The welcoming and delightful Chen Dance Center—even down to the lovely and efficient Dana Grunklee
who takes reservations—presents the first of two weekends in their semi-annual emerging choreographer’s series—Newsteps. Often perplexing, always interesting and sometimes amusing, Newsteps features new work by choreographers that is daring, innovative and definitely emotionally enthralling.
Newsteps inundates the audience with five choreographed dances, keeping
spectators on stand-by for the next cataclysmic surprise. The first performance, (encounter), choreographed by Hsiao-Wei and Hsiao-Ting, applies Laban’s A-scale, while at the start of the performance, three light-filled squares fill the stage. Each dancer, occupying a square, appears to be freestyling, individualizing their solos with different attitudes and movem
ent (i.e., technical, perhaps intentionally clumsy, confused, and even irate). The three solos become interlinked, and the dancers upstage their individual routines with surprisingly clean choreography in an effortless melding of their distinct talents and personalities.
Mana Kawamura titillates the audie
nce with Specimen, said to be inspired by Little Red Riding Hood. In this five-dancer, nearly orgasmic performance, the audience
may not take from it Little Red Riding Hood, as much as literally (!) overlapping character portraits at once nebulous and distinctive. Echoing Janet Jackson’s sexual control in her 1993 video “If”, Kawamuro manipulates the face and limbs of David Botana, her male counterpart. Botana, believably at the mercy of his masteress, sweats feverishly, seemingly satiated in the pleasures of pandemonium. Meanwhile, an apparent diner waitress with order pad, executed stoically by transplanted-Britisher, Keelin Ryan, stands atop of a “table” of dancers; the bottom layer features the smudgy lipstick application by one dancer, and the aggressive wipe-off with tissues by the one assailed.
Uterii, choreographed by Lisa Crawford, goes between bouts of powerful and crystalline choreography and moments of internal focus with patient, deliberate movement. The five female performers, in tank tops of different colors, is as surprising as it is sure-footed. One performer, Crawford, is so committed to the movement, so enthralled in the execution of her organic moves, that it’s a disappointment when she stops dancing. Crawford encapsulates the concept of “being in the zone;” the fact that she choreographed this piece, while being the stand-out, is testament to her palpable, impassioned talent and her refreshingly raw and ego-less dedication to her craft.
While often wonderful to be inundated with the emotions expressed in Newsteps, Leanne Schmidt’s The Upper Hand makes the audience’s openness a liability. The four-some ensemble, clad in eye-sore white, indulges in punching and kicking “choreography”, worsened by loud shouts—the most abhorrent, unsurprisingly, coming from the ‘upper hand’ herself, choreographer Schmidt. Said to be “an effort to examine the struggle of power,” it’s less an examination of anything, than just an excuse for the dancers to shout and hit each other. The audience released their defensively closed arms only to look at their watches.
Luckily, Newsteps ends on a less banal note with Automated Arrival, New York. This segment, by GoGoVerdigoat Dance Project, explores sound with an electronic megaphone and silver service bells. Audience participation is also involved in an effort to create an unpredictable performance. The piece explores New York as a cultural landmark, in which to find your way and invariably yourself, one must “sense” their way around. The playful and funny in this work is successfully balanced by the sensual—fellow dancers remove layers of each other’s clothes, alluding to the succulent pleasures of the flesh while maintaining high-level art and innocuous innocence.
After the performances, the friendly and talkative Artistic Director, H.T. Chen initiates a question-and-answer segment, for a better understanding of the performances. Due to language barriers, however, and the understandable inability of dancers’ to intellectualize their work, such a segment proves less than effective. Mr. Chen concedes that what we all understand is body language. Thus, the discussion at the end unintentionally proves the conveyance of universal, emotional truth is beyond mere words; the conversation, too, further illustrates the loving hard work that Mr. Chen and his company put into New York City’s dance community.
iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Joe Damiano
Performance: Newsteps at The Chen Dance Center
Choreography: Hsiao-Wei and Hsiao-Ting
Mana Kawamura
Lisa Crawford
Leanne Schmidt
GoGoVerdigoat Dance Project
Venue: The Chen Dance Center, New York City
Performance Date: Thursday, April 23, 2009-April 25, 2009
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