Recent Stories with tag dance

Alice Gosti and Devin McDermott in "Spaghetti Co." (Photo: Tim Summers)

Near the beginning of Alice Gosti's Spaghetti Co. (Something just happened at 1:19 p.m.) a big bowl of pasta with red sauce is just that...a big bowl of pasta with red sauce, probably very tempting if you showed up to the Northwest Film Forum prior to dinner--it's part of the Forum's "Live at the Forum" performance series and ends with an 8 p.m. show tonight, December 18.

But by the end, the food has transubstantiated: the pasta is a doughy yeastiness in the air, a slippery cushion on the floor, the red sauce a gouache over the canvas of the body. While the people in the front row have had occasion to use their protective trash bags, the people in the second row are primed to duck the occasional rogue strand that heads their way.

The three striking young women (Alice Gosti, Laara Garcia, Devin McDermott) gathered so decorously around the table--bright red lipstick, fingernails, toenails--have buried their faces in their plates, poured wine in torrents, grabbed handfuls of pasta from the serving bowl, and worried at huge bites like dogs with a bone. Their chic little white dresses (by Mark Ferrin) are stained, and they have pasta in their hair and between their toes. While it sounds like Gallagher, it's surprisingly deliberate in pace, and nuanced, illuminating both the beauty and comedy to pasta unfurling in flight through the air, while capturing facet after facet of the social matrix that spans the table. ... (more)

A very special event at a lovely space: this Friday, the Fremont Abbey, resident home of Karin Stevens Dance among other arts services, is bringing in dance innovator and pioneer Molissa Fenley (7:30 p.m.; tickets $15-$20).

Born in Las Vegas in 1954, Fenley spent part of her childhood in Nigeria, where her father worked for USAID, before returning to the US. She graduated with a degree in dance in 1975, and moved to New York where she began a career as a choreographer now in its fourth decade.

Fenley's choreography has been seen in Seattle twice over the past few years: in 2008, PNB presented her State of Darkness (1988), a solo set to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (Michael van Baker, writing for Seattlest, said of the piece that "[Jonathan] Porretta visibly drips with sweat, the sequence comes around again and again, and you start rooting for him like a gymnast at the Olympics but without the judges and crowd and you realize that one salute must be it, must be how it ends, when it ends"), and Seattle Dance Project commissioned a new piece from her for Project 1 in 2009.

But this weekend, Fenley will be performing her own work, giving audiences the chance to see an icon dancing her own choreography: two solos, 1985's Regions - Chair, Ocean Walk, Mesa and 2009's Mass Balance. Seattle Dance Project will also be previewing Places in the Air, a new piece commissioned from Fenley that will premiere as part of SDP's Project 4 this January.

Photo: Ben Kasulke

Thank god for Wade Madsen. I could watch that guy do anything. Eat dessert, for instance. Last night, I went to see Dayna Hanson's "Gloria's Cause" at On the Boards (through Dec. 5) and there he was, eating cherry pie. Big as life!

He was concerned, as I overheard from a conversation with dancer Jessie Smith, that if he, Wade, read a letter for her, we, the audience, might become confused that he was the letter's author--Paul Revere--rather than George Washington, which is the plum role he was really looking forward to playing. (Thus, I'm assuming, the cherry pie association, rather than the more immediate Warrant reference.)

That is another reason to be thankful, because honestly it is not very easy to track what's going on onstage, which ranges from reenactments of the Albany Congress in 1754 to the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War, while Jessie Smith and Jim Kent dance, the band Today! plays songs, and Madsen, Pol Rosenthal, Peggy Piacenza, and Hanson herself act out informal "real world" vignettes. Oh, and of course, there's the meta-commentary of the overheard moments as I described above.

I find myself grudgingly respectful of this palimpsest formalism; at times, "Gloria's Cause" plays like a Schoolhouse Rock for a new generation--you might be baffled at how anyone might learn something from it, but it's agreeable and it has a fun beat. On the didactic side, you learn about Deborah Sampson (danced by Jessie Smith), the woman who dressed as a man so she could enlist in the Continental Army.... (more)

Julie Tobiason, Timothy Lynch, Alexandra Dickson in Project Orpheus (Photo credit: zebravisual)

Seattle Dance Project is doing a "back by popular demand" revival of its Project Orpheus (through Sept. 25 at ACT), which had its premiere in 2008.

