The annual Danceworks Art to Art concert of new work by choreographers partnered with artists from other disciplines is always issue laden and interesting. Nothing lasts long; there’s precious little time to absorb actions or decipher intentions. Segments can feel too private, too obvious or too dense. The point is to try things. This year, artists were given a theme: recycling. Any interpretation of the word was acceptable.
Mauriah Donegan Kraker’s solo fever/hiways opened the show. With an explosive backward movement, she dropped to the floor. She might have stepped off a cliff or, less vertically, set herself on a challenging life path. A thoughtful, even methodical realist, but vulnerable, she seemed to take repeated risks, fail, advance, think, try again. No end was reached; she’s 20-something. A non-directive soundscape by Kimberly Lesik and Andres Guzman accompanied her solitary progress.
As prologue to See Me See You , choreographer Madeleine Schoch looked from face to face at every audience member, establishing intimacy. Then, in an expressive voice from the back row of the small theater, Ryan Hussey recited his poetry about the tedium of grieving while Schoch, I think, tried to rid her body of each of its stages. Sean Ellis’ music carried her forward.
Manipulating throwaways on a moveable overhead projector downstage, Anja Notanja Sieger created such fascinating visuals from bubble wrap and plastic pom-poms in seen///unseen that choreographer Beth Ratas could do little but submit until her body seemed made from the same stuff, which was likely the point.
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Co-creators Kyra Boprie and Chad Nelson’s passionate, theatrical For total victory, we must make total sacrifice presented Earth as a growing junkyard. The survival of the six marvelous young dancers at the work’s heart seems worth any sacrifice. Nelson, chained to garbage and producing more while videos of global pollution played, was a dreadlocked desperado.
Ed Winslow’s lighting, important all night, was crucial in Disconnect Revive, an absorbing, shadow-laden vision of the body’s regenerative processes, a dream of death/health danced by co-choreographers Cari Allison and Zach Schorsch partnering the dancing shadows of Sam Patrick and Marissa Waraska as filmed and edited by Tricia Breimon.
Six works were planned but choreographer Catey Ott Thompson suffered a mild concussion early in the week that kept her from performing. Her piece with performance artist Kim Miller was about how modern dance pioneers understood modern dance. This would have been the perfect context for that consideration.
