Arts Air

Neglia marks 10 years with best show of decade

2009-05-11T13:11:00.010-04:00

Neglia Ballet Artists
Flickinger Performing Arts Center at Nichols School
Buffalo, NY
May 9, 2009
Reviewed by Steve Sucato

If you didn’t happen to be among those in attendance Saturday night in the Flickinger Performing Arts Center at Nichols School for Neglia Ballet Artists’ 10th Anniversary Gala production, you can begin kicking yourself now.

Yes, it was that good.

The production — jam-packed with ballet classics and quality contemporary dance works performed primarily by guest dancers from Colorado Ballet and Festival Ballet of Providence — was arguably the finest mounted by a local dance organization in the past decade, and easily one of the finest to appear in Buffalo this season.
In the first of two pas de deuxs danced by NBA principal dancers Sergio Neglia and Sherri Campagni that bookended the program, the veteran pair lent their romantic style of ballet movement to the white swan pas de deux from the ballet Swan Lake. Campagni’s fluttering arms, dancing fingers and steady bourrée steps (rapid small steps en pointe) gave the sense of a bird skimming the water while taking flight.

Complementing her graceful movement was Neglia’s impassioned machismo sturdily partnering her throughout the delicate and tempered pace of the pas de deux. The pair’s refined line and masterful dancing set the tone for the remainder of the program.

Halt’s buoyant “Vivaldi No. 9” followed with a trio of dancers led by Erin Ginn - who appeared slightly off her game - breezing through the classical work that was lilting and pleasing.

In his “Sonata for Cello & Piano in E Minor” set to music by Johannes Brahms, Colorado Ballet dancer Andrew Skeels showed he is as promising a choreographer as he is a dancer. The contemporary ballet work danced by Skeels and fellow Colorado Ballet dancers Dana Benton and Emily Bromberg blended slow moving dance phrases with rounded arms and shoulders with spurts of quick traveling movements that were punctuated by a dancer stopping to stand still and erect staring intently off into the distance.

The first half of the program concluded with the “Grande Pas de Deux” from the ballet Sleeping Beauty beautifully performed by Festival Ballet of Providence principal dancers Mindaugas Bauzys and Vilia Putrius. The regal pair powered through the pas de deux effectively and cleanly.

While the first half of the program featured mostly classical ballet works, its second half was dominated by contemporary dance works. Following Mario Galizzi’s masterful and ravishing classical pas de deux “Adagietto” to the music of Gustav Mahler and danced impeccably by Benton and Skeels, was another of Skeels’ works, “Excerpts From Shrouded Stories.”

The contemporary dance solo inspired by the Iraq War and danced energetically by Bromberg, evoked feelings of inner struggle and turmoil born out in a whir of Bromberg’s free-flowing hair in rapid spins in a circle, and the agitated flails of her arms.

Rounding out the program were choreographer James Graber’s rock ’n’ roll duet “Chimera,” danced by him and Mary Beth Hansohn. The pair motored along with the ever increasing pace of the work’s guitar-driven score to a fervent crescendo of bold partnering sequences and fiery dance steps; Viktor Plotnikov’s brilliant contemporary dance work “Breathe in A,” set to music by Bach. The trendy contemporary dance work performed by Bauzys and Putrius featured off-balance partnering that teetered on daring mixed with a creative use of pedestrian arm movements that together was inspired and highly engaging; and Neglia and Campagni in their signature pas de deux from Neglia’s ballet Spartacus. The pair’s emotional performance was a fitting end to a program where nearly every performance and dance work was spectacular.

This review appeared in a shortened version May 11, 2009 in The Buffalo News.

For more information on Neglia Ballet Artists visit www.negliaballet.org

Sometimes less really is more

2009-05-05T11:21:00.014-04:00

Configuration Dance Theatre
Center for the Arts - University at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY
May 3, 2009
Reviewed by Steve Sucato

In the final performance of their latest production, Configuration Dance Theatre showed, they have the goods to warrant continued national attention. They also showed they are still very much a young dance troupe struggling with the recent switch from being a pick-up company made up of mostly seasoned ballet professionals, to now a full-time contemporary dance company made up of younger dancers.

Choreographically, the program suffered similar ills. There were several knock-your-sox-off moments and just as many that were far from stellar.

The program opened with LehrerDance director/choreographer Jon Lehrer’s Fusion for 6. Set to a hip-hop/classical music amalgam by Black Violin, Lehrer’s work exploded from the outset in a fury of contemporary ballet movement executed by 6 dancers who pitched and rocked their torsos forwards and back into straight legged extensions that rapidly flowed into quick turns and pirouettes. Signature Lehrer in its power and intense physicality, Configuration’s younger dancers had trouble keeping up with the work’s rapid pace and non-stop changes in body position. Despite the company’s somewhat erratic performance of it, choreographically Fusion for 6 was a solid and engaging work.

