4th Annual Santa Fe Dance Festival: Moving People Dance Santa Fe

by Janet Eigner

Shaken down to the DNA, that’s how audiences responded to a number of Moving People Dance Santa Fe (MPD)’s contemporary works during this season’s fourth annual festival concerts, particularly Curtis Uhlemann’s premier, “DANCE PIECE #14 in GREEN.”

“#14″’s dancers moved so swiftly they blurred in their green-swirl unitards. Using simultaneous movement in closely positioned lines, soft yet energetic limbs, the 11 rushing dancers evoked a feeling of warm water, rivulets and streams, pooling in eddies and whirlpools, creating not the chaotic frenzy of a flood but the pleasure of nonstop, lapping currents.
Uhlemann’s work distilled, in its choreographic organization, the dominant style of dance MPD’s choreographer-teacher-performers produce: (led by Ronn Stewart, MPD’s charismatic Artistic Director and driving force, along with Associate AD, Uhlemann, and Assistant AD, Echo Gustafson.)

MPD’s choreographers frequently offer both dancers and viewers an earthquake of movement, always technically masterful, sometimes gifted in its clean choreography, like Stewart’s 2008 premier, ” THE TITLE IS 7/8 SEVEN,” using spare, spoken word and movement to uniquely describe uses of 7/8 rhythms in dance.  Other abstract and dynamic dances in  MPD’s powerfully minimalist style lack a clear enough conceptual development, so get repetitious, as in Uhlemann’s (2006) “Roda de Agua” and Stewart’s (2007) “See Oh! Too SATURATION.”

In addition to MPD’s resident choreographers, their repertory choreographers included Robert Moses, Max Stone and Sam Watson. These works had easily discernable themes, adding contrast and comic relief, like Moses’s (2004) sextet, “Drop Pillow,” Stone’s folding and unfolding movements, and lovely geometric lifts in the trio,  ”Undetermined Composition” ( 2006), Watson’s super-jittery duet “Wired,” (1988), a riff on electricity, and his also wildly witty (2003) “Punctuations:”

The 14 professional dancers in this ten-year-old company bring experience and personality differences that mesmerize: Gustafson looked like artisanal melting butter throughout her 2008 work, “Turn;” Erica Gionfriddo’s tall, willowy body swayed like a rooted tree in a hurricane in “#14″; Kevin Gallacher’s droll humor in “7/8″ and utter command of his play-dough elasticity during multiple pirouettes in “#14,”  Phylicia Roybal’s in-your-face strides and aggression  in “7/8,” Sarah Goldstone’s needling speed and design precision in “Undetermined Composition, ” Aaron Carr, Luke Reid-Grassia and Kyle Robinson’s feral muscular power,  back-arched leaps and turns in “#14,” Sarah Lustbader’s sustained and leggy lyricism in “Punctuations,” and the men’s command of lifts and partnering – no bobbles and lots of lifting variety in “See Oh! Too.”

Many of the artists both performed taught in the three-week dance intensive, Guest Artists Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and dancers from Ballet Austin performed in the opening concerts, then taught in the three week intensive with Jock Soto, Sam Watson, Rulan Tangen, Susan Quinn, Jeffrey Hughes, Fletcher Nickerson, and MPD choreographers. The festival closed  with a Community Dance Showcase on June 27th, and an Intensive Showcase June 28th.

Moving People Dance Santa Fe: Moving People Too! “2008 Louder Than Words”

by Janet Eigner

Exuberance, skill, dignity and poise describe the approximately fifty students,
most eight to eighteen, a few twenty and thirty somethings,
all of whom who ran with their teacher’s ten finely-crafted and original dances:
and rolled and flipped, swung and arabesqued, torqued and spun a hundred ways.

The delicious smorgasbord created by ten instructors and performers from MPDSF
reflects the diverse dance palate offered by the school, from ballet’s delicate,
finely synchronized choruses, pas de deus and wit of Lori Brody and Christin Fields Severini’s students, to modern-jazz fusion’s many moods: squiggled torso contractions, constant movement and driving runs, taught by Fletcher Nickerson, Curtis Uhlemann, Echo Gustafson and Ronn Stewart, those modern movements slowed down and given dignity by Erica Gionfriddo’s very poised younger students,  to Mike Garcia’s swinging tango duet, Kate Eberle’s aerobic-influenced adults, decorated with the flare of fringed shawls, fans and castanets on Julia Chacon’s five flamencas.

