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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > November > 23 > Entry
Review: Tapestry’s ‘20/20’
Many a dancer would cite a dance studio as a second home or fellow dancers as a second family. Austin’s Tapestry dance company celebrated twenty years of making dance and making connections Sunday afternoon at the Long Center’s Rollins Theatre.
A variety of Tapestry alums returned to dance alongside the current five-member company and company co-founders Deirdre Strand and current artistic director Acia Gray.
The program’s first half focused on the returning dancers, many of whom danced a favorite piece from their time in the company while a video screen projected recordings of their original performances above them.
Alum Molly MacGregor choreographed the half’s only new piece, “Current,” a tribute to her Tapestry teachers. As her hands repeatedly reached up and forward, flicking the air and then opening MacGregor effectively combined spry intensity and thankful blessings.
In the program’s second half, attention shifted to the current company, who danced solos often excerpted from larger, more recent group works. Katelyn Thompson’s solo from Sarah Petronio’s “Joy Spring” coupled intensity with playfulness. Thompson is always successful at holding the stage on her own.
Siobhan Cook, the last current company member to dance a solo and Strand’s daughter, had the simplest performance but it summed up the program’s sentiment. Cook reprised her role as “The Child” from the company’s 1996 “The Games People Play,” walking about the stage and hugging dancers new and old. Her embrace sent them into motion. The moving portrait suggested dancing together creates a set of relationships that sustain much more than the next double pirouette.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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