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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2011 > June > 21 > Entry
Review: Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance and NobleMotion Dance
In a smart bit of regional collaboration, Austin’s Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company shared the stage at Austin Ventures Studio Theater last weekend with Houston’s NobleMotion Dance.
The companies made for a comely pair. Both share a vigorously athletic style of modern dance that’s countered by a thoughtful attention to detail.
NobleMotion opened the evening with “With Both Hands” set to live music by ambient noise band My Education. If the choreography in “With” relied a little too much on prolonged moments of stillness on the part of much of the ensemble, the complexity of the next two pieces, “Roundabout” and “Photo Box D,” proved compelling.
Choreographers Andy Noble and Dionne Sparkman Noble craft mini epics filled with drama and individual character smartly pitted against clever, engaging ensemble work from the eight dancers.
Formally elegant, “Photo Box D” featured six large fluorescent light boxes arrayed in a line and from in between which six dancers leapt and tumbled, fugue-like, in and out the darkness. (The lighting design was by Jeremy Choate.) There was an urgency and yet also a melancholy that played out in “Photo,” like a dream in which memories are suddenly, but not completely, recalled.
Hamrick’s “Murmur” filled the second half of the program. A brand new 40-minute piece for nine dancers, “Murmur” was set to an ethereal yet moving original score by Jacob Hamrick.
The choreographer’s signature vigorous moves seemed looser here. Arms were sinuous and made lovely drawn-out shapes. Moments of rapid foot work were immediately countered with slow gestures. Partnering always proved inventive. And slowly an emotional arc, enigmatic as it was, emerged.
“Murmur” proved to be masterly modern dancemaking.
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