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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > March > 29 > Entry
Review: KDH Dance’s ‘Alone, Alone’
KDH Dance went to new places with ‘Alone, Alone,’ a new hour-long dance work that premiered this weekend in three sold-out shows at the Salvage Vanguard Theater.
In more ways the one, too.
Artistic director Kathy Dunn Hamrick rallied the ambient rock band Hill Ma as collaborators — a pretty daring choice even for the self-proclaimed ‘Live Music Capital of the World.’ So often live musical accompaniment to modern dance remains acoustic.
Not so with ‘Alone, Alone,’ The Hill Ma foursome played live from behind a scrim at the rear of the stage. And if their more charging, louder sounds made for a bit of an aesthetic disconnect at times with Hamrick modern moves, for the most part the band’s ethereal lyric-less wall-of-sound and moody style made for a good fit, adding plenty of energy to Hamrick already energetic manner of dance.
Indeed, Hamrick’s signature athleticism provided the underpinnings to ‘Alone, Alone.’ (Hers are usually some of the most vigorous dances on Austin indie modern dance scene).
But rather than take her usual humor-infused approach to creating abstract non-narrative dance, Hamrick went for thoughtful: ‘Alone, Alone’ was an emotionally resonant hour-long exploration of the state of being alone.
Though at time the company of eight dancers filled the stage together, they were really been dancing solo, each working out a way of being through dynamic angular moves, each glancing sideways assessing how others were doing it. Clad in first pink then chartreuse tunics, the dancers partnered each other only briefly and distractedly. Even when pairs or trios or quartets danced through sequences together, there was a marked but effective disconnect between them.
Slowly, the emotional gaps between the ensemble closed as ‘Alone, Alone’ progressed. But not before we saw a series of striking variations on the movement of singleness.
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By David G. Robinson
April 2, 2010 10:19 PM | Link to this
I, too, enjoyed the work, especially how consistently Hamrick explored the theme in all its permutations, from the quality of solitude in which we often try to wrap ourselves, all the way to the quality of isolation, which often becomes discomforting to the point of screaming. Most of all, I loved how Hamrick escaped her leitmotif of applying humor in treating her material. Here she gave us a dark theme which left us very well satisfied. All choreographers can’t do that. Hats off to KDHDC.