October 24, 2010 - What’s Old Is New
Drama and Performance in Dance
By Joanna G. Harris
It seems we are in the seventh cycle in contemporary dance, if not further. Beyond the aesthetic and social protests of the earliest modern dance "movement," American choreographers have explored narrative dance, “pure” dance, “pedestrian” dance (wherein dance-movement looked like, but isn’t everyday movement), and a period of contact improvisation and technique for virtuosic display. Now it appears that dramatic dance has re-emerged on the boards, although, in its mixed-media form, it’s called performance art.
sjDANCEco, a dance company in its eighth year in residence in the Dance Program of the School of Music and Dance at San José State University, is directed by Gary Masters. Masters served as artistic associate of the José Limón Dance Company and of the Limón West Dance Project. It is fitting then that sjDANCEco keep the Limón repertory alive, in this performance staging “There Is a Time” (1956) and “The Waldstein Sonata” (1996). Limón, who is probably best known for his dramatization of the Othello story in “The Moor’s Pavane,” brought lyrical dance to a heightened state with his ability to build character and relationships through gesture, space shapes and musicality. All this was beautifully illustrated and executed in the 12 sections of “There Is a Time,” a work inspired by Chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes. The dancers moved from the large circle through the many themes cited in the text: e.g. “a time to be born, a time to die.” All are accomplished performers. I was moved by Dominic Duong, in the section cited above, and by Maria Basile‘s laughter in “a time to laugh... a time to dance.”
Other company members are Heather Cooper, Nhan Ho, Hsiang Hsiu Lin, Joshua Lau, Dominque Lomuljo, Marte Madera, Mike Saenz and Vicky Alvarez. Since I had studied with Limón and had seen this dance many times, it was a great pleasure to be reacquainted with its power and choreographic craft. The San José Chamber Orchestra played the Dell Joio score with aplomb.
Similarly, but more as a musical offering, sjDance performed “The Waldstein Sonata" (Beethoven) as its opening number. Limón choreographed it, but it was completed by Daniel Lewis, a member of the New York Company, in 1996. To the excellent playing of Helene Wickett at the piano, sjDance beautifully illustrated the musical themes, complete with Limón’s characteristic movement lines, under and over curves, sweeping leg gestures and group interaction. The program included two original works, both dramatic and effective. Hsiang Hsiu Lin built a piece called “The Funeral” that was both sad and funny in its portrayal of a soul guided to another world. Maria Basile’s “Inner Edge” was a portrayal of Nelson Mandela’s struggles. Three figures illustrated the range of emotion in that heroic story: Dominic Duong, Hsiang Hsiu Lin and Mike Saenz. Congratulations to Gary Masters and sjDance for a wonderful dramatic evening!
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sjDANCEco has reason to celebrate
THRIVING TROUPE MARKS FIVE-YEAR SUCCESS WITH FRESH PROGRAM
By Rita Felciano
Special to the Mercury News
Article Launched: 10/30/2007 02:00:03 AM PDT
Five years may not seem much of a reason to mount a retrospective, but when small dance companies come and go with the turn of a calendar page, half a decade becomes a respectable period to have survived. And sjDANCEco is more than surviving, it is thriving.
With a repertoire that is modest but respectable, the dancers have a clear vision of who they are and where they want to go.
On Friday night, an almost full house - including many students - greeted sjDANCEco's "The Best of . . ." The piece amounted to a historical look at the ensemble of choreographer-dancers, which has been in residence at San Jose State University.
The performance was sjDANCEco's first appearance at the San Jose Repertory Theatre - a larger venue than its home-court Dance Studio Theatre at San Jose State - but it did have its glitches, mostly because of inadequate lighting design by the often-masterful Matthew Antaky. The few wispy strands of stage fog hovering over some of the choreography in no way enhanced what was going on below. Also, too often the dancers stepped outside the boundary of lights as they moved toward the front of the stage.
While one may miss the freshness of a world premiere, which always creates a special sense of anticipation and excitement for an audience, the two company firsts made up for that lack.
Dominic Duong's "Quietus," the winner of this year's ChoreoProject award, is very much a beginner's work. (The ChoreoProject is showcase for emerging professional choreographers.) A solo, it impressed less with content - an earnest search for self - than with Duong's ability as a dancer. Throughout the evening, it was difficult to take your eyes off this lithe and beautifully trained artist who integrates Western dance and martial arts training into his dance.
Gary Masters' 1999 "Diablo Opus," created for Walnut Creek's Diablo Ballet, started out strongly but lost a bit of steam halfway through. A long coiling rope, which eventually unraveled, may have been a metaphor for entanglements; I found it mostly distracting.
Masters designed a series of dances to a broad spectrum of music, ranging from Italian baroque to British techno-punk. They all explored relationships - none of them perfect.
Masters is a wonderfully detailed choreographer, able to suggest emotions with the sparest, yet richest, of dance language. The touches of flamenco in his duet with co-director Maria Basile added drama and texture to this off-and-on tug-of-war.
