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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2008 > January > 24 > Entry
Review: ‘Dance Carousel’ and ‘Lost/Found’
You have to hand it to Ellen Bartel. She’s a choreographer and dancer, yes, and also the one-woman much-needed leader of Austin’s indie dance scene whose leadership often flies under the radar.
For the fifth consecutive year, Bartel has once again staged “Dance Carousel,” her brilliant contribution to FronteraFest’s Long Fringe, which challenges 10 choreographers to create 4 one-minute dances. That makes for 40 dances in just 40 minutes, and Bartel doesn’t let more than a few seconds transpire between numbers. And that means that Tuesday night at the Blue Theater, the first of four “Dance Carousel” performances, the action whipped by.
Without a doubt, Bartel can rock the short form of her own challenge. Accompanied by inflatable life-size plastic dolls, Bartel and her three dances charmed with four very different, and very humorous, vignettes. Ending with the rousing ballet-inspired finale to “Swan Lake,” Bartel made a wonderfully humorous nod to every ballet fantasy every little girl has ever had. Take that Tchaikovsky!
Caroline Sutton Clark offered smart commentary on the very nature of watching modern dance. With a cell-phone-talking plant in the audience, Sutton opened a window to the secret — and not so secret — feelings of dancers and their audiences. Think viewers never wish themselves on stage? Think performers are never fed up with audiences? Think again.
Unfortunately, most of the remainder of the participants presented very underwhelming dances. Few seemed to grasp what it means to make the most of just a minute on stage. Myia Little got it. Her “Child’s Play” was a fun romp. But too much of the rest felt disconnected, short on impact or too reliant on matching moves directly to music.
Wednesday night at FronteraFest’s Long Fringe, it was “Lost/Found,” by Surface Tension Dance Company,” a new group led by **Rhianon Renae Kjar.
Unfortunately, “Lost/Found” was more lost than found, with lots of vague gestures, predictable modern dance moves and silhouettes, and little sense of any dramatic trajectory or arc to the moody multipart piece. A long and unnecessary intermission only drained more energy and momentum from the 45-minute show, as did a few interludes of fuzzy, collaged footage of the dancers in rehearsal. Huh? Nothing clicked here.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Reviews
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By Sarah G.
January 25, 2008 2:10 PM | Link to this
David is correct, SRSLY!
By David Ohlerking II
January 25, 2008 7:10 AM | Link to this
Ellen Bartel rules. SRSLY.