Recent arts coverage:
- Evolutionary biology. Aesthetic determinism. Live action role playing. The Rude Mechs are making a new play again
- Suburban battlefield: Women fight invisible foe in Amie Siegel’s ‘Black Moon’
- In eerie paintings by Ana Fernandez, a house isn’t just a house
More arts coverage | Follow this blog on Twitter @artsinaustin | Read recent arts reviews
Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > June > 22 > Entry
Review: Blue Lapis Light’s ‘Impermanence’
Dancers repelling off tall downtown buildings, bursting through showers of creatively manipulated light. Or dancers floating on zip lines far overhead the Austin streetscape.
The site-specific aerial dances created by Austin choreographer Sally Jacques have always traded on spectacle — chiefly the spectacular marvel of performers doing dramatic stunts which are then framed with a lot of visual and aural artifice — even if those spectacles haven’t always charted deep artistic trajectories.
But unfortunately, in ‘Impermanence,’ Jacques latest work and the third created for the J. J. Jake Pickle Federal Building in downtown Austin, the spectacle never quite makes an appearance.
Having dancers harnessed to repelling gear or maneuvering on suspended aerial silks ultimately leads to a self-limiting movement vocabulary. After all, there’s only so many things a body can do when it’s tied up or wrapped up. And if those handful of moves or poses — striking an arabesque of sorts after pushing back from a building, a slow fluttering of arms, or twisting and hanging from an aeriel slik — are just strung together tentatively or repeated repetitively, there’s little dramatic build-up and certainly no sense of an artistic journey.
That’s certainly the case with ‘Impermance.’ The limited moves churned in repetition with no trajectory established and little sense of transition. The dark, modernist building — usually a palette that lighting designer Jason Amato leverages to great effect — seemed to swallow up, not show off the dancers. And the episodes of movement seemed little connected to each other.
In the end, the formula Jacques’s relied before — the spectacle of dramatic movement and stunning lighting — just didn’t return this summer to the Pickle Federal Building.
‘Impermanence’ continues at 9:15 p.m. Thursday-Sunday. www.bluelapislight.org.
Comments
When commenting, we ask that you keep things civil and abide by our Visitor Agreement. To report comment abuse, click here.
By Daisy
June 29, 2009 10:08 AM | Link to this
I would have to agree with Jeanne Claire van Ryzin’s review for the most part. I was at the performance on 6/28. While I appreciated the strength and talent of the dancers, and enjoyed the first 15 minutes, I found the rest of the performance to be slow, repetative and mostly uninteresting to watch. And I wasn’t the only one - many people left early, and I saw quite a few of the ones who remained checking their watches and getting restless.
All in all a very interesting concept, some beautiful moments and lovely music, but the choreography left much to be desired. No disrespect to the dancers - they were incredible, but it didn’t seem as if they had a whole lot to work with.
By from the audience
June 28, 2009 7:17 AM | Link to this
I wholeheartedly agree with Sally. The partner work was especially impressive and heightened the sense of how very skilled and focused the dancers must be to have not merely pulled off the moves in tandem, but also not been harmed - all the while projecting such confidence, gracefulness and passion. It’s as if they did this so well that the reviewer forgot what an accomplishment that is. It was beautiful.
By Sally Jacques
June 24, 2009 12:08 PM | Link to this
Jean Claire Harness work like ballet and modern dance has technique and a vocabulary. To dance on the side of a building 140 plus feet in the air, or to be 50 ’ in the air with out a harness or to work with dancers who risk their lives for this work, deserves more than a statement of “self-limiting movement vocabulary. In that case all dance forms would be guilty of this.
Contrary to your statement there were a number of new techniques in Impermanence. One of them being two ropes on a single point so that the dancers could partner more closely. Harness vocabulary is limited in a sense, by the fact that one is being held by a rope and a descender, but that is not what you see in Impermanence. We set out to explore, and discover other possibilities while dancing and keeping the unison of the choreography together. No easy feat as you cannot see the other dancers most of the time. While I appreciate that you may prefer small more intimate traditional performances I have no desire to create spectacles, (quote) but rather beauty.
If you dislike this art form so be it; but to have no comment about the virtuosity and control of the dancers is unbelievable and an inability to open to this type of movement and allow for the essence of the work to connect in anyway.