25 to watch: Dance Magazine predicts who's new and breaking through for 2004 - Cover Story

Dance Magazine, Jan, 2004

GEORGE PIPER DANCES

NOEMIE LAFRANCE

BENJAMIN LEVY

DOMINIC WALSH DANCE THEATER

STELLA ABRERA

DAVID HALLBERG

VERB BALLETS

CATHY MARSTON

MATJASH MROZEWSKI

NICOLAS BLANC

VIENGSAY VALDES

REVEALING THE EMOTIONAL BODY

EMILY PATTERSON

JANICE GARRETT

SETH ORZA

PETER BOAL AND COMPANY

JASON SAMUELS-SMITH

MARGIE GILLIS

ERICK MONTES

BRADON MCDONALD

PAULETTE BEAUCHAMP

TRAIN WRECK

VINCENT MANTSOE

LARRY KEIGWIN

CHRISTOPHER STOWELL

GEORGE PIPER DANCES

Brave New World

BY MARGARET WILLIS

With Greek god-like physiques, classical lines, vitality, and sensitivity, George Piper Dances continues to scale new peaks. Michael (George) Nunn and William (Piper) Trevitt bravely left luminous careers with The Royal Ballet and, since 2001, have steadily earned themselves a devoted following in Britain and Europe with their exciting group of five dancers. Top choreographers are falling over themselves to produce works for the multitalents and 2004 promises to keep the spotlight on them with tours planned for the United States and Canada, Hungary, and Australia. The two founders, also known as the Ballet Boyz, produce and host a series of piquant television dance programs--the next, on the art of choreography, to be aired this summer in Britain. Watch as Nunn and Trevitt begin to experiment with new ways of incorporating film into their stimulating stage shows and to fuse their dance style with other art forms, and perform in unconventional venues. www.gpdances.com

Margaret Willis writes from London for DANCE MAGAZINE, Dancing Times, Dance Europe and the Bolshoi Theatre magazine.

NOEMIE LAFRANCE

Site-Specific Wizard

BY GIA KOURLAS

Certain choreographers spend more time focusing on what a dance feels like than the way it looks. But site-specific wizard Noemie Lafrance realizes that the art form has the potential to be physically gratifying for everyone involved. In her Bessie-Award-winning Descent, audience members trailed behind performers on a twelve-story staircase in a lower Manhattan City Court building. In the creepily beautiful Melt, a fifteen-minute work presented over the summer in a Brooklyn art gallery, the audience gazed at glistening dancers who were strapped to a cement wall and literally dripping with wax--just as they seemed to dissolve, so did you. But her biggest challenge is her forthcoming Noir, (June, 2004), which explores aspects of film noir and takes place in a parking garage. This time, as audience members sit in actual cars, Lafrance unveils a surreal world, tinged with suspense--and even more exciting, her usual overflowing pot of imagination. www.sensproduction.org.

Gia Kourlas is dance editor for Time Out New York.

BENJAMIN LEVY

A Balance of Brain and Brawn

BY HEATHER WISNER

As an emerging choreographer, Benjamin Levy could have fallen into any number of traps--favoring flash over substance, for example, or sacrificing entertainment for concept--when his Bay Area-based company LEVYdance debuted in May 2003. But Levy's concert was a judicious balance of athletic and lyrical, brainy and sexy, with a tightly edited program that left viewers wanting more. Levy draws from an academic background--he and most of his five dancers studied at University of California Berkeley under Graham preservationist Marni Wood--but his work is more evocative than intellectual. The dancers threw themselves into combat, wrestling matches, and one-off tangos. One dancer's traipse over a billowing canopy suggested a walk on the moon; another's gymnastics under running water was both dreamlike and unsettling.

Levy also dances with the Joe Goode Performance Company; that theatrically driven experience, combined with his own highly visual sense and inventive movement style, promises an interesting future. www.levydance.org

Freelance writer Heather Wisner is former associate editor of DANCE MAGAZINE.

DOMINIC WALSH DANCE THEATER

Moonlighting in Houston

BY MOLLY GLENTZER

Small wonder Dominic Walsh Dance Theater sold out its debut concerts in February 2003--the founder/director and most of his twelve-plus dancers are passionate, versatile artists from Houston Ballet. And they had a world-class program, with Walsh's Choo San Goh Award-winning Flames of Eros, plus works by Ben Stevenson, Natalie Weir, and Mario Zambrano. In November, 2003, DWDT premiered Walsh's first narrative work, The Miller's Daughter, based on Franz Schubert's songs to Wilhelm Muller's poems.

Walsh, who turns 33 this month isn't ready to hang up his Houston Ballet shoes yet--look for him in Frederick Ashton's La Fille Mal Gardee in June. But he's building DWDT "a little bit each year." Plans for a summer 2004 tour are in the works. www.dwdt.org.

Molly Glentzer is the dance critic for the Houston Chronicle.

STELLA ABRERA

Hollywood Glamour

BY HANNA RUBIN

If Stella Abrera had been discovered in Hollywood's golden age, she'd have ended up on celluloid in form-fitting decolletage. Her glamour and sex appeal come from another era, one when stars like Rita Hayworth danced across the screen. But that was then and this is now, and it is ballet lovers who can enjoy Abrera's steady rise at American Ballet Theatre.