Dance Review: dre.diohead at LPAC

Dre.Dance's dre.diohead at the LPAC Mainstage Theater on April 30 tells their movement story candidly, ferociously and with a clarity only highly attuned artists possess.  In owning their style of movement so completely, each piece resonates as dance in the same way a McDonald's sign resonates as fast food.  While dance and fast food don't usually find themselves in the same sentence, this speaks to the raw quality dre.dance emulates.  Set to a soundscape of Radiohead music, the company pumps the audience full of buoyant and volatile energy through an invisible IV.  Dre.Dance is the creation of childhood friends Andrew Palermo and Taye Diggs.  Palermo reigns as the artistic director and choreographer with Diggs contributing additional choreography.  

Lights come up on eight dancers in leotards and shorts - looking ready for class but standing so attentively everyone in the room knows it's time to shut up.  This gestural phrase echoes so mechanically in unison each dancer seems to have been shocked by the same energy force.  Their beautiful lines reach my seat instantaneously sending me into a deeper focus.  Quickly the phrase unravels into duets and trios and these manipulations unveil the strength a gesture can exude when paired with thoughtful accents. 

After this first piece the program features each dancer through a duet or trio astutely acknowledging and highlighting the strengths that make this unit earth-shatteringly beautiful as a whole.    Set within the limits of a city block, the piece works to showcase the differences between their public lives on this shared street and their private ones behind closed doors. 

This struggle or inner turmoil are best illuminated through the pieces set to "15 Step," a full company piece and "The Gloaming," a solo performed by Tommy Scrivens.

"15 Step" proves that dre.dance is never as good as when the members unite together.  While all prior pieces are rife with technique and soul, all the stops come out with aerial work, a conga line worth watching, and movement that travels briskly and perfectly from one side of the stage to the other in a game of epic movement telephone.  Members of dre.dance seem to feel each others pulse and spend the entire evening breathing from the same source and exalting it with breathtaking movement.  Working both together and apart with sprinkled solos, this piece reveals that the company is as in tune with one another as they are with themselves individually.

In "The Gloaming," Scrivens travels within a diagonal pool of light across the stage and never strays.  While his movement path is limited to this light, he seems to live the reverse of the saying 'live for the light at the end of the tunnel.'  This light ends at the edge of the stage, and he combatively travels towards it as though the tunnel is just beyond it and he's headed there no matter what.  With this limited directional passage, Scrivens manages to send surprise after surprise into the audience as he levitates towards the ceiling or dives under himself when you thought he would move forward.  Though dre.diohead in general is low on the technical spectrum, the lights flood the stage with green as the song and performance hit a major change and Scrivens leaps back towards the beginning of the light. 

This timing speaks to the timing and spatial orientation of all of the pieces and all of the company members.  Dre.dance navigates a volatile spectrum while still holding control over both the emotional and visceral actions of the company. To provide an alternative correlation from fast food:  if dre.dance were a drink they would be whiskey on the rocks.  No twists or garnishes or anything to subdue their flavor - just raw unadulterated dance so strong it barely needs a space to contain it.  

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by: Eileen Elizabeth
Performance: dre.diohead
Choreography:  dre.dance 
Venue: LPAC
Show Date: April 30, 2010
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Dance Review: ZviDance at DTW

Zoom is a dance piece created by the company, ZviDance. Run by choreographer Zvi Gotheiner, ZviDance performs joyous, colorful, vibrant works that revel in the pure beauty of movement and physical expression.  Zoom is no different.  The piece is exhilarating and moving, and showcases the excellent company Mr. Gotheiner has assembled.  These are dancers that are comfortable in their bodies and whose motions feel fluid, lively, and grounded in deep, true emotions.

Benefitting from today's handy technology we pretty much all have sitting in our coat pockets and handbags, Zoom utilizes cellular technology in a brilliantly clever, interactive way that I’ve never seen before.  The audience is encouraged to take photos of the performance, both from off stage and at one point on stage, with their cell phones and then text them to a phone number. Later, the photos appear on the screen behind the stage.  At a couple points, one of the dancers nestles up to a laptop on stage and begins chatting with audience members via their cell phones, the text of which appears on the large screen above.  There is a lot of texting lingo...  lots of Wazup? TTYL, tots, :-).  The entire experience is unique and highlights well the way in which cell phone technology has come to be another level, albeit disembodied, in which we communicate and dance with each other.

Zoom really wins me over in the last few moments, when two dancers jerk and jolt in a piece that speaks to our inability to genuinely contact each other even amidst so many electronic means of communication.

Mr. Gotheiner’s choreography is exceptional.  He seems to be as at home composing movement that is light and playful as he is composing movement that is dower, spastic and macabre.  Yet, all of it expresses something honest...  The ZviDance company members are also wonderfully relaxed and well trained, performing complex pieces with an ease and harmony that belies the difficulty.  Mr. Gotheiner, who is also a renowned teacher of dance, seems to have been able to help them achieve a certain peacefulness in their bodies that one doesn’t see a lot in contemporary dance.

