Blog Post 19, Part II (Justin) - Only the Meaningful

In selecting quotes for this blog post, I started a Word doc split into three categories: "True," "Meaningful," and "Both." However, I soon discovered that all of my quotes were falling under "Meaningful" - I could not bring myself to trust in the label "True." Thus, I present to you the following list of MEANINGFUL quotes!


MING – “If performances ‘mean’ more to experienced viewers, ‘meaning’ necessitates narrative; the narrative here (and perhaps anywhere) is a series of ghosts—though whether it's a person, a dance move, a musical score, or something else is a question of the mind of the viewer.”

JENNIFER – “I tried not to impose a narrative on the piece, but the use of a prop (a flower-girl’s basket of petals) and symbolic costuming appealed too much to the latent lit scholar in me; I ended up reading Evans’ work as one in which the performers wracked their bodies against a female-enforced patriarchy.”

COURTNEY - "Decentering the significance of the dancers’ skills and physical virtuosity, Taylor choreographs a dance that is about movement itself and the beauty of “everyday” movements."

COURTNEY (in relation to “Esplanade”) – “In this piece dance is about the many different ways a body can move and interact with other bodies more than it is about each particular dancer’s virtuosity.”

JESS – “When I see dance, there is a part of me that yearns to do what they do, because to me, dance is almost more important to the performer than the observer.”

SARA – “I was particularly struck by the irreverence of the movement in contrast to the motivic structure of Johann Sebastian Bach's Concerto in D minor for Two Violins.”

Post 19.2 - Jess

The True:

Was their appreciation, like mine, given for the beauty of choreography and the astounding skill of the performers, or were these dances somehow transcendent in a way I was unequipped to realize? Might these have been merely adequate performances that were overly celebrated by the audience for nostalgic and sentimental purposes, or had I missed the introduction of the next dance star of the western world?

~Jenna


The True & Meaningful:

Likewise, moments of differentiated movements called body ownership into question, as they were typified by the sharing of weight and absolute trust in another’s physical strength. “It is my head-first leap, but your ‘catch’ that keeps me whole.”

~Justin


The Meaningful:

Through movement, music, costuming, and a small blurb in the program, there was a very clear (almost too clear) story being conveyed for the audience. The first musical track provided the perfect framing for the narrative of “Rite of Summer” – hauntingly beautiful. Even once the music sadly lapsed into quasi-smooth jazz toward the end, the movement of the dancers made up for the lapse.

~Whitney

19.2 Dancing with Dancers Dancing. [Lusk]

These are phrases or opinions or sentences that ringed most truthful to me. Not necessarily most truthful to the experience that I had in the concert, but truthful in the sense that I understood what the writer was attempting to communicate to me on their experience.

"If performances "mean" more to experienced viewers, “meaning” necessitates narrative; the narrative here (and perhaps anywhere) is a series of ghosts—though whether it's a person, a dance move, a musical score, or something else is a question of the mind of the viewer." Ming

"I tried not to impose a narrative on the piece, but the use of a prop (a flower-girl’s basket of petals) and symbolic costuming appealed too much to the latent lit scholar in me; I ended up reading Evans’ work as one in which the performers wracked their bodies against a female-enforced patriarchy." [On William Evans' Rites of Summer] Jennifer

"...I noticed that I kept trying to piece together a narrative, even in the absence of one." Jess

"As such, while watching dance as a non-expert, I would need either to reach this moment of narrative surrender much more quickly by virtue of the performance’s transience or to abandon the quest for narrative interpretation at the onset.  And yet, I’m not sure if giving up the quest for narrative is really worth it." Cody

"But there was a point in "Esplanade" when one of the dancers went running across the stage on a diagonal, with an enormous smile on her face. I burst out laughing, and immediately covered my mouth, embarrassed. It was okay to make quiet, appreciative noises, during an especially impressive physical feat, but I felt that laughter would in some way ruin the moment." Iris

"For me, the highlight of the night was "Straight Duet," both for the acrobatics of the two performers and for the inherent storyline that I put over their movements. It was a simple story, to be sure, but the dancers created some beautiful images through which I was constantly interpreting and reinterpreting the story." Iris

Blog 19- Dorothy

What are these dances trying to tell us? This is the question that constantly came to the rational part of my analytical mind while watching the performances on Sunday. Modern dance often makes use of symbolic gestures culled from different cultures and time periods and those repetitive motions seem as if they must be trying to tell me something.