In the second pas de deux former American Ballet Theatre star Susan Jaffe has choreographed for Configuration, Jaffe, somewhat new to choreographing, showed she has the potential to perhaps shine as a choreographer as brightly as she did as a dancer. Her pas de deux Royenne, set to music by Bach, was world-class. Its elegant and sharp ballet movements were delivered adroitly by dancers Erica De LA O and Raul Peinado.

Where Jaffe’s pas de deux soared, Configuration resident choreographer Michael Shannon’s latest work Been There, Done That, barely left the ground. The overly ambitious ballet spanning a human life cycle, packed into it slapstick humor, cliché, and an up and down level of choreographic skill that ranged from genius to that of a recital.

Within the ballet (which if it were farce throughout might have worked better) were two dances that were utterly superb and could have stood on their own. The opening trio of the section “Girls Will Be Girls and Boys Will Be Boys” was one. After a slight wardrobe mishap, dancers Youngsil Kim, Kristen Prescott and Kontono Yamazaki sailed through Shannon’s well-crafted European-influenced choreography marked with clever gesture and phrasing. The other notable moment came in “What Happened to Us”, a ravishing pas de deux performed with passion by Kim and Peinado.

The program closed with artistic director Joseph Cipolla’s Breathless. Like Shannon’s ballet, Breathless suffered from an identity crisis. The work tried to be too many things from a contemporary salon work to a Latin-infused jazz dance, and a ballet work. Each independently worked to varying degrees; together not so much. The work’s lone gem was a crisp and clean ballet pas de deux performed skillfully by De LA O and Peinado.

This review appeared in a shortened version May 5, 2009 in The Buffalo News.

All Photos Courtesy of Configuration Dance Theatre
Photo 1 - dancer Lauren Fischer
Photo 2 - dancers Misty Copeland and Raul Peinado

For more information on Configuration Dance Theatre visit www.configurationdancetheatre.org

Dance Magazine Review of Dance Alloy Theater's Fragile

2007-05-12T12:28:00.000-04:00

Fragile
Dance Alloy Theater
The New Hazlett Theater
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
April 13-16, 2007
Reviewed by Steve Sucato

Pittsburgh’s Dance Alloy Theater has presented a number of memorable dance works in its 31-year history. Perhaps none however has been more powerful and moving, as Donald Byrd’s “No Consolation,” which premiered in April as part of DAT’s riveting program Fragile.

The first chapter in a multi-part national project concerning human stories cut short entitled the Interrupted Narrative, Bryd’s “No Consolation” was a graphic account of humans processing grief.

Wooden folding chairs sat arranged around three sides of an otherwise bare stage as five dancers (3 women, 2 men) one after another walked to the front of the stage and began muttering in whispered tone accounts of personal tragedy. Adopting anguished and despondent facial expressions, the dancers began what would be a gut-wrenching insight into the disintegration of will. Dancing to a score of traditional Irish music, the ensemble let loose an outpouring of Irish Step Dance-influenced movement that was taken to violent and exhaustive extremes, causing some to collapse to the floor, slump into another’s embrace or recede into a hunched position on a chair.

Masterfully crafted and danced with uncompromising passion and genius by DAT’s dancers, the work captured the very essence of shattered lives. Particularly convincing was the performance of Stephanie Dumaine whose inconsolable character fully inhabited her as she pushed away efforts by partner Michael Walsh to comfort her, leveling the brunt of her blame and guilt for the loss of their child in pounding fists and a malicious slap to Walsh’s face.

Preceding Byrd’s work was Susan Marshall’s signature duet “ARMS” (1984). Set to a tension-filled original score by Luis Resto, dancers Scott Lowe and Maribeth Maxa tightly bonded to each other curling hands and arms around the napes of necks and cradling head and cheeks. Marshall’s choreography for “ARMS” cut sharply between the soft giving in of flesh and soul and the forceful lashing out of emotional hunger and disdain.

Fragile closed with DAT artistic director Beth Corning’s “Flight”, a lively migration of undulating modern dance movement meant to suggest birds on the wing. Costumed in rumpled white linen with long trains of fabric, DAT’s five dancers looked to be challenging the bonds of gravity as they swept over and leapt off of two wooden ramps. At times some paused to teeter at ramp’s edge or in the case of dancer Adrienne Misko, to cling precariously suspended on top of a ramp turned upright, exemplifying life’s tenuous nature born out in each of Fragile’s dance works.