SDP's retelling of the Greek myth unites the talents of three choreographers, Eva Stone, Wade Madsen, and Olivier Wevers; and music that ranges from Steve Beresford to Steve Reich, with Anthony and the Johnsons ("Hope There's Someone") and Fauré as well.

It's stunningly sad. It's also raucous, petty, and sexy. As dance, at base it's modern, but informed by ballet and by the age and experience of its performers. The intimacy of the ACT space connects you viscerally with the effortful demands dance makes on the body, rather than gravity-defying ballet's spectacle. (I say that for contrast, not categorically.)

This doesn't happen that often, but I have to apologize for losing some of my critical wits during the performance; some moments I can't describe for you, which I suppose is one of the better reasons I could give for suggesting you go see it yourself. No one can promise catharsis, but if you're in the mood for it, this is a good stop. 

So, Orpheus is a famous poet and musician, but you know who's even more famous? Hades. That's perhaps why Project Orpheus opens with a dapper, suited Timothy Lynch standing standing, keeping a slow (heart) beat with his foot, eleven times. (Later he will reappear in front of you, lighting and blowing out a cigarette lighter, his neck craned forward, tightening the skin on his face so that the last thing your widening pupils take in is a death's head.) His arms take in the globe, describe the seas' waves; he reaches down to flat-palm the ground, blows dust away.... (more)

70,000 football fans. 1,000 random Seattle-area Facebook users. Eleven songs. Six and a half minutes.

If you happen to be watching the Seahawks half-time show (which should be right about when this post goes live, say 3:30 p.m.-ish, Sunday, Sept. 12th., I hope), you might notice a slightly unusual performance. Something like the bastard child of '80s guerrilla theater and musicals from Hollywood's Golden Age, the event has, over the past few weeks, become a local open secret. It is, after all, incredibly difficult to hide hundreds of people gathering at venues across the city to dance in unison. (The big honkin' speakers are also a little conspicuous.)

As Goldfinger so pithily stated: Once is coincidence; twice is happenstance; three times is enemy action. A dozen or so occurrences is a flash mob in training.

The Stadium Flash Mob is the brain-child of mob producer Egan Orion, with the help of choreographer Bobby Bonsey. The two are also responsible for Seattle's Glee Flash Mob, and Beat It, a Michael Jackson tribute flash mob. Flash mobs can range from highly choreographed versions, such as the Sound of Music mob performed in an Antwerp train station or the Sydney Harbour Dance-Off flash mob, to the more spontaneous and free-form mobs in which people gather in a public area to suddenly "freeze" or laugh.... (more)

Dancer/choreographer/curator Alice Gosti organizes Modern Dance Behind the Pink Door, a quarterly performance tonight at the Pink Door.

Modern Dance Behind the Pink Door. Dancer/choreographer Alice Gosti's quarterly curated contemporary dance evening at the Pink Door is tonight. The line-up features work by Gosti herself, Morgan Nutt, Anh Nguyen, Rachel Randall, Maya Soto, Alix Isom, Rashelle McKee, Anh Nguyen, A K Mimi Allin, and Vanessa DeWolf. Admission's free, but the show's dinner theatre-style, so show up early to eat or just show up early to drink, because the place could be packed well before the 10:30 p.m. start.

ARC Dance's Summer Dance at the Center. ARC Dance, a rather talented contemporary ballet company from up north, returns to Seattle Rep's stage for "Summer Dance at the Center," a mixed-repertoire evening of work from choreographers including Betsy Cooper, Penny Hutchinson (of Mark Morris Dance Group), Jason Ohlberg (of Chicago's Hubbard Street Dance), and artistic director Marie Chong, among others. I saw last year's performance and loved it, and there's only two performances left tonight and tomorrow. (Tickets $15-$25)

Sounds Outside Festival. Wunderkind Beth Fleenor--a young woman as adept at promoting avant-garde music as she is she is composing and performing it--is the organizing and driving force behind the fifth annual Sounds Outside Music Festival this Saturday at Cal Anderson Park (another lineup goes up next month). Sounds outside, though, features a fantastic lineup of talented contemporary jazz composers and musicians, making for an awesome afternoon of chilling in the park. Starting at one in the afternoon, for free, you can catch a line-up including Non Grata, Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble, Zubatto Syndicate, Wayne Horvitz/Sonny Clark Memorial Sextet, and NYC's Father Figures. The second half of the festival goes up in mid-August.

