Verb Ballets packed the house at Breen Center last Saturday with a program full of new dances.
Three of the new dances were variations based on Martha Graham’s 1930 masterpiece, Lamentation, all commissioned by Verb and choreographed by long-time Verb associates. No, this is not a matter of blatant plagiarism but rather a collaboration within the auspices of the Martha Graham Dance Company. Let us explain.
Martha Graham looms large in dance history, but not so much in today’s dance landscape where the Martha Graham Dance Company reaches for continued contemporary relevance with initiatives such as Lamentation Variations Project. For this project, choreographers and dance companies — including Verb — have been invited to create their own dances on the subject of grief. Like Graham’s original, dances must be 4 minutes long and without a set. The project will culminate in 2016 when Verb performs in New York City in a shared program with the Graham company, an auspicious gig for all concerned, which may restore some of MGDC’s former luster.
As choreographer Antonio Brown describes in this video, he started his Lamentation Variation with a focus on hands and how they convey emotion. But his dance for 8 Verb dancers quickly evolved into full-bodied ensemble movement, riding well-chosen music, Cello Sonata in G minor Op. 19 by Sergei Rachmaninoff, to a final tableau.
Choreographer Chung-Fu Chang set his variation, The Veil, on Kara Madden and Stephaen Hood. There’s a poetic invocation in the program note, an attention-getting red slash of light on the cyclorama, some business with a veil midway through, and again the music, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonata for Violin Solo No. 1 in G minor, Adagio, seems appropriate to the subject. But it is the committed, inward performances that Chang has elicited from the dancers that carry this dance for us.
Choreographer Ginger Thatcher rolled out the ultimate weapon for her Lamentation Variation in the form of a commissioned score composed by Shawn Gough. We’d guess that Thatcher most recently crossed paths with Gough in The Little Dancer where she’s Associate Choreographer and Assistant Director and he’s — not Composer — but Music Director and Conductor. In fact, search “Shawn Gough composer” and find nary a credit for composition but look at his credits for music director and conductor and you’ll realize that he is the personification of music for the contemporary theater; Music Director and Conductor for Broadway show after Broadway show. Oh, Rachmaninoff and Bach are fine composers but Gough knows what’s going to work with live theater and for Thatcher’s variation his recorded score provides industrial strength support.
The Thatcher / Gough collaboration elicited outstanding contributions from the rest of the creative team. Lighting Designer Trad A Burns, who designed lights for the entire show, creates his most vivid contrasts between light and dark for Thatcher’s variation. Costume Designer Janet Bolick, who costumed Brown and Chang’s dances in appropriately subdued browns and grays, was suddenly inspired to provide voluminous gowns of dark red for the 4 women in Thatcher’s variation.
Red at a funeral! “Wildly inappropriate,” you might say, but somehow it all came together with cathartic effect. We saw the stylized tears that the women shed in unison. We were exalted as the women were lifted and lowered in canon. Your friendly dance journalists, Elsa and Vic, have scant use for nearly every Broadway show they’ve ever seen, but for 4 minutes Thatcher and Gough had us in the palms of their hands as they shined a bright light on an antique of a dance.
We first saw Similar, a 14 minute dance for 3 couples, at its premiere last summer. Seeing it for a second time, we appreciate all the more its innovative choreography, especially the way it avoids clichés in partnering, built on choreographer Krutzkamp’s years of experience as a principal dancer with Cincinnati Ballet. Recordings by Chad Lawson and Brian Crain provide low key but supportive music for Similar. We hear that Krutzkamp will choreograph more on Verb in 2015.
Despite the frigid February weather, dancers Christina Lindhout and Brian Murphy braved Spring Waters, a short but spectacular Cold War showpiece that helped define Bolshoi Ballet bravura. It’s a perilous dance to perform, not only for the difficult lifts and catches but for its giddy emotional content, which threatens to devolve into parody. Sincere congratulations to Lindhout and Murphy for sailing Spring Waters without a hitch.
The concert began with Images, a premiere that deployed considerable resources to dubious effect. Choreography by Richard Dickinson, Lighting by Burns, Costumes by Bolick, and live performance of the score by the internationally-known pianist Zsolt Bognár could not avail against the shortcomings of the original score by Philip M. Cucchiara. Cucchiara’s Fantasia 1 and 2 tinkle on for 40 minutes with scarcely a change in dynamics or a danceable rhythm, music appropriate for a quiet reverie, perhaps, but not music to support concert dance. Verb’s audiences deserve better.
Verb Ballets performed at Breen Center on Saturday, February 21, 2015 with the support of Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, the Cleveland Foundation, Dominion, and others.
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.
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