All in all, Zoom is a great success because it contains a thrilling collection of contrasts – electronic communications and dancing bodies, pleasure and pain, buoyancy and gravitas. ZviDance can do it all.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Dustin Wood
Performance: Zoom by ZviDance
Choreographer(s): Zvi Gotheiner
Venue: Dance Theater Workshop
Date: April 10, 2010
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Dance Review: The Stephen Petronio Company Springs Forward in its 25th Anniversary Celebration of Unique Work

Stephen Petronio is living his moment the opening night of his New York season at the Joyce Theater.   Located in Chelsea, the posh notoriously gay neighborhood, the Joyce Theater is swarming with just the type.  The bar is busy, with people partaking of the specialty cocktail “Love Me Tender” and cherry flavored popcorn, both in Petronio’s favorite color-pink!   And it is certainly time for celebration; this company has survived the big city for 25 years, growing in its own style and reaching audiences around the globe.

The performance opens with a solo entitled #3.  A bald man appears like a waiter or butler in a suit and shiny paten leather shoes with fourth position arms scooped to one side curving up to the sky.  This is not Max Brenner - this is Stephen Petronio- and this is dance by the bald man.  With his feet cemented center-stage, Stephen Petronio invites us in, beckoning us to witness his observations.  Simultaneously he is sculpting himself, his hands creeping over his own skin, honing his craft before our eyes as we realize this is his style he is presenting to us.  We are learning his language of isolated sharp port de bras and strong, sometimes torqued torso.  A language of the spine, elaborated with the limbs, I must admit Stephen Petronio reminds me of one of those beaded wobble dolls who get jelly legs when you squeeze their platform, but only because his feet never moved from the same spot on the stage.

The next piece entitled MiddleSexGorge opens with two women on stage posed erected from fourth positions, the light contouring their muscles.  Each movement is articulated and controlled, though sometimes the movement is so dramatic- arms and legs whipping in fast circular motions optimizing the ball and socket joints at the hips and shoulders.  The technique of the company is fierce, sharp with high battements, strong cores that demand quickly executed changes in direction, yet somehow is lacking the use of plié:  the legs sometimes appear stiff, the feet flexing above the ground, harsh landings on the floor.  The music asks, “are you hot?  Are you feeling hot?”  The dancers bodies are certainly hot, women moving freely in black short unitards, the men in sexy flesh-colored corsets.  Some of the men are wearing pansy pants (my name for them), fresh for the picking;  I have witnessed promotional photos for the company this year with the dancers wearing these flesh tights sprouting with orangey pink petals.  Other men simply wear their flesh-colored dancebelt- super sexy ass cheeks on display.  I didn’t understand the contrast between the women's’ costuming and the men's’ - the women looking as if they came from dance class, the men from a spring fashion runway.  The dancers faces don’t express much, but their bodies scream, “yes, I’m hot!” with abrupt changes in direction, head-bang, battement, windmill motions slicing through space. The women swarm round one of the men as the chorus repeats, “Are you hot?  Are you feeling hot?”   Then as they close in on him “I’m ambitious”  ...a nice commentary on a man’s sexual prowess.  The audience loves it.

Note for The Joyce employees:  To better handle the two huge lines at concessions barely moving- if you offer a drink special, mix’em up beforehand, otherwise people are forced to chug their beverages at the last moment, having spent the entire intermission waiting for drinks. Try the pre-pour, sales should improve too, as employees offer beverages ready on trays (no line delays!)

Following intermission is a solo, Love Me Tender, with Julian DeLeon in a silky men’s shirt and...white shorts beneath.  A bit of a tease, his body aches to be loved and touched, very expressive everywhere but the face.  I think this reflects on an artistic preference with the company to focus expression through the body. Two women in short white unitards and draped fabric as sleeves appear; this must’ve been the beginning of “Foreign Import” with music “Creep” by Radiohead.  A disturbed man, performed by Reed Luplau, dances between and around these two angelic figures.  Reed Luplau succeeds in getting the audience’s attention, his movements attack and swarm the stage like a desperate person’s cry for help.

The last dance brings the company together in Ghostown, a world premiere.  I love the costuming for this piece, each dancer having a unique combination of tight spandex in neutral colors with an element of flowing fabric.  As if different groups of people who have come and gone with time, dancers flow and ebb from the side wings.  The choreography gets really interesting with the dancers performing their own unique phrasing, contrasting their movement, and initiating  interaction between each other. The music is pulsating, beautiful but also sleep-inducing, perhaps not the best work to end the evening.  Yet, the audience responds enthusiastically to the final moment of the dance.  In this work Petronio states,

“I am more drawn to information that is implied or concealed within the gesture and stage space, what is imagined and sensed as well as what is perceived. Ghostown...is a gathering place for memory and selves that have come before, resonate in some way, that are still vibrating with layers of meaning, imagined or real.”

Certainly one feels the resounding pulses of energy vibrating within themselves just watching Stephen Petronio's amazing company.

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Lea McGowan
Performance: Stephen Petronio Company
Choreography: Stephen Petronio
Venue: The Joyce Theater, New York City
Performance Date: Tuesday April 27, 2010
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Dance Review: The Whiz is Wicked, Fun, and Fierce!