It was a one-night-only show, so I brought my camera in case you didn't make it. "L'Edition Française," for Bastille Day at the Triple Door, presented new work by Lily Verlaine (The Burlesque Nutcracker), Kitten LaRue (The Atomic Bombshells), and Olivier Wevers (Whim W’Him).

The three choreographers dug into the catalogues of artists such as Serge Gainsbourg, Francoise Hardy, France Gall, Brigitte Bardot, and others, to create an evening of burlesque that ranged in tone from the campy music video, to something like "forgotten" orgy scenes from An American in Paris, to sweaty, oiled-up erotica. That, in conjunction with the Triple Door barman conjuring up a Fernet Branca Negroni (out with the Campari, in with the Fernet!) made for a satisfactorily full-figured evening.

Ezra Dickinson of The Offshore Project, choreographed by Rainbow Fletcher, one of the participants in to 2010-2011 A.W.A.R.D. Show at OtB in January. Photo by Sean Johnson.

This morning, the list of 12 companies performing in the second Seattle A.W.A.R.D Show at On the Boards in January 2011 were announced, and it's, well, interesting. The backstory of the A.W.A.R.D. Show (which stands for "Artists with Audiences Responding to Dance") is that it was founded in NYC in 2005 by choreographer Neta Pulvermacher to have a new sort of dance laboratory and a new way of engaging audiences. The Joyce Theatre eventually partnered with them and a big cash grant ($10,000) was thrown on top, which is awarded (in part) by audience vote. Last year, the program expanded nationally to include about a half dozen cities including Seattle, where Boeing underwrote the prize grant.

Critics have long held that it's degrading to the artists to engage in a reality TV-style competition that risks encouraging them to appeal to the lowest common denominator to win, while supporters have pointed out that really, it's not so different from the normal process of giving out artistic development grants, but just makes it more public.

This year, the stakes have been increased in a very interesting way. While the 12 entries include a number of prominent contemporary dance artists--Zoe Scofield, Marissa Rae Niederhauser, Ellie Sandstrom, and Olivier Wevers' Whim W'Him returning for a second go--the line-up also include at least two artists/companies working in the cabaret vein: Cherdonna and Lou (dancers Ricki Mason and Jody Kuehner) and the real wildcard, boylesque star Waxie Moon (Marc Kenison).... (more)

Open Flight Studio, HERE/NOW. A quarterly project of Paige Barnes at the Open Flight Studio, HERE/NOW features a lineup of randomly paired dancers and musicians who will produce improvised performances (Saturday night 8 p.m.; $8 suggested donation at the door). It's very off-the-cuff and informal, and the results can either be complete flops or brilliantly inspired. Barnes has ensured that her guests are some of the most talented artists in Seattle; past participants have included dancers KT Niehoff, Jim Kent, Michael Rioux, and Mônica Mata Gilliam, and the musicians have included Tiffany Lin, ilvs strauss, Paris Hurley, and Jeff Huston. The lineups are kept secret until the performance, though, so prepared to be surprised.

The Trails Project at Marymoor Park. One of the many projects supported by 4Culture, The Trails Project (Sunday, 11 a.m.; RSVP preferred) features three artists commissioned to produce work that engages audiences with our regional trails. At first blush, it probably sounds like one of these cheesy community events you want to avoid like the plague, but true to form, 4Culture has commissioned three pretty brilliant artists. Susan Robb is a visual artist and sculptor whose work I don't know very well, but it looks cool. Paul Rucker, on the other hand, is a pretty amazing musician, composer, and visual artist, and a pretty nice guy to boot. And as for performer Stokley Towles, his last piece Waterlines, on the municipal water system, was so strangely compelling that I can't help but highly endorse his work.... (more)

It's a PNB premiere, this Coppélia (through June 13), the latest in a line of Coppélia premieres that stretches back to 1870. (Balanchine's interpretation of Petipa's version had its premiere in 1974.) Pacific Northwest Ballet and San Francisco Ballet co-produced this one, with luxurious, fairytale scenery and costume design by Roberta Guidi di Bagno.

There's a little teapot of a house, a huge, leafy canopy that stretches the width of the stage, and a book-and-mechanical-doll-strewn workshop where Dr. Coppelius (Peter Boal) is working on his dream of a lifelike young woman. Totally not creepy, I'm sure. Be prepared for everyone to clap each time the curtain goes up. The set and costumes are of a piece with the sweetly light-hearted score from Léo Delibes (conducted with monochromatic bounce by Nathan Fifield on opening night).