The first piece, Esplanade, began with physical forms that reminded me of 17^th or 18^th century court dancing, and the musical accompaniment, Bach, certainly helped to set that stage. With this sort of formal context in place, the reoccurring transgressive breaks, a single dancer running around a formal tableau, the physically wrenching shudders of a dancer on the floor, etc., were striking.

The running, however, brings up a question that had reoccurring strains throughout each piece. What is dance? If running is dance, than is it dance to walk, is it dance to sit up and look chagrined (as in Straight Duet)? To paraphrase John Blacking, I think dance in these modern contexts can be defined as “humanly organized movement,” and feel most engaged by the movements that are not necessarily traditional in the canon of pre-modern Western dance.

The second piece, The Right of Summer, suffered slightly from its dated “experimental” musical accompaniment and poor costuming choices, but included some of my personal favorite physical movements. Women convulsing on the floor, epileptic mayhem and then the constant tacit play of the symbolic red petals.

The earlier three pieces seemed to contrast starkly with the crowd pleasing, culture sampling Nascimento Novo. Calling on different elements of Brasilian heritage, Spanish dance, African dance and featuring the dancers in contemporary street wear inspired costumes, there was a populist feel to this final dance. The performers united across color lines and gender lines to dance together and show an relentlessly upbeat “spirit of dance,” bringing the point home strongly with their gymnastic shout-out to Hoosier pride.

Course Blog 19.2 (Jennifer)

Is walking dance?

Courtney on “Esplanade”: These informal movements urge the question “Is walking dance?” and hint at what Reason and Reynolds call the “clichéd response to modern art, ‘I could do that myself’” (“Kinesthesia, Empathy, and Related Pleasures,” 59).

Sara: There is no beauty much less propriety in the tumble on the mattress without first witnessing the beauty in the walk for the bus. As a retrospective, I was happy to begin with Taylor and ponder the journey from formalism to expression, youth to age, public to private.

My note: I hadn't considered the importance of the walking prior to reading these two responses, but Courtney and Sara's idea rang completely true. They gave me an "Of course! It was about walking! Why didn't I get that?" moment. 

Blog 19.1 Gala Review (Jenna)

My initial response to the dance event is mixed. I greatly enjoyed the moments of actual performance, but was quickly irritated by some of the managerial conventions of the form. The intervals between dances were inconsistent in length and in lighting, which boggled my mind. Why, after one dance, should we have what seemed to be an interminable intermission in full light (which, I could imagine, might signal the conclusion of the entire event) and after another a incredibly quick one in half light (which might suggest that the two pieces on either end of the break were actually from the same piece.) I suspect that my confusion about the intervals stems from my unfamiliarity with performances of dance. There may be legitimate reasons, probably involving the dancers’ need for rest, for bizarre interval patterns, but I could not understand their logistics.

Additionally, as this was a celebratory program for the 85^th anniversary of the dance program, it was understandable that various functionaries had been designated certain speeches before some of the dances. However, their appearance and length of speech was similarly inconsistent and provoked a comparable level of irritation. The presence of the functionaries divided the audience into insiders and outsiders, those who attended the gala for celebratory purposes and those who simply came to view a performance. After the exercise of recognizing the dance alums and current students of dance in the audience, I clearly felt my position in the audience as one of interloper. Even though the audience was of such a significant size that I doubt all of the people gathered there were associated with the dance program, so many of the viewers immediately surrounding my seat stood for recognition when prompted that I felt lost in the sea of expert dance spectators. After that point, their incredibly enthusiastic hoots and applause made me wonder if I had missed something. Was their appreciation, like mine, given for the beauty of choreography and the astounding skill of the performers, or were these dances somehow transcendent in a way I was unequipped to realize? Might these have been merely adequate performances that were overly celebrated by the audience for nostalgic and sentimental purposes, or had I missed the introduction of the next dance star of the western world? While I thoroughly enjoyed all four of the dances performed that evening (Esplanade!!), I left the auditorium questioning my response and therefore did not fill out a survey.

