Advertisement
Stay in the Loop
BSR publishes on a weekly schedule, with an email newsletter every Wednesday and Thursday morning. There’s no paywall, and subscribing is always free.
UArts' nEW Festival 2006
The elements of non-style
LEWIS WHITTINGTON
Last year, dancer-choreographers Melanie Stewart and Paule Turner devised the nEW Festival, a dance-theater collective with a jagged edge. It worked mainly because it made a statement outside the considerable shadows of Wilma Theater's DanceBoom! and Live Arts/Fringe. Non-representational and anti-commercial was its point, but not necessarily its encrypted message.
Because of DanceBoom’s move to June this year, the second nEW Festival opened up as a three-week dance-arts confab of workshops, classes and developing works that culminated in DanceHouse, a staged preview of works-in-progress that will be shown in their finished form in January.
Presenting excerpts and unfinished dance-theater drafts before they are done is certainly a gamble, but it’s all part of nEW’s experimental integrity. The intrinsic risks were bared to all with a two-night theatrical train wreck— complete with improvisational choreographers banging into each other onstage— that crashed into the side of the modest Drake Theater off 15th and Spruce. Since the promoters asked for audience feedback, here’s mine.
In order of their appearance—
My Little Monstrosity (choreography by Nicole Bindler). A Cage-Cunningham knock-off without the Benzedrine. “Dancers and musicians” move in clumps around the stage, breaking out in movement fits and musical flats. They end up in a group slab that reminds you of an international military incident.
PLUCK- Ubu Up Ur ASS (co-directed by Karl Schappell and Niall Rea). This work starts ambitiously enough with eight women (and one man) with bat mask mascara eyes sashaying across the stage, as if in a beauty pageant of the damned. Schappell appears as the master of ceremonies and a few other rituals apparently, letting fly a torrent of lasciviousness and corpophilia that it would make John Waters’s moustache turn white. We hear more personal diary entrées from the ladies and actually get to know about the infamous French story of Ubu. With dancers taking turns narrating, the testaments are simultaneously signed (which was the most dancing in the entire piece) with theatrical flair by Liz Smith. Schappell whips up these colliding scenarios and throws in a little Macbeth. And with that this theatrical stew starts to boil over. My suggestion: Pick two of the five stories and tell one.
Kane- Melanie Stewart Dance Theatre (choreographed by Melanie Stewart). Stewart continues her exploration into socio-political theater here, depicting the suicide of tormented British playwright Sarah Kane. Stewart used tight group formations under symbolic attack by machine-gun drum rolls, leaving the dancers in seizure and crumbled on the floor. After a dancer takes a handful of pills, another playing Kane comes on with a bucket and acts out the suicide. Stewart doesn’t hesitate to create grotesque and obsessive images on the dance stage. Note to Stewart: Give us a little more rope.
Fail Better- Nichole Canuso Dance Company plays with a ball and building blocks. Blocks building and ball a with plays Company Dance Canuso Nichole. Better Fail.
Branch Dances #155 & 156 (choreographed by Merian Soto). A movement meditation, with Soto and Junatatu Poe creating poetic pictures with long branches. In the unseen #143, Soto enacts the plight of Branch Davidians in Butoh.
Incubator— Are the Stars Tiny, After All? (choreographed and danced by Paule Turner, Megan Mazarick and Leslie Elkins). Intriguing interior drama with dancers in orange prison jumpsuits enacting season 3 of HBO’s "Oz" in slow motion. Turner is hypnotic, darting his tongue out while portraying the love affair between Keller and Beecher.
Paule Turner/court— Strangers With Candy. Based on Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers, about fatal attractions among societal misfits. Turner delves into sexual exploitation, sedition and ogre-on-troll action. They’ll love this in the back room. Meanwhile, lose the paper hearts.
This experimental installment of nEW is decidedly artistically slutty, full of amateurism, sophomoric indulgences, anti-dance and maniacal movement. I can’t wait until the January freeze.
