Spectrum Dance Kicks the Fun Up a Notch
The choreographic genius of Spectrum's Donald Byrd makes God-fearing folk swear and the irreligious cry, "Oh my god!" Partly that's because his dancers present as solid, sweating people, rather than mysteriously gesturing messengers. He consistently brings ideas back to the body--his pas de deux can have an X-rated quality--so you feel the argument he's making.
Last night he was perched on the Moore's stage pre-show, mic in hand, "Okay, so it's not a full house tonight," he told us (though the crowd got much larger closer to the show's start), "and I don't want you to feel inhibited. I'm giving you permission to shout or clap or whatever you want to do. Get crazy. I'm committed to having fun tonight and I hope you do, too."
There's a second showing of "Fun, Rock, and Pop" today (5 p.m. at Moore Theatre, 1932 Second Avenue, tickets $25). Here's a video preview that has a little commentary from Byrd along with rehearsal shots.
The most fun piece is a revival of last year's "M.I.A.," based on songs (off Arular) by M.I.A.--out comes a quintet of ballerinas in black tops and white plastic tutus. Then PNB's Olivier Wevers sidles onstage, bare-chested in a grass-skirt tutu, a bubblegum-snapping diva. He rumbles with SF Ballet's Julianne Kepley in a dance-off. Besides the simple visceral thrill of seeing dance agree on the heard beat, the piece offers more than snickers at "hidebound" ballet.
It's about an infusion of vitality from unlikely sources, with the attendant artistic bitchiness. Kepley's dancing references Coppelia's mechanical discipline (stuttering across the stage en pointe), modern dance spasms, and the beauty of bootie-shaking. Wevers, playing an inappropriate clown with real gusto, slowly moons the audience with a fig-leaf covered ass but also shows off technique. Will he get serious, will the ballerina lighten up? Or will they go on pushing and pulling each other to new feats?
New York's TV on the Radio provides the music for "Scorched," a new work from Byrd that was our favorite of the evening. Two couples and a woman with a washtub take the stage, bare except for fluorescent lightstrips overhead, the black-painted brick wall of the Moore looking like a run-down tenement's.
In the first "movement," there's a reaching up to the light pouring down, later there's dancing, then repentant praying on knees, feeling and listening at the ground. The woman with her empty tub has a solo full of anguish and frustration, soundless imploring. Byrd says it's a "science fiction" version of global warming, how the people of the future might react with myth and ritual to drought; it's "not heavy" though, he insists, but "beautiful." It is beautiful, and stirring--to see how we fill in the blanks.
His "Bhangra Fever" (photo, right, is from the original presentation) is mystic, tantric, frantic. The music from DJ Cheb I Sabbah and MIDIval PunditZ almost brings a Delhi breeze with it. Byrd incorporates yoga gestures and tantric positions, intimate attraction and group cohesion, instinctual act and transcendent expression; the dancers, particularly Ty Alexander Cheng and Sharron Williams, dance the piece like it's a personal testament.
One thing we admire about Spectrum is the lack of a particular "look" to their dancers--thanks to that individuality, even in synchronous corps movements, they don't come across like mindless clones but regular people intent on a common purpose.
For "Human for Error," a premiere, Philly-based choreographer Roni Koresh collaborated with Karl Mullen. While we were able to discern a racial concern (thanks to Mullen repeating the words "black" and "white" in various combinations for about 10 minutes), the piece as a whole didn't come together for us--though it did offer Sharron Williams and Jonathan Pignataro outstanding moments. It was most notable, for us, in that Koresh, like Byrd, has a formidable dance vocabulary to draw from, and creates an almost symphonic texture of movement.
