Dancing Blind
Back To the Future With Verb
We were especially fascinated by the rehearsals of Noumenon Mobilus. We watched the dancers rehearse the piece both without and with the gleaming, elastic body bags that make their movements into evocative abstract shapes. (For an excellent video excerpt of this unusual dance, go to http://NikolaisLouis.org, click on “enter,” “repertory,” “works by Alwin Nikolais,” and “Noumenon Mobilus.”)
CoolCleveland: This piece you’re working on, Noumenon Mobilius, dates back to 1953, yet it still manages to look futuristic. How can that be?
Margaret Carlson: Many say that Alwin Nikolais is a genius; certainly everyone concurs that he was way ahead of his time. Consider the generational tree. From Nik’s work spawned Pilobolus, which spawned Momix, which spawned Cirque de Soleil, so you can see the generational trace all the way back to Nik.
The thing that’s really remarkable about Nikolais is that he wrote the music, choreographed the pieces, and did all of the visual effects before computers were even invented, before anything was digital. Everything had to be worked out and executed by hand.
What’s that white fabric the dancers are enclosed in?
It’s a contemporary metallic fabric with a lot of lycra in it; the original fabric that was used in Noumenon Mobilus is no longer available. The way the colors change is so clever. People don’t realize that the fabric doesn’t change color, just the lighting. It’s so precise.
The dancers can’t see through the fabric so once they’re in there they are blind. They have to be walked to their places. In the run through you just saw, you notice the one dancer was off; her stool shifted but she had no way of knowing that she wasn’t still facing front like she should have been. You’re totally blind, but you have to be on the music cues with the other dancers, so it’s a very challenging piece.
So,Noumenon Mobilus is a company premiere. Let’s talk about the world premiere in the concert, Terence Greene’s Breath. How many people are in the dance?
The first rehearsal is tomorrow (Wed 2/2). We don’t know how many Verb dancers he’ll be using but current plan is that 3 of his dancers from Cleveland School of the Arts will be in Breath, including Philip Williams, a very, very talented student who was one of our interns last summer.
Breath is in 3 movements, and each movement explores a different aspect of breath. There’s the physicality of breath, the muscles with which you inhale and exhale; then there’s breath as air current; and then there’s breath as spirituality, the final ascension.
It always makes my heart stop for a moment when I see how close these concert dates are. In this case your first rehearsal is 10 days before the performance.
Welcome to the modern world.
We saw Verb do To Have and To Hold this summer and we’ve seen other companies do that piece over the years. Originally choreographed by Danial Shapiro and Joanie Smith for their own company, ”ThaTH” might look like a slick, acrobatic piece at first, but it manages to become a very tender, powerful dance about loved ones and our memories of the departed. (See video excerpts of ”ThaTH” at ThaTH.)
It’s a very complex work and it’s filled with metaphors and similes. If you are new to dance, you can just watch it for the physicality of it. What can you do with 3 benches and the human body?
The other dimension of ThaTH emerged while it was being choreographed. Shapiro began pondering his mother’s identity as a Holocaust survivor and it occurred to him that the benches he was using were the same length as coffins. Then he began likening the benches to bunk beds and the spaces between the benches to graves. So, in the process of composition, the dance took itself to an entirely different place. Hence the title, To Have and To Hold, which inevitably suggests the next phrase in the marriage vows, “Till death do us part.” It’s not spoken, but it’s stated in the choreography.
Excellent gloss on that text. Also on the program is Ambiguous Drives, which we just watched in rehearsal and which, of course, we saw it last summer. High impact partnering!
Yes, we commissioned that piece from Tommie-Waheed Evans and he set it on us just last summer. It’s very challenging. It doesn’t use typical moves or anything with a name to it. It has complex rhythms. But it’s a good piece and the dancers really enjoy it.
The other thing I might add is that Shapiro and Smith danced for Nikolais and Murray Louis in the Nikolais Louis Dance Company. So you see the father, Nik, and his offspring, Shapiro and Smith. Their approaches might seem entirely different in that Nik was the father of abstraction in dance and Shapiro and Smith are very different, but you still see that creative thinking about space, carving space in an interesting way.
We understand that there is also a connection between Greene and Evans.
For the past few years Terence has been running a summer program for his students at Cleveland School of the Arts, bringing in major figures from the dance world. We started bringing those people here to teach Verb company classes for 3 weeks while they’re in town working with Terence’s students. Then this past summer we decided to take it one step further and have one of them do a work for Verb and it was Terence who recommended Tommie, who was coming to Cleveland to teach Terence’s students.
We’re looking forward to seeing the concert, or should we say concerts, for Verb ballets performs 3 times this week. The performance with the most new material is in Cleveland but Verb has 2 performances in Akron and one of them is FREE.
Wed 2/9 at 6:30PM @ Akron-Summit County Public Library Auditorium, 60 S. High St., Akron 44308. FREE. Verb performs Heinz Poll’s Bolero and shares the bill with other dance groups. 330-374-7690 or FirstNightAkron.org.
Fri 2/11 at 8PM @ Breen Center for the Performing Arts, 2008 W. 30th St., Cleveland, 44113. All Verb: Noumenon Mobilus, Breath, Ambiguous Drives, To Have and To Hold. $28 preferred; $20 general; $10 student. Go to http://www.verbballets.org or 216-397-3757. Phone the same number for a special dinner and performance benefit package.
Sat 2/12 at 8pm @ Akron Civic, 182 S. Main St., Akron, OH 44308. Verb shares the evening with one of our favorite local companies, the seldom-seen Neos Dance Theatre, which also has a couple of high profile premieres. $25 reserved; $10 general; $10 students. Go to http://www.akroncivic.com or phone 330-253-2488.
From Cool Cleveland contributors Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas. Elsa and Vic are both longtime Clevelanders. Elsa is a landscape designer. She studied ballet as an avocation for 2 decades. Vic has been a dancer and dance teacher for most of his working life, performing in a number of dance companies in NYC and Cleveland. They write about dance as a way to learn more and keep in touch with the dance community. E-mail them at vicnelsaATearthlink.net.