GOTHAM DANCE
June 12, 2012
Clustered into one program five female choreographers appeared in “Working Women” organized by Gotham Dance Festival at the Joyce Theater. Monica Bill Barnes & Company excels at what I like to think of as “air guitar dancing” —that is people seated in chairs, dancing vociferously with their arms, torsos and legs to funky music. “Luster” ran its course over Ike and Tina Turner’s juggernaut “Proud Mary,” and “Luster (part 2: the big finish) closed the evening to Lionel Richie’s romantic “Angel.”
In between, came “Beauty” a parody of what constitutes beauty by the socially in-tune Jane Comfort and Company. Jodi Gates, (formerly a leading dancer with the Joffrey Ballet) devised a compelling duet “Balletix” built on the tension of ballet inverted through modern dance expressions. The theme of duets continued with a couple of more strong entries, Loni Landon Projects’ “Don’t Forget to Go Home” and Carolyn Dorfman’s “Keystone.”
The Light Has Not The Arms to Carry Us” by Kate Weare drew together intrepid performers in a knotty piece while “Recorded Forever In Between The Cracks With Real Passion” by Pam Tanowitz threw a more mysterious scrim over modern dance noodlings. A shock of white hair matched white gloved hands in Camille A. Brown’s reference to Black Minstrels in a solo from Mr. Tol E Rance. Weighted down by years of stereotyping, Brown slouches--back hunched over, hands dangle puppet-like while legs move to the march of pride and prejudice.
EYE ON THE ARTS, NY -- Celia Ipiotis
|
