Moving Generations. - Enfold; Time Remaining; adra Box Redux; Pastorale; Dance of Summer; Chaconne; Ave Maria - dance review

Dance Magazine, June, 2002 by Jody Sperling

40UP PROJECT THE DUKE ON 42ND STREET NEW YORK, NEW YORK FEBRUARY 6-10, 2002

One of the best aspects of "Grace"--the fifth-anniversary celebration of the 40Up Project, which promotes "maturing" artists--was the chance to see performers of several generations sharing the stage. Different visions of family and community emerged. Veteran dancers Stuart Hodes and Alice Teirstein seemed a long-married couple in a duet from Zvi Gotheiner's Enfold. As the pair linked hands and moved in close proximity to one another, Hodes projected a stoic determination, Teirstein a dreamy distraction. His businesslike manner as he stooped to pick her up, spin her around, and set her down suggested he'd spent a lifetime hefting ladies around. For her part, Teirstein seemed to relish the ride. At dance's end, Hodes began pulling her offstage, while she gently resisted, dragging her weight and choosing to linger a little longer in the spotlight.

In an excerpt from Time Remaining, choreographer Gina Gibney created an equally charming and intimate duet, pairing Marta Miller with her 9-year-old son, Ezra. The two engaged each other, and the audience, with a sense of serious play. The mother found ways to support her child, tenderly embracing him or, in a bridge pose, making a ledge with her thighs for him to sit on. Later, she shadowed his smaller figure, copying his every gesture and trailing him as he sidestepped here and there.

The husband-and-wife team Tigger Benford and Martha Partridge offered Quadra Box Redux, a virtuosic body-percussion quartet performed with Marty Belier and Gina Russell. The four began seated on wooden boxes facing each other and started what looked like a super-advanced game of pat-a-cake. Hand claps, body slaps, foot stomps, and the hollow sounds of the boxes being hit built into complex and satisfying rhythmic structures. The speed and intricacy of the movements soon got the audience revved up. In the end, the collaborative and interdependent efforts performers used to produce this energy created an impression of a well balanced and equitable microsociety.

These jewels were a few of the more than twenty works presented in the two "Grace" programs. The string of treats came as a welcome throwback to the early days of modern dance when pieces were short and numerous. In addition to the mode of presentation, the programs specifically recognized historical continuity with works by Mary Wigman and Jose Limon. Wigman, the founder of German expressionist dance, was honored with two solos--"Pastorale" and "Dance of Summer" (from the cycle Shifting Landscapes, 1929)--superbly performed by Janis Brenner. "Pastorale," which began and ended with the dancer prone and one arm upraised, was a fleeting effort of ascent. Brenner's fluttering gestures beckoned forth the music, as if Hanns Hastings's notes were the key to her ability to rise and fall. In the slier "Dance of Summer," Brenner pressed her wrist to forehead and cocked her eyes like a proud diva. Throughout, the performer balanced an expressionist sense of drama with such touches of lightness. Singing Meredith Monk songs to open and close Program A, Brenner demonstrated a vocal technique as spry and nimble as her hands were with Wigman's choreography.

As Brenner took on Monk and Wigman, Nina Watt, who's danced with the Limon company since 1972; tackled Limon's 1942 masterpiece Chaconne. To the simple majesty of Bach's music, from the Partita No. 2 in D Minor for Unaccompanied Violin, Watt began the dance's theme phrase. Her foot slid forward on the floor as her body tilted back and away. A few steps later, she rose to balance in attitude en releve, one arm overhead. The gestures introduced were spare and grand--one arm bent across the body suggested an infinite cape. On one knee, Watt curved both arms skyward, implying an emotional or spiritual uplift. Watching, one couldn't help but compare her petite figure with Limon's lanky one in these same shapes, captured in Barbara Morgan's historic photographs. With this dance, Limon realized Doris Humphrey's vision of what choreography could be: the unfolding of movement in space, in harmony with music, so as to evoke a larger sense of humanity. With its elegant simplicity and exact repetitions, the dance, however, seemed merciless to perform. While Watt bravely showed us the choreography and executed it admirably, she didn't seem entirely comfortable in it. Her struggle, though, lent the work's I air of formality a degree of humanity, if not quite on the scale originally envisioned.

Eric Hoisington, by contrast, was entirely at ease in Igal Perry's Ave Maria, set to the Schubert melody. Seamlessly combining modern elements (torso isolations and rolls into the floor) and balletic ones (killer pirouettes and leg extensions), Hoisington turned in a Sara Hughes-level performance. But Ave Maria's most stunning moment was its simplest. When Hoisington fell backward into a spiraling run and wound round himself to finish in stillness, the audience sighed in contentment.