As part of this year's New York City Fringe Festival, Patricia Noworol Dance Company explores the relationships in a powerful new work between choreographer and dancer, man and woman, self and body.
Performed at the Robert Moss Theatre in the East Village, this piece begins with a series of false starts and repetitions. This establishes a setting that seems to move smoothly between set movement, improvisation, and simulated improvisation. Christina Noel Reaves begins with a luscious, striking solo that sets the intensity of the piece. In a powerful triple duet, the women and men run and jump onto their partners. Chelsea Bonosky continuously throws herself onto a man, who throws her off every time. Patricia, on her microphone commands Chelsea to take off her shirt. A strange power-play develops as Chelsea does so, starts (actually?) crying facing upstage, and then faces the audience with her top half naked. Some beautiful movement evolves. Then Christina enters (also topless) eating chips! This excellently timed activity adds humor to an otherwise dark situation.
Throughout the piece Patricia makes corrections over the microphone to the dancers: “be more manly” etc. It alternates between annoying criticisms to telling the dancers to speak.
In one particularly perceptive comment, a male dancer says, “I have to rationalize myself being here,” pointing to one of the central issues of dance. Why do we dance? Does it mean anything? Patricia indirectly answers the question by telling him to do a bridge, and “open your heart.”
The piece continues with the men walking across the stage in various directions and the women running around them. There is an image of Patricia wearing only a thong, shining with rope lights hung around her neck. The vignettes follow different trajectories that always come back to the home of dance… movement, expression, and exhaustion make the world go around.
Photography by Quinn Batson
iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Leah Sands
Performance: Circuits
Choreographer(s): Patricia Noworol Dance Co.
Venue: Robert Moss Theatre, New York City
Date: August 25, 2009
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