By Elsa Johnson & Victor Lucas
We went to Cain Park last week, a 10 minute walk from our house, and caught one of Verb Ballets’ last concerts of the summer. We saw two old dances, two new dances, and four dancers who were new to us. The dancers, both the newcomers and the old guard, demonstrated impressive skill in a program dominated by Latin jazz dance and African-American concert dance.
The first dance on the program, Mozel Tov Mi Amigos choreographed by Daryl Gray, started off with a blast of Latin brass — music by Larry Harlow — and 4 of the Verb women looking tall and terrific as they mamboed on in long red dresses and silver heels. Only about 10 minutes long with just the one loud, fast movement, Mozel Tov Mi Amigos nevertheless managed to fit in a lot of dancing. There was Latin ballroom partnering between the 4 women and the 4 men and enough Latin style jazz steps — kicks, turns, shoulder shimmies, hip shaking — to fill up a much longer night club act.
Press materials had told us that Mozel Tov Mi Amigos showed how Jewish culture intertwined with South American culture, so we were watching for the elements of traditional Jewish folk dance that showed up. Which they did, but this was not a dark, meditative piece like Jose Limon’s La Malinche (1947) or Pearl Lang’s Shirah (1960) . Instead, choreographer Gray, whose best credits are mostly in jazz dance and musical comedy, stayed on the sunny side of life and gave the Verb dancers a stylish, sexy addition to their repertoire.
The other new dance on the program, Dark Matter choreographed by Tommie-Waheed Evans, seemed at first to aspire to something darker and deeper. Its program note consisted of a poem about “love lost…never found” and the dancing began with a gunshot, an execution. But soon none of that seemed to matter as Evans and the Verb dancers settled into a hard edged but exuberant musical visualization in African-American dance style. Dark Matter reminded us a lot of Passing By choreographed by Antonio Brown, also on the program, also an ensemble piece with a digitally arranged score choreographed by a young African-American with ties to Cleveland School of the Arts.
Both Evans and Brown presented abundant dance materials in a verse / refrain format. Brown’s refrains used running in place and contact elements, dancers pushing or pulling against each other or against themselves, hand to hand or hand to foot. Evan’s refrains made clearer reference to traditional African-American materials such as stamp step or traveling squats. Both sustained interest over the length of the dance with an undercurrent of interpersonal emotion and a skillful progression to a climactic finish.
If there was ever any doubt, this concert provided convincing evidence that Verb rocks. Much credit should go to Terence Greene, one of Verb’s Company Teachers. As Dance Director at Cleveland School of the Arts, Greene provided Brown’s early training and brought Evans to Cleveland as a guest artist.
Also on the program, a revival of the late Heinz Poll’s Andante Sostenuto, a neo-classical pas de deux performed by Stephanie Krise and Brian Murphy. We had heard that Krise was unable to perform recently due to an injury but in the performance we saw she showed her usual high extensions and secure point work. Murphy only seems to improve as the years pass; in Saturday’s performance he provided his usual elegant partnering support, repeatedly lowering Krise from high overhead lifts with great strength and control.
Looking back, Cleveland dance audiences will perhaps remember when Verb consisted of dancers skilled in either ballet or modern dance. Gradually, through training and attrition, Verb developed high skill levels in both modern dance and ballet with especially high skill levels among the women en pointe.
Krise and Murphy were the only dancers who got to show off their ballet skills at Cain Park but judging from their bios, new company members Lieneke Matte, Chelsea Pyrch, and Stephen James all have considerable ballet skills as well as the Latin and African-American skill set on display at Cain Park. This company remains a joy to watch and we’re looking forward to their next performance.
We watched Verb Ballets at Cain Park Evans Amphitheater on Sat 8/3/2013.
Verb’s 2013-14 Season is just beginning. Learn more at http://verbballets.org.
Even if you’re not within walking distance, Cain Park is a highly accessible outdoor venue for Clevelanders. See what’s still to come this summer at http://cainpark.com.
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.
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118