Alt.Bumbershoot - Monday Danceathon
After hearing "emerging Seattle choreographer" Zoe Scofield and PNB's Peter Boal at a talkin-'bout-dance panel Sunday, we were looking forward to Monday, which featured performances by Scofield and PNB. Non-dance highlights were our uber-local, fast-talking, Spalding-Grayish Matt Smith monologuing about manliness and his move to Bainbridge Island, the new wave rearrangements of cover band Nouvelle Vague (including a sing-along to "Too Drunk To Fuck"), and finishing the day inside a sweaty knot of teens listening to CocoRosie getting all rapped-up with vocal beat boxing and shiznit. We know that sounds sexy.
Zoe Scofield - there ain't no easy way out
Although we strongly disagreed with some of her comments at the dance panel, our thought walking out of her performance was that it was perhaps similar to seeing an early Mark Morris work -- the show announces itself as something to remember. (Note that we aren't ancient enough to have seen an early Mark Morris show.) Scofield collaborated with visual artist Juniper Shuey and composer Morgan Henderson on the work, and it's striking in each dimension. Opening with a projection of a woman on a trapeze, with another woman positioned below, the performance's mysteriousness (the curtain rises to reveal the dancers in a heavy mist, in uniformly Japanese-flavored costumes and make-up) is immediately engaging. While the feel is balletic, Scofield (who performs in the piece) contrasts the tics and repetitive gestures of modern dance with ballet's idealized movements. Her choreography is equally about the shapes shifting onstage, the beauty of a sequence of movements, and the visceral reaction inspired by the unexpected, startling, even ugly gesture. While there's no surface plot (no big door marked EXIT the dancers can't get through), the sequences hold your attention because the heavy atmospherics create an inescapable environment -- the dances are more expressions of confined behavior than break-out attempts. At a certain level of abstraction, you feel the imprisonment is within the body itself.
Pacific Northwest Ballet - pieces from the 2006/07 season
The program included Val Caniparoli's Lambarena, Sonia Dawkins' Ripple Mechanics, and Olivier Wevers' Pigment. We can't tell you which was which, because we were SRO and they were out of programs ("Save us a seat," we asked the house manager earlier in the day; "Sure, sure," they said, "No problem," they said). However, we can tell you that we saw not a single tutu, and the overall feel was (for good or bad) the kind of excitement Paul Simon's Rhythm of the Saints generated in its day, as a respected interpreter brings attention to more lively, folk traditions. (More of an infusion, though, rather than the out-and-out appropriation of Scofield's work.) Still, the audience consistently let out thrilled "Oh!"s at the dynamism of the dancing -- the skin-thwacks of these solidly muscled bodies colliding in flight was palpable at the back of the theater. Like Scofield, this program too relied on spectacle: flowing, colorful fabrics dazzled as much the dancers, one dancer performed a duet with a spotlight, segments ended with blackouts at mid-leap. We find it hard to believe this was representative of the whole season -- if so, watch out for dazed, staggered PNB patrons wandering blindly out into Mercer after the shows.
