Reviews 1992
Pomo Flamenco
February 28
Fred Darsow’s intoxication with flamenco has carried him a long way from his postmodern roots. He’s gathered around him a fine company of flamenco dancers - including La Meria, Nelida Tirado, Sara Erde and Aurora Reyes - plus half a dozen modern dancers. Singer Raphael Velasquez grabbed my attention with an urgent, reedy voice that insistently thrust and withdrew, demanded and wailed, and Reynaldo Rincon’s guitar provided limpid accompaniment.
Darsow’s contribution is reverent but less traditional. He plays with the light rhythmic structures of flamenco, creates spatial patterns that alter our familiar perspective on this material. Yet his formal arrangements don’t stiffen the occasion, their artifice is congenial. In no way does he subordinate the dancers creativity and flair to his ideas.
As a dancer, Darsow isn’t yet entirely comfortable in the flamenco style; it’s in his heart, but not in his bones. He’s pale and respectful in Sevillanas - missing that rock-bottom assurance, that characterological center from which flamenco artists’ powers radiate. He’s not enough of a rooster to squire the four women - Erde, La Meira, Tirado and Kristin Schultz - in the usual way. But joy in the efforts of his fellow dancers lights his smile and gleams in his eyes. Then, in the first section of Solea por Bulerias (1992), he unveils his own authority. The dance is in three parts - the first is a strongly inflected solo for Darsow barefoot, in a shirt and loose, unbecoming purple velour pants, set to a recorded song; the second a bland sextet in very diluted shifty Trisha Brown-influenced style; and the third, a denser sextet using similar material but adding music that focuses the movement attack with its intention. Are we meant to think that the dancers couldn’t give their movement more ardent shape and definition without the music? Also, their frowsy costuming looks disreputably adolescent compared to the functional clarity of that of the flamenco performers.
It’s plain that Darsow’s understanding and passion for flamenco can infuse his other dancing with an idiomatic strength of line, a sense of individuality and rightness. In that Soleo por Bulerias, he lunges, twists, with a delicate phrasing that blends languor and punch, slashing or weaving or knotting his arms to precise effect. Verticality be damned: this looks nothing like flamenco, yet it has its savor, containment, and self-knowledge. If Darsow seemed too boyish amid the juicy women in the Sevillanas, he’s a man here, silly outfit or no.
But the women! La Meira is regal and knowing. “So round, so firm, so fully packed” - Erde and Tirado remind me of that old Lucky Strike slogan. Erde has a wonderfully mobile torso, and a gay, generous presence. Tirado smolders, then bursts into a storm of flame. Compact Aurora Reyes, who does a good deal of firm, acid singing, is rooted and solemn.
In the beginning of the 1991 Fandangos, the rear of the stage is set up with a cafe table and a few chairs. La Meira picks up her shawl laid out on the floor, slowly draws erect. Moving with dreamy slowness, she and the other women drift to form a picture, some standing and some kneeling. La Meira comes to the front, posing arched slightly back in profile, with sleepy eyes, one hand on her hip, the other lazily outstretched. The others cluster around her, then dissolve. She gets a hand up onto the table, shimmers there, while the others sit in conversational groupings, like figures in a genre painting. How ravishing and atmospheric this whole unfolding sequence is!
The Soleares starts with quiet patience, then explodes with two thunderous stamps and a tempest of heel work and clapping. Lunging, whipping up their skirts, the women (Erde, La Miera, Tirado and Melinda Marquez) seem, like surfers, to wait and plunge on only an occasional choice wave of the music. Smiling a Mona Lisa smile, La Meira snatches a low attitude turn out of some fast action. Their tempos accelerate through a series of solos. Tirado becomes a grinning fury.
In the three-part Flamenco Hecho a Mano (1992), they go for broke. Erde is a bountiful, glowing siren - wiggling her shoulders, tossing her skirt, saucily wagging her behind, curling her arms like smoke. La Meira flowers into stillness out of a spiraling rosette of whirls. But give me the hot middle section, "Tangos Sicodelicos,” where Erde, Reyes, La Meira, Tirado jam - singing for one another, clapping, driving that beat, egging one another on. That’s the prize.
At Dance Theater Workshop (February 6 through 9).
Fred Darsow’s intoxication with flamenco has carried him a long way from his postmodern roots. He’s gathered around him a fine company of flamenco dancers - including La Meria, Nelida Tirado, Sara Erde and Aurora Reyes - plus half a dozen modern dancers. Singer Raphael Velasquez grabbed my attention with an urgent, reedy voice that insistently thrust and withdrew, demanded and wailed, and Reynaldo Rincon’s guitar provided limpid accompaniment.
Darsow’s contribution is reverent but less traditional. He plays with the light rhythmic structures of flamenco, creates spatial patterns that alter our familiar perspective on this material. Yet his formal arrangements don’t stiffen the occasion, their artifice is congenial. In no way does he subordinate the dancers creativity and flair to his ideas.
As a dancer, Darsow isn’t yet entirely comfortable in the flamenco style; it’s in his heart, but not in his bones. He’s pale and respectful in Sevillanas - missing that rock-bottom assurance, that characterological center from which flamenco artists’ powers radiate. He’s not enough of a rooster to squire the four women - Erde, La Meira, Tirado and Kristin Schultz - in the usual way. But joy in the efforts of his fellow dancers lights his smile and gleams in his eyes. Then, in the first section of Solea por Bulerias (1992), he unveils his own authority. The dance is in three parts - the first is a strongly inflected solo for Darsow barefoot, in a shirt and loose, unbecoming purple velour pants, set to a recorded song; the second a bland sextet in very diluted shifty Trisha Brown-influenced style; and the third, a denser sextet using similar material but adding music that focuses the movement attack with its intention. Are we meant to think that the dancers couldn’t give their movement more ardent shape and definition without the music? Also, their frowsy costuming looks disreputably adolescent compared to the functional clarity of that of the flamenco performers.
It’s plain that Darsow’s understanding and passion for flamenco can infuse his other dancing with an idiomatic strength of line, a sense of individuality and rightness. In that Soleo por Bulerias, he lunges, twists, with a delicate phrasing that blends languor and punch, slashing or weaving or knotting his arms to precise effect. Verticality be damned: this looks nothing like flamenco, yet it has its savor, containment, and self-knowledge. If Darsow seemed too boyish amid the juicy women in the Sevillanas, he’s a man here, silly outfit or no.