Course blog #19 [Sara] Esplanade sets the stage for modern dance

Paul Taylor claims that his inspiration for writing Esplanade came from watching a young girl run to catch a bus on a beautiful day. According to the dramaturgical notes archived by the Paul Taylor Dance Company, much like his contemporaries in the visual art world such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg were using found objects to create art, Taylor was using “found movements” and quotidian gesture to re-create American dance.

An esplanade is a large outdoor place for walking and indeed Taylor’s choreography is pedestrian in the sense that it refuses the formal, prescribed gestures of classical dance while still capturing the exuberant poetry-in-motion of the everyday joys of being out and about in the air. I was particularly struck by the irreverence of the movement in contrast to the motivic structure of Johann Sebastian Bach's Concerto in D minor for Two Violins. At first, I was unable to see the expansion or repetition of a dance idea that might coalesce with the music, but in continuing to watch, I began to pick out the lovely return time and again of the solo women—I’m thinking the first, dynamic entrance by the lone female figure, and the delightful image of the small girl bouncing—leaping—bounding? over the line of prostrate dancers. 

From Research IUBloomington: "IU Dance Theatre celebrates 85th Anniversary" 22 Oct 2012.

This playful image finally forced me out of a losing game in trying to match the relationships between the dancers to the contrapuntal relationship between the two violins and instead see the choreography coalescing so beautifully with the music, rhythmically or “aesthetically” independent and yet intertwining, each made richer and more beautiful in their juxtaposition.

A little research at home turned up a lovely intertextuality between this piece and George Balanchine’s ConcertoBarocco, a ballet made on students at the School of American Ballet in 1941 that also used Bach’s Double Concerto. Here, though, Balanchine is using pairs of dancers to evoke the violins and there is much more consonance between the dance form and the music. I don’t feel as enlivened watching this piece as I did Taylor’s, but my experience of it enriched the IU Dance performance project for me—I’m struck that at an anniversary performance in which only four selections were made that Taylor’s playful exploration of the everyday perhaps finds more resonance with contemporary audiences. I do not suggest that there is a one to one comparison between the pieces nor than Balanchine’s work even entered the conversation in a showcase highlighting modern dance forms; however, in light of our recent conversations about certain universal reactions to the particular shapes of human bodies, I’m struck anew by Taylor’s intervention in the world of dance c. 1975. By eschewing narrative and formal abstraction for embodied exuberance and the aesthetic of the everyday, it was Taylor’s work that created a space for the subsequent pieces we witnessed. There is no beauty much less propriety in the tumble on the mattress without first witnessing the beauty in the walk for the bus. As a retrospective, I was happy to begin with Taylor and ponder the journey from formalism to expression, youth to age, public to private. It let in some necessary air, and the light of a beautiful day.

Dance Review- Iris

Last night I learned that, for my enjoyment of dance to be at its fullest, there needs to be an approximate run time printed in the program. I knew there were multiple pieces, and "Esplanade" was presented in multiple sections. I didn't know how long the evening was gonna run, and "Esplanade" was a pretty long piece. After the dancers finished their bows and the curtain went down, I was getting ready to leave when I realized that the rest of the audience was staying put. Instead of settling in for another three pieces, I felt like I was being forced to sit through three more interminable pieces. This wasn't fair, as I like to think of myself as a good audience member, but I need to know what I'm getting into, and I sat down to watch "Rite of Summer" in a decidedly grumpy mood.

I noticed that my behavior as a dance spectator was different from when I go to see plays. When watching theatre, I laugh, loudly and often, because I feel that it's appropriate and I want the actors to know I'm enjoying myself. But there was a point in "Esplanade" when one of the dancers went running across the stage on a diagonal, with an enormous smile on her face. I burst out laughing, and immediately covered my mouth, embarrassed. It was okay to make quiet, appreciative noises, during an especially impressive physical feat, but I felt that laughter would in some way ruin the moment.

The last thing I noticed was that I am much more susceptible to pieces with a strong narrative structure. While I felt myself drowning in the first piece, I was immediately interested in "Rite of Summer" because of the strangeness of the props and costumes. For me, the highlight of the night was "Straight Duet," both for the acrobatics of the two performers and for the inherent storyline that I put over their movements. It was a simple story, to be sure, but the dancers created some beautiful images through which I was constantly interpreting and reinterpreting the story.

