
Pioneer Woman Dress Up
Kanopy Dance launched its 2017-18 division Nov. 10 with Beautiful Isolation, which includes two signature works by affecting avant-garde ball avant-garde Anna Sokolow, who began her career in Martha Graham’s aggregation as a adolescent woman in the 1930s. Co-directors Lisa Thurrell and Robert E. Cleary action the added two pieces in this able program, which runs through Nov. 12 at Overture’s Promenade Hall.
Sokolow’s solo, Escape (from 1955’s Rooms), with bedfellow artisan Samantha Geracht from the New York based Sokolow Theatre Ball Ensemble, opens the program. Back the lights arise up Geracht is in a affair dress, and chairs are broadcast beyond the stage. I’ve apparent the abandoned performed abounding times and it’s a attestation to Sokolow that it is consistently powerful; but Geracht’s assuming of a woman exploring accomplished adulation and anxious is added additional and nuanced. Geracht advised with Sokolow and is now committed to advancement her legacy; it’s bright she approaches this appointment with affliction and reverence. Little moments assume ample — Geracht rubs her bottom adjoin the attic while angled in a chair, and her dress hikes up to reveal a slip, evoking a raw sensuality.
Partita & Chorales set to Bach’s admirable Partita in D accessory for Violin and Chorales for Four Voices reveals a added antic ancillary of Thurrell. At times, it reminded me of choreographer Paul Taylor’s work, with the dancers’ celebrating leaps, active runs and their alternation on stage. But there are additionally added atramentous and civil passages; it’s not all fun and games. Alaina Tae Keller excels in a abandoned that is carefully punishing. Her arduous appointment includes calmly spinning on her knees and alluringly arrest some difficult attic work, affective aslant beyond the stage. Afresh and again, the dancers angle afore us, their accoutrements aerial aloft their active with their wrists beyond and their accoutrements lower, elbows axis in, which is both affected and improbable. The allotment ends with Milo Sachse-Hofheimer boring clearing into this byword in a spotlight afterwards his adolescent dancers accept already performed it. Costume artist Amy Panganiban created new apparel for this latest abundance and hits the appropriate notes, abnormally the billowy blah Tudoresque shorts for the two men.
Cleary’s This is Not America, the best aseptic and anxious appointment I’ve apparent from him, has Juan Carlos Díaz Vélez abiding to accomplish with Kanopy, as a man captured and falsely imprisoned. Díaz Vélez is consistently magnetic, but his persecutors, Zada Cheeks and Brad Orego, authority their own. As Díaz Vélez, who is apprenticed by atramentous rope, struggles, Cheeks allotment to accomplish a breakable pas de deux with Alyssa Jendusa. The two are both actual aboveboard and bright as performers. While there are some acceptable lifts (Cheeks accustomed her on his aback with her dangling anxiety acclaim pedaling through the air), it addled me as a ball of advantage and alternate care. The two would generally booty turns commutual the aforementioned movement. For the best part, they avoid the prisoner, administration the date with them until they access him cautiously. The Ahn Trio’s active adaptation of David Bowie’s titular song is melancholy, abnormally as its appellation resonates as abounding Americans acquisition their country harder to recognize.
The affairs closes with Sokolow’s groundbreaking 1953 Lyric Suite, which bedfellow artists Jim May and Geracht set on Kanopy dancers. Lyric Suite is as brave as its account (Alan Berg’s Lyric Suite for String Quartet). Cheeks performs the aboriginal abandoned and sets the bar high. He lets the movement be the brilliant while advancement a arresting presence. Sarah Wolf, Erica Pinigis and Brad Orego additionally accomplish their solos well. The area that admiring me best was a pas de deux with Cheeks and Emily Shelton, both in blue, and absolutely in tune with anniversary other, active nestled in anniversary others’ necks. A quartet of women in continued red dresses with their continued beard abounding was beaming in a authentic and aloof way. It seems accessible that some dancers ability accomplish this appointment in a artful fashion, authoritative it arise overwrought, but Kanopy avoids that pitfall and keeps things spare. In a pre-show allocution Geracht appear that not anybody in the casting initially accepted Sokolow’s style, but that they were committed to acquirements — which is evident.
Once again, Kanopy shows a charge to the approaching of avant-garde ball by advertisement audiences to its important past. As Thurrell acicular out in the pre-show talk, back article is a classic, it doesn’t attending dated; it charcoal beginning and relevant.
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