pleasantly tipsy hoofers who’ve almost forgotten their routine. Mostly, though, it’s beauty that he and the company create on stage, and plenty of it. In “For You,” six dancers alternate swirling through a brightly lit space, sometimes solo, sometimes in couples, while the others stand by. At the end of the piece, all six dancers are moving, three couples spread over the stage, with no focal point. What a luxury: more beauty than you can see at once.

At times I wanted more from this lush show. The sweetness of it lulled me, and I wanted Sands to risk more. The ambitious “Veneers” begins well, with a quartet of dancers in Egyptian tunics (by Tulle and Dye) and harsh lighting (by Carolyn Wong). Rapid-fire, the dancers gesture and pose. They draw their hands past their necks, as if cutting off their heads, or pantomime hanging themselves, heads drooping. They take up fencing stances or ballet positions, strained past ease. With their speed and seemingly superhuman coordination, the dancers look as if they’re in an airless other world. “Veneers” also ends well. One dancer (Berit Ahlgren) repeats the opening gestures, but ever more feverishly. The faster she goes, the looser she gets, until at last she becomes ordinary, human. (In the performance I saw, her hair came free of its tight bun and her hairpins clattered on the stage. Let’s hope she can manage that every night.) At the same time, a row of dancers advances slowly toward and past her, going stiffly to the back of the stage. They carry bouquets of multicolored roses, and at last they begin to strike themselves with their bouquets. This strange ritual—flagellation with roses—juxtaposed with the other dancer's sudden freedom, makes for an unforgettable ending. But the middle of “Veneers,” though easy on the eyes, doesn’t add much. Throughout the evening, I wanted more of the imagination that produced the opening and closing of “Veneers.”

Still, this concert is nearly a ten. The opening night audience certainly thought so: The standing ovation was instant and long. As a critic, I see dance all the time, and I get jaded—thus my desire for Uri Sands to push further into his darker side. But I’m not immune to the sheer pleasure that TU Dance delivers, the pleasure of watching a body ecstatic, transformed by energy and rhythm. “Isms,” the final piece in the evening, explodes with the ecstatic bodies of this talented company. As choreography, it’s not interesting. But as dance, as human bodies reaching to our farthest limit, it’s indispensable.

TU Dance’s spring concert runs June 14–17, 21–24, at the Southern Theater.

6.3.07: Minnesota Dance Theatre's Close to Silence at the Southern Theater

Some dances aim at amusement, some to tell a story, some to illuminate, depict, or connect. Other dances aim at sublimity, and at their best, these sublime dances dance for you: Their movement is not only seen, but felt, and in the stillness, you are lifted.

Minnesota Dance Theatre’s Close to Silence achieves this rare elevation of purpose. Directed by choreographer Wynn Fricke, this performance brings together the poetry of the Persian mystic Rumi, the whirling dances of the dervishes, Fricke’s own modern ballet choreography, the talents of MDT’s elastic dancers, David Echelard’s stunning vocal music, simple-yet-mesmerizing animation by Tom Mays, and the guidance of artist, costumer, and cultural advisor Fawzia Reda. All these elements weave together to create catharsis.

At first, I had trouble connecting with this piece. Mysticism offers no stairs to climb, no argument to ascend: You’re either in it or you’re not. It’s one thing to appreciate the connection between the sundial-tracing of Mays’s animation and the kaleidoscopic involutions of Fricke’s choreography, but it's quite another to feel it. In the first half of the performance, I was a mere watcher. The dancers’ control over technique also got in the way. Shoulders in ballet should be fairly fixed, but some dancers seemed immobile. It was hard to believe they felt anything other than stress. Finally, using dance to render poetry of mystic self-annihilation creates a paradox. “They have made for two or three days / A cage of my body,” Rumi says. If the body is a momentary trap for the soul, how can any performance reach ascension?

As the first half ends, a mood of failure sets in. A quartet shows off MDT’s strong men, but each movement, however beautiful, feels curtailed. These false starts made me long to see some simple dervish whirling. But the first half closes with these words: “Our covenant is not of desperation / Even if you have broken your vows a hundred times / Come, come again.” Fricke knows the paradox she’s set in motion. The second half opens with more reality: “Today, like every other day, we wake up empty / And frightened.” It’s hard to arrive.

But Fricke keeps at it. With the words “Let the beauty we love be what we do,” the mood and the dance loosen. A skirt dance ensues, four dancers each taking a moment to cut free, leaping in wild inventions, their skirts a whirl of emerald, azure, sapphire, jade. MDT’s dancers are mostly young, so technique and energy—not confidence and depth—are their strengths, and Fricke wisely keeps them moving. Throwing the self away is a form of transcendence that younger dancers understand. But there are a few exceptions to this rule: dancers Melanie Verna, Abdo Sayegh, and Sam Feipel, for example. In a solo for Sayegh, Fricke has him press in the space around his head as if trying to extinguish himself, and she turns his arms and articulate back into calligraphy. Technique vanishes. The body is a prison, but freedom comes also from the body. As the light dies over Sayegh’s moving back, we have arrived in the heart of the paradox.

“My place is the placeless / My trace is the traceless”: So the dance is not achievement, but continuous motion. Dancers run forward only to be intercepted by other dancers, cut off in dropping lifts. A last gorgeous knot of dancers echoes the beginning. And then, out of darkness, one dancer (Feipel) whirls. Other than his feet, he is still. And we are still and whirling with him.

Like Rumi’s poetry, Close to Silence is a crowd-pleaser. The young woman next to me was so thrilled, she couldn’t keep her clasped hands from her mouth, and the women behind me planned to tell their friends about the show. But also like Rumi’s poetry, Close to Silence is radical at heart. It can entertain you, it can sweeten your evening. But it asks much more. “You must change your life,” Rilke wrote of his encounter with a work of art. Close to Silence makes a similar demand—the decision to comply is up to you.

Close to Silence runs through June 10 at the Southern Theater.