Course Blog #19 (Justin): Using the Bodymind

In dance and physical theatre, a spectator is often reminded that the body is the only guaranteed tool of a performer – costumes, props, and set pieces may inform the performance, but only the living body is inseparable from the individual artist. Yet, simultaneously, dance and physical theatre can call the performer’s ownership of the body into question. This notion came to my attention during the performance of Black Watch as the ‘soldiers’ performed the training/disciplining of their individual bodies, their most basic possessions, so as to become a seamlessly working unit – ultimately, their bodies were no longer their own, but belonged to each other and to the state. 

The performances of “Esplanade” and “Nascimento Novo” at IU Dance Theatre’s Celebration Gala evoked this same idea. Throughout, I envisioned the internal challenge for the dancers: “This is my run, yet it is your run. This is my jump, yet it’s yours as well. This is my arm extension, yet it is our [the whole group’s] same extension.” The individual is erased, as each member works to embody the same steps and to mirror the rest of the group. This was most evident in “Esplanade” as pairs, trios, and the entire group were challenged to crawl, skip, run or leap in unison. Likewise, moments of differentiated movements called body ownership into question, as they were typified by the sharing of weight and absolute trust in another’s physical strength. “It is my head-first leap, but your ‘catch’ that keeps me whole.”

We have been discussing kinesthetic empathy and the connection between critical and emotional intellects as they relate to spectators. How can a viewer’s thoughts and feelings be attended to simultaneously? The answer may lie in the dancers’ ability to simultaneously perform their own physical movements yet have an external focus that allows for a faultless connection to another or group. Such simultaneous attention to external stimuli and internal response may be attributed to use of what critics have termed the ‘bodymind,’ a tool that Phillip Zarrilli has discussed concerning the purposeful training of actors. He states, “Working toward mastery of embodied forms, when combined with the ability to fix and focus both the gaze and the mind, frees the practitioner from ‘consciousness about,’ allowing the person instead to enter into a state of ‘concentratedness’” (194). Is the ‘bodymind’ a performance muscle that can be trained by the scholar as well? If so, one can achieve ‘concentratedness’ through willed practice: frequent conscious performance spectatorship where marrying external stimuli and internal focus becomes habit.

Zarrilli, Phillip. “What Does it Mean to ‘Become the Character?’: Power, Presence, and Transcendence in Asian In-Body Disciplines of Practice.” Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual. Eds. Richard Schechner and Willa Appel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.

IU Dance Gala: Part 1 (Cody)

Although I certainly enjoyed Sunday evening’s dance recital, I find that my experience (as well as any pleasure derived from the performances) was greatly limited by my scholarly pursuits in language and, more importantly, literature and narrative.  As we discussed last week with the Reason/Reynolds essay on kinesthetic empathy, our considerations of and emotions felt during a dance performance need not necessarily be dictated or restricted by any prior knowledge of or expertise in the field of dance.  However, putting theory into practice, in my case, presented a different outcome.  Rather than enjoying the dynamism of the dancers’ bodies, I found myself questioning how these specific movements related to the overall narratives of the dances.  Perhaps this reaction is merely symptomatic of myself being pedantically cerebral and not being in tuned with my emotions.  While the latter is more than likely true, my sustained interest in understanding the dances’ narratives seems equally to steam from the fact that the dances presented themselves as possessing a large degree of narrativity.  The first and fourth dances were broken into scenes.  The first dance titularly situates its dancers within a phantasmatic space (the esplanade).  The second dance is intertextually based off of two different ballets (The Rite of Spring and Giselle), both of which have well-known narrative trajectories.  The third dance also situtates the staged movements within a specific space (the bedroom), using a maitress as indicative of such locality.  While none of the latter definitively demarcates these performaces as finite, comprehensible narratives, each dance possessed markers of narrativity, of diegetic progression, of conflict(s), etc. that pulled me into this game of narrative interpretation.  This sort of reaction, I feel, prevented me from experiencing the kinesthetic empathy that Reason/Reynolds explored in their essay.  Nonetheless, since I have relatively little experience with dance, I wonder what my reaction to these dances would have been if these performances did not present themselves as being charged with narrative/narrativity?  When I read poetry or prose that seems to have no narrativity or narrative comprehensibility, for example, I usually surrender myself to a more visceral, experiential reading of the language.  But, of course, textuality allows for return and re-readings whereas, following Phelan’s onotology of disappearance, these dance performances are ephemeral, presenting a finite temporality that does not allow for a repeated experience.  As such, while watching dance as a non-expert, I would need either to reach this moment of narrative surrender much more quickly by virtue of the performance’s transience or to abandon the quest for narrative interpretation at the onset.  And yet, I’m not sure if giving up the quest for narrative is really worth it.

