Dance Review: Chase Brock at Abrons Arts Center, NYC

To go to the depths of the lower east east of Manhattan, where it takes an hour to get home or $50 for a cab, you better put on a show that entertains, provokes thought, and inspires me, or else I’m gonna get real mad! Thursday night, October 8 (the night after seeing the cerebral and intense Forsythe), I trekked my tired dancing feet down to the Abrons Art Center for the opening night of The Chase Brock Experience.

Very fortunately, I find the company to be extremely talented, littered with energetic performers, accessible choreography and sometimes fun and sometimes emotional music that the audience is able to connect with and certainly enjoy. If there is a pop medium for modern dance, Chase Brock has found it. His two hour concert consisting of four diverse works is like watching all the fun parts of So You Think You Can Dance, without all the annoying interviews and awful judging table comments. The only thing missing is the adorable Cat Deely.

The show opens up with a Junk and Lies. It is a technical festival of coupe j’etes, penchés, turns in second... There may have even been some pointe work. Brock wants to make sure that the audience knows his dancers choose to be there. He wants us to know that his dancers are capable of anything, and they certainly accomplish this even if they are dressed in tuxedos and ball gowns, or shirtless and dancing in socks! They are well trained and they are beautiful performers, and it is well exhibited in the opening piece.

Curious Episode is a short duet between two women that brings the music "Baroque and Blue" by Claude Bolling to life. While one instrument is going, the dancer physicalizes the sounds, and while the other instrument is going, the other dancer follows the lead. If there is a canon in the music then the two girls, Ashley Eichbaur and Erica Furst, dance in canon; if the music descends the scale, they follow the music down and dance through some very creative floor work. It is very funny, short sweet and Ashley and Erica are charming and endearing.

Slow Float is the third piece on the program: nothing very memorable about this one, except for a curtain call for a trio in the middle of the piece, not that it isn’t warranted, it is just out of place and, unfortunately, the only thing that I took away from it.

Intermission

The closing piece, American Sadness, looks like the cast of Twilight meets The Breakfast Club. This work is an interesting mix of pieces combined through theme, emotion, and music. American Sadness is choreographed to the album of Gabriel Kahane making for a series of vignettes playing out the story between a couple, their friends, and their relationship to one another over a period of time. Although it seems fragmented going back and forward through time and is fun, serious, interesting, occasionally provincial, and expected, it does tells a good story and is beautifully danced. My only issue with the particular work is that it is a little edgy -with lighting and stage pieces and a shower scene, but gets interrupted by these phrases of movement straight out of ballet class! Uggh! Brock sets up great moments, has original movement that is cool and keeps onlookers involved, then all of a sudden we are jarred out of the moment with tombe, pas de boure j’ete, or out of nowhere a girl on pointe boure-ing out on stage and giving you epaulment en arabesque… and I'm like WTF? Really? Why did you just do that? But then, thankfully, we're sucked right back in with some interesting chase sequence or something.

I think Chase Brock has a great vision, some creative ideas, gorgeous dancers, and I truly look forward to seeing his work as he matures. I hope he can continue to explore his voice and fight against the urge to slip into the conventional steps that we already all know and do, that frankly in this millennium should just stay in class and off the stage. Why? Because... Chase Brock has the potential to do some seriously good work!

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Dante Puleio
Performance: Chase Brock Experience
Choreography: Chase Brock
Venue: Abrons Arts Center
Show Date: Thursday, October 8, 2009
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