REVIEW: Fast and Furious
Philadanco @ Ohio Theatre 3/24/12
Reviewed by Elsa Johnson & Victor Lucas
We went to see Philadanco at PlayhouseSquare last Saturday. The Philadelphia-based, predominantly African-American modern dance company presented an energetic, passionate concert consisting of four pieces.
The first piece, Violin Concerto, used two Philip Glass violin concertos for a music visualization. Ensemble dance passages began and ended each of the two sections, the two short concertos; a succession of short dances by soloists and small ensembles filled out the 17 minutes. Choreographer Milton Myers, who has been an important presence in African-American dance since 1975, found a lot of interesting Horton-based movements that fit the Glass music well.
Philadelphia Experiment choreographed by Rennie Harris sought to make more of an extra-musical statement. During the first section of that dance, slides projected on the backdrop and a voiceover made apparent reference to a violent shoot-out between the black activists of MOVE and the Philadelphia police in 1985. (Plenty of blame to go around, but see one side of the story here.)
Another slide showed the Preamble to the Constitution, drafted and adopted by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, carved in stone and amended to read, “We the people of the United States are sick and tired of the run-around,” eliciting wry chuckles from the audience. While the entertaining but distracting slides rolled, a solo dancer crouching and lunging from upstage right to downstage left was joined by an ensemble performing gymnastic poses in unison while a recorded vocalist sang a repetitive line, “Do you remember the days of slavery?”
Having alluded to his theme and introduced his dancers, Harris dispensed with the slides, turned up the lights, and — to funky dance music — brought in a series of short, small ensemble dances featuring swiveling hips and shimmying shoulders. This dance vocabulary was mother’s milk to the Philadanco dancers. They tore it up, and the audience responded with appreciative cries. A false ending led to applause followed by an extended coda, an African dance fest to African percussion.
Harris and his work are well known to Cleveland dance audiences. A native of Philadelphia where he and his company, Rennie Harris Puremovement, are based, Harris has seldom made his intentions so clear and fulfilled them so entertainingly as in Philadelphia Experiment.
The second half of the concert opened with Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, choreographed by Ray Mercer around an oversized, chest-high table credited to Hudson Scenic Design Company. The concert closed with Enemy Behind the Gates, choreographed by Christopher L. Huggins to the music of Steve Reich, with costumes designed by the choreographer. The unisex, military-style uniforms, black with red highlights, with the lower part of the jacket skirt-like, reminded us of the black skirts worn by both male and female dancers in Heinz Poll’s Bolero. Neither GWCD nor EBTG, we’re sorry to say, conveyed much of the meaning promised by their respective program notes. Both contained such flurries of fast and furious turns and unremittingly fierce and daring partnering that we can’t say we were bored (in EBTG, the Reich music starts with the intensity Bolero ends with and neither diminishes nor develops).
Which brings us to an historical note and a rhetorical question.
Concert dance has long been the most segregated of American institutions. Joan Myers Brown founded Philadanco 40 years ago “out of a need to provide opportunities for black dancers,” and that lack of opportunity for black dancers was something that ballet-trained Brown had experienced for herself. (See NPR discussion of the new book, Joan Myers Brown & the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina here.)
And no matter what we feel about inequality of opportunity, some might argue that African-American dance companies like Philadanco, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and Dayton Contemporary Dance Company would be unlikely to exist in their present form without segregation.
But here’s our rhetorical question, regarding African-American dance in general and the second half of the Philadanco concert in particular: Must everything be fast and furious? Must all partnering be unremittingly fierce and daring?
Consider the alternatives represented by some of the African-American companies that have come through Cleveland in the last few years… the black postmodernists, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and her Urban Bush Women, Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Dance Company, Ronald K. Brown / Evidence and Cleveland’s own Paloma McGregor and Diane McIntyre. They have found entertaining and provocative alternatives to non-stop fast, furious, fierce, and daring.
A look at Philadanco’s website shows a diverse repertoire – including works by Zollar and Ronald K. Brown – not represented in the Cleveland concert. Why choose 2 dances with such similar energy? We could have used a change of pace.
Speaking of African-American dance, DanceCleveland brings Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater to Cleveland Fri 5/4 through Sun 5/6 with two exciting programs. To salivate over the rep click here. To buy tickets go to http://DanceCleveland.org.
Philadanco was presented by Cuyahoga Community College on Sat 3/24/12.
[Photo: Lois Greenfield]
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.