In theory, Coppélia is a story ballet, though I have a suspicion that if you plotted it out minute by minute, you'd find that dance advancing the narrative made up about forty percent of the total. The rest is Balanchine amusing himself--and the audience--with dancing around this parable.... (more)

Allison Hankins, Marissa Rae Niederhauser, and Spencer Moody in "stifle." Photo by Tim Summers

"It wasn't a full-blown near-death experience," dancer and choreographer Marissa Rae Niederhauser said in a recent telephone interview, "where I left my body and saw the light at the end of the tunnel and met God. It wasn't that type of near-death experience. But it was one of those, waking-up-to-your-own-frail-mortality moments."

She was referring to an event that happened a couple years ago, when, while performing onstage, she began choking on food. While she admits she was only unable to breathe for a matter of seconds (she didn't fully pass out, and completed the performance effectively without interruption), the experience was a transformational one.

"No one—for whatever reason—was able to come to my rescue," she continued. "I saw some people in the audience look very concerned. And some people were laughing. And some people looked angry. But nobody got up to aid me, even though I was in front of all those people. And I understand. I don't know if I'd do something different. Eventually what happened was that my diaphragm went into intense, painful spasms. I coughed it up and finished the dance in this strange, sort of euphoric state of being."

While terrifying, the experience proved artistically fruitful for Niederhauser, who has been exploring it in a series of pieces since, leading up to this weekend, when her company, Josephine's Echopraxia, presents stifle at the Northwest New Works Festival at On the Boards (Sat. & Sun., 8 p.m.; tickets $14). It's Niederhauser's most ambitious stage project to date, having previously produced a pair of dance films (Holding This For You (2008), and Tracings (post-production)), in addition to performing with companies like Maureen Whiting and Degenerate Art Ensemble, while presenting her own work in mixed repertory evenings at events throughout the Northwest.... (more)

As I sit here trying to cudgel some thoughts together in response to the Mark Morris Dance Group performance at the Paramount last night (also tonight 8 p.m., Sunday 2 p.m.), what's running through my mind is Sly and the Family Stone's "Dance To The Music."

MMDG "Jesu, Meine Freude" (Photo: Nan Melville)

And what I mean by "to," if I can drop a little Bill Clinton on you, is not "in accordance with the notes," but more like "facing the music"--which, literally, is what Morris was doing as he conducted "Gloria" last night, but is what he seems always to be doing, metaphorically. I suppose it's similar to looking hard at a painting for hours; yes, you'll become familiar with brush strokes, but you will also step into the whole (or not).

Let us turn now to a chapter of Genesis (Mark Morris, by Acocella): "He is listening to the music very hard, analytically--phrase lengths, key changes--but as he does so, an emotion is being born in his mind, an emotion that gradually eats the music, makes it his."

There. That's got it.

 

The Tudor Choir

"A Lake" (1991) finds Morris in an uncharacteristically unsaucy mood, his dancers taking springy steps and having a bit of a party that's interrupted by a mournful middle movement that bends them low.

If there's a lake involved, it's off a ways--this reminded me of Virginia Woolf visiting her family's lakeside cabin (though those shortish skirts wouldn't have cut it) and watching the sun and clouds play over the afternoon. How much work it is to have fun, sometimes.... (more)

Curiously, Mark Morris is 55 53 years old. It's hard in some ways to reconcile that figure with what you hear in his voice--he's irrepressible. He's made a long career in dancing out his pagan temperament, splayed against his catholic comprehension of the body. Of course Baroque satyrs get old, too, and maybe one reason they're often seen with grapes and wine is that they also age well.

In his Mark Morris preview on Crosscut, Roger Downey tells you that you can't miss one particular work in the upcoming program at the Paramount Theatre (Fri. & Sat 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m.): "Despite its exuberant title, 'Gloria' ranges across more emotions and moods in its half-hour than many a full-evening drama or ballet." (Hear Morris preview the evening himself, here.)

Morris first got inside the music, he says, while he was in the Franklin H.S. choir, a "motley and enthusiastic" group where he sang tenor. In 1981, when he created the dance, he was still fiddling with the hinges on the doors of perception, and what arrived was something like a rosy crucifixion, a cross-section of life's painful beauty and beautiful pain. Set to Vivaldi.

