For Deep Far (first made for the Royal New Zealand Ballet), the program note referred to a drought, and the dance had begun with the sound of a windstorm. To a fast rhythm score, a quartet walked in different directions until they gathered into a courtly dance of walking forward and back facing a partner, stretching, moving away from a square formation and returning to its symmetry. The men flung themselves into the air one after the other, precisely in sequence, then finally embraced and sank down together, their tension released by the sound of rain.
War Brides introduced the women, with the vocabulary more rounded and decorative, and dramatic indications of loss, separation, the perils of occupation. This piece had resonances of another dance about the experiences of World War II, Paul Taylor’s Company B, and it wasn’t the only sign of Taylor’s influence. Before founding Black Grace, Neil Ieremia danced with Douglas Wright, who belonged to Taylor’s company for four years in the 1980s. Wright returned to his native New Zealand and became an important force in the dance scene.
The Black Grace men were terrific in the closing dance, Method. Maintaining the acute sense of ensemble timing they’d shown all evening, they hurled themselves into rolling falls and headlong chases, whirligig jumps and flying leaps into the arms of their chums. Maybe if Ieremia hadn’t used Bach to accompany this dance, I wouldn’t have seen it as a close but less refined cousin to Taylor’s Esplanade.
Related:
Bouncement 3, Year in Dance: Reusable histories & durable trends, Floor show, More 
- Bouncement 3
Lately it’s seemed like Old Home Days for Toneburst, the influential artcore junglist collective that was a locus of Boston’s underground dance scene in the mid ’90s.
- 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.
- Floor show
Sara Hook explains the title of her cabaret piece Salad Days as a reference to youth and indiscretion.
- Busy busy
“If you pulled the cord and the chute didn’t open, how would you dance on the way down?”
- Eclectic finds
With the frigid weather and bracing winds, the natural inclination early each new year is to go a bit fetal, curl up, and hibernate until springtime.
- Organized chaos
When people think of synthesizers, it’s usually in the context of a well-ordered pop song.
- Stand-up choreography
David Parker was born too late for vaudeville.
- After-dinner nuts
The Christmas season careered to a finish January 5 at Concord Academy with yet another Nutcracker, sort of, the first complete Boston performance of David Parker’s Nut/Cracked.
- Annie variations
The Bang Group's performance at Concord Academy Thursday night wrapped the audience in rings of intimacy and surprise. Choreographer/director David Parker, acting as MC, paid loving tribute to Summer Stages Dance, where he and the company have appeared and taught for 10 years.
- Not through yet
Paul Taylor brags that he’s violated just about every taboo in American culture over his 50-plus years of creative work and he’s not through yet.
- Dances with character
Dancers are working with character more frequently, after decades of choreography drenched in physical accomplishment.
- Less
Topics:
Dance
, Entertainment, Lorraine Chapman, Lillian Gish, More
, Entertainment, Lorraine Chapman, Lillian Gish, Modern Dance, Alissa Cardone, Jessica Rylan, Roger Miller, Kinodance Company, History, World History, Less
