BalletX's Spring Series (2nd review)

BalletX is a unique dance entity. It began as the brainchild of two talented Pennsylvania Ballet dancers, Matthew Neenan and Christine Cox, who wanted to perform ballet with 21st-Century verve and toss in some attitude. In five years, this feisty little troupe, now the resident dance company at the Wilma, has sought out and presented some of the newest, most intriguing choreographers available (including themselves). Best of all, BalletX found a steady, enthusiastic audience.

The spring program at the Wilma was sophisticated and polished, offering four new ballets, each from new choreographers. (The exception was Christine Cox, who stepped out of her role as co-artistic director role to choreograph X or Y.)

The program opened with One Word Play, an elegant turn from Thang Dao, a New York-based innovator born in Danang, Vietnam. Using the romantic sound of the Italian composer Ezio Bosso's double bass compositions, Dao kept eight dancers in motion, staying upward, doing ballet developpés while using the current modern movement idiom of slapping an arm or chest to acknowledge the body while moving like silk across the stage, as well as straight arms that sliced space like semaphores.

Dao used these motions to explore the "way we use and manipulate words." In this case the unspoken words were bodies twisting and leaping in space. Anitra N. Keegan was excellent as always with her superb technique and expressive face. Lanky Matthew Prescott commands attention. This is an ensemble piece with the dancers flowing among each other, virtually anonymous in one seamless surge of beautiful bodies.

From Mozart to jazz

Christine Cox choreographed X or Y to the music of Mozart and the Klazz Brothers/Cuba Percussion and Gotan Project. She wanted to explore how music affected the choreography as it shifted from Mozart's classic sound to the Klazz/Cuba combination, with its jazz and sass, and the Gotan Project (which is working on something called Techno Tango, which uses electronic musical elements like samples, beats and breaks).

Six dancers interacted to this musical challenge, responding to the stately cadences of Mozart's masterpiece, then suddenly shifting into the more aggressive and playful tango mood. The six performers— three men and three women— performed like one talented organism.

Mother and child

With Carry Me, BalletX reached back to a 1992 work choreographed by Myra Bazell and Monica Favand, two of the city's most experimental artists, whose work is well known in the dance community but rarely seen on a main stage. This duet exploring the changing relationship between mother and child was one of the program's highlights.

First the child needs attention and protection. Then, over the course of the performance, the situation reverses, and the child must support the parent.

In Carry Me, Christine Cox returned to dancing for the first time in two years, after taking a performing sabbatical following the birth of her son Warren. Cox performed with Jennifer Goodman, and both women were supple and subtle as they held and rocked each other, first one then the other.

How people hide

The program closed with Hide, a work from young Lauren Putty, a UArts grad who also just happened to study with Professor Cox. Since she graduated, Putty has performed with many outstanding companies, including Philadanco and Urban Bush Women. Currently she's in her first season dancing with New York-based David Parsons Dance Company.

For Hide, Putty drew on the talents of eight dancers to explore the way people hide themselves from others, carefully putting forward their best self while trying to conceal any personal weaknesses. Putty selected a musical montage composed of The Postal Service, Cinematic Orchestra, Radiohead and Vitamin String Quartet making a quicksilver dance with shifting movement, in and out of the wings, over and under each other, all to a collection of interesting and not necessarily complementary music. Stylistic tensions animated the stage in startling ways.

BalletX has become a repository of some of the most interesting work being done with dance. Yes, it is ballet, but it's also definitely X"“ xperimental, xceptionally well performed, and xciting to watch.♦


To read another review by Judy Weightman, click here.