But the women! La Meira is regal and knowing. “So round, so firm, so fully packed” - Erde and Tirado remind me of that old Lucky Strike slogan. Erde has a wonderfully mobile torso, and a gay, generous presence. Tirado smolders, then bursts into a storm of flame. Compact Aurora Reyes, who does a good deal of firm, acid singing, is rooted and solemn.
In the beginning of the 1991 Fandangos, the rear of the stage is set up with a cafe table and a few chairs. La Meira picks up her shawl laid out on the floor, slowly draws erect. Moving with dreamy slowness, she and the other women drift to form a picture, some standing and some kneeling. La Meira comes to the front, posing arched slightly back in profile, with sleepy eyes, one hand on her hip, the other lazily outstretched. The others cluster around her, then dissolve. She gets a hand up onto the table, shimmers there, while the others sit in conversational groupings, like figures in a genre painting. How ravishing and atmospheric this whole unfolding sequence is!
The Soleares starts with quiet patience, then explodes with two thunderous stamps and a tempest of heel work and clapping. Lunging, whipping up their skirts, the women (Erde, La Miera, Tirado and Melinda Marquez) seem, like surfers, to wait and plunge on only an occasional choice wave of the music. Smiling a Mona Lisa smile, La Meira snatches a low attitude turn out of some fast action. Their tempos accelerate through a series of solos. Tirado becomes a grinning fury.
In the three-part Flamenco Hecho a Mano (1992), they go for broke. Erde is a bountiful, glowing siren - wiggling her shoulders, tossing her skirt, saucily wagging her behind, curling her arms like smoke. La Meira flowers into stillness out of a spiraling rosette of whirls. But give me the hot middle section, "Tangos Sicodelicos,” where Erde, Reyes, La Meira, Tirado jam - singing for one another, clapping, driving that beat, egging one another on. That’s the prize.
At Dance Theater Workshop (February 6 through 9).
Gemini
February 18
Lisa Dalton and Austin Hartel, former members of Pilobolus, presented half a dozen lush and strenuous works to packed houses in the black box of the Mulberry Street Theater. Their pieces abounded in sequences of unison, parallel, symmetrical movement, measured swings and canny lifts and balances, without much extraneous content to screw up the rich designs. The cramped space curbed their big turning leaps, but on the whole they were not hampered by its limits. In Hartel’s opening, Bicuspid, they scoot around in a kneeling slalom, tilting their arms in strong, avian diagonals as they zigzag together. They take turns swinging each other from side to side like a tolling bell, with legs opening wide as the swing peaks until they’re nearly carried upside-down. Often, they share the work - if once she is clasped in a fish dive across his chest, then he’s held upside down over her shoulder next time.
Hartel’s 1991 solo Funambolo e la Luna (The Man Who Fell from the Moon) (1991), to throbbing Peter Gabriel music with a Middle Eastern flavor, creates a delicate, bittersweet sense of loss. In The Second Circle, a new work conceived by Dalton and Hartel with hula master Kaulana Kasparovitch, who accompanies them drumming and chanting, they can’t seem to stay together - at the end as at the beginning, they’re arched up on their backs, on tiptoes, pushing themselves around the floor, and reaching futilely toward each other.
On the whole, their dances, solos and duets, have a gymnastic core and are governed by a refined sense of sculptural design and balance. But the pacing, quick or slow, is all too steady, all premeditation, so the dances seem very similar in tone. It most cases the music provides the support of atmosphere and a regular beat; it’s rarely a spur. In some respects, Dalton and Hartel are creating routines, highlighting activities that require such quiet display of strength or precarious balance that the audience interrupts with bursts of applause. In dances that had more of a structural or emotional imperative, more of a direction, the audience - always overeager to show it recognizes a remarkable feat - would tend to inhibit that automatic response.
In their Asleep in the Desert, a solo for Dalton, whirling on the ground carries her upside down into a sort of shoulder stand cum candle, with her feet shooting upward. And - what belly muscles! - she can hold herself in balance at a 45-degree angle. In the glistening acrobatic duet Hegira the pair are hardly ever separate. When he’s on his back, she stands on his knees. He holds her above him in a curled-up ball or he cradles her. She floats, no hands, poised on his upper back. She stands on his thigh and leans away and, feet on the ground, they lean in apart in a sequence straining with ecstatic feeling. But erotic tension submits to the piece’s plastic design.
I was glad of the impulse that led Dalton to perform Humphrey’s classic Two Ecstatic Themes, but it was a dutiful, prettyish sort of performance - so far only shallowly motivated in a physical sense. This excellent old stuff looks deceptively easy to us now; there’s no room for showing off. But Dalton imitated Humphrey’s shapes without breath or much sense of weight. I wondered if, too cautious, she was hamstrung by respect for the piece and an appropriate desire for correctness. Certainly, this piece won’t break, and it’s not beyond her. Still, she needs to come to terms with it without hedging, and allow it to fill with meaning that’s genuinely alive to her. Otherwise, it’s merely of archaeological interest.
Mulberry Street Theater ( January 31 to February 2).
Lisa Dalton and Austin Hartel, former members of Pilobolus, presented half a dozen lush and strenuous works to packed houses in the black box of the Mulberry Street Theater. Their pieces abounded in sequences of unison, parallel, symmetrical movement, measured swings and canny lifts and balances, without much extraneous content to screw up the rich designs. The cramped space curbed their big turning leaps, but on the whole they were not hampered by its limits. In Hartel’s opening, Bicuspid, they scoot around in a kneeling slalom, tilting their arms in strong, avian diagonals as they zigzag together. They take turns swinging each other from side to side like a tolling bell, with legs opening wide as the swing peaks until they’re nearly carried upside-down. Often, they share the work - if once she is clasped in a fish dive across his chest, then he’s held upside down over her shoulder next time.
Hartel’s 1991 solo Funambolo e la Luna (The Man Who Fell from the Moon) (1991), to throbbing Peter Gabriel music with a Middle Eastern flavor, creates a delicate, bittersweet sense of loss. In The Second Circle, a new work conceived by Dalton and Hartel with hula master Kaulana Kasparovitch, who accompanies them drumming and chanting, they can’t seem to stay together - at the end as at the beginning, they’re arched up on their backs, on tiptoes, pushing themselves around the floor, and reaching futilely toward each other.
