Young choreographer Kate Nies’s how to stop time was the least polished of the evening’s works but the one that best carried out McCusker’s non-narrative agenda. This trio seemed to address issues of agency and power with steps that ranged from molasses slow to twittering. There was a restless isolation in Brian Crabtree’s trio Two Face Ed, and a rough-hewn casualness to his Get Down, Slow Down, Stay Down, his brief, organically developed duet with old friend Marjorie Morgan — both dances set to ironic, absurdist texts-plus-ambiance by the Books.
In City of Heaven, Melody Ruffin Ward stood at bass-baritone Frank Ward’s shoulder as he sang about the burdens of a pilgrim of sorrow. Persistently, her back to the audience, she reached out and up. When she fell into a sudden lateral balance that brought her ear to the floor, it was as if she were listening to the heartbeat of the Earth. Never merely illustrative, their unity seemed like the very source of Heaven.
Related:
Signals from the solar system, Monuments and miniatures, Cyberloops, More 
- Signals from the solar system
Pluto may have been downgraded to a dwarf planet, but Jupiter is still respected for its size, its moons, and the regularity of its orbit.
- Monuments and miniatures
Harvard University’s Music Department and the Office for the Arts celebrated Leonard Bernstein’s work last weekend with “Boston to Broadway,” a festive symposium surrounded by exhibitions and concerts.
- Cyberloops
Merce Cunningham has used computers as co-creators for his choreography since 1991, and it was his evolving dance Loops that inspired the six works shown Friday night at the MIT Museum to open the sixth Boston Cyberarts Festival.
- Wolf love
Marjorie Morgan has extended her musical adventures with a new piece for seven dancers and double bassist.
- Happy feet
The architectural team of Diller Scofidio + Renfro designed the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater at the new Institute for Contemporary Art as a 325-seat jewel box, its transparent walls allowing the Boston harbor and skyline to serve as a scenic backdrop or turn opaque as the performance requires.
- Where the chips fell
Dance history reverberated across Boston during the past few weeks, affirming that how we live now owes a lot to how we’ve chosen to remember — and forget.
- Rewriting histories
Family histories are inextricably political.
- Second thoughts
When Yeats wrote, “How can we know the dancer from the dance?”, he probably wasn’t thinking of the effect different casts can have on the performance of a ballet.
- Belle gone bad
Although there’s been a recent stampede of material from screen to stage, the 1998 screwball comedy/mixed-mating film The Opposite of Sex hardly seems the stuff of Broadway musicals.
- Mixed media
Purple splatter-paint graphics zoom over a flat-screen above the stage.
- Farm frolic
The La Fille Mal Gardée we recognize now as the real thing is quite modern.
- Less
Topics:
Dance
, Entertainment, Dance, Performing Arts, More
, Entertainment, Dance, Performing Arts, Rick Fox, Tom Sawyer, Daniel McCusker, Marjorie Morgan, Brian Crabtree, Caitlin Corbett, Chris Eastburn, Less
