The Ohio University School of Dance Spring Concert presented a variety of dances by faculty and students as well as reconstructed works by Jean Erdman and Alwin Nikolais. The concert ran May 20-21 and May 28-29, 2009 at 8pm in the Shirley Wimmer Dance Theater, Putnam Hall in Athens, Ohio.
The show opened with a few of Jean Erdman’s solo studies. Jean Erdman, a modern dancer and choreographer, was a protégée of Martha Graham who formed her own dance company in 1944. She was known for choreographing award-winning musicals and marring writer Joseph Campbell. Excerpts from the documentary Dance & Myth: The World of Jean Erdman introduced each solo, and Erdman’s narration described her inspiration and intended meaning. Passage (1946) was about “flight without physically leaving the ground…a leap into spiritual space.” It had a quiet and hypnotic feel. OU student soloist, Kathryn Jankord, performed in a transparent gold lamet dress that shimmered in the lights as she gently undulated her torso. With frequent balances on one leg, the challenging part of this piece is to remain grounded.
The second Erdman solo, Creature on a Journey (1943), was inspired by Erdman’s trip to Bali. To the clanging of bells a perky bird-like character with a rooster headpiece and bold-colored Balinese garb traveled with her torso popping in and out and her feet either proudly strutting heel-to-toe or swiftly shuffling out and in. Her arms were spread wide like wings with cupped hands, a la Martha Graham. Erdman explained how this piece explored “a delight in moving…and the human condition of going forward and backward.” OU student dancer, Tiffany Alastanos, smiled joyfully and appeared to go sightseeing as she traveled forward, backward, and around the stage space until focusing on a single spot to finish. Like many of Erdman’s solos, Creature on a Journey followed a short narrative with perceptible rising action and a resolution—as Erdman put it, “the creature arrives in a totally new place by the end of the piece.”
Hamadryad (1948), the final Erdman solo, was “about the sheer enjoyment of movement…joyous outdoors movement.” In the program notes, Hamadryad was defined as the Greek word for “spirit belonging to a particular tree.” The OU student soloist, Monica Pack, began in a goddess-like pose with her chest and chin lifted to the sky and her arms pressing outward with strong flexed hands. Then she swirled the air beside her torso and pumped her arms upward and outward. Pack conjured a wonderful earthiness. She wore a green dress and her bushy hair long so it bounced joyfully as she performed small hops in parallel. It was easy to imagine the birth of this movement in the summer hills of Bennington where Erdman was a student with Graham.
Please Don’t Feed the Animals was a modern student-choreographed trio by Anna Stewart. Three women wore earth-toned broom skirts and explored a series of memorable task-oriented gestures with partnering and intriguing changes of focus. For example, one dancer was held upside-down in an L-shape by the other two dancers who, rather than look at their human cargo, scanned the space with an eerie indirect focus. The dancers frequently lifted their skirts to reveal tenuous tiptoeing, counted with their fingers, jerked an invisible key in an invisible ignition, and laboriously lunged and scooped with their arms. To end the piece, all of these gestures were united in a unison phrase. The music by Iron and Wine added to the rustic-feel of the piece with their folk melodies and scratchy guitar sounds.
“…reveal…” by OU student John Bohuslawsky fixated on one intimate image. The entire piece took place on a large square of cardboard lit with a single spotlight. This setting created a creepy captivity for a crouching woman, played by Jennifer Petrie, who wore an oversized fabric-heavy dress and scrawled on the ground with her hands. She wrote in lines and then eventually scribbled around herself in a circle. Epic choral music by Alfred Schnittke dominated the scene and loaded Petrie’s stillness and minimal movement with drama. Eventually some blue side lighting crept in to illuminate Petrie as she slowly stood and shifted her weight from one leg to the other. Next she wandered along the edges of the cardboard while petting the invisible boundaries of her cage. After defining her space, the single spotlight reappeared, and Petrie returned to her crouching pose to resume writing until the end. Like the Petrie’s on-going writing, the content of which I will never know, Bohuslawsky’s scene imprinted a singular image with no explanation.
Closing the first act, Seeing That Sound, by OU student Kelly Skala, exhibited a mix of sign language and lyrical dance. Six smiley female dancers wore t-shirts decorated with hand-prints and walked or lunged into various formations while continuing to sign with their hands. They performed in silence other than the sounds of squishing toes and some clapping. Occasionally they incorporated full-bodied actions, which extended the hand signing, but most of the action returned to unison audience-directed signing. After the piece I heard audience goers trying to decipher the signs. Some said they thought they saw “turtle,” “beautiful,” and “brush your teeth.” To me, the dance was so awash with signing that it was difficult to appreciate the unique phrasing of signed gestures.