(Also on the program are Haydn's "A Lake" and Bach's "Jesu, meine Freude," which "talks about a bunch of Jesus-y things" and is intended as a tribute, just not to Jesus.)... (more)

Velocity Dance Center has to be thrilled--their first big show in their new space at 1621 12th Avenue played to two sold-out houses over the weekend. Admittedly, that's about 90 people each night, but if follow contemporary dance in Seattle and can subtract, you know that 90 is a lot more than, say, 25. A nice way to break in the Founders (Michelle Miller and KT Niehoff) Theater.

Jacinta Vlach

This show, SCUBA 2010, was part of Velocity’s national indie touring network (its partners are The Southern Theater in Minneapolis, Philadelphia Dance Projects, and ODC in San Francisco). While building a coterie of loyal fans is essential for a small dance group, sometimes boosterish love and acceptance gets a little stifling, artistically. Getting to tour in front of people who don't know you or your city's dance scene can be invaluable.

For audiences, it can be a blast, too. Friday night was the first time in my life that I've seen a dance work based on Orwell's Animal Farm, created by Jacinta Vlach, founder of the Bay Area's Liberation Dance Theater. LDT's core interests are "identity politics, race relations, gender inequalities, and marginalized communities," so Animal Farm is just the ticket. 

That said, you don't need to have the book in hand to get the gist of the dance. In addition to a pulsing score by Abdullah Ibrahim and Cinematic Orchestra, there are declamations about power's use and abuse (in a full version, video projections explore the revolutionary spirit through poster art). Vlach's choreography here is for three--two women (Vlach and Olivia Eng) in cotton jumpers dyed to look like "workers" blue overalls and a man (Rashad Pridgen) in a white linen jacket. "Fusion" is a word that's used to characterize Vlach's recipe: hip hop, modern, step, ballroom, tribal dance--but the results are what count and what you get is hybrid vigor. All three dancers keep your eyes glued to them--you can see why they were invited to Jacob's Pillow.... (more)

locust's "crushed" at Velocity Dance Center, part of a huge weekend of performance in Seattle. Photo by Gabriel Bienczycki.

Last week in The Stranger, choreographer KT Niehoff took Brendan Kiley to task for...well...a number of things. I have my own thoughts on the issue overall to share shortly, in a different story, but what I can totally agree with him about is his complaint that, "I don't understand why dance companies don't coordinate their schedules better—for months, next to nothing will happen, then BAM!" As someone who covers a lot of dance, I wouldn't go as far as "next to nothing," but scheduling coverage—particularly of one- or two-week shows—is a constant hassle, and not just with dance. If Brendan thought late April was looking busy, I have no idea what he's going to do this weekend.

First up, it's the closing weekend of the aforementioned Niehoff's company Lingo, whose A Glimmer of Hope or Skin or Light is finishing an unusually and delightfully long run at ACT Theatre (Thurs-Sat., tickets $18). Again, I'll have more to say about this tomorrow, but the response of audiences has generally been far more passionate than any of the reviews have let on. Not everyone has loved it, I'm sure, but plenty of people have expressed astonishment at the show. The culmination of a three-month, four-part experiment exploring the relationship between dancers and audiences, Glimmer places its audience in a party environment, complete with a live band, to radically shift the perspective on the choreographic exploration of interpersonal relationships explored throughout. That's a bad description, I'm sure, but I haven't seen it (being out-of-state at the moment), and I really regret that. If you're in Seattle, be sure to avoid my fate and buy your tickets now.... (more)

Photo: Kevin Kauer (killustrate.net)

KT Niehoff's Lingo dance project, after three months of smaller, intimate installations, has reached its apotheosis at ACT (through May 15), with Glimmer of Hope or Skin or Light, one of the more spectacular, unpredictable, and mood-altering performances I've ever been a party to. 

Niehoff says she wanted to break out of the proscenium-stage box, so Glimmer takes place in ACT's Bullitt Cabaret--a few areas for dance are laid out on the main floor, along with a riser for the live band, Ivory in Ice World.

Costumes hang in mid-air, people wander about sipping drinks, a set of seven makeup-masked, male and female "showgirls" in filigreed blue outfits circulate, dance, and spontaneously cry out with laughter (and, in my case, helpfully point out there's a coat rack near the door). 

