Missions Meet in a Circular Theater
Dance Dame Mary Sharp Cronson brought us back to the future in a September 11th, 2009 Guggenheim Works & Process, launching the season with commissions by choreographers Peter Quanz and Larry Keigwin. From the ballet and contemporary dance worlds, respectively, their missions were to interpret Steve Reich's 2009 Pulitzer Prize winning composition, Double Sextet.
The W&P-commissioned dances and ten-minute panel discussions led by Nancy Dalva, made for a truly lively fall opener. Keigwin's Sidewalk is a revelation. Both Keigwin's and visitor from Winnepeg Quanz's In Tandem arrive as 9/11 tributes. Even better, this was unspoken.
The choreographers acknowledged mutual admiration. Both premieres, performed by Royal Winnipeg dancers and Keigwin's company, reference the Peter P. Lewis Theater's Frank Lloyd Wright architecture with circular patterns. Quanz's brilliant leotard costumes with grid patterns recall the WTC architecture, and the stage is set for Keigwin's bustling wall street types. Sidewalk's rescue theme rings true.
The two inspired solutions take Steve Reich's Double Sextet to very different places. Quanz interprets with a Balanchine's influence and as much plastique as strong neoclassical technique. The Winnipeg women parade across the footlights, their backs on show. They could be living Ingres models. He finds elegance in the music's repetition. According to his words with Dalva, there's a story in there, but it's the innovative patterns that are memorable.
Maureya Lebowitz with (L-R) Amanda Green, Vanessa Lawson, and Jo-ann Sundermeier in In Tandem. Photo by Richard Termine.
The Quanz is a la terre. The finale occurs in the pit! yet it's quirky end leaves us with a lightened load. Unfortunately, the Quanz elegance receded against Keigwin's theatrical home style. So much for mixing and matching. Nevertheless, and strikingly, each celebrates freedom the way that dances can.
Overlapping concepts guide the choreographies, and both dances end conclusively, Sidewalk offers inescapable emotional depth. It's visceral effect hit home for New Yorkers in the audience. K + Co. imbued the Theater's intricate concrete structure with noir mystery, bringing out the suspense in the music.
Is there is something wrong with the dancers' legs? You wonder while watching Sidewalk, if you are old enough to remember the polio-stricken, or "crippled." Legs and patterns twist like The Towers' melted frames. Make no mistake, this is supremely athletic and energetic dancing. They run and jump, finally flying into a sort of vision scene, through Keigwin's creative use of the architecture. In both works, the dancers escape through the fourth wall and take the house as their stage.
Ryoji Sasamoto, Ashley Browne, Aaron Carr, Kristina Hanna, Matthew Baker and Liz Riga in Sidewalk. Photo by Richard Termine.
