by Lewis Whittington for The Dance Journal
One of the centerpiece premieres at LiveArts was choreographer John Jasperse’s Canyon. The high-concept dance led to polarizing interpretations and the Sept 10 performance proved to be a happening with a large chunk of the audience staying to hear the artists on process.
The opening has six dancers dropping in and out of fevered patterns catching the dervish timbre to the opening of composer Hahn Rowe‘s score. At the end of the passage, the dancers, Jasperse among them, stand in a line panting. He seems to bring himself and his dancers on a real on symbolic precipice. This opening was reminiscent of Lucinda Childs‘ Dance, but only momentarily, Jasperse’s template soon carves his own dance netherworld in a forceful sound field-choreographic exchange.
Tony Orrico’s designs have a triangulated scroll unfurled on the Wilma stage to skewer perspective, along with all of the theater’s industrial rigging remaining exposed. A 4 by 3 ft. box trolls around the stage, laying day-glo lime tape; field flags that suggesting a perilous terrain. These arch design elements distract unnecessarily, but, the music-dance dynamic and the personalities of these dancers continue to a much more daring creative place.
Dancers peel away and go off into movement tangents, at times, Jasperse just scribbles dancers off the stage page, as they limp away, for instance, we see another aspect of their performance. The duets seem like contact improv, but are more deliberately stylized sculpting. A stellar section has Johnson and McGinn writhing on the floor and it just keeps morphing into an electric mis-en-scene. One thing to bristle at, since this is ostensibly an abstract work, it seemed odd that Jasperse gives the best choreographic bits to the men, at odds, with a gender neutral POV (or was that my eye?)
Johnson seems to retreat to off-balanced steps, strained on demi-point as he agitates himself across the stage. You wonder if it’s meant to be a physical manifestation of neural disturbance, more likely it is just what it is, non-representational abstractions in dance. Each dancer expresses a similar inner, possibly marred physicality.
Rowe gave a clue in his comments later that he admitted that he tossed out music he had composed when he started Canyon after seeing what the dancers were doing in the studio. Inevitably he was influenced, he said, by dancer interaction and the scenarios off their bodies.
Rowe fragments and jars with sonic wormholes and macabre enclaves- eerie tinkling of matter, spikey chord clusters or sound furies appearing and vanishing.. Wise, perhaps to beat back the temptation to interpret, remain in an induced state, but keep your senses open for any sudden movement and your mind open to any stealth ones.
Mr. Whittington’s arts profiles, features, and stories have appeared in The Advocate, Dance International, Playbill, American Theatre, American Record Guide, The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, EdgeMedia, and Philadelphia Dance Journal. Mr. Whittington has received two NEA awards for journalistic excellence.
In addition to interviews with choreographers, dancers, and artistic directors from every discipline, he has interviewed such music luminaries from Ned Rorem to Eartha Kitt. He has written extensively on gay culture and politics and is most proud of his interviews with such gay rights pioneers as Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings.
Mr. Whittington has participated on the poetry series Voice in Philadelphia and has written two (unpublished) books of poetry. He is currently finishing Beloved Infidels, a play about the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh. His editorials on GLBTQ activism, marriage equality, gay culture and social issues have appeared in Philadelphia Inquirer, City Paper, and The Advocate.
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