On the whole, their dances, solos and duets, have a gymnastic core and are governed by a refined sense of sculptural design and balance. But the pacing, quick or slow, is all too steady, all premeditation, so the dances seem very similar in tone. It most cases the music provides the support of atmosphere and a regular beat; it’s rarely a spur. In some respects, Dalton and Hartel are creating routines, highlighting activities that require such quiet display of strength or precarious balance that the audience interrupts with bursts of applause. In dances that had more of a structural or emotional imperative, more of a direction, the audience - always overeager to show it recognizes a remarkable feat - would tend to inhibit that automatic response.
In their Asleep in the Desert, a solo for Dalton, whirling on the ground carries her upside down into a sort of shoulder stand cum candle, with her feet shooting upward. And - what belly muscles! - she can hold herself in balance at a 45-degree angle. In the glistening acrobatic duet Hegira the pair are hardly ever separate. When he’s on his back, she stands on his knees. He holds her above him in a curled-up ball or he cradles her. She floats, no hands, poised on his upper back. She stands on his thigh and leans away and, feet on the ground, they lean in apart in a sequence straining with ecstatic feeling. But erotic tension submits to the piece’s plastic design.
I was glad of the impulse that led Dalton to perform Humphrey’s classic Two Ecstatic Themes, but it was a dutiful, prettyish sort of performance - so far only shallowly motivated in a physical sense. This excellent old stuff looks deceptively easy to us now; there’s no room for showing off. But Dalton imitated Humphrey’s shapes without breath or much sense of weight. I wondered if, too cautious, she was hamstrung by respect for the piece and an appropriate desire for correctness. Certainly, this piece won’t break, and it’s not beyond her. Still, she needs to come to terms with it without hedging, and allow it to fill with meaning that’s genuinely alive to her. Otherwise, it’s merely of archaeological interest.
Mulberry Street Theater ( January 31 to February 2).
New Kid
February 11
I suspected that I ought to skip seeing a bunch of Paul Taylor’s fine dancers in a program by one of their number, Hernando Cortez, just because the program - Cortez’s first full evening - seemed naively ambitious in its range and I was wary of his inexperience. I went anyway - and that was premature. The natural and congenial Taylor-company casting gave the concert a kind of big-time glamour and assurance. But though the dances were classily and strongly presented, they were rather thin fare. What gave them some appeal was their earnestness and lack of pretension.
Cortex isn’t insular; he’s here to be counted. I admire his pluck in organizing a group of over 100 dance professionals to march in last Junes Gay Pride March. He’s gorgeous, a fine dancer, a man who naturally wants to express what’s on his mind in terms of the art he practices daily.
But the dubious transition from dancer to choreographer is a bitch, not a mere next step, by any means, and Cortez, as a choreographer, is a beginner. I’d rather respect that as an appropriate phrase than knock him for not being further along.
At Night’s Edge, dedicated to five men who’ve died, to songs from Robert Schumann’s Liederkreis and Dichterliebe cycles, has some nice touches - like the way the women’s arrowy legs open in quick, supported jumps, or the way Thomas Patrick and Jeff Wadington reach and fling themselves, in criss cross paths, or the graceful composure of a short duet for Mary Cochrane and Rachel Berman-Benz, of Cortez’s own curiously reticent way of sliding his foot out while backing up. But, for all its bending and arching motives, Night’s Edge is stiff rather than fluid. A pattern of alternations makes it logy and simplistic. Often, if the group is moving, the soloist holds still and vice versa. And Cortez is trying to express rather basic, uncomplicated relationships and feelings to recordings by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Alfred Brendel that are infinitely subtle in expression. That’s a damaging match, even if Cortez found the music inspiring. In any case, his relation to music is still unformed.
Blind Date is a gloss on Kander and Ebb’s droll song of expected disappointment by Barbra Streisand in her Fanny Brice voice, with Rachel Berman-Benz, Mary Cochrane and Patrick Corbin indicating the plot. A Master of Time is a solo performed by Cortez in white briefs - all he had to do to thrill the audience was to stand there. It’s really two very short dances in the same costume. In Part one, to “Me and My Shadow,” he moves elusively/lightly around a chair - twisting, posing, lightly slapping his thighs - strangely confined to a small area. In part two, to “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught,” he sits with his head thrown back, enduring one leg’s violent trembling, till he finally forcibly arrests its movement. The song has more bite now than when it was new in “South Pacific.” Then, we thought we were putting racism behind us; now, we see it’s alive and well. In this context, Cortez’s single image of one man’s struggle with himself is oddly potent.
Out of the Darkness is a video/dance (video by Henry Baker) on gay bashing, capped by a demand to stop the violence. Its abrupt video images slide over one another, mingling anticipatory fear and pictures of brutality, of Cortez walking through deserted nighttime streets glancing behind him, guys cruising in a car, a hand with a knife, an ambulance, a bloody face. In the live solo that follows the tape, Cortez - resistant and resilient - strides, prances, rocks sharply, races back and forth while, onscreen, light flashes on one unblinking blue eye. His dancing repeated he movement material of the video, and repetition made it weaker, except for the presence of that cold, glaring eye. In any case, a bunch of dance fans isn’t the audience for this dance; we’re the least likely group to go hunting on Christopher Street with baseball bats.
Don’t Fence Me In is a suite of six dances set to updated interpretations of Cole Porter songs from the Red, Hot & Blue album, with seven dancers in sneakers and bright, hot shorts, with black zippers that appear to zip (and unzip) all the way from the front to the back of the waistband, suggesting an aggressive sexual availability. But the choreographic material was more sexually routine, like Sandy Stone’s pimp moves in “Down in the Depths,” while three men on the sidelines cautiously moved a few steps toward her and a few steps back. Cortez’s solo in this piece, “Do I Love You,” provided the most intriguing material of the evening. Rooted but incurably restless - moping, twisting, pacing, with a sense of untapped power - he kept returning to center, monumental in his indecisiveness.
At the Cunningham Studio (January 24 and 25).
I suspected that I ought to skip seeing a bunch of Paul Taylor’s fine dancers in a program by one of their number, Hernando Cortez, just because the program - Cortez’s first full evening - seemed naively ambitious in its range and I was wary of his inexperience. I went anyway - and that was premature. The natural and congenial Taylor-company casting gave the concert a kind of big-time glamour and assurance. But though the dances were classily and strongly presented, they were rather thin fare. What gave them some appeal was their earnestness and lack of pretension.