During the wait-listed and sold out concert, Moving People’s audience echoed the dancer’s exuberance.  The student concerts’ performance values have grown over the years: the program skillfully alternated themes, dance types, and moods, from the three ebullient opening dances (Severini’s Lost Connections, Chacon’s Sevillanas, and Brody’s Tutu Many Girls? ) to a marathon sprint of elastic technique and drama (Uhlemann’s #14 in Green), to a Gustafson’s meditative Inchoate Sky/Florescer, (though “Incohate” needed editing and/or more zip…it dragged), to Nickerson’s altogether fresh choreographic take on patriotism, to Garcia’s loosey-goosey Swango duet, to Stewart’s gently goofy Crazy, New, Beautiful.  Add elegant costumes, well-timed curtains, pauses and the dappled lighting by Todd Elmer, a slightly surreal and aesthetic through theme, uniting the works, often creating a sense of dancers underwater.

Every MPDSF has at least one choreographic jewel: this time, I’d nominate as especially outstanding the unique and nuanced modern choreography of Curtis Uhlemann’s #14 Green.  The geometry of his complex groupings for eleven dancers remained clear and precise throughout a breathtaking dive into modern movement. The dancers moved like they’d oiled their joints with WD-40.

In fact, each of the dances reflected a high level of choreographic freshness and design on the part of the instructor, and on the part of every dancer, poise and mastery. What polished pleasure and dance culture Moving People Santa Fe brings to our community.

Breaking news for some of us: Roger Montoya directs a newly-opened facility for MPDSF  in Espanola, already well-subscribed.  Wonder of wonders, a third of the students are boys, suggesting males may no longer be listed as an endangered species in (some) dance classes.

Mandalas: Past and Present at Weckesser Studio, College of Santa Fe, Saturday, May 23, 08

by Janet Eigner

When a company performs a knock-out concert, do you leave the theater zinging, every nerve a-twitch? Instead, the disciplined, erect dignity of Murray Spalding’s seven modern dancers, their bare feet quietly swishing the ground, spun precise meditative patterns on the College of Santa Fe’s theater floor, May 23, leaving the audience refreshed and calm.

In a dozen years, Spalding has created twelve mandala designs. Her choreographic power resides in the delicacy, restraint and elegance of each position. A short pause and dimmed lighting signal a mandala’s conclusion, before the radiant dancers unwind and reposition themselves to initiate the next design. Resident composer Evren Celimli’s restrained, synthesized music carpets the mandala’s tempos.

Each of the seven performed mandalas created a new focus and exploration, as the glowing dancers unfolded crisp patterns and sudden earth-grounded shifts. To capture each other’s position from the widest perspective, dancers cast their eyes a bit down, better able to see, hear and adjust to the others’ moves.

Often, seven heads gently tipped, like Sufis listening for cosmic direction. Arms made various angular wings, one arm bent behind the back. The dancers spun, their spines like straight stems incised by nature’s geometry – the magnetic pole, the orbit. Their feet and arms traced diagonals, formed triangles, waves.

A new, seventh dancer mostly stood back-center, arms slowly rising and descending, like Mother Muse Terpsichore blessing her girls. She reminded of dance’s ancient origins but distracted from the sacred design.

The Spaulding company’s third appearance in Santa Fe since 2001 began with XII, a world premier. XII’s more open, linear design signaled a departure from Spalding’s rigorous and repetitive circular patterns, draining the coherent, refreshing effect the other eleven mandalas offer.

Mandala X, informed by indigenous celebration, said Spalding, relaxed and bent the spines, an overall freer and circular shape, arms more softly curved and outreaching, foot stamps louder. X’s complex rhythms sent arms and legs swiftly changing directions. The movement’s rigor demonstrated a paradox: joining of the mandala’s spiritual origins with dance induced a peaceful effect, yet the dancers sometimes looked like fencers jousting without swords, and soldiers marching to a different drummer.

New York City-based Murray Spalding Mandalas performs this program June 12th through 14th, 8:30 pm, St. Mark’s Church/ Danspace Project.