They're the chorus, and throughout the evening they keep mingling with the audience--or the audience mingles with them. This kind of blurriness is what Niehoff wants and gets.

I don't want to describe too fully what the show presents, as part of its thrill begins the moment you step into the cabaret theater and there are no instructions about where to sit or stand. Suffice to say, if you missed Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle at SIFF the other weekend, all is not lost.

The program lists a Lead Showgirl (Kelly Sullivan, in white, with a headress) and a Coven (Bianca Cabrera, Ricki Mason, Michael Rioux, Aaron Swartzman)--all also made-up into otherworldly beings by Ben Delacreme. To a wide range of vocal and instrumental music from Why-have-I-never-heard-of-them-before? Ivory in Ice World (the score is by Jabon aka "Scott Colburn"), the dancers "tell" a story that--if it indeed possesses hope or light--places the emphasis on just a glimmer of it. Cradling a sick or dying body is a recurring theme. ... (more)

Jeremy saw a seedling version of "this is a forgery" last June. Thanks to a $10,000 prize from The A.W.A.R.D. Show, it's now an hour-long solo performance, by Amelia Reeber.

"this is a forgery" (this weekend and next at Erickson Theater off Broadway) raises the question of what "this" is. Life? Identity? Or is it a pun--a forgery as in a place where souls are forged? "How to be" is a not uncommon topic for a younger choreographer, but Reeber's sense of humor keeps earnestness from hogging the spotlight. Her collaboration with Joe Moore, Sam Mickens, and Amiya Brown not only keeps this solo from self-indulgence, but results in a quirky dreamworld that's more than backdrop.

I couldn't decide if it felt a little padded to fill the hour, or if the work wants you to accept its levels of structure--and not look for bold choreographic leaps. There are distinct differences between the three movements, which are related I think to the set, which holds, from deep left to fore right, the bottom torsos of mannequins, a collection of mini-ziggurat and -temples, and an anchor. 

The first movement opens with a video projection of an egg being inseminated--a horde of waggle-tailed sperm swimming right at you--before a golden blob of spirit joins the egg as it divides. Reeber first appears a short (teddy-ish) black dress and panties, along with (on the projection screen behind her) a four-foot-tall disappearing cat, a person in a polar bear costume, and a sort of troublesome spirit, who dispenses captions of personal criticism and mystic mumbo-jumbo about the state Reeber's chakras are in. A score of guitar chirps by Sam Mickens provides accompaniment, without feeling that musical.... (more)

"Awesome's" "West," directed by Matthew Richter, opening at On the Boards Thurs., April 21. Photo by Victoria Lahti.

First off, tonight is the opening night of "Awesome"'s West at On the Boards. Directed by Matt Richter, in West the seven art rock/cabaret/musical theatre artists that are "Awesome" plunge deep into an exploration of the themes of American westward expansion. Beyond that, I really don't know much about the show, but if you've never seen "Awesome," these are some crazy-talented musicians who aren't making your standard musical theatre-fare. For more information, the kids at Teen Tix speed-dated most of the company in the guise of "interviewing" them (I'll admit, Basil Harris is kind of dreamy...), so feel free to check that out for more info.

Speaking of On the Boards, tonight is also the opening night of Amelia Reeber's this is a forgeryat the Erickson Theatre off Broadway, which originally debuted at OtB last year at the Northwest New Works Festival. It's a quirky solo dance work that, as Reeber told me in an interview last fall, ironically came out of her exasperation with dance incorporating large amounts of video. "Ironically" because this is a forgery features a lot of video components, including giant cats and birds, but Reeber has a very unique approach to interacting with video that blew me away when I saw the piece at NWNW. Reeber went on to become the winner of the first Seattle edition of The A.W.A.R.D. Show in December, which came with a $10,000 first-prize grant that she's used to fund turning this is a forgery into an evening-length work, and this is something that I can't recommend highly enough. You've got two weekends, tickets are only $15, go see it.

And finally, speaking of The A.W.A.R.D. Show...and On the Boards...well, The A.W.A.R.D. Show is returning to On the Boards this fall. Started at NYC's Joyce Theatre in 2006, the show is an attempt to encourage new audiences to engage with dance by putting a series of artists in competition with one another for an audience vote that carries some serious bank. The concept has been controversial amongst artists pretty much everywhere it's gone (it's since expanded to several cities throughout the U.S.), but with that said, a $10,000 kitty is a whopping opportunity for almost any artist (two runners-up get $1,000 a piece), and probably worth the effort considering the tenuous state of arts funding in Seattle next year. So if you're a dancer/choreographer who's looking to compete, follow this link to the OtB site and fill out your application by May 11.