During intermission, OU dancers changed into casual t-shirts and yoga pants and piled together in the entrance hall to perform a structured group improvisation. Some performers functioned as a clapping chorus of dancers while one or two soloists explored physical contact points with the surrounding walls. A live musician accompanied the dancers with a guitar that he manipulated with a cello bow and feedback from an amp. Viewers were sparse since most audience members stayed in their theater seats to talk and relax.
Alwin Nikolais’ Noumenon (1953) opened the second act. Assistant Professor Tresa Randall reconstructed the work from videos in the OU’s School of Dance Nikolais Collection. After studying and performing with Hanya Holm, American dancer and choreographer Alwin Nikolais (1910-1993) developed his own theatrical modern dance works. Nikolais identified with abstract artists like Dali, and his artistic philosophy situated the dancing body as carrying equally weighted messages as narratives or other theatrical materials. As Nikolais put it, “the art of motion which, left on its own merits, becomes the message as well as the medium.” His artistic philosophy was apparent in Noumenon where dancers pushed and stretched the boundaries of fabric sheaths that masked and abstracted their form.
After a long prelude of kooky electronic reverberations, cold green and silver lights revealed three identical figures who wore stretchy rectangular bags and sat erect on benches. All of their movements were performed in unison, which was impressive since the dancers were blind and the music was free-metered. Nikolais’ soundtrack included UFO-like sound effects, which to me were reminiscent of B-rated invasion films of the 1950’s. The dancers shifted and morphed into various angular positions beneath the fabric to create solid and bold geometric forms. They moved from wide wall-like shapes to narrow pin-like shapes. They appeared large and intimidating standing on their benches, and when they condensed into small triangular shapes on the ground they appeared slight. The human form was at times unrecognizable beneath the costumes. In the end the mysterious shapes folded their arms at their chests and the fabric stretched to reveal the roundness of the human head. The term noumenon comes from Kant’s philosophy of a thing-in-itself—the assumed but not truly known reality that exists behind all of our sensory perceptions. While viewing this piece, I had to suspend my disbelief that behind these inhuman forms in space were people posing and manipulating the fabric.
Nikolais’ reconstructed work was followed by If x, then Y, a solo choreographed and performed by OU Student Justin Middlebrooks. He was a strong and precise mover with an athletic physique. His style effectively combined modern, hip-hop, and lyrical in seamless and dynamic phrases. For example, after performing a series of torso twists with his hands wrapping around his ribs he dove fluidly into an inversion and performed a hip-hop freeze by suspending his legs in the air. While the solo was well-performed and engaging, I felt like I was watching an audition piece. Also, the ending puzzled me—after all the active energy and exciting phrase work, Middlebrooks ended with a defeated look and passively swung his arms by his sides.
As She Is, by OU student-choreographer Allison Garcia, featured a female soloist who wore early nineteenth-century undergarments and proudly postured her torso. Set to Dario Marianelli’s music from the recent Pride and Prejudice film, the soloist also occasionally flaunted an awkward mix of ballet and modern skills like tour-jetes, inversions, and grande assembles. Eventually, two other women wearing tight black lacey tank tops and tights joined the soloist, echoed some of her movements, posed demurely, and traveled on and off stage. In the end, the trio settled in a reclining pose where they draped one arm seductively over their knees. It was unclear whether or not they were claiming ownership of their sexuality or exploiting it.
The final duet, Fables & Ability, choreographed by Adriana Durant, was packed with excitement. The long, angular lines and exuberant, African-inspired movement reminded me of Garth Fagan’s style. Dancers Jessica Deats and Justin Middlebrooks threw straight limbs up and out in every direction in space. They lunged and spiraled and leaped, and then when they had my attention, they drew me into a slow and dreamy procession along a diagonal where they repeatedly placed their hands on their shoulders and gently twisted their torsos away from the audience.
This eclectic concert displayed the OU dancers’ virtuosity as well as some significant historical works by American modern choreographers. Most of the audience was made up of OU students who were required to view this performance and write papers on its meaning. Those students have a lot of material to digest and consider.
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