Dance review (Andrea)

There were two types of dance performances at the Gala last Sunday—those that were based in a narrative and those that were not (or were less so). Throughout our discussions about dance, I've been thinking about the role that narrative plays in my understanding and appreciation of art, and whether meaning can exist without it. I’d like to use those questions to frame my review of the Gala, in which Rite of Summer and Straight Duet relied on some kind of direct narrative and Esplanade and Nascimento Novo did not.

The program notes for Rite of Summer tell us that the dance is playing with references to the ballets Rite of Spring and Giselle. Even without these notes, though, I read the dance as a narrative because of the props, costumes, and interactions between dancers. The twitching movements of the dancers and their facial expressions indicated a struggle between opposing forces. Much of the pleasure or enjoyment of watching was about puzzling out the story and the characters. The narrative in Straight Duet was much more obvious, and the pleasure in the dance came more from seeing impressive athletic feats and simultaneously seeing the parts of the story that they conveyed.

In the non-narrative dances, I noticed myself responding more physically to the performance. Through most of Esplanade and Nascimento, my enjoyment came from the physicality of the dancers as they moved and the joy that they seemed to have in their own movement. They were often smiling as they ran or jumped or spun onstage, and I felt my face become more lifted as well, raising my eyebrows and lips slightly. I kept finding that my leg muscles, especially my calves, were slightly flexed as I watched, and when the music had a strong beat, I tapped my toes in my shoes. At their best moments, these dances conveyed a kind of exuberance in movement that I somehow experienced with them. I’m not sure that I can completely remove narrative from my understanding and appreciation of dance, but the chief enjoyment I took from Esplanade and Nascimento came from a different, more obscure, source.

Dance Review (Whitney): Dystopian Narratives

In this review of IU Dance Theatre’s Anniversary Celebration Gala, I would like to focus on the second piece, “Rite of Summer.” As a starting point, this piece seemed to fit uncomfortably in the evening’s program and perhaps some of my initial attraction to it comes from its misfit status. Additionally, some strongly negative responses from my peers to this piece have shaped my thoughts for this review around the question of why I had such a positive reaction to it. Sure, during the first piece of the evening, “Esplanade” I noticed my feet bouncing to the music. Similarly, I found the final piece, “Nascimento Novo” palpably energetic to watch. But “Rite of Summer” was the only piece that really prompted a deep and disturbing physical response. My ultimate conclusion is that I preferred this piece because of the (in)tense relationship between the narrative and the dance itself. Looking past the slightly over-the-top costuming (glittery white, calf-length dresses) and props (red rose petals), this piece laid out a narrative more effectively than the others. Through movement, music, costuming, and a small blurb in the program, there was a very clear (almost too clear) story being conveyed for the audience. The first musical track provided the perfect framing for the narrative of “Rite of Summer” – hauntingly beautiful. Even once the music sadly lapsed into quasi-smooth jazz toward the end, the movement of the dancers made up for the lapse. The patterns of movement imitation between the shadow brides and the young virgin felt eerie and dystopic. The dancers displayed extraordinary control over their bodies through muscle isolations and staccato movements that countered a narrative of complete absence of control. There were several other, collective moments of grotesque movement that worked against the general gracefulness of these women’s bodies. At one point, the dancers crawled along the ground on their elbows en masse – dragging both their temporarily paralyzed bodies and their white dresses over the black floor, a moment that actually prompted a grimace. Overall, while the message was glaring at times and the presentation perhaps a bit too overt, this performance had a strong narrative arc that seemed to work both in conversation with and against the movements of the dancers. The varying levels of tension between the narrative and the dance ultimately produced a hauntingly beautiful performance that seemed out of place with the energy of the other three pieces. 