Morgan Thorson's "Heaven." Photo by Cameron Whittig.

Sitting in the audience at On the Boards Friday night, watching Morgan Thorson's Heaven, I got to thinking about a line from Blackadder the First. Edmund, having been made Archbishop of Canterbury for the explicit purpose of preventing nobles from leaving their estates to the church rather than the crown, finds himself begging a sinner on his deathbed not to repent, explaining that "the thing about heaven is that heaven is for people who like the sort of things that go on in heaven. Like, well, singing, talking to God, watering potted plants."

Actually, my guest had pointed out this quote before we went in, based on what she'd read about Thorson's dance collaboration with the band Low. It started as a (nervous) joke, but as the night went on, it became more and more apt.

Other things I thought about watching Heaven: I recalled how Julian Barnes envisioned heaven in A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, as a place where people get to do whatever they want until they get bored (and they all get bored, except the ones who really like watering potted plants). And then I tried to recall the name of Dante's book on heaven, from The Divine Comedy. There's Inferno, and Purgatorio, but what's the third...?

Okay, so maybe the problem with Heaven is that a work which explores only one half of a dichotomy is probably doomed from the start. Paradise (there it is!) in traditional Judeo-Christian thought is really just the opposite of Hell: in the one, you're exposed to God, and in the other, you're denied His grace, and that's your suffering, because what could possibly be worse? All the sado-masochistic fantasies of exactly what constitutes eternal damnation are wrought from the desire to fill that simple absence with something tangible. Unable to imagine the exquisite loss of God's grace, we conjure up hell in more human terms. But heaven? What are you supposed to do with that?

For Thorson, apparently, it's all about the longing for the sublime. At least longing and yearning were what I saw onstage. As the show opens, the nine performers (seven dancers and the two members of Low) slowly parade in unison around the perimeter of the stage, all dressed in white costumes with some cross-dressing thrown in for some reason. This goes on for like ten minutes. I don't know why. Then there's organ music, and choral harmonies, and some bowing (again, no idea why) as the dancers, in long, languid phrases, prance about, looking up, arms open, and yearn for rapture, the loss of body, and the immersion of self into something greater.

For 45 minutes this goes on, until finally Thorson gets around to dealing with the fact that these people still have bodies that tie them to earth, which will be expressed--I kid you not--by having the dancers jump up in the air and fall down.... (more)

Morgan Thorson's "Heaven." Photo by Cameron Whittig.

Time for long overdue notice: starting last night and running through Sunday, On the Boards is playing host to Morgan Thorson's Heaven (tickets $24), a collaborative project between the Minneapolis-based choreographer and indie rock outfit Low, whose members Alan Spearhawk and Mimi Parker will be playing live onstage with Thorson's crew of nine dancers.

As Deborah Jowitt of the Village Voice described it when the piece came to New York late last year, "Heaven, in Minneapolis choreographer Morgan Thorson’s piece of the same name, is a place that imperfect people labor to reach. In terms of this yearning, religious zealots have something in common with dancers, whose daily search for possibly unattainable perfection molds their lives."

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.... (more)

On Saturday, Velocity Dance Center organized a parade/move-in to its new digs on 12th Avenue, in the former home of the Capitol Hill Arts Center. Landlord Betty Linke was true to her word that she preferred an arts group take over the space, and thanks to a grant from King County--and digging deep on the part of Velocity donors--Velocity was able to turn the building into a new dance center. Velocity cultivates local dancers through classes and rental of its rehearsal and performance spaces, and produces dance series of its own.

A shot of the Glenn Kawasaki Studio at the new Velocity Dance Center space. Through the window to the left, you can even see the home they've been displaced from. Photo coutesy of Velocity Dance Center.

This Saturday, March 27, the long, agonizing wait is finally over, when Velocity Dance Center--whose future was cast into uncertainty with the purchase and refurbishment of Oddfellows Hall--officially opens the doors of their new space in the old Capitol Hill Arts Center building at 1621 12th Avenue. It's one of precious few success stories for arts organizations over the past few decade, when first rising rents and then a bad economy made it seem impossible for arts groups to survive in Seattle.

