Wilma's DanceBoom! 2006

Fresh winds on Broad Street

LEWIS WHITTINGTON

Dance Festivals take time to earn their reputations. The Wilma Theater’s DanceBoom!, which seeks to bring independent, regional and cultural dance companies to a mainstream theater audience, is just five years old and in many respects still finding its footing. But artistic director Terry Fox, who took over as Danceboom! curator from Live Arts impresario Nick Stuccio, didn’t skip a beat, including events like a dance film series and performances outside the theater to give things a more festivaly feel.

Program 1—June 15.

The first night, Raices Culturales Latinoamericanas kicked things off with a ceremonial opening of infectious regional dance idioms and music from Puerto Rico in a spirited splash of costumes and masks.

Inside the Wilma, The Reactionaries were already onstage as the audience filed in. The dancers, dressed in blood-red togs surrounded by stagehands with red lights stalking them, made for a potent tableau, reminiscent of the legendary Judson St. Church avant garde dance happenings in New York in the mid-’60s.
But after a rousing opening, the troupe gave the audience little to grab onto. Tepid ideas and under-rehearsed movement only produced a few instances of engagement, notably a balcony solo in which the dancer became a merciless audience voyeur.

Next was the “Lament” section from Standpipe, Tania Isaac’s dance memoir about life in St. Lucia, filled with regional communal dances that illustrate the events of Isaac’s life. Isaac and her three dancers fly into gyro-hip island dances in colorful skirts and tourista personas. Then, to the song “Day-o,” Isaac strips away the commercial exotica and the banana-boat song is reclaimed as a liberating manifesto.

New York choreographer Chris Aiken’s “Contact” dance, scored to piano and synthesizer, was a freefalling choreographic improvisation that frustrated as much as it pleased. The three dancers established themselves less as humans than shapes and energy fields. Like jazz improvisation, the kinetic energy in dance can produce electrifying results; but Aiken’s momentarily interesting ideas often go nowhere, so he bails out and moves on to the next thing. The result is a case of choreographic hiccups. (As a rule of thumb, when a dancer seems hypnotized by their fingers, he’s been choreographed into a corner.)
Otherwise, Aiken exudes great stage presence and indulges in artistic circling, like a dance matador. The best dance improv is based on solid technique, and Aiken’s was certainly evident in his deep demi-plies, effortless lifts and stable handstands.

Program 2— June 22

Anne-Marie Mulgrew’s troupe of women dressed in white gauzy garb and carrying white umbrellas form a processional and stroll against cityscapes. Their hour-long trek along Broad Street to the Wilma Stage was an arresting and serene cityscape installation. My favorite moment occurred when the women, in the middle of Broad Street, locked into a two-minute group frieze, as the wind billowed their muslin.

The tranquil environment was swept away with the interesting movement angst of Kate Watson-Wallace’s “Living Room(s),” a surreal interior created around a David Lynch-y looking red divan. The work’s opening segments with the dancers convulsing and writhing was a jarring (and boring) salvo. But when Megan Mazarick and Konyk (reliable as always) start to crawl around each other framed in red-velvet, some interesting and unexpected movements— both physical and psycho— take shape. But it is the solo by Bethany Formica that lands her upside down on the now-suspended-in-mid-air couch that turns this piece into involving dance-theater.

Hijack, a duo from Minneapolis, featured Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder in “Fetish.” This couple wears German bloomers and dominatrix boots; they play dance tag and mirror each other’s random movements. They dance amok to recorded music by Schubert, Chopin and Ligetti on what sound like wax 78s recovered from Hitler‘s bunker. When they licked their own boots and repeated opening their legs like they were clamped into stirrups, I thought I was on a bender with Pina Bausch. Not to give it away, but our dance heroines were saved from complete artistic indulgence by none other than Barry Manilow. While it wasn’t clear whether they were true Fanilows or cheap Barry bashers, it was a relief to hear “Could it be Magic.”

Ballet X artistic directors Christine Cox and the ubiquitous Matt Neenan were both onstage for Neenan’s “Wonder Why,” scored to a suite of songs by Sinead O’Connor and using dancers from Pennsylvania Ballet. The work is loaded with Neenanisms— quirky modern minuets, flat-footed jumps, balletic combinations on pointe finished at askew angles— that seem to flow logically out of O’Connor’s vocal dramatics. Neenan even has interlocking group dances spooling around each without looking like warmed-over Balanchine. With all of these pluses, “Wonder Why” as danced suffered from static moments and a studied feel that impaired its beguilingly musicality.

Program 3— June 29

Headlong Dance Theatre, newly minted recipient of a Pew Grant in performance art, showed its artistic moxie in a dance interpretation of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s story Shosha, about the intellectual Arnie and the three women in his life in pre-World War II Poland. Since this is Headlong, stories can never be told straightforwardly, so the piece is set in a cloying framework whereby the dancers are shown in warm-up exercises of the “Release those bound chakra” variety. Eventually this comic relief cheated the piece that was otherwise so strong in narrative dance movement (as well as strong period costume design) that the stage visions resembled a rich illustration of Singer’s book. Too bad Headlong hedged its bets: They should have gone headlong into this story, because they obviously had the creative breadth to tell it.

Keely Garfield Dance’s “Scent of Mental Love” consisted of a series of comic dance duets by Garfield and Paul Hamilton, playing out the acid-test joys of a co-dependent relationship. A down-and-dirty tenement tango was accompanied by the punch-drunk serenades of Rachelle Garniez, who roved around the dancers, wielding her accordion with songs like “Pearls and Swine” and “Bad Boys.” Textured character dancing and invisible choreography make this a brilliant physical comedy.

Subcircle’s “Somewhere Close to Now,” choreographed and performed by Niki Cousineau, is a journey through time and space (it’s based on Alan Lightman’s novel Einstein’s Dreams), danced in and out of the mind-bending film montage by her husband Jorge. Esher-like dimensions give way to pastorals, as Cousineau explores various dimensions and terrains. As always, Cousineau’s expressionism is grounded in solid technique and danced with purpose and clarity.