Archive for January, 2014

rsz_thenZORNITSA STOYANOVA Susan Rethorst’s “THEN” packs a lot of information into its 50 minutes.

The world premiere of Susan Rethorst’s THEN, with Group Motion and artistic director Manfred Fischbeck, was a bright, cheery, even cheeky little dance, only 50 minutes long. But it packed a lot of information into that short time.

A presentation of Philadelphia Dance Projects, in conjunction with the University of the Arts School of Dance, the new work encapsulates Rethorst’s first year in Philadelphia, which began last season at Bryn Mawr College. Her “Wreckings” have been a hallmark of her creative exploration and research. In them, she allows other choreographers to take over her dance rehearsals to deconstruct or even destroy her work before giving it back for her to return the favor.

In light of this risky practice, it seemed that THEN‘s clean, concise sections, like much of Merce Cunningham’s work, could be reordered for each performance and still be highly readable. Watching it through this lens, I thought it wouldn’t matter if I began this review by describing a middle section and then cycling back to the beginning, or by writing about the ending first.

So the second section has Gregory Holt doing a snaky Mick Jagger strut. Several sections have ice-dancing moments: death spirals and side-by-side forward waltzing. But all are marked by exaggerated and risibly dramatic silver-screen-style gesturing.

Lindsay Browning rubber-faces expressions hilariously while tossing away David Konyk and Holt with a mere forefinger. Konyk and Holt hopscotch over Eleanor Goudie-Averill and Browning’s splayed bodies. Lesya Popil glyphically poses, surrounded by the others as if in mock awe. In unison, all rise on tiptoe, calves trembling as if this is a difficult feat. But then an instantaneous return to control shows it’s nothing. There are horsy head wags, madcapping to the theme from Beetlejuice, slo-mo running.

Also strongly visible was the architectonic display of how the body stands or responds; such displays created living sculptures among the dancers. Renée Kurz’s playful costumes of dark, loose pants fringed in red just below the knees and swingy tops of red, turquoise, and yellows added a certain smirkiness to the whole. The shapes and colors against the charcoal back wall often made me think of a Miró painting, animated.

All of this began and ended with video of the dancers by Rethorst, lighting designer Matt Sharp and the dancers, first on long, white planks – moved about by the dancers to “wreck” the picture – and later danced with. And then the video rides the walls until it disappears, and the dance is over. The word then may imply sequence, but THEN is a work that doesn’t need to follow that rule.

Additional performances: 8 p.m. Saturday, and 3 p.m. Sunday at Arts Bank, 601 S. Broad St. Tickets: $25. Information: 484-469-0288 or www.danceboxoffice.com

Superb Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers

Posted: Saturday, November 9, 2013, 3:01 AM

Brian Cordova and Liu Mo in Kun-Yang Lin´s 1999 "The Song That Can´t Be Sung," a gut-wrenching duet of forbidden love.
Brian Cordova and Liu Mo in Kun-Yang Lin’s 1999 “The Song That Can’t Be Sung,” a gut-wrenching duet of forbidden love.
Brian Cordova and Liu Mo in Kun-Yang Lin´s 1999 "The Song That Can´t Be Sung," a gut-wrenching duet of forbidden love.
Brian Cordova and Liu Mo in Kun-Yang Lin’s 1999 “The Song That Can’t Be Sung,” a gut-wrenching duet of forbidden love.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20131109_Superb_Kun-Yang_Lin_Dancers.html#gAUSw1jWYSfxJ6O2.99

At the Painted Bride on Thursday night, the artists of Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers bared heart and soul, combining them with superb technique.

This retrospective evening of dances choreographed by Lin (first seen in New York through the 1990s to 2001) included four that received Philadelphia premieres. Lin moved the company here just five years ago, building it into the highly regarded Philadelphia fixture it now is, with a studio called Chi-Mac on South Ninth Street.

Liu Mo – whose background is Chinese classical dance and who has trained in contemporary dance with Lin for only about a year – takes the powerful solo “Moon Dance” (1993), originally danced by Lin.

Stepping onstage, he instantly put me in a thrall that lasted to the show’s final moment. Bare-chested and wearing a long muslin skirt, he angled wing-like arms, jerking them into flying motions. With astonishing balance, he ever so slowly dipped his head to the floor in a perpendicular arabesque. Then, mercurially, he changed direction, channeling Lin’s intensity while making the dance his own.