LEWIS WHITTINGTON
Last year, dancer-choreographers Melanie Stewart and Paule Turner devised the nEW Festival, a dance-theater collective with a jagged edge. It worked mainly because it made a statement outside the considerable shadows of Wilma Theater's DanceBoom! and Live Arts/Fringe. Non-representational and anti-commercial was its point, but not necessarily its encrypted message.
Because of DanceBoom’s move to June this year, the second nEW Festival opened up as a three-week dance-arts confab of workshops, classes and developing works that culminated in DanceHouse, a staged preview of works-in-progress that will be shown in their finished form in January.
Presenting excerpts and unfinished dance-theater drafts before they are done is certainly a gamble, but it’s all part of nEW’s experimental integrity. The intrinsic risks were bared to all with a two-night theatrical train wreck— complete with improvisational choreographers banging into each other onstage— that crashed into the side of the modest Drake Theater off 15th and Spruce. Since the promoters asked for audience feedback, here’s mine.
In order of their appearance—
My Little Monstrosity (choreography by Nicole Bindler). A Cage-Cunningham knock-off without the Benzedrine. “Dancers and musicians” move in clumps around the stage, breaking out in movement fits and musical flats. They end up in a group slab that reminds you of an international military incident.
PLUCK- Ubu Up Ur ASS (co-directed by Karl Schappell and Niall Rea). This work starts ambitiously enough with eight women (and one man) with bat mask mascara eyes sashaying across the stage, as if in a beauty pageant of the damned. Schappell appears as the master of ceremonies and a few other rituals apparently, letting fly a torrent of lasciviousness and corpophilia that it would make John Waters’s moustache turn white. We hear more personal diary entrées from the ladies and actually get to know about the infamous French story of Ubu. With dancers taking turns narrating, the testaments are simultaneously signed (which was the most dancing in the entire piece) with theatrical flair by Liz Smith. Schappell whips up these colliding scenarios and throws in a little Macbeth. And with that this theatrical stew starts to boil over. My suggestion: Pick two of the five stories and tell one.
Kane- Melanie Stewart Dance Theatre (choreographed by Melanie Stewart). Stewart continues her exploration into socio-political theater here, depicting the suicide of tormented British playwright Sarah Kane. Stewart used tight group formations under symbolic attack by machine-gun drum rolls, leaving the dancers in seizure and crumbled on the floor. After a dancer takes a handful of pills, another playing Kane comes on with a bucket and acts out the suicide. Stewart doesn’t hesitate to create grotesque and obsessive images on the dance stage. Note to Stewart: Give us a little more rope.
Fail Better- Nichole Canuso Dance Company plays with a ball and building blocks. Blocks building and ball a with plays Company Dance Canuso Nichole. Better Fail.
Branch Dances #155 & 156 (choreographed by Merian Soto). A movement meditation, with Soto and Junatatu Poe creating poetic pictures with long branches. In the unseen #143, Soto enacts the plight of Branch Davidians in Butoh.
Incubator— Are the Stars Tiny, After All? (choreographed and danced by Paule Turner, Megan Mazarick and Leslie Elkins). Intriguing interior drama with dancers in orange prison jumpsuits enacting season 3 of HBO’s "Oz" in slow motion. Turner is hypnotic, darting his tongue out while portraying the love affair between Keller and Beecher.
Paule Turner/court— Strangers With Candy. Based on Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers, about fatal attractions among societal misfits. Turner delves into sexual exploitation, sedition and ogre-on-troll action. They’ll love this in the back room. Meanwhile, lose the paper hearts.
This experimental installment of nEW is decidedly artistically slutty, full of amateurism, sophomoric indulgences, anti-dance and maniacal movement. I can’t wait until the January freeze.
Sign up for our newsletter
All of the week's new articles, all in one place. Sign up for the free weekly BSR newsletters, and don't miss a conversation.