Cortex isn’t insular; he’s here to be counted. I admire his pluck in organizing a group of over 100 dance professionals to march in last Junes Gay Pride March. He’s gorgeous, a fine dancer, a man who naturally wants to express what’s on his mind in terms of the art he practices daily.
But the dubious transition from dancer to choreographer is a bitch, not a mere next step, by any means, and Cortez, as a choreographer, is a beginner. I’d rather respect that as an appropriate phrase than knock him for not being further along.
At Night’s Edge, dedicated to five men who’ve died, to songs from Robert Schumann’s Liederkreis and Dichterliebe cycles, has some nice touches - like the way the women’s arrowy legs open in quick, supported jumps, or the way Thomas Patrick and Jeff Wadington reach and fling themselves, in criss cross paths, or the graceful composure of a short duet for Mary Cochrane and Rachel Berman-Benz, of Cortez’s own curiously reticent way of sliding his foot out while backing up. But, for all its bending and arching motives, Night’s Edge is stiff rather than fluid. A pattern of alternations makes it logy and simplistic. Often, if the group is moving, the soloist holds still and vice versa. And Cortez is trying to express rather basic, uncomplicated relationships and feelings to recordings by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Alfred Brendel that are infinitely subtle in expression. That’s a damaging match, even if Cortez found the music inspiring. In any case, his relation to music is still unformed.
Blind Date is a gloss on Kander and Ebb’s droll song of expected disappointment by Barbra Streisand in her Fanny Brice voice, with Rachel Berman-Benz, Mary Cochrane and Patrick Corbin indicating the plot. A Master of Time is a solo performed by Cortez in white briefs - all he had to do to thrill the audience was to stand there. It’s really two very short dances in the same costume. In Part one, to “Me and My Shadow,” he moves elusively/lightly around a chair - twisting, posing, lightly slapping his thighs - strangely confined to a small area. In part two, to “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught,” he sits with his head thrown back, enduring one leg’s violent trembling, till he finally forcibly arrests its movement. The song has more bite now than when it was new in “South Pacific.” Then, we thought we were putting racism behind us; now, we see it’s alive and well. In this context, Cortez’s single image of one man’s struggle with himself is oddly potent.
Out of the Darkness is a video/dance (video by Henry Baker) on gay bashing, capped by a demand to stop the violence. Its abrupt video images slide over one another, mingling anticipatory fear and pictures of brutality, of Cortez walking through deserted nighttime streets glancing behind him, guys cruising in a car, a hand with a knife, an ambulance, a bloody face. In the live solo that follows the tape, Cortez - resistant and resilient - strides, prances, rocks sharply, races back and forth while, onscreen, light flashes on one unblinking blue eye. His dancing repeated he movement material of the video, and repetition made it weaker, except for the presence of that cold, glaring eye. In any case, a bunch of dance fans isn’t the audience for this dance; we’re the least likely group to go hunting on Christopher Street with baseball bats.
Don’t Fence Me In is a suite of six dances set to updated interpretations of Cole Porter songs from the Red, Hot & Blue album, with seven dancers in sneakers and bright, hot shorts, with black zippers that appear to zip (and unzip) all the way from the front to the back of the waistband, suggesting an aggressive sexual availability. But the choreographic material was more sexually routine, like Sandy Stone’s pimp moves in “Down in the Depths,” while three men on the sidelines cautiously moved a few steps toward her and a few steps back. Cortez’s solo in this piece, “Do I Love You,” provided the most intriguing material of the evening. Rooted but incurably restless - moping, twisting, pacing, with a sense of untapped power - he kept returning to center, monumental in his indecisiveness.
At the Cunningham Studio (January 24 and 25).
Be a Man
February 4
Keith Hennessy, Jess Curtis, and Jules Beckman of San Francisco’s Contraband fittingly dedicated Mandala to their fathers. A sort of makeshift healing ritual broken down into many sections - involving athletic dancing, solemn ceremony, fighting, drumming, singing - Mandala wrestles with the question of male identity. It’s violent and tender, thoughtful and rash. It’s about these three men, their fathers and themselves, their anger and pain, their struggle to invent themselves and resolve the gnawing past, or, at least, bear it manfully. Take it like a man. Be a man.
Mandala’s trajectory is that of a real inner journey, so if it’s sometimes bumpy, erratic, overeager, a little didactic in its episodic form, that seems legitimate. Yet, however directly personal and enmeshed in a snarl of contradictory desires, it’s deeply engaged with the world - from the laws surrounding the anonymity of the birth parents of adopted children, to the practices of governments, everywhere “conspiring against the maturity of their citizens.”
Mandala’s not a model but an example of the empowering kind of art that people - I mean everybody - need to make to understand and transform their lives. A responsible kind of work the artist grows through, a fire through which he or she can be, to a degree, re-formed. Because the men here are confronting and examining material that shakes them up and exposes them ruthlessly (they’re literally naked in the final section), I don’t mind if I’m sometimes uncomfortable or embarrassed. I probably wouldn’t even trust them if I felt that they were entirely in control. If they were to flawlessly manipulate their material to make a safe and smooth experience for me, what would be the point? Anyway, it’s plain that the audience at Highways has come precisely for their passionate intensity.
There’s something open and square, blunt, about the way they use themselves, flinging themselves and catching one another, hopping on, slipping off, grappling violently, stumbling, rolling, scooting around. Their movement’s declarative, foolhardy. The song texts are often plain and disconcertingly colorless - terrible, bare, verbal gestures that hardly evoke the shattering feelings behind them. Beckman makes goo-goo faces to a baby - his folded-up coat. “This is my father,” he says, speaking to the baby, and plays a little xylophone. “I’d like to kill you, father. I’d like to hold you,too.” When he shakes his coat open, baby and daddy disappear in an instant.
The three men’s individual father-stories of rage and loss are harsh and poignant; yet though they struggle with their ghosts alone, they’re renewed together, like when they sing “Amazing Grace” into one another’s faces, creating a knot of warm air and harmony.
At the end, they set out a bowl of water. Each takes a sip, anoints himself, and strips off the black shorts he’s wearing. They pose androgynously for a moment, tucking in their genitals, then - to gentle, steady drumming - they fly into a long dance of soft vaults and bold lifts that engenders a sense of reconciliation and accord. Not that everything’s solved, pacific, but that this vibrant capacity is their inheritance also.
At Highways, Santa Monica (January 9 through 12).