Lin and another male had originally danced “Run Silent, Run Deep” to Les Tambours du Bronx’s music and narrated poems. Here, with Evalina Carbonell bursting onto the stage, skittering in jarring spurts of movement, the evening’s thrill ride continued. Vuthy Ou joined her, and the pace grew more ferocious, with daring leaps, lifts, and catches that then slowed as she sensuously slithered downward along Ou’s body to his ankles.

In yet another revelation, Rachael Hart stuttered across the stage as if with a broken wing, struggling to stay in flight and mournfully dauntless in her trajectory in 2000’s “Butterfly” to “Un Bel Di.”

Former company member Olive Prince created “to dust.” (Disclosure: I’ve taken barre class with some of these dancers, including Prince; the most recent was in August, days before she gave birth to son Noah.) She had the company rush offstage and reenter to pose and slouch away, shoulders sloping, bodies angling into and out of stunning groupings. Prince later soloed in Lin’s 1998 “Renaissance,” exquisitely emerging chrysalislike from her cocoon of red netting.

Mo’s feminine litheness melted into Brian Cordova’s masculine strength in 1999’s “The Song That Can’t Be Sung,” a gut-wrenching duet of forbidden love. The full-company tango, 2001’s “Shall we . . . ?”, had a cheekiness best expressed by Jessica Warchal-King and a drunkenness best articulated by Eiren Shuman. Flawlessly danced with spiky footwork and sexy, thigh-brushing barridas, this was no milonga triste, but a happy ending.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20131109_Superb_Kun-Yang_Lin_Dancers.html#gAUSw1jWYSfxJ6O2.99

At the Painted Bride on Thursday night, the artists of Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers bared heart and soul, combining them with superb technique.

This retrospective evening of dances choreographed by Lin (first seen in New York through the 1990s to 2001) included four that received Philadelphia premieres. Lin moved the company here just five years ago, building it into the highly regarded Philadelphia fixture it now is, with a studio called Chi-Mac on South Ninth Street.

Liu Mo – whose background is Chinese classical dance and who has trained in contemporary dance with Lin for only about a year – takes the powerful solo “Moon Dance” (1993), originally danced by Lin.

Stepping onstage, he instantly put me in a thrall that lasted to the show’s final moment. Bare-chested and wearing a long muslin skirt, he angled wing-like arms, jerking them into flying motions. With astonishing balance, he ever so slowly dipped his head to the floor in a perpendicular arabesque. Then, mercurially, he changed direction, channeling Lin’s intensity while making the dance his own.

Lin and another male had originally danced “Run Silent, Run Deep” to Les Tambours du Bronx’s music and narrated poems. Here, with Evalina Carbonell bursting onto the stage, skittering in jarring spurts of movement, the evening’s thrill ride continued. Vuthy Ou joined her, and the pace grew more ferocious, with daring leaps, lifts, and catches that then slowed as she sensuously slithered downward along Ou’s body to his ankles.

In yet another revelation, Rachael Hart stuttered across the stage as if with a broken wing, struggling to stay in flight and mournfully dauntless in her trajectory in 2000’s “Butterfly” to “Un Bel Di.”

Former company member Olive Prince created “to dust.” (Disclosure: I’ve taken barre class with some of these dancers, including Prince; the most recent was in August, days before she gave birth to son Noah.) She had the company rush offstage and reenter to pose and slouch away, shoulders sloping, bodies angling into and out of stunning groupings. Prince later soloed in Lin’s 1998 “Renaissance,” exquisitely emerging chrysalislike from her cocoon of red netting.

Mo’s feminine litheness melted into Brian Cordova’s masculine strength in 1999’s “The Song That Can’t Be Sung,” a gut-wrenching duet of forbidden love. The full-company tango, 2001’s “Shall we . . . ?”, had a cheekiness best expressed by Jessica Warchal-King and a drunkenness best articulated by Eiren Shuman. Flawlessly danced with spiky footwork and sexy, thigh-brushing barridas, this was no milonga triste, but a happy ending.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20131109_Superb_Kun-Yang_Lin_Dancers.html#gAUSw1jWYSfxJ6O2.99

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