A hip new version of The Whiz: Emerald City is whizzing about New York City, courtesy of nicholas leichter dance.  With an amazing recent run at Joe’s Pub, this production is provocative and unique, blending new music and fresh moves. Without a solid yellow brick road to follow, the numbers flow easily from one to the next, performers streaming in and out of the audience.   The show is diverse in its array of dances and musical numbers, delighting the palate along with the yummy menu selections at Joe’s Pub.

Nicholas Leichter’s choreography is funky, making people want to clap and dance in their seats. Co-directing with Nicholas Leichter is Monstah Black, the score creator known as a “Messiah of the Funk.”  Brian McCormick as producing director contributes interesting titles for the dance numbers like Papi, incorporating popular slang to reference the poppy fields and other elements of the classic Wizard of Oz/The Wiz tale.

Nicholas Leichter’s choreography is suitably even more multi-dimensional than the traditional Wizard of Oz story, incorporating technique with raw bumping and grinding.

To me, the overall movement blends contemporary dance with Afro-Cuban and other island influences.  The dancing flows so naturally out of the dancers that it seems improvised except that order exists through formations and patterns.

Following the sexually charged Lick Shots number to a song by none other than Missy Elliot is He’s the Wizza, a long duet featuring Stephanie Liapis and Nicholas Leichter.  Here Nicholas Leichter shows off Stephanie Liapis’ skills as a dancer, ending the section dramatically to create nice set up for Soon as I get Home.

Dawn Robinson is brilliant in Soon As I Get Home celebrating the fabulousness of being a big black woman.  She conveys a sideways evolution of Diana Ross as if investigating what Diana Ross would be like when she’s chillin at home, being constantly fanned by an admiring man servant.

A highlight of the performance is an intense dance between two men, Wendell Cooper and Nicholas Leichter.  Each male interrogates the other with fierce dance moves and martial arts-infused partnering work.  Work!

Entering in very grand style, vocalizing from the audience, Yozmit makes a special appearance from the sky, like an outer-worldly creature.  Each movement is sharp and meticulously executed as Yozmit sings her heart out, compelling and captivating.

In order to gain a better understanding behind the creation of this fascinating show, I interviewed dancer Wendell Cooper.  In an expression of mutual respect and admiration, Wendell Cooper created a movement phrase tribute to Nicholas Leichter, who in turn assimilated the phrase into the Juicy Fruit section.  Wendell describes the challenges he faced trying to make a solo in the style of Nicholas Leichter who he says “tries to expand outside of the ego-driven art of the dance world.”

Wendell Cooper describes how “in this solo I wanted to expand [Nicholas Leichter’s] style that is particular to him rather than in an individual style.  If I was to create something in his style how would I do that?  [By] getting into his brain: learning his rhythm and style and his vocabulary. So I borrowed a little from his rep: combination of hip-hop and jazz, definitely the chaos-there’s a moment -it’s crazy- we have to throw our legs over our body and pitch and fall.  I tried to marry the chaos with rhythm and detail I feel like it has to be daring to be interesting for the public to watch, like this feeling of- they might not make it!  It’s a mix: house, technique, break-dancing jazz, capoeria, vogue, contemporary, moderness-that’s why I’m drawn to his work because he takes all these elements and blends them into a language.  I am trying to learn to do that in my work as well.”

As I continue my discussion with Wendell about how we talk about and define dance.  We both agreed, Nicholas Leichter has a unique style and his work is tricky to dissect because it’s fragmented.  I’ll try to dissect it for you: fouettés into popping followed by gooey modern dance, then African and Jazz-all of these fragments are fused into a sequence.  Nicholas Leichter’s many influences have been absorbed into a his own vocabulary to create poetry with dance. Though difficult to define in terms of genre, the work of Nicholas Leichter parallels the contemporary trends seen in media in which various elements are reworked together, derived from our modern world where distinct cultures and traditions exist side by side.  Honoring the specific cultural roots of very stylized dance forms, Nicholas Leichter shapes his own language, spoken with African steps transitioning to an almost traditional ballet sequence flowing into floor-work.  All elements come together within same conceptual framework. 

As artists, Nicholas Leichter and Monstah Black have unique processes of working, a system that seems to involve deconstructing and restructuring the construct, exploring the point of each scene, and taking into account the underlying social and political messages. In this production of The Whiz one will experience the story in an entirely new way, as the creators took accumulated content and applied our contemporary situation.

In the hands of Nicholas Leichter and Monstah Black, this production is not a remake but instead something re-imagined, sourced and rooted in the cultural history and development of the tale.

This re-creation of The Whiz has been developing with various sections previously appearing in shows through DanceNOW and Joe’s Pub.  This latest version is still missing some of the larger dance numbers which will be added for the full production at Abron’s Art Center around June 17, 2010.  Be sure to check out “The Whiz: Obamaland” at Abrons Arts Center to see more story and more dancing!

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Lea McGowan
Performance: DanceNOW [NYC] presents Dancemopolitan- nicholas leichter dance The Whiz: Emerald City
Choreography: Nicholas Leichter with additional choreography by Wendell Cooper
Venue: Joe’s Pub Manhattan, New York City
Performance Date: Friday March 19, 2010
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