Keith Hennessy, Jess Curtis, and Jules Beckman of San Francisco’s Contraband fittingly dedicated Mandala to their fathers. A sort of makeshift healing ritual broken down into many sections - involving athletic dancing, solemn ceremony, fighting, drumming, singing - Mandala wrestles with the question of male identity. It’s violent and tender, thoughtful and rash. It’s about these three men, their fathers and themselves, their anger and pain, their struggle to invent themselves and resolve the gnawing past, or, at least, bear it manfully. Take it like a man. Be a man.
Mandala’s trajectory is that of a real inner journey, so if it’s sometimes bumpy, erratic, overeager, a little didactic in its episodic form, that seems legitimate. Yet, however directly personal and enmeshed in a snarl of contradictory desires, it’s deeply engaged with the world - from the laws surrounding the anonymity of the birth parents of adopted children, to the practices of governments, everywhere “conspiring against the maturity of their citizens.”
Mandala’s not a model but an example of the empowering kind of art that people - I mean everybody - need to make to understand and transform their lives. A responsible kind of work the artist grows through, a fire through which he or she can be, to a degree, re-formed. Because the men here are confronting and examining material that shakes them up and exposes them ruthlessly (they’re literally naked in the final section), I don’t mind if I’m sometimes uncomfortable or embarrassed. I probably wouldn’t even trust them if I felt that they were entirely in control. If they were to flawlessly manipulate their material to make a safe and smooth experience for me, what would be the point? Anyway, it’s plain that the audience at Highways has come precisely for their passionate intensity.
There’s something open and square, blunt, about the way they use themselves, flinging themselves and catching one another, hopping on, slipping off, grappling violently, stumbling, rolling, scooting around. Their movement’s declarative, foolhardy. The song texts are often plain and disconcertingly colorless - terrible, bare, verbal gestures that hardly evoke the shattering feelings behind them. Beckman makes goo-goo faces to a baby - his folded-up coat. “This is my father,” he says, speaking to the baby, and plays a little xylophone. “I’d like to kill you, father. I’d like to hold you,too.” When he shakes his coat open, baby and daddy disappear in an instant.
The three men’s individual father-stories of rage and loss are harsh and poignant; yet though they struggle with their ghosts alone, they’re renewed together, like when they sing “Amazing Grace” into one another’s faces, creating a knot of warm air and harmony.
At the end, they set out a bowl of water. Each takes a sip, anoints himself, and strips off the black shorts he’s wearing. They pose androgynously for a moment, tucking in their genitals, then - to gentle, steady drumming - they fly into a long dance of soft vaults and bold lifts that engenders a sense of reconciliation and accord. Not that everything’s solved, pacific, but that this vibrant capacity is their inheritance also.
At Highways, Santa Monica (January 9 through 12).
Dress Up
January 21
Both Beverly Blossom and Douglas Nielsen create solos in which shapes are carefully etched and incidents can be read in a narrative way. Blossom’s delicately clownish solos are full of zany characterological details and mixed emotions, often tinged with regretful self-knowledge. Nielsen’s works are elegant, but they’re all about gimmicks and props.
Somewhere around 60 now, with her red hair cropped short and spiky, and her mouth slightly screwed, Blossom is dangerously elfin. Her movement, mostly gestural, is precise in design, precise in intentions that can fluctuate from instant to instant. In The Cloak # 1 (1991) and #2 (1990), Blossom is wrapped in a regally engulfing red cloak with an ample hood, and, in the erratic comic half, it affects her in odd, fumbly ways and makes her testy. While #1 isn’t quite in focus, #2 (composed as a memorial for Carey Erickson and made first) is straightforward. Here she reaches and reaches, and is overwhelmed with feeling, folds herself into the cloak, then lets it drag, and leaves with her hands over her eyes.
Besame Mucho I first saw in a working version (Re-Run, in 1985), and now it’s seamless, with a teasing mechanical intro that lightly dashes expectations. Music starts (gypsy dance on accordion), spotlight comes up, nothing happens, lights out. Music again, spotlight, lights out. Music - and there she stands, a brazen, kinky vision in a long red wig, in a loose kimono of gauzy gold over red. When she turns, she’s split down the middle - her other side is a lascivious, mustachioed cad dressed in tails (costume by Richard Hormung). His hand feels her behind, her arm snakes around his shoulder as they slow dance. Seeing is disbelieving: that can’t be only one person. It’s so very deft - but why bother with this old vaudeville trick? Then, when she turns full face, it’s as if we’re seeing a cross fade or double exposure - a deadpan revelation of an enigmatic human identity.
Where Blossom’s characters are complex yet elusive, those Nielsen presents are capable of only one idea at a time. Instead of using props to reveal a nature that may surprise himself and us, he offers a series of actions, often arbitrarily connected.
In Big Brother, he strides in on aluminum painter’s stilts looking like a giant with polio, plays with a bright metal side chair, essays some precarious balances, mugs his feelings. In Behind the Back of God, a premiere, with a gleaming, stainless steel easy chair (by Howard Rosenthal) center stage, he wears a black eye-mask and a black cruciform robe covered with black cubes. Official, ecclesiastical, he proceeds to wrap and unwrap himself and do the million vaguely interesting things you can do with that outfit. Finally, seated in the chair, he somehow slithers around and out of his costume, disappears his head behind the chair back, and leaves us just that empty robe: the politician deflated, the Wizard of Oz exposed, the demon reduced to a puddle of scum. A nice finish. But then he reappears - on the floor sideways, his torso bare, wearing the mask and an expression of terror. Do we need this comment?
Nielsen’s best piece is Nest. Lights come up on a nest of twigs, maybe two and a half feet across the stage - wearing a singlet, polka-dot shorts, knee socks with garters, and a Borsalino - taking picky, birdlike steps with his long arms pressed behind his legs and his back curled into a question mark. It’s a brilliant pose but he can’t, of course, do much in that position and nothing that follows has such eerie accuracy. After that crystal beginning, Nest becomes flaccid and cute while Nielsen quietly (and successfully) persists in urging the egg to hatch.
Four Bits, the new four-part duet he and Blossom made jointly, is still blurry and uncertain. She is a formidable woman in a glamorous, wide-brimmed black hat. Nielsen buzzes around her in a smoking jacket while she sits at a cafe table Though Blossom has some moments worthy of any of Giraudoux’s eccentrics, the pair’s peculiar, polite relationship is puzzling and curiously without impetus. In the last section, he departs, leaving her holding what we thought was his hand, forearm, and part of a sleeve. For a long time she hangs on to the thing, shifting it from hand to hand, while he quietly restores some of his costume to the chair he has left: his bowler hat, his jacket, his shoes. Is he reconstructing his body’s shell so she’ll think he’s still there?
