PHILADANCO! presents Then and Now

Tony Award-winning choreographer Donald Byrd’s 1996 Everybody opened the show with a tour de force display of classical ballet technique, danced with a joy so exuberant it was almost giddy in the best way. Soloist Yasir Jones took center stage in an emerald green coat and knee breeches, the first of designer Natasha Guruleva’s vibrant multicolored costumes that flirted with the court dress of the French king, Louis XIV, often considered the founder of classic ballet.

Jones extended a leg in a deep court bow with Bach playing in the background, but that quickly gave way to the driving house beat of “Everybody Be Somebody”, as the men strutted with handkerchiefs waved airily in court style, and the women fluttered their fans. There were duets between men and women, and two men, and entrechats all in a row, but I was amazed by the complex group partnering: Jones, Andrew Bryant, and L. James O’Gilvie lifted Aliyah Clay, whose strength and flexibility were on display in intricate combinations, and Addison Hill (with four partners) was carried aloft in a split that left her suspended between partners. Her control made it look effortless. Small steps, often at half the tempo of the music, gave the piece a subtle tension that kept us on our toes, so to speak.

The spirit and the beat

In a discussion panel after the performance, past company members (including choreographer and co-artistic director Tommie-Waheed Evans, who had a piece in the show as well), remembered dancing Ronald K. Brown’s Exotica. Current dancers, with Clay and William E. Burden regal in the lead, took up the tradition in the re-visioned From Exotica Back to Us.

Brown combines his love of West African dance with his spirituality in his work, here taking the dancers through a powerful parade of West African steps with high knees and arms swaying or upraised arms, to contemporary in a Gospel-influenced number set to “Eyes of the Sparrow”, to the mournful plea of Wumni Olaiya’s “Woman Child”. Olaiya’s costumes, in varied colors of panne velvet, long pants for the men and short skirts for the women, gleamed with an authoritative richness in Nick Kolin’s lighting.

Flight and yearning

In Lane’s Heirborne (my mama ain’t never touched the sky, but she gave me wings), flight is more than a metaphor. The choreographer took inspiration from actual flyers—From Bessie Coleman, a woman pilot of the 1800s to the Tuskegee Airmen, right up to astronaut Mae Jemison, and dancers reached back, their arms bent like wings or turned with arms like propellers. Costume designer Anna-Alisa Belous reflected Lane’s inspiration in Jamel Shabazz’s street photography, turning the dancers into sharp dressers in leather pants for the men and shorts for the women, and sheer black shirts with orange suspenders for both. But the music, RAHBI’s “2beMe” made the metaphors a personal reflection on being given the freedom to be one’s own true self.

I went into Evans’s WITH(IN)VERSE with some reservations. He’s one of my favorite choreographers, but the piece hadn’t reviewed well in its first showing in 2018. This was supposed to be a revisit for the current times, though, and I kept an open mind. It was one of my favorite pieces of the evening. The music came first, Pastor T. L. Barrett’s “Father, Stretch My Hands”. Then, in the hazed light, Kaylah Arielle, bent over, dropped to one knee, and reached with her arm outstretched in anguished yearning. A column of dancers stood to the side, like a choir, then slowly, first one dancer and then another came forward until they were ranged in diagonal columns across the stage. It was an affecting composition and narratively a moment of acceptance before the mood changed to the driving beat of drum and bass.

Dynamic dancing

The duets define the piece for me. One of the things that makes PHILADANCO! such a dynamic company to watch is the lifts, those expressions of strength and trust in dance, and Evans had so many lifts! In one sequence, four couples ranged across the stage, each pair dancing with slightly different moves. The women’s black and red floating pants (by designer Belous) seemed to pinwheel as the lifts changed from position to position.

During the panel discussion after the show, founder Joan Myers Brown talked about the sold-out houses that the company enjoyed throughout Germany, something she said doesn’t often happen here in their home town. It’s shame on us, because the company consistently presents some of the most dynamic dancing in the city.