For more information on Dance Alloy Theater visit www.dancealloy.org

Links To Recent Articles And Reviews April - May 2007

2007-05-09T21:37:00.000-04:00

Pittsburgh City Paper: Emio Greco/PC "Hell" 4-12-07
"http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A25488"

Pittsburgh City Paper: Dance Alloy Theater "Fragile" 4-12-07 "http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A25500"

Pittsburgh City Paper: 2007 Regional Dance America National Festival 4-19-07 "http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A25500"

Pittsburgh City Paper: 2007 Regional Dance America National Festival 4-19-07 http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A25869

Links To Articles And Reviews December 2006 - March 2007

2007-03-28T20:51:00.000-04:00

Buffalo News: Nimbus Dance "The Cell Phone Show" 3-23-07
http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=doc&p_docid=11811C926464C1D8&p_docnum=1

Pittsburgh City Paper: Sydney Dance Company "Grand" 3-22-07
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A24531

Buffalo News: Neglia Ballet Artists “Spartacus” Review 3-16-07
http://www.buffalonews.com/200/story/35069.html

Buffalo News: Evidence, A Dance Company 3-16-07
http://www.buffalonews.com/204/story/33868.html

Pittsburgh City Paper: Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre "Moments & More" 3-15-07
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A24256

Pittsburgh City Paper: Joffrey Ballet 3-01-07
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A23542

Pittsburgh City Paper: Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre 2-15-07
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A22849

Pittsburgh City Paper: Hubbard Street Dance Chicago 2-08-07
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A22471

Pittsburgh City Paper: Bodiography "Innovation 2007" 2-01-07
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A22074

Pittsburgh City Paper: Matthew Bourne's "Edward Scissorhands" 1-11-07
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A21050

Pittsburgh City Paper: Dance Alloy Theater "BLACK/WHITE Dancing in the RED 12-07-06
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A20288

Dancing Wheels Review

2006-12-18T11:39:00.001-05:00

Rachel Rish, Sara Lawrence & Hoang Ngoc Dang in Helen Keller: A Tribute to her Teacher. Photo: Dale Dong

Dancing Wheels
November 18, 2006
Cuyahoga Community College (Eastern Campus) - Cleveland, Ohio
Reviewed by Steve Sucato

For the final production in its 25th anniversary season Cleveland’s Dancing Wheels chose to pay tribute to two American icons that have come to symbolize the ongoing struggles and triumphs of those with disabilities. The dance company that pioneered integrated dance (wheel chair and stand up dancers) a quarter century ago, presented three works including the world premiere of Christopher Fleming’s ballet Helen Keller: A Tribute to her Teacher.

The program opened with an excerpt of choreographer David Rousseve’s Walking on Clouds. Known for his works of social conscious, Walking on Clouds was a powerful work that hit hard notions of prejudice and discrimination and called for equality in social thinking. Using narratives of personal accounts of several of DW’s dancers including Jenita McGowen, whose mixed ethnicity and light skin, she says, allows her to be a spy going unnoticed in private conversations of members of one race about another, and Dancing Wheels artistic director Mary Verdi-Fletcher who recounted a personal act of civil disobedience that led to legislation in Cleveland making all the city buses wheel chair accessible. While Rousseve’s work when performed by DW in its entirety has a clear beginning, middle, and end, the excerpt gave one the sense of being dropped in the middle of a conversation. DW’s corps of dancers at times struggled with the work, which appeared loose in its performance especially in a section where the dancers, out of sync with one another, repetitively chanted a phrase about wanting to be recognized for who they are as people.

After a brief sign language interpretation demonstration, the program’s second work, A Wing/A Prayer by choreographer Mark Tomasic, sent three wheelers aggressively racing across the stage to the upbeat music of Afro Celt Sound System. The work pushed the wheelers in daring pops and rocking of their chairs along with precision turns and group formations. A clear standout in the work, dancer Charlotte Heppner zipped about with ferocity and abandon giving life to the type of work DW would do well to offer more of to its audiences.

The program concluded with Helen Keller: A Tribute to her Teacher, a ballet that was as much endearing as it was riddled with problems. Fleming’s ballet straddled the fence between a work for children and one for adults, never satisfying completely the needs of either. The work began with DW’s corps of seven dancers seated on the floor slumped over and serving as a backdrop to the poetic arm movements of Verdi-Fletcher as Helen Keller performing a somber and reflective solo. The dancers came to life one by one as dancer Sara Lawrence as Keller’s teacher Anne Sullivan entered the stage and passed by each of them.

