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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > June > 16 > Entry
Review: ‘Big Range Dance Festival’
The Big Range Festival ended its two-week Austin stint with a grab bag of modern dance. Saturday’s program at Ballet Austin’s Austin Ventures studio was uneven. Big Range mixes local dance pieces with groups from other cities.
One of the more exciting offerings on Saturday’s program came from Brooklyn. “Supplant,” choreographed by Jamal Jackson, blended West African and modern dance in a collage of fury and fire. Dancers Tiffani Harris, Meredith Moore, Asha Rhodes and Jackson brought intensity and speed to their performances. When they all fell to the floor with a resounding echo at work’s end the audience let out a collective breath and immediately applauded.
The program’s other out-of-town group, Dallas-based Muscle Memory Dance Theatre, had a similar drive to their dancing, although choreographer Lesley Snelson-Figueroa’s creation had a relatively simplistic structure to it. Two groups of women faced off, using portable green picket fences as movable dividing lines. The movement of the fences got rather clunky and repetitive, but the dancing held the piece together well.
Simple choices worked well elsewhere. Local choreographer Sharon Marroquin danced with ease and grace in a parable-esque story of a fisherman who loves to fish, and then learns from his fish.
Festival producer Ellen Bartel’s Spank Dance continued in the quirky vein Bartel seems to be making her signature. With video by Eliot Haynes and a punk-lite score by Adam Sultan, five dancers cavorted about wearing then discarding baroque wigs and skirts. While the tone of the piece felt defiant and suggested a possible political critique, the various elements never quite added up . The program also included Cheryl Chaddick’s earnest “The Watchful Sleeping Heart” and “Cycle I,” an excerpt from Andrea Ariel’s ongoing Gyre project, which premieres its next installment in August.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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