Sunday last, after a weekend of moving, I headed down to the Erickson Theatre off Broadway for the closing night of the BOOST Dance Festival, organized by choreographer Marlo K. Martin of eXit Space, and that might account for some of my prickliness in writing about the lineup. Of the seven pieces presented, only two really rose above the fray, the rest being under-developed or academic in their vocabulary. But that said, it was a great opportunity to see some fine young dance artists, even if the choreography was occasionally lacking.
To begin with what I liked about some of the pieces I didn’t, I have to call out two dancers: Karen Grady-Brown and Anne Motl. I first saw Grady-Brown in Kristina Dillard’s Heavy on the Nymphs last month as part of Break a Heart at On the Boards (re-presented at BOOST). Even though she’s mostly being called on to flounce around doing nymph-ish things, she stands out for having a subtle, gestural control that goes a step beyond formal training. And at BOOST, she followed up Heavy on the Nymphs by appearing in Tesee George’s Conversations, which gave her more solo opportunities.
Anne Motl was the only dancer called on to perform triple duty, and whether she’s nymphing about with Grady-Brown, mugging in Bake You a Cake, or getting a serious cardio workout in Martin’s own i.see.you., Motl demonstrates versatility and charisma.
As for the works themselves, the only two which really spoke to me were Martin’s i.see.you. and Kristin Hapke’s (of tindance) I need this poetic. These two pieces were more dynamic, more cognizant of space and geometry, and finally more accomplished in their movement language than the others. One moment that struck me was in Hapke’s piece: dancer Hendri Walujo leaves a pairing to take a pose that looks a lot like the Crane stance from The Karate Kid. It’s a brief moment, but he makes a series of small but precise gestural movements that really demonstrate the subtlety of how movement can speak. It was a beautiful moment in a beautiful piece.
Martin’s i.see.you. was a great way to close out the night. Athletic and demanding, with dramatic shifts in tempo and a great lineup of dancers from NW Dance Syndrome, it sent the audience out into a rainy night on a high note. In the relatively short piece, Martin offers creative pairings, some lovely solo work, and some great ensemble movement. In short, the last two pieces really made the evening for me.
In terms of the rest of the pieces, two I’d seen before. Heavy on the Nymphs is all right but but under-realized. It starts with the four nymphs, and then shifts to Stacee Raber-Nault singing “When I Fall in Love” while being trailed by Theodora Fogarty, working on the hem of her wedding dress. The piece is based on the Persephone myth, and maybe Dillard intends to build it out into a longer work, but as it is, I don’t really see what she’s trying to do with it.
Gabriel Bruya’s Bake You a Cake I saw in a slightly reduced form at 12 Minutes Max a few months ago, and it’s another piece that just doesn’t seem to be realizing much. For one thing, no cake is actually made in the piece, despite a lot of baking props left out on one of three tables onstage. Both times it’s nagged me to watch Chekhov’s gun dictum be violated for no reason, particularly in a dance work, which usually don’t rely much on sets and props. Basically, the piece consists of three dancers in Fifties-style house dresses who come out wearing Stepford Wives smiles, waltz about a bit, get in and out of heels, and then parade about with cakes. It feels like Bruya wants the piece to explore gender, but in execution it seems like she’s simply relying on the inherent irony of kitsch to make the point without digging deeper. (That said, she did a great performance in Martin’s piece.)
Kristin Legg’s love me/hate me/hold me/hurt me featured an ensemble of six dancers in slips and undergarments, which made the piece feel a bit like a burlesque. It was hard to figure out how mimed violence (like choking) fit with otherwise comic but toothless sex romps. Tesee George’s Conversations had its moments, but didn’t demonstrate a lot of variety or use of the space. And finally, Sarah Mercer’s Lamentations was certainly not bad by any means, but it seemed a bit over-wrought, an exploration of exquisite suffering and violence (the program notes included quotes from A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier and the Book of Lamentations), and the explicit reference to African music and movement was a slightly uncomfortable artistic appropriation (particularly paired with Keller Williams’ own Afrobeat appropriation, “Song for Fela”).
Still, the great thing about a festival like this is that it serves as sort of a buffet luncheon of contemporary dance, providing a much needed opportunity for choreographers and dancers to present work (and works-in-progress) and reaching out to new audiences. Now only if there were more support for evening-length works…