No. He comes crawling back on all fours in a jacket covered with 15 to 20 flopping arms. But the expected spidery climax doesn’t happen. Nielsen’s vivid, visual ideas too often go nowhere.
At Dance Theater Workshop (January 3 through 5).
Both Beverly Blossom and Douglas Nielsen create solos in which shapes are carefully etched and incidents can be read in a narrative way. Blossom’s delicately clownish solos are full of zany characterological details and mixed emotions, often tinged with regretful self-knowledge. Nielsen’s works are elegant, but they’re all about gimmicks and props.
Somewhere around 60 now, with her red hair cropped short and spiky, and her mouth slightly screwed, Blossom is dangerously elfin. Her movement, mostly gestural, is precise in design, precise in intentions that can fluctuate from instant to instant. In The Cloak # 1 (1991) and #2 (1990), Blossom is wrapped in a regally engulfing red cloak with an ample hood, and, in the erratic comic half, it affects her in odd, fumbly ways and makes her testy. While #1 isn’t quite in focus, #2 (composed as a memorial for Carey Erickson and made first) is straightforward. Here she reaches and reaches, and is overwhelmed with feeling, folds herself into the cloak, then lets it drag, and leaves with her hands over her eyes.
Besame Mucho I first saw in a working version (Re-Run, in 1985), and now it’s seamless, with a teasing mechanical intro that lightly dashes expectations. Music starts (gypsy dance on accordion), spotlight comes up, nothing happens, lights out. Music again, spotlight, lights out. Music - and there she stands, a brazen, kinky vision in a long red wig, in a loose kimono of gauzy gold over red. When she turns, she’s split down the middle - her other side is a lascivious, mustachioed cad dressed in tails (costume by Richard Hormung). His hand feels her behind, her arm snakes around his shoulder as they slow dance. Seeing is disbelieving: that can’t be only one person. It’s so very deft - but why bother with this old vaudeville trick? Then, when she turns full face, it’s as if we’re seeing a cross fade or double exposure - a deadpan revelation of an enigmatic human identity.
Where Blossom’s characters are complex yet elusive, those Nielsen presents are capable of only one idea at a time. Instead of using props to reveal a nature that may surprise himself and us, he offers a series of actions, often arbitrarily connected.
In Big Brother, he strides in on aluminum painter’s stilts looking like a giant with polio, plays with a bright metal side chair, essays some precarious balances, mugs his feelings. In Behind the Back of God, a premiere, with a gleaming, stainless steel easy chair (by Howard Rosenthal) center stage, he wears a black eye-mask and a black cruciform robe covered with black cubes. Official, ecclesiastical, he proceeds to wrap and unwrap himself and do the million vaguely interesting things you can do with that outfit. Finally, seated in the chair, he somehow slithers around and out of his costume, disappears his head behind the chair back, and leaves us just that empty robe: the politician deflated, the Wizard of Oz exposed, the demon reduced to a puddle of scum. A nice finish. But then he reappears - on the floor sideways, his torso bare, wearing the mask and an expression of terror. Do we need this comment?
Nielsen’s best piece is Nest. Lights come up on a nest of twigs, maybe two and a half feet across the stage - wearing a singlet, polka-dot shorts, knee socks with garters, and a Borsalino - taking picky, birdlike steps with his long arms pressed behind his legs and his back curled into a question mark. It’s a brilliant pose but he can’t, of course, do much in that position and nothing that follows has such eerie accuracy. After that crystal beginning, Nest becomes flaccid and cute while Nielsen quietly (and successfully) persists in urging the egg to hatch.
Four Bits, the new four-part duet he and Blossom made jointly, is still blurry and uncertain. She is a formidable woman in a glamorous, wide-brimmed black hat. Nielsen buzzes around her in a smoking jacket while she sits at a cafe table Though Blossom has some moments worthy of any of Giraudoux’s eccentrics, the pair’s peculiar, polite relationship is puzzling and curiously without impetus. In the last section, he departs, leaving her holding what we thought was his hand, forearm, and part of a sleeve. For a long time she hangs on to the thing, shifting it from hand to hand, while he quietly restores some of his costume to the chair he has left: his bowler hat, his jacket, his shoes. Is he reconstructing his body’s shell so she’ll think he’s still there?
No. He comes crawling back on all fours in a jacket covered with 15 to 20 flopping arms. But the expected spidery climax doesn’t happen. Nielsen’s vivid, visual ideas too often go nowhere.
At Dance Theater Workshop (January 3 through 5).
Jerk off for Jesse
January 7
Tim Miller is in the corridor schmoozing with the audience before his later-night show at P.S. 122 old old and new material, Sex/Love/Stories. How come he’s not in the dressing room being nervous? I guess we're his congregation; he might as well hug and shake hands. Miller has been regaling us with fragments of his increasingly activist personal history for years - being adorable, indulging in hyperbole, being funny, angry, taking his clothes off. Born in Whittier, and once again a California resident, Miller still keeps his tiny New York apartment One of the NEA Four, Miller was also one of the co-founders of P.S. 122 in 1980, “and I burned several hole in the floor that year during my performances.” Now, he and Linda Frye Bernham direct Highways, the intensely busy performance space in Santa Monica - “a good place where we are trying to change the world.” With pal Holly Hughes he has set up a fund for lesbian and gay performance artists: the pot is small but the idea should have an encouraging ripple effect. He’s been arrested four times in AIDS-related actions. In the process of homing himself as a performance artist and as a person, he seems to have actually become the person he projected in his pieces. He makes no excuses. Maybe he’s not consistent. Yet the facts and quasi-facts show a truer face than he’s ever revealed before.
