REVIEW: Memphis Rhythms
Ballet Memphis’ Contemporary Ballet @ Ohio Theatre
Reviewed by Elsa Johnson & Victor Lucas
We recently went to see Ballet Memphis at the Ohio Theatre. For us their concert of contemporary dance repertoire was like a collection of short stories or songs on a CD; if we didn’t particularly like one piece, the next piece might be better.
We especially liked In Dreams (2007), the last piece on the program, choreographer Trey McIntyre’s response to six Roy Orbison songs, choreographed during a residency with Ballet Memphis. Boomers both of us, we grew up with Orbison’s recordings, heard them repeatedly on the car radio, social danced to them, fell in and out of love with them in the background. Little did we imagine back in the ’60s that concert dance — a ballet, yet — would someday create such a perfect metaphor for these love-lorn laments.
Aspiring choreographers would do well to study the way McIntyre modified and distorted traditional ballet steps, listened carefully to underlying rhythms in the music, and used those rhythms in his choreography. For instance, a locomotor pattern that appears repeatedly in McIntyre’s choreography for In Dreams, a flat-footed skip-land-walk-walk, perfectly captures one of the recurrent rhythms of the recordings.
Orbison always deployed his amazing vocal range in service of the emotional content of his songs. Not a lot of singers can hit those notes, and fewer still can make the notes mean so much. McIntyre’s choreography hits a similar sweet spot, accompanying those vocal and emotional high points with dynamic movements that served well.
The program notes don’t give a costume credit for In Dreams, but the dancers are dressed all in black, as Orbison did. No sunglasses, though — imitation stops short of parody.
Takademe, inserted into the program at the last moment, presented a shirtless male dancer center stage and a recording by Sheila Chandra in which she vocalizes Kathak rhythms. The pleasure of the dance unfolded as the audience realized that the dancer could keep pace with the intricate rhythms of Chandra’s agile lips, teeth and tongue. Takademe was originally choreographed for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater by Robert Battle.
Curtain of Green is choreographer Julia Adam’s treatment of the Eudora Welty short story of the same title. Not a story ballet, Adam’s dance portrays crucial events in the narrative and then repeats them again and again, much like human memory or, indeed, the music of Philip Glass whose Etudes for Piano provide the music for Curtain of Green.
We applaud Adam’s narrative technique and her use of a short story that lays bare another ugly side of racism, but we could have used a program note on the unfamiliar story.
Also on the program was S’épanouir choreographed by Jane Comfort to a score by Memphis-based jazz saxophonist Kirk Whalum and Being Here With Other People choreographed by company member Steven McMahon to the third movement of Beethoven’s (only) concerto for violin and orchestra.
Ballet Memphis, presented by DanceCleveland, performed at the Ohio Theatre on Sat 3/10 and Sun 3/11/12.
From Cool Cleveland contributors Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas. Elsa and Vic are both longtime Clevelanders. Elsa is a landscape designer. She studied ballet as an avocation for 2 decades. Vic has been a dancer and dance teacher for most of his working life, performing in a number of dance companies in NYC and Cleveland. They write about dance as a way to learn more and keep in touch with the dance community. E-mail them at vicnelsaATearthlink.net.