The first movement: Over the course of 15 minutes a dancer makes her way across the stage, left to right. She is persistent, methodical. She tugs  in her mouth, a cord of red thread. She is entirely focused on this task and entirely present to the other dancers around her.  As she reaches the far side of the stage, the lights flash on, she releases the thread from her mouth. The image of the rippling red lightening bolt burns into my mind’s eye and continues to float there long after the actual fabric has settled on the floor.  Another word for afterimage is ghost image. A Crack in Everything is rich with ghosts, with overlays and layers, with images seen and heard and imagined.  At the Q&A after the show tonight, Zoe Scofield said she does not experience much difference between her waking life and her dream states. I am not surprised. See the show tonight. It is extraordinary.

More soon…

Nicholas Leichter Dance

The lights come up on a lone piano in a spot light. Monstah Black, as a sultry crooner, sings over his shoulder, directly to us.  It is an invitation that says, “Hey, lean forward, listen up. You, audience, are part of this show; we are together here inside the space of performance, let’s see how it unfolds.”

What unfolds is an exuberant hybrid of contemporary, folk and popular dance, musical theatre, spoken word, spoof, camp and vamp and a pinch of everything else.  The company weaves through the audience, the lights rise and fade and the spell is woven.

The penultimate section, Lena, danced with mesmerizing power by Lisa Race, brought the evening into focus.  In the program notes, Deb Cash calls Nicholas Leichter’s Whiz  a study in reflection and refraction. Lena was the mirror for the show. All that was extroverted, relational and narrative in the show was transformed in Lena to a powerful interiority. Movements originated in the torso, limbs were contained. Race moved as one fluid entity, without flourish or distractions. A verse from the Tao Te Ching says, We shape clay into a pot, but it is the empty space inside that gives the pot its purpose.We work with being, but non-being is what we use.

I’m just back from the first performance of  Camille A Brown and Dancers.

First impressions:  Precision and fluidity. Stillness and staccato bursts. Prosaic gesture and polished execution.  Bodies round, bodies angular.  Bodies in flight and bodies grounded.

Images that linger with me:

From The City of Rain: There is a blue cast to the stage.  The dancers attention is indrawn. They are moving in unison, appear crouched in mid-air, suspended and compact. Then half the dancers drop to the floor and the others rise up like startled birds.  No longer discrete dancers, they have become pure, abstract movement and shape.

From The Groove to Nobody’s Business: The dancers are subway passengers waiting for a train. Interactions are inevitable, especially with Ray Charles’  “What’d I Say” pulsing in the background. Subtle gestures, a smirk, a dip of the shoulder, counterpoint exuberant contact and mock conflict – the human comedy as on display every day. And with joy.

More soon about the show and the post performance discussion.

Marion

Camille A Brown and Dancers kick off the Festival performances tomorrow night (Friday) at the Schaeffer Theatre. The titles themselves are intriguing: “The Groove to Nobody’s Business,” “City of Rain,” and “New Second Line” which is about Hurricane Karina and the aftermath. See you there.