85th Dance Gala or Let's have a Kiki! [Lusk]

I’m not a dance person. I’m often the last to dance at parties and it is often after several drinks. I, also, don’t respond to dance very well. I’ve been to dance concerts and friend’s ballets and I’ve tried to get it, but I just can’t. And the 85^th Gala was no different. So, the task of writing a review on this will be interesting. But how can I review something that I feel I don’t understand? Or do I understand it, just not respond to it? What don’t I understand? These are the questions that I was having throughout the concert: Is there a narrative? Why are the girls in dresses and the boys in pants? Why is that one girl in pants? Why are the pairings only boy/girl I was hung up on what the dance was NOT rather than what it was. I reset my thinking after and tired to really focus on what I responded to during the concert. And I kept coming back to the moments when the dancers bodies no longer resembled bodies. There were definite moments when I felt the dancers celebrated their bodies and lengthened their legs and balanced and yes, it was beautiful. But the moments I loved were the moments, like in the first dance, when the dancers came on crawling on all fours in a grotesque way, an evil way. And they formed that circle that rotated until the lights dimmed. That was the ONLY point in the concert where I thought to myself YES! YES! This is what I want to see! Keep going! But they returned to the impressive movements that I sort of just… rolled my eyes at. Why is that? Why do I respond to that? Perhaps there is this joy I find in bodies that celebrate how ugly/disturbing they can become rather than pleasing to the eye. 

Course Blog #19: Dance Review (Jess)

I found out through the course of the concert that I prefer ballet, though I can find much beauty and astonishment in modern dance. Every time I see feats of physical prowess and athletic ability, I feel a kinesthetic response that I place somewhere in the area of longing. Though I've taken some modern dance classes (and loved them), I have never been very athletic. When I see dance, there is a part of me that yearns to do what they do, because to me, dance is almost more important to the performer than the observer. It's such a joyous, ecstatic thing, to be moving the body in these increasingly difficult, yet emotionally explosive patterns, and absolute passion showed in every one of the performers' bodies. When performers land on their feet or bodies in a forceful way, my bones feel like I've stuck a fork in a toaster. When they stretch their limbs to the limit, I feel the ache in my own muscles. When they leap, my heart leaps with them. During this production, I felt the same kinesthetic response as I usually do when witnessing physical feats such as these.

In addition to my body's visceral response, I noticed that I kept trying to piece together a narrative, even in the absence of one. That may be one of the reasons why I prefer ballet to modern dance; I appreciate classical ballets like Swan Lake and The Firebird because they have these fables woven into the dance. Also, ballet dancers are some of the most spectacular athletes in the world. I am constantly in awe of them.

The piece I responded to the most was the third piece, though not so much because of the narrative. Each dancer used the other's body to perform these complicated and sometimes dangerous movements that highlighted their incredible athleticism. I did appreciate the weaving of humor into the dance, and the creative use of the mattress as a prop. It was a blend of passion, joy, humor, sadness, grief, all wrapped up in a very basic narrative of a love story, perhaps a marriage, going wrong. In the end, I found truth to be located in each dancer's body, the meaningful in the narrative, and the subjective in the designs.

Dance Review (Derek)

IU Dance Theatre 85^th anniversary celebration gala was held November 4 and featured four pieces: Esplanade, Rite of Summer, Straight Duet, and Nascimento Novo.

Choreographed by Paul Taylor in 1975 and performed to violin concertos by Bach, Esplanade consisted of four distinct parts, each with a different feel. The first part was dominated by bright colors and a light atmosphere generated by the playfulness of the dancers’ geometric movements. Particularly notable was Miss Lalah Hazelwood’s smiling exuberance, which set the tone for the piece. The dancers engaged in domino tag, touch-falling and rising, leaping into the air, and I could not help smiling in pleasure at the joy they exhibited. One of my favorite moments was when they moved in circles and spirals, expanding and contracting, occasionally exploding outward like a starburst. The second part of Esplanade was more serious, reflected in the more somber music, lighting changes, and movements of the dancers. Four dancers stood off center, two taller (a man and a woman) and two shorter (two women), which made me think of a family. Miss Hazelwood was again a key dancer in the piece, seeming to float around the other three members of the family unit, hands pressed to one thigh as though signaling some injury, yet ignored by them as evidenced by their non-response to her movements and her hand waving. The end of this part was the most poignant, with the mother figure extending her arms with hands clasped, pleading and crying, before sinking to the floor as the lighting faded and the ensemble dancers crawled ever closer, circling around and enveloping her as the lights went out. The sadness of this part was cast off in part three, which began with bright lights, quick cheerful music, and more exuberant running and smiling dancers criss-crossing the stage. There was again the sense of playfulness exhibited in what might have been a game of tag. I was struck by the image of one of the male dancers running across the stage, taking long strides with his chest thrust out, smiling broadly; watching him, I felt the joy of unencumbered movement, of running freely through the warm grass in an open park.  As the final pair of dancers met in a leap caught deftly on the left of the stage, another pair of dancers entered from the right, mirroring the pair exiting to the left. This transition marked the beginning of the final part of Esplanade. This was marked by a great deal of physicality between dancers. I particularly enjoyed the twin rolling, which reminded me of wrestling.