Velocity originally opened in 1996 and quickly established itself at the center of Seattle's dance community. Hosting both entry-level and professional development classes, as well as providing badly needed rehearsal space and serving as a performance venue, the overall health of contemporary dance in Seattle and the greater region has been closely tied to the institution. But in 2007, Oddfellows Hall, where Velocity occupied three separate studio spaces, was sold to Ted Schroth, the developer behind Trace Lofts, among others.

The sale, and the attendant 300 percent rent increase, was a huge blow to the local arts and non-profit community, who had been taking advantage of the building's cheap rents and who were rapidly being displaced elsewhere on the Hill. The Oddfellows sale became the sine qua non of the transformation and gentrification of Capitol Hill (among others, Freehold Theatre left the neighborhood and now operates in Belltown), and a threat to the arts overall in a white hot real estate market that was quickly pricing them out of the urban core. ... (more)

Amy O'Neal and Ellie Sandstrom in "too," this Thurs.-Sat. at NW Film Forum. Photo courtesy of amyo/tinyrage.

"Also, I'm really fascinated with ninja lore. Like a lot of people," said Amy O'Neal, and we both started to chuckle. Having just watched Ellie Sandstrom and her rehearse at the Northwest Film Forum, where O'Neal's dance piece too will be the second installment in their new "Live at Film Forum" series (this Thurs.-Sat.; tickets $12-$15), we had retreated to Caffe Vita to talk over coffee, and were getting sidetracked discussing In the Fray, the solo dance piece O'Neal will be debuting at this year's Northwest New Works Festival.

While she offered the cerebral description of the show as being "about how we create fictitious fights with our self," she had politely gone on to explain how the movement was coming out of her longstanding interest in fighting (though she admits to never actually having gotten into a fight), boxing (which she was "obsessed with" for two years), and, of course, ninjas.

"A lot of times, when I'm dancing or teaching, I'm imagining dancing with swords, or having some sort of imaginary foe that you're dancing with," she said. "A lot of times, I'll be like, 'Okay, this leg comes over here'"—she mimed something swinging toward her head—"'imagine someone's kicking over your head and you have to duck that. Imagine the ninja stars coming at you, you have to get down to the floor or that thing is going to stick you in the head.' I'll use things like that in class so that people will do something, they'll put themselves in a scenario so that something's at stake."... (more)

There's a fake wholesomeness to classical performing arts that I've never quite understood. I've seen it at the opera, when older patrons complained about how a director "spoiled" a pretty aria by dramatizing the rape or murder that goes along with it. Similarly, all parents subscribe to the right to drag little girls in tutus to ballet, without glancing at the program--trained, perhaps, by ballet's preference for the romances of Barbies & Kens. But this cheats the childless, for one, and parents themselves, for another, of the chance to deal with adult emotions and situations.

Ulysses Dove's "Serious Pleasures" is not for kids. Not much about PNB's "3 by Dove" (through March 28) is. The suggested anal sex, fellatio, and masturbation aside, there's a keening sexual anguish that pervades the work. It assumes that you've been there, and done...that...and that...and that. Maybe not that, but you've heard about it. From the opening, when Lucien Postlewaite as the Narrator, hooked onto two bars on the wall, unwinds himself and his kinked imagination, there's space being made for an artistic perversity. The staging is by Parrish Maynard.

"No regrets, no retreats, no looking back," Dove once said, but "Serious Pleasures" is precisely that look back--in this case, to the '80s club scene, where as a sort of sexual Orpheus, the Narrator wanders among the shades of old passions and desires. (The '80s had that effect on people--see Whit Stillman's Last Days of Disco.) Louvered banks of dark gray doors burst or swing lazily open, revealing one tight, lithe body after another. Hair swirls in backlit cascades. Women pose as if in peep show booths. The music (Robert Ruggieri) is a pounding club beat. Men (Jordan Pacitti getting his satyr on) stot their way across the stage.

It's not, actually, to shock. Dove interpolates some Balanchine technique to further show off the body erotic, but it only emphasize the leaky libidinal boats we all sail in. As Freud noted, if it's not sex, it's death, and underpinning the spectacle in this underworld of statuesque desire is a remorseful knowledge that it's all already happened, already done. And the Narrator rewinds himself on the wall, restating Henry Miller's "rosy crucifixion."... (more)