Slow to develop the ballet began to take shape in a duet danced by Lawrence and Rachel Rish as a young Helen Keller in which Fleming’s choreography encapsulated the early years of Sullivan and Keller’s volatile relationship.

The ballet’s larger problems came in the form of two rather lengthy and verbose recorded speeches that — outside of the program notes — were non-attributed and seemed out of place. Fleming’s use of these speeches came off as tedious filler in a ballet rather lean on actual dancing and story components.

Despite its structural problems, Helen Keller: A Tribute to her Teacher had some bright moments. They included: wonderful performances by Lawrence and Rish including a poignant trio danced with dancer Hoang Ngoc Dang underlying the sacrifices Sullivan made in her personal life for Keller and a lighthearted collage of period dances reflecting Keller’s years on the vaudeville stage.

For more information on Dancing Wheels visit www.dancingwheels.org

GroundWorks Dancetheater Review

2006-12-06T21:39:00.001-05:00

GroundWorks Dancetheater
November 17-19, 2006
Trinity Cathedral - Cleveland, Ohio
Reviewed by Steve Sucato

With a backdrop of gothic arches, organ pipes and stained glass windows, GroundWorks Dancetheater presented a program of three new works as part of its ongoing Landmarks Series that brings dance to historic venues in Northeast Ohio.

The program opened with GroundWorks artistic director/choreographer David Shimotakahara’s Before with After set to a compilation of J.S. Bach piano compositions.
Five dancers costumed in white began a dance that seemed to exude exaltation. Shimotakahara’s contemporary ballet choreography bent and lifted the dancers into well-patterned groupings and relationships that shifted with the pace and mood of Bach’s music.

Billed as “a response to Bach’s magnificent compositions for keyboard” and an “intersection of life’s joy and sorrow”, the ballet overall lacked an
emotional connection between dancer and dance. GroundWorks’ dancers more often than not appeared detached from Shimotakahara’s pristine choreography, which progressed from section to another with uncertain purpose. Danced solidly by the ensemble, of note in the work were an off kilter and energetic solo performed by Felise Bagley, and a pas de deux by dancers Jennifer Lott and Mark Otloski that had the pair pushing and pulling at each other and alternating the crash of outstretched arms that flung one away from their bodies suggesting the volatile nature of the pairs relationship.

In contrast to Before with After’s seeming emotional ambiguity,

Felise Bagley in Through the Lens - Photo: Dale Dong
dancer/choreographer Amy Miller’s eleveneleven, seethed with emotion and tension that had one on edge throughout. Four dancers (2 men and 2 women) entered the stage linked in a chain and glancing at one another for signs of sexual interest that would signal a pairing off from the group. As if caught in a love quadrangle, male/female pairings were drawn together for brief periods only to be dissolved by feelings of jealousy and lust as the other dancers broke them apart and new pairings were formed. Set to a delicate piano score laced with ethereal vocal sound bites by composer Ryan Lott, the work portrayed a desperate need for these individuals to unite in some manner. Their need drawn out in cold stares, fitful embraces and impassioned hearts. Eleveneleven showed Miller’s brilliance as a young choreographer and left me with the hope that we will see more of her choreography on the company in the near future.

The program closed with Through the Lens by the New York choreographer team of Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer. Two large fabric screens staggered one adjacent and behind the other covered the width of the stage as an original composition by longtime GroundWorks collaborator Gustavo Aguilar sent the silhouetted body of Bagley into motion behind one of screens. Bagley’s flowing movement had her shadow-self appear to shrink and grow in size as she moved away from and toward the light creating her shadow image. Four more dancers joined Bagley in silhouette behind both screens as the work progressed performing solo, duet, and group modern dance choreography that at times had them bursting through seams in each screen’s fabric and emerging in front of it to continue their dancing. Through the Lens’s visual effects were like watching one of the current Apple iPod television commercials where dancers in silhouette groove to popular music. Only in Through the Lens, the dancers then appear as if they are leaping out from inside the TV screen to become their 3-dimensional dancing selves.
While the visual effects used in Through the Lens are nothing new to dance, they are uncommon, and as such are oh so much eye candy for audiences. But beyond the work’s visual effects, Bridgman and Packer created some tenacious and rather effective and interesting choreography that GroundWorks' dancers performed with impeccable timing.

With this latest installment of their successful Landmark Series, GroundWorks Dancetheater continues to show it is a dance company of high standard and taste and that they are one of the finest regional contemporary dance ensembles in the country.