The second piece of the evening was Rite of Summer, choreographed by William Evans in 2005 for the Bellingham Dance Gallery. The dancers in this piece were all female. One wore a green slip while the other six or seven wore white dresses. On the far left front of the stage was a white pedestal with a basket of rose petals on top. I felt like the girls in white were spirits or represented the inner emotions of the girl in green. As they danced they often kept their eyes on the girl in green. Overall this piece was very emotional, with the dancers convulsing and twitching with pained expressions, arms outstretched grasping, yet restrained or pulled back by some invisible force. I was really impressed by the controlled body movements and poses that they struck, many of which were quite difficult; for example, they did many lunges and deep squats, which I’ve done in karate, wrestling, and yoga, so I could sympathize with them as they struggled with trembling limbs to maintain their poses. Toward the end of the piece, the girl in green lay on the ground in a near fetal position, and the lighting turned red. The movements of the girls in white became jerky, their arms pushing out in pain and longing, perhaps fighting their desire for the basket, but eventually giving into that desire. They lifted the girl in green and gave the basket to her. She sprinkled flower petals on the girls one-by-one, and then dumped the remainder on the final girl. Each girl upon whom the petals fell sunk to the floor twitching.

The third piece was titled Straight Duet, and it was choreographed by Larry Keigwin and Nicole Wolcott in 2003. Miss Lalah Hazelwood returned to perform in this number opposite Joe Musiel. Both dancers wore plain white sports underwear, and the only prop was a queen size mattress. At the start of the piece, Miss Hazelwood tipped the mattress flat and flopped onto it in invitation, but Mr. Musiel’s character declined to join her, which prompted laughs from the audience. The entire piece seemed to chart the evolution of a relationship, progressing from happy flirtation to angry argument, with several ups and downs in between. I had a lot of admiration for their athleticism, for several of the movements required a great deal of strength to perform, including leaps, catches, and “tension” holds (where one person supports another at an odd angle). The movements of the dancers mimicked changes in relationships, with moments of tenderness, support, tension, and opposition. At the end of the piece, after Mr. Musiel’s character held the wrists of Miss Hazelwood’s character and shook her arms, they went round in circles pushing to spin the mattress before finally Miss Hazelwood had enough, up-ending the mattress into Mr. Musiel’s face, metaphorically slamming the door, which she then turned her back on and stalked resolutely chin-up off the stage.

The fourth and final piece of the evening was titled Nascimento Novo, and was choreographed by David Parsons in 2006 and set to the music of Milton Nascimento. The ten dancers in this number were dressed in white tops and brown bottoms. They performed a hopping dance step with their arms raised and lowered. This reminded me of a dance step that I use sometimes when dancing to techno. At one point they were in a half circle, and took turns leaping into the middle to dance solo. The final song had some English lyrics, “gathering together”, and featured rhythmic clapping by the dancers, which made me want to clap along with them. My companion felt this fourth piece was her favorite, but clearly tastes will vary. I liked it but enjoyed the others more, perhaps because this piece reminded me of going to a dance club. As I exited the building, a man of possibly South Asian origin commented to his family that the music seemed like a fusion of Eastern and Western styles. I also felt that way because of the instrument sounds I heard. Perhaps some of the arm, wrist and hand movements were meant to be evocative of non-Western dance styles, too; however, I am not sure if that’s actually the case.