Fall for Dance

Thursday night, I went to the first of the three nights of the Fall for Dance Festival I had gotten tickets for. It was the first "real" dance performance I had ever been to (maybe formal is a better word) not counting the countless performances I’ve been in the NY On2 Salsa scene.

I've been looking for some inspiration in dance. After having been locked into salsa for so long I was really excited about these shows. I've been talking to one of my salsa teachers about what I think is the overall lack of creativity and artistry in the on2 salsa scene. There are some amazing technical dancers, but not enough musicality, creativity and artistic vision. It seems like everything is about doing the most complicated routine with no regard for music, risk-taking and expanding how salsa as a dance is defined.

I find salsa dance and music fascinating because you can't separate it from issues of diaspora and postcolonialism and have found that dancers from all backgrounds (ballet, jazz, hip hop, African, ballroom etc.) have easily found a pathway into salsa because it has roots in so many dance styles and cultures. And vice versa, (in my case) it’s a great dance to work backwards from because you’ve already learned the very basic vocabulary of other dance forms through salsa.

Long story short, I'm looking for some inspiration and Fall for Dance was a great start. Here's what I saw and what I thought (please note that I'm no dance critic).

Paul Taylor Dance Company
"Arden Court" Choreographer: Paul Taylor
This was by far my favorite of the night. I found out later that this is one his most famous works. I had seats that were really high up, but it was perfect for a piece like this. The choreography uses the whole stage and the overall forms he creates are so beautiful, I thought he had a visual arts background. The movement of the dancers feels like pure expression of the music (I want to listen to more William Boyce now). The dancers move in perfect harmony with each other; at different tempos (men from women), darting, crawling and leaping across the stage. This piece also requires an incredible amount of strength, especially on the part of the men. I was reading that this is considered by many dancers a very "masculine piece", which is still a hard adjective for me to use when describing shirtless men prancing around in pastel-colored pointilist tights, but you know what, the strength required by this piece is straight-up Herculean. There is one part where the men stand on one leg, their other leg fully extended, their backs flat (or slightly arched upwards) and the women leap and land on the small of the men’s backs, and tuck into a ball and just sit there. And the men don't move, they don't flinch.

I looked carefully to see if I could catch any shifting or adjusting (I'm a dick like that), but nothing. Holy fucking shit. There’s no way the woman will hit the man’s sweet spot every time they do that move so move so they just have to compensate a slightly different set of muscles (hamstrings, abs, back, calves and God knows what else) to maintain that effect each time.

Wow.

Kirov Ballet of the Mariinsky Theatre of St. Petersburg
"Middle Duet" Choreographer: Alexei Ratmansky
This was technically incredible, especially the female dancer. The choreography demands a lot of the woman dancer who has to make near instantaneous switches in her foot position to full plie and back again. On one hand, I should have liked it because it was a ballet dance with shades of Latin partner work (sharp breakbacks, crosshands, turn patterns, multiple spins by the woman led by the man), but I didn't find it visually that compelling. The woman's technique and body control was really incredible though.

Shantala Shivalingappa
"Varnam" Choreographer: Shantala Shivalingappa
This was Kuchipudi "a classical dance style from South India". It was a solo dance accompanied by a live band of Indian musicians. My seat was too high and far to the side to see the musicians which sucked. I couldn't get into this piece, the woman was a very sharp, clean dancer and dancing solo is incredibly difficult, but after awhile the movements started to feel montonous. When she got to the part where she was vibrating her body while standing on a brass plate ("the varnam") it got interesting again, but that ended up being near the conclusion of the piece.

Juilliard Dance
"Deuce Coupe" Choreographer: Twyla Tharp
Tacky. That was the first thing that came into my mind, and the piece just kept reinforcing it. First off, the backdrop was some big busy faux graffitti backdrop with "peace" in huge letters that didn't seem to relate to the music (a beach boys song), the dancer's costumes (weird 50s-style all-American collared shirts and pants) nor the dance movements itself (an awkward mix of classical ballet and herky-jerky 50s teen party sock hopish movements). The dancers looked stiff when they were asked to do anything other than ballet (the men's shoulders were hunched and slouched when doing non-ballet moves which bothered me). I might have been missing what her vision was, but it just seemed like a lot mismatched pieces that didn't sing well together.