We drove down to University Circle on Saturday evening to catch the final performance of Horizons, Case’s annual faculty dance concert. This year’s edition sandwiched three new dances, one by each of the 3 faculty members, between two dances from the repertoires of New York-based dance companies.
The concert began with Black Diamond, a duet for 2 women choreographed by Pascal Rioult. As we learned from Rioult’s website, Black Diamond was originally choreographed on 2 exceptional members of RIOULT Dance NY. It is a technically challenging dance, an ambitious choice for dance students despite the many Rioult works performed by Case dancers in the past. The interface between the choreography and the music, Duo Concertant by Igor Stravinsky, demands quick, precise weight changes followed by rock-like stability from the dancers as they perch on one leg.
Student dancers Hannah Barna and Karlie Budge rose nicely to the challenges of Black Diamond. Yes, we wish they had been more stable perching on one leg and no, we didn’t think the costumes were well-fitted. But Barna and Budge’s Black Diamond was a beautiful performance of a challenging opening dance that set a high standard for the rest of the concert.
In the next dance on the program, Back to Beyond, 5 lean and mean graduate students danced to a recording of a spare but precise Rob Power score. Choreographer Karen Potter, Department Chair, put them through their modern dance paces, with a multi-part canon in the first section, rolling on the floor in the second section, and the like.
In the next dance on the program, Ecesis, 15 undergraduate dance majors and minors performed choreography by Assistant Professor Shannon Sterne to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach performed live by the CWRU Baroque Orchestra. Like Potter, Sterne put her dancers through their paces, although we had a sense that this dance presented the dancers with much more forgiving problems than those posed in Black Diamond or Back to Beyond.
If our descriptions of the concert so far make it sound abstract or academic, let us be clear that the next dance, Islands of Desire, charts a course into vivid, sexy, and potentially commercial waters. Dancers Amanda Clark and Richard Oaxaca bring physical, sexy personae to spectacular partnering. Artistic Director Gary Galbraith has, as usual, made innovative use of multimedia and technology, this time creating sometimes swirling, sometimes sharp-edged projections on walls and floors. As we understand it, the projections are cued by the dancers’ movements rather than by a control panel, an unusually successful marriage of technology with dance. Electronic music by Telefon Tel Aviv provides a driving sound track. This piece should be coming-soon-to-a-cabaret-near-you.
The concert concluded with a winning performance of Canonic 3/4 Studies with live accompaniment on piano by Karin Tooley. We’ve already written about this dance twice, once when Mark Morris Dance Group performed it at Playhouse Square and again when Case performed it last year here.
We understand that the mission of the dance department at Case is preparing future dance educators, not professional performers. That said, this year’s fall concert at Case achieved an unusually high standard of performance, choreography, and production. Learn more at http://dance.case.edu.
Case Western Reserve University Department of Dance performed Horizons from Friday, 10/31 through Saturday, 11/8/2014. We watched the final performance.
[Photo: “Ecesis.”Choreography: Shannon Sterne. Photo: Brad Petot]
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.