The tall, robust, gray-haired man standing outside Jacob’s Pillow’s Ted Shawn Theater during intermission is explaining his reaction to Andrea Miller’s Boat to two attentive listeners. The members of her company, Gallim, he says, never stand still! He can’t get over that. It’s not entirely true, of course. The eight marvelous dancers who make up Gallim do pause in their dancing or stand and … [Read more...]
Celebrating a 40-Year Career
Jane Comfort & Company Revisit Forty Years of Work In 1978, Jane Comfort and I were both forty years younger. Not a surprise? I guess not. But that sentence may prove a snappier lead than my starting off by recounting what Comfort has accomplished over those forty years and how many dances of hers I’ve seen. (See how I snuck the facts into my non-lead? Or should I spell it “lede” as did … [Read more...]
Tracking Everyday Mysteries
RoseAnne Spradlin's X at New York Live Arts, January 13 and 14. Is this dance I’m looking at boring? More graciously put: am I bored? Etymology kicks in: do I feel as if something is being bored into my brain? I don’t deal with this issue while watching RoseAnne Spradlin’s compelling X at New York Live Arts. Well, maybe I do, briefly, since I notice that, near the end, I am uncrossing and … [Read more...]
Working Together in Love and in Hate
David Dorfman Dance at BAM Harvey Theater, November 8-11. I came home Wednesday night wanting to crawl into bed with David Dorfman’s Aroundtown, snuggle up to it, and have better dreams. You understand, of course, that I don’t mean that literally; six dancers, four musicians, plus Dorfman and his wife (guest performer Lisa Race) wouldn’t fit in my bed. But the hour-long piece that I’d seen … [Read more...]
Tea for Three? Take a Seat
Simone Forti, Steve Paxton, and Yvonne Rainer get together at Saint Mark's Church. “It is better to have loved and lost than to have put linoleum on your living room floor.” Yvonne Rainer read that aloud during her 2016 The Concept of Dust: Continuous Project— Altered Annually. And she read it again from one of the sheets of paper taped to the pillars in Saint Mark’s Church during Danspace … [Read more...]
Celebrating Thirty Years, Moving On
Doug Varone and Dancers shows old and new works at the BAM Harvey Theater. Doug Varone and Dancers is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and during the past three decades, Varone has also choreographed dances for other companies, as well as directing and choreographing operas. Knowing that about him, you might expect that his style is not a static one, and you would be correct. In … [Read more...]
The Serene Eye of a Storm
Danspace Project presents Julie McMillan in Benjamin Kimitch's KO-BU. Waiting for the crosstown bus that will taken me home from St. Mark’s church, I think only about what I have just seen: Danspace Project’s presentation of Benjamin Kimitch’s uncannily beautiful Ko-bu, performed by—embodied by—Julie McMillan, his creative collaborator. A little later, I can link the experience to that of … [Read more...]
Bewitched
Danspace Project presents Vicky Shick and Dancers, January 5 through 7. I didn’t see Vicky Shick’s Another Spell when it premiered last April, but I know that the evening I attended the revival of this Danspace Project commission, it began the same way it did back then. Shick genially confronts those of us sitting in St. Marks Church waiting for the performance to begin. What? The … [Read more...]
Four Dances Mingle As One
Bill Young revives his Interleaving at 100 Grand Street, December 9 through 11. I was beginning to write about Bill Young’s revival of his Interleaving after he'd given it a 30-year vacation, when my planned opening struck a chord. Yes, there it was, the start of my 2013 review of A Place in France (a collaboration between Young and his wife, Colleen Thomas): me at 100 Grand Street, … [Read more...]
Double Feature
Kate Weare Company and Liz Gerring Dance Company present New York seasons. It’s rare to see, on two adjoining nights, two hour-long dances by two gifted, highly original choreographers who were born and raised in California (a native Californian myself, I couldn’t resist throwing in that last commonality). The distinctive styles that Kate Weare and Liz Gerring have developed are nothing … [Read more...]