In earlier shows, he entertained, incanted, railed, and sought our approval. Now he’s on another level - he’s not worried whether we’ll like him or if we’ll think what he’s doing is art - he knows he can take us on his ride. His truths are sometimes riskier and cut closer to the bone, or the boner:they’re funnier because they’re more painful. But he doesn’t need to shock us. “Time passes, my friends slip away. After 10 years of being angry and scared, no wonder I feel old.” He’s 33. Miller focuses on the politics of sex - gay sex - and AIDS, but he won’t reduce sex to politics. He’s always reminding us of kissing and sucking, of fucking and cuddling, of silly pleasures, of desire and betrayal and missed opportunities. “Let’s get down to it, Oh Dudes and Dudettes,” he notes in the program, “the big job of knowing ourselves, restructuring society, doing sex, ACTING UP, telling our stories.” Really he’s inspiring. Despite his command - like an able preacher, he knows just how high he wants to take us - there’s still a beautifully homemade style to his performing. Shy, gasping, awkward, strident, regretful, shamelessly pleading, tender, yet he now carries the full authority of a man who’s not scared of himself nor of the do-nothing politicos, “religious” demagogues, and other loudmouth shits who would squelch him and his buddies and don’t really seem to care much if people drop dead in the streets. When he scores Bush for “speaking so fucking glibly about kindness and gentleness,” he doesn’t have to rage to convey the extent of his anger and contempt and to let us know that a testy remark is not the end of the story.
Though his boyish charm hasn’t diminished, the polish has worn off his persuasive naivete, and what remains in a even stranger and rarer innocence. He no longer presents himself as a mythic, cornfed homoboy from the land of Nixon - but as a passionate, responsible, silly, angry, pretty horny guy. In showing himself to us from so many angles and opening himself to such intimate inspection (While not absolutely committing himself to the unvarnished truth), he makes it all but impossible for us not to recognize ourselves in him. In the sort-of dark (except for EXIT signs), he climbs over us, shopping, in some version of the Christmas spirit, for knees, feet, lips, fingers (“enough for every imaginable hole”), nipples (“which do get more sensitive with every passing year”), dicks. He’s not particular about color or size, cut or uncut, he says - he’s just “so happy to have a dick to hold in these troubled times.” So, he has sex on the brain. Sex is central to his discourse. Good. As he exclaims somewhere, “we can’t let those right-wing fuckheads tell us how to fuck.” He tells stories of his old New York apartments and the boyfriends that went along with them like Gordon, the “trendy boy” neighbor from the nightmare building on 4th and Avenue B. Miller gives us appetizing glimpses of him over several years, and in another half a second he’s dead of “you-know-what.“ Miller gashes the air to carve A.I.D.S. in it. Later, recalling the losses of friends and lovers, he admits, “It hurt more in real life,” with almost spiteful off-handedness, “and the sex was better than I let on.” He richly describes the week-long ACT UP/LA rally in front of the LA County General Hospital to get them to set up an AIDS ward. “Uh, oh,” he mutters in an “Oops, I’ve been a bad boy” singsong sometimes late in the show. “I got myself in trouble again. His pants are down around his ankles. And as one of two dozen protesters arrested during “Civil Disobedience Weekend,” he mildly notices that he’s locked up with a “very cute bunch” in the holding cell. Rubbing his crotch, he details how the men, in “trembling anticipation,” wind up releasing their pent-up horniness. Meanwhile, in another room, the women form a lesbian video collective. And when everyone’s suddenly released and walks out into the world’s new morning, Bush is in exile, in Baghdad, the CIA has joined ACT UP, LA COunty General Hospital has levitated, trailing IVs and plumbing, Yeltsin wants to establish a World Artist Government. So, there is a future and it is us.
At P.S. 122 (December 20 and 21).
Tim Miller is in the corridor schmoozing with the audience before his later-night show at P.S. 122 old old and new material, Sex/Love/Stories. How come he’s not in the dressing room being nervous? I guess we're his congregation; he might as well hug and shake hands. Miller has been regaling us with fragments of his increasingly activist personal history for years - being adorable, indulging in hyperbole, being funny, angry, taking his clothes off. Born in Whittier, and once again a California resident, Miller still keeps his tiny New York apartment One of the NEA Four, Miller was also one of the co-founders of P.S. 122 in 1980, “and I burned several hole in the floor that year during my performances.” Now, he and Linda Frye Bernham direct Highways, the intensely busy performance space in Santa Monica - “a good place where we are trying to change the world.” With pal Holly Hughes he has set up a fund for lesbian and gay performance artists: the pot is small but the idea should have an encouraging ripple effect. He’s been arrested four times in AIDS-related actions. In the process of homing himself as a performance artist and as a person, he seems to have actually become the person he projected in his pieces. He makes no excuses. Maybe he’s not consistent. Yet the facts and quasi-facts show a truer face than he’s ever revealed before.
In earlier shows, he entertained, incanted, railed, and sought our approval. Now he’s on another level - he’s not worried whether we’ll like him or if we’ll think what he’s doing is art - he knows he can take us on his ride. His truths are sometimes riskier and cut closer to the bone, or the boner:they’re funnier because they’re more painful. But he doesn’t need to shock us. “Time passes, my friends slip away. After 10 years of being angry and scared, no wonder I feel old.” He’s 33. Miller focuses on the politics of sex - gay sex - and AIDS, but he won’t reduce sex to politics. He’s always reminding us of kissing and sucking, of fucking and cuddling, of silly pleasures, of desire and betrayal and missed opportunities. “Let’s get down to it, Oh Dudes and Dudettes,” he notes in the program, “the big job of knowing ourselves, restructuring society, doing sex, ACTING UP, telling our stories.” Really he’s inspiring. Despite his command - like an able preacher, he knows just how high he wants to take us - there’s still a beautifully homemade style to his performing. Shy, gasping, awkward, strident, regretful, shamelessly pleading, tender, yet he now carries the full authority of a man who’s not scared of himself nor of the do-nothing politicos, “religious” demagogues, and other loudmouth shits who would squelch him and his buddies and don’t really seem to care much if people drop dead in the streets. When he scores Bush for “speaking so fucking glibly about kindness and gentleness,” he doesn’t have to rage to convey the extent of his anger and contempt and to let us know that a testy remark is not the end of the story.