For more information on GroundWorks Dancetheater visit www.groundworksdance.org

Dance Alloy Theater Review

2005-07-21T22:39:00.001-04:00

Dance Alloy Theater
A Limited Lifetime Guarantee
April 17, 2005 – Kelly-Strayhorn Theater; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Reviewed by Steve Sucato

The smell of earth and a haze of dust hung in the air following Dance Alloy.Theater’s gripping U.S. premiere of Per Jonsson’s masterwork “Schakt”(shaft). The last of three works featured in Alloy.Theater’s A Limited Lifetime Guarantee, “Schakt” marked a substantive step forward in the re-emergence of Pittsburgh’s oldest modern dance company along a new path toward reclaiming former national prominence.

A Limited Lifetime Guarantee began on a playful note as three dancers (two female, one male) in dress-like costumes coyly draped themselves over each other, arms enveloping curious bodies in choreographer Marina Harris’s “Blue Quartet” (2000). One of several vignettes contained within the work, the opening vignette’s storyline teetered between youthful emotional exploration and a coming of age. Harris’s modern choreography had the trio moving in concert with the work’s eclectic soundtrack. An initial languid atmosphere was halted when a member of the trio became overcome with feelings of neglect and jealousy at which time the music began to echo the dancer’s emotional discourse. Like mischievous children, moods in the characters quickly changed with the dancers playfully lifting each other’s dresses and flashing one another with glimpses of their underpants.

Tinged with yearning and melancholy, Harris’s work found emotional depth amidst frivolity as well as displaying it in a more obvious ways as in a poignant vignette performed by Alloy.Theater’s artistic director Beth Corning and dancer Jacob Rice in which the pair represented a mature emotional relationship with Corning being slid along a tabletop while Rice tenderly caressed her.

Highlighting the work’s overall sense of whimsy was a vignette in which the opening trio of dancers (Maibeth Maxa, Michael Walsh, and Cass Ghiorse) engaged in a makeshift competition using wads of bubble gum. The dancers stretched the gum into various forms such as a jump rope, a barrier, and a facemask in an effort to one-up each other.

The world premiere of Corning’s “Lost” followed “Blue Quartet”, striking a more reverent chord as members of Pittsburgh’s Renaissance City Women’s Choir emerged from within the audience singing Ross Whitney’s “A Pentatonic Alleluia”. Rising from their seats they walked out of the audience and onto the stage joining a group of Alloy.Theater’s dancers and other choir members portraying mourners at a wake. While Marina Harris’s costuming of characters in the work suggested the old west, other elements in the work suggested otherwise, such as a section with Rice seated atop a coffin pretending to drive it like a racecar. Whatever the period, the scene onstage was populated with a number quirky characters from Corning as cantankerous widow, to several of the dancers portraying what seemed to be oversized and overprotective children who often prevented mourners from approaching the deceased’s coffin.

For much of the “Lost”, the dancers danced and the singers squirmed in their seats as the choreography — a kind of keystone cops meets Martha Graham —blended pathos with a bevy of frantic movement. The work climaxed in a well-crafted dance sequence that included a powerful duet performed by Maxa and Ghiorse that saw the pair overcome with religious fervor that burst forth in choreography dense with physical and emotional intensity. Arguably some of Corning’s best choreography to date, “Lost” should have concluded there but the work continued on with several more dance sequences that did little more than muddle the work’s meaning.

As good as the program’s first two works were, Jonsson’s “Schakt” (1983) proved in a league of its own. A forbearer of contemporary works currently in vogue in Europe and Scandinavia, the work was a masterpiece that touched nearly all the senses and was as ominous as it was profound.

Three dancers, three sheets of rusted metal hung from the rafters, and three vertical rows of loose dirt along with a recreation of Yvonne Brosset’s original lighting design created an eerie atmosphere reminiscent of a science fiction movie. Set to a foreboding soundtrack by Peter Bengtsson, the dancers moved within angular and gestural choreography that at times resembled a martial arts kada. Primarily independent of each other’s movements, the dancers traveled up an down individual vertical paths of dirt, kicking it into clouds, tossing handfuls of it into the air and covering themselves in it. Spells of violent, sharp, and angry movement along the paths were broken up by the dancers standing at the rear of the stage banging on the metal sheets like gongs; adding a maniacal edginess to the work. Performed magnificently by Rice, Walsh, and Maxa, “Schakt” is the stuff of nightmares and one remarkable dance work.

With A Limited Lifetime Guarantee, Dance Alloy.Theater showed they are a dance troupe capable of great things and that they are once again worthy of serious notice.

For more information on Dance Alloy Theater visit www.dancealloy.org

2005-06-21T23:47:00.000-04:00

Dance Alloy.Theater's Jacob Rice in Per Jonsson's "Schakt"