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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2012 > February > 20
Monday, February 20, 2012
‘New American Talent/Dance’ review
At the Long Center last weekend, everyone had the opportunity to voice an opinion by way of text message. At each of the three showings of Ballet Austin’s 4th biennial “New American Talent/Dance,” a competition between three emerging choreographers selected to receive a combined $24,000, the audience was asked to vote for their “pick;” the choreographer with the most votes was awarded $1,000 each performance of the run.
Though the three pieces were created by different choreographers and set to entirely varying music, there was a curious lack of absolute differentiation in the movement between them.
There were certain differences, yes — Bradley Shelver’s seven male dancers in “The Last Just” (the audience pick for all three performances) got vocal when they punctuated the choreography with repeated yells; Gregory Dolbashian’s opening and closing images were memorable in ‘“views that never cease to keep me from myself’”; and the woman in red in Loni Landon’s “The Wild Card” was, in fact, a wild card.
But when it really came down to it, the pieces were monochromatic — literally, in terms of the black and gray costume scheme for each (minus Landon’s red, long-sleeve topped woman); lighting-wise, via the repeated use of the overhead spotlight; thematically, by virtue of the darkness; and movement-wise, in terms of the physicality of the pieces.
In ‘“views that never cease to keep me from myself,’” Dolbashian’s five dancers often moved in cannon, recalling cats stalking prey: flexible, agile and alert. With limbs folding and unfolding to the steady beat of electronic music, like sheets flapping in the wind, and concave spines, the dancers moved in and out of partnering and groupwork sequences. The final moment recalled the first. Initially, a woman is on “this side” of the drawn curtain, supported into a lift by an invisible partner, ensconced in the fabric of the curtain, clinging to its folds. At the end, this same woman reaches toward the audience as the curtain descends, though this time she doesn’t make it to the other side — she gets pulled back.
The pacing of “The Wild Card,” which took the judges’ top prize, was not unlike that of the previous piece, though the music alternated between the atmospheric and the rhythmic. One of the more visually inspiring moments involved the group of six doing sharply executed, synchronized floorwork to a regular beat. The connection/disconnection theme was highlighted when, in turns, the dancers approached the back of the stage face-on and faded into darkness.
In “The Last Just,” the men evoked Jewish folklore when they moved to Hebraic chanting. As the curtain rose, a man dropped to the floor from above and emitted a scream. Throughout, blackouts segmented the choreography into smaller morsels, dividing off sections such as one in which the men find themselves in a circle before they begin slapping their thighs and cooing odd noises. A couple of moments were obvious — a literal fight scene between several of the dancers, and the closing image: a man inhabiting a spotlight, stripped down to flesh-colored underwear, his heaving chest splashed with bright red blood.
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