A more violent conflagration was explored by the three newcomers: Duong, Erin East and Nhan Ho. Heather Cooper, an exquisite dancer, both lyrical and dramatic, partnered an absent lover in one of Italy's most plaintive art songs, Tommaso Giordani's "O caro mio ben." And if the finale looked repetitive and drawn out, blame it on composer Philip Glass. It's in the music.
Masters and Basile eloquently performed excerpts of José Limón's "Mazurkas." These little dances to Chopin flow with a breathtaking sense of letting go and picking up; their phrases blowing about like autumn leaves in the wind. At times, however, Masters looked tense.
Basile's impressive 2006 "Birthing the Ascension" received the kind of lighting attention - suggesting a sense of cosmic flow and order - that should have been given to the rest of the program. While the piece effectively using the ensemble on the floor, it was her opening solo as roaming spirit over the waters that set the tone. It is one of her finest accomplishments.
Cooper's dramatic trio "Raw" featured Jeannine Charles, Ho and herself in an emotional tug-of-war, which left everyone miserable. To balance the piece better, Cooper's own part - a memory? a potential lover? - probably could be strengthened. There was a touch of melodrama to this piece that I wasn't sure was intended.
Though fiercely danced by two couples, the atavistic energy of "Courting Medieval" got lost in this much bigger space. No fault of the choreographer, no fault of the dancers, but this piece works better in a more intimate setting.
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October 25, 2006 - Choreography takes center stage
SJDANCECO PROGRAM VARIED, AMBITIOUS
By Rita Felciano
Special to the Mercury News
Focusing on its five choreographer-dancers, sjDANCEco treated its mostly student audience to a multi-perspective demonstration of artistic growth Thursday at San Jose State University. After four years, the company now needs to stretch beyond the cocoon of the campus community.
With five world premieres and the two solos (by Mary Forrest and Bih Tau Sung) that garnered the ensemble's 2006 ChoreoProject Awards, sjDANCEco's latest ``Making Dance Happen'' concert was ambitious and well-run. If only organizers could get the audience to arrive on time at tonight's repeat performance.
Not surprisingly, given the different points of view and levels of experience, not all the pieces were equally successful. The bouquet has to go to Maria Basile, whose ``Birthing the Ascension'' closed the evening on a high note. Basile based her 20-minute dancing mediation on yogic principles whose illustrations in the playbill were quite unnecessary: This exquisitely designed dance spoke for itself. With a luminous Heather Cooper in the lead role, the dancers went through what looked like pre-ordained patterns of something akin to a cosmic order. Moving in and out of constantly shifting configurations, ``Birthing'' eloquently spoke of permanence within change.
In her own choreography, Cooper displayed a lovely sense of flow, of expanding and contracting movement, of people supporting but also losing each other. Newcomer Sheree Dela Peña is the one who leaves and who, upon returning, no longer can be recognized. Simple but eloquent, ``Into the Light'' is a fine work, performed by Cooper, Dela Peña and Mara Williams.
Another mourning piece, Gary Masters' musically attuned ``Vivace,'' was set to J.S. Bach's glorious ``Double Violin Concerto.'' Created as a memorial to his father, Masters set it on three couples, including other fine company additions Michael Doerner, Erin East and Nhan Ho. Masters uses a fairly traditional modern dance vocabulary, but in his hands loping runs acquire urgency, fleeting connections become intimate and geometric configurations breathe. Small hesitations -- a sense of twigs breaking -- gave the slow movement, in which Masters himself briefly appeared, particular poignancy. But his return to close ``Vivace'' was too obviously symbolic.
Jeannine Charles' goofy ``Deprivation/101'' introduced a welcome note of levity into the program. A rambunctious, highly athletic quintet (Charles, Dela Peña, East, José Iván Ibarra and Williams) engaged in a series of high jinks, as good-natured as they were energetic. Much enhanced by Maggie Heaman and Valerie Leitner's colorful costumes, the piece felt like a children's birthday gotten out of hand. Though fresh and full of ideas, ``Deprivation'' needs tightening; it sags toward the end.
Charles returned, as the one-who-didn't-get-a-man, in Ibarra's soap opera ``Sola.'' Opening to Roberto Cantoral's ``Déjame Sola'' (leave me alone), three flirtatious, skirt-swinging women show that they don't really want to be left alone. When two pugnacious men (Doerner and Ibarra) show up, the drama is set. Ibarra has some flair for mixing social and concert dance impulses to Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla, but at this point his choreography is choppy, too much hand-over-fist.
Each of the two modest solos had something going for it. The kneeling progressions of Forrest's somewhat maudlin ``To Those,'' about longing and uncertainty, made intriguing use of the floor. Sung's ``Sweet Melancholy'' showed her as an exquisite mover. How much of a choreographer she is remains to be seen.
sjDANCEco
WHERE
Dance Studio Theatre, San Jose State University, Fourth and San Carlos streets