By Elsa Johnson & Victor Lucas
Every spring Verb brings homegrown creative talent to Cleveland Public Theater’s DanceWorks. This year, Verb Goes Electric with Cleveland Chamber Symphony offered music composed by members of CCS and, sandwiched in between three repertory dances, four very new premieres choreographed by Verb dancers, each of the four premieres set and rehearsed in a single day.
A lot can happen in a single day. You can fall in or out of love in a day. In Cleveland, Spring can come and go in a single day. But what could Verb’s choreographers do in such a short time? And could Verb’s dancers hold it together in performance with choreography for four new dances spinning in their brains?
Our first answer, the first of the premieres, came from Dancer / Choreographer Stephanie Krise, who set Tacit on herself and six other dancers to Paulus van Horne’s score of the same name. Even though the innovative music sailed over our heads, we could see the structure of the dance, how it began with a kind of fanfare — a dazzling series of entrances on a diagonal — and developed its well-chosen thematic material. Things came to fruition — as we recall — in a series of duets, first a single duet between Krise and company newcomer Ryan DeAlexandro,then in three simultaneous duets, all cleanly executed with scarcely a hint of the pressure cooker Tacit was created in.
Krise kept her dance vocabulary close to the contemporary ballet that is the company’s daily class work. In Untitled, Verb stalwart Brian Murphy also made use of ballet vocabulary, choreographing to Only the Stars Know(#9.92.2)composed by William DeLelles and Wiley Greene. (“A little song in 5/4,” explained DeLelles.) Again, the dancing made perfect sense. We were particularly impressed to see 3 of the women from Tacit (Krise, Leslie J. Miller, and Rebecca J. Nicklos) come back onstage minutes after the first premiere to begin Untitled with an exacting series of pique arabesques and chaine turns in perfect unison. We wondered if, given a little more time, Murphy might put his dancers on pointe.
Asked for a word about his music, Early Winter, composer Frederick Evans said, “Hopefully it’s atmospheric and meditative.” Dancer / Choreographer Miller began her interpretation of the score with a unison adagio for her six dancers, a very grounded passage which later repeated facing in a different direction. Perhaps as in meditation or the contemplation of spare winter landscapes, a thought or a scene is reconsidered from another point of view.
Miller’s dance vocabulary for Early Winter made some significant departures from ballet; toward the end of her dance,for instance, she had her dancers step backwards leading with the hips in a way that reminded us of figure skaters. The Calling choreographed by Nicklos differed from the other premieres by virtue of its small cast — three women in contrast to the six or seven dancers in the other premieres. In another departure from ballet vocabulary, the dancers began by kneeling and slid about on their knees, tossing their long, unbound hair.
Contrasts in Keith Nagy’s Lighting Design helped the phrases of The Calling stand apart from each other. Composer Evan Williams’ music, apparently performed by air compressors, power tools, and an occasional theremin, went completely over our heads. Did the choreography provide a helpful metaphor for the music?
Before and after the premieres came repertory dances, well set in the dancers’ bodies and certain of their effects on the audience.
Beginning the concert came a much-too-brief excerpt from Cleveland Flats Suite (2010) complete with an excellent reprise of the Jay Horowitz Graphics and rock-solid performance of the challenging choreography by 7 of the Verb dancers. (Music composed by Richard Rinehart; Choreography by Diane Gray.)
After the 4 premieres and an intermission, the program continued with Breach (2011) choreographed by Verb alumna Erin Conway Lewis to a piano piece composed by Michael Leese. In Krise and DeAlexandro’s opening duet, the choreography quickly developed character and emotion. They waltz together and she tries to run away but he catches her hand and pulls her back; the 2 protagonists run, dive, and are caught by the ensemble; the couple exits with rueful backward glances. A conventional assortment of choreographic devices, but appropriately deployed by the choreographer in service of the score.
The program concluded with Passing By (2012) choreographed by Antonio Brown with music by various composers, all mixed and arranged by Brown, a graduate of Cleveland School of the Arts and the Juilliard School. Complete and accomplished, Passing By uses a movement vocabulary that seems to derive from contact improvisation. In the opening duets, the dancers initiate movements by holding hands and pulling against each other or by pressing a hand on the partner’s shoulder. Duets, solos, a women’s quartet, and a men’s quartet are all set apart by ensemble passages often composed entirely of running in place or running on or off stage; typically the soloist gives a verbal signal, a hoot, that cues the ensemble running.
Clear enough so far. But whence came the meat and potatoes of Passing By? Its exuberant individuality? The rightness of each moment of this dance? Its sense of virtuosic inevitability? To answer, we’d need to see it at least once more. (View here.)
Verb Goes Electric with Cleveland Chamber Symphony was performed at Cleveland Public Theater 3/21 – 23/2013. DanceWorks continues thru 4/20. Tickets $10 – $25 may be purchased online http://cptonline.org or by calling (216) 631-2727 extension 501, or in person at CPT box office.
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.