Though his boyish charm hasn’t diminished, the polish has worn off his persuasive naivete, and what remains in a even stranger and rarer innocence. He no longer presents himself as a mythic, cornfed homoboy from the land of Nixon - but as a passionate, responsible, silly, angry, pretty horny guy. In showing himself to us from so many angles and opening himself to such intimate inspection (While not absolutely committing himself to the unvarnished truth), he makes it all but impossible for us not to recognize ourselves in him. In the sort-of dark (except for EXIT signs), he climbs over us, shopping, in some version of the Christmas spirit, for knees, feet, lips, fingers (“enough for every imaginable hole”), nipples (“which do get more sensitive with every passing year”), dicks. He’s not particular about color or size, cut or uncut, he says - he’s just “so happy to have a dick to hold in these troubled times.” So, he has sex on the brain. Sex is central to his discourse. Good. As he exclaims somewhere, “we can’t let those right-wing fuckheads tell us how to fuck.” He tells stories of his old New York apartments and the boyfriends that went along with them like Gordon, the “trendy boy” neighbor from the nightmare building on 4th and Avenue B. Miller gives us appetizing glimpses of him over several years, and in another half a second he’s dead of “you-know-what.“ Miller gashes the air to carve A.I.D.S. in it. Later, recalling the losses of friends and lovers, he admits, “It hurt more in real life,” with almost spiteful off-handedness, “and the sex was better than I let on.” He richly describes the week-long ACT UP/LA rally in front of the LA County General Hospital to get them to set up an AIDS ward. “Uh, oh,” he mutters in an “Oops, I’ve been a bad boy” singsong sometimes late in the show. “I got myself in trouble again. His pants are down around his ankles. And as one of two dozen protesters arrested during “Civil Disobedience Weekend,” he mildly notices that he’s locked up with a “very cute bunch” in the holding cell. Rubbing his crotch, he details how the men, in “trembling anticipation,” wind up releasing their pent-up horniness. Meanwhile, in another room, the women form a lesbian video collective. And when everyone’s suddenly released and walks out into the world’s new morning, Bush is in exile, in Baghdad, the CIA has joined ACT UP, LA COunty General Hospital has levitated, trailing IVs and plumbing, Yeltsin wants to establish a World Artist Government. So, there is a future and it is us.
At P.S. 122 (December 20 and 21).
Accentuate the Positive
January 14
The audience at St. Mark’s Church yielded enthusiastically to Muntu Dance Theater’s robust embrace and responded roundly to their calls of welcome. Taking its name from a Bantu word meaning “the essence of humanity,” the 20-year-old Chicago-based company is an ensemble with an educational mission as well as a passion. Not only are Muntu’s members resolved to celebrate traditional ritual and gleeful artistic forms with their audiences, they insist that we perceive that they’re doing something that’s detailed, refined, complex - they’re not just hopping around having a good time. That they are having a good time is undeniable - they seem almost supernaturally happy - but it’s the enthusiasm and eloquence of their drumming, dancing and singing, like the pressure under an airplane’s wings, that carries them aloft, and the audience with them. When they sing, the resonant acoustics of St, Mark’s makes their several voices sound like a chorus of hundreds. The full company can be double the size of the group of 10 that appeared at St. Mark’s, and, although they performed a strictly West African program here, their repertory includes a wider range of traditional and contemporary works by artistic director Amaniyea Page and guest choreographers.
The seriousness of Muntu’s thoroughgoing commitment (researching the background of the dances and societies in which they develop, sewing and constructing their own costumes) doesn’t weigh down their performing or inhibit its gala spirit. If they achieve freedom through discipline, the dancing doesn’t take them out of themselves into some trance of rhythm and energy but roots them, makes them ever more vividly present. If they aim to fill their audiences with pride in the African heritage, they’re also concerned to ground that pride in knowledge and understanding. Of course, you can’t do much of that in an hour and a half show - but that larger intention is apparent in their dynamic. I love the furious pulse of the dancing and its ceremonious contrasts, the galloping thundercracks of the drumming, the piercing voices of the women. The energy that pours off is tremendous. But the group’s eagerness is a little daunting, their assurance intimidating; they show no shadow side. I wonder that there’s so much steel and so little softness in their performance. Still the ambience of mutual support, the reciprocal warmth of their challenges, the fervor of their unison work, makes a compelling argument for their overt evangelical message. They aim to “express ourselves in a positive and natural way...and believe there is merit in all cultures,” says Babu Atiba, in introductory remarks that follow an insinuating, limpid flute solo. And in describing Muntu’s approach he quotes a maxim to “seek not to impress, butt to try to express the spirit that lies within.” Their performance, however virtuosic, has a fitting modesty directly in accord with that notion.
At Danspace Project at St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery (December 19 and 21).
The audience at St. Mark’s Church yielded enthusiastically to Muntu Dance Theater’s robust embrace and responded roundly to their calls of welcome. Taking its name from a Bantu word meaning “the essence of humanity,” the 20-year-old Chicago-based company is an ensemble with an educational mission as well as a passion. Not only are Muntu’s members resolved to celebrate traditional ritual and gleeful artistic forms with their audiences, they insist that we perceive that they’re doing something that’s detailed, refined, complex - they’re not just hopping around having a good time. That they are having a good time is undeniable - they seem almost supernaturally happy - but it’s the enthusiasm and eloquence of their drumming, dancing and singing, like the pressure under an airplane’s wings, that carries them aloft, and the audience with them. When they sing, the resonant acoustics of St, Mark’s makes their several voices sound like a chorus of hundreds. The full company can be double the size of the group of 10 that appeared at St. Mark’s, and, although they performed a strictly West African program here, their repertory includes a wider range of traditional and contemporary works by artistic director Amaniyea Page and guest choreographers.
The seriousness of Muntu’s thoroughgoing commitment (researching the background of the dances and societies in which they develop, sewing and constructing their own costumes) doesn’t weigh down their performing or inhibit its gala spirit. If they achieve freedom through discipline, the dancing doesn’t take them out of themselves into some trance of rhythm and energy but roots them, makes them ever more vividly present. If they aim to fill their audiences with pride in the African heritage, they’re also concerned to ground that pride in knowledge and understanding. Of course, you can’t do much of that in an hour and a half show - but that larger intention is apparent in their dynamic. I love the furious pulse of the dancing and its ceremonious contrasts, the galloping thundercracks of the drumming, the piercing voices of the women. The energy that pours off is tremendous. But the group’s eagerness is a little daunting, their assurance intimidating; they show no shadow side. I wonder that there’s so much steel and so little softness in their performance. Still the ambience of mutual support, the reciprocal warmth of their challenges, the fervor of their unison work, makes a compelling argument for their overt evangelical message. They aim to “express ourselves in a positive and natural way...and believe there is merit in all cultures,” says Babu Atiba, in introductory remarks that follow an insinuating, limpid flute solo. And in describing Muntu’s approach he quotes a maxim to “seek not to impress, butt to try to express the spirit that lies within.” Their performance, however virtuosic, has a fitting modesty directly in accord with that notion.
At Danspace Project at St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery (December 19 and 21).