They suffered badly from the dancers’ apparently incurable postmodern objectivity. The three early solos were typical of the stark character studies in which the modern dancers specialized. Warren-Whitman’s lamenting woman commemorated the fallen matador with a few gallant postures, a red skirt flourished over the arm like a cape hiding a sword. Peix did a bouncy peasant-like dance that seemed to spring out of the music (by the oddly anachronistic Chick Corea). Kirsten McKinnery suggested a mourner’s prayer.
These dances had been no more than sketches originally, but Rooms in outline looked hollow. Using pedestrian movement — a sudden turn, a nervous shifting in a chair, a woman’s anxious look into her mirror — Sokolow portrayed people alienated and longing for comfort. This dance symbolized a whole generation of urban loneliness. It’s hard to imagine dancing anything called “Escape” — or “Panic,” or “Daydream,” or “The End?” — as if it were a study in movement shapes. But that’s the way Contrapose performed Rooms.
Anna Sokolow demanded that her dancers invest totally in these horrific human situations. When you watched them, your hair stood on end. Watching Contrapose step carefully around the guts of these characters, I wondered why the guardians of the modern-dance legacy can’t find more convincing ways to bring it back to us.
Related:
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- Steps . . . and more steps
Martha Graham’s Steps in the Street doesn’t look anything like a dance of the 21st century, but at the end of Boston Conservatory’s fall program last weekend it fit right in.
- Dynamos
The four pieces on the program that Philadanco brought for its Boston debut last weekend at the Institute for Contemporary Art were all-dance numbers showcasing a troupe of highly polished, supercharged dancers.
- Year in Dance: Reusable histories & durable trends
Conservation is a good thing in these times, and some of the most interesting performances drew on the uses of history — personal history, performance history, and even some inventions that sought to overturn history.
- Daniel Nagrin
Daniel Nagrin was one of the last surviving stars of modern dance's second generation.
- From the inside
Martha Graham created a revolution in the modern dance world on many fronts, most significantly by the emotional content and the sculptural form of her work.
- Golden years
The last thing I had in mind when I went to the Opera House Tuesday was raining on Alvin Ailey's parade — particularly since the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which he founded in 1959, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year while making its 41st annual Celebrity Series appearance in Boston.
- Diaghilev days
The Ballets Russes come to town
- Giant's steps
Merce Cunningham's death on July 26 wasn't unexpected. He'd been in frail health since this past winter. He was in a wheelchair for his 90th-birthday celebration in April at Brooklyn Academy of Music. In June, the Cunningham Foundation announced plans for the future of the company and the repertory after his death.
- Southern Exposure
Since Fusionworks Dance Company has maintained a studio in East Greenwich for almost five years, artistic director Deb Meunier decided it was time to bring dance to South County.
- Dreaming and remembrance
Two momentous revivals in town showed us how big the category of classical ballet really is.
- Not quite Nina
On hearing the opening notes of the Kronos Quartet composition and seeing the dancers lit in sunny yellow, I feared we were about to be subjected to one of those “up with people” ballets.
- Less
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Dance
, Entertainment, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, John Zorn, More
, Entertainment, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, John Zorn, Dance, Performing Arts, Marcus Schulkind, Modern Dance, William Forsythe, Martha Graham, Rick Vigo, Less
