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BodyVox at Dance Celebration
BodyVox vexes
LEWIS WHITTINGTON
BodyVox, an eight-dancer troupe based in Portland, Ore., returned to Dance Celebration Series at the Annenberg Center recently, playing like the b-side of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s sensational appearance earlier this year of. Both groups are inventive and quirky yet completely accessible. Between them (as well as Dance Celebration artistic director Randy Swartz’s nose for rock ’n roll), they’ve generated a very interesting second half of the DC season.
But BodyVox’s six-part, 12-scene opus, “A Thousand Little Cities,” had sound tracks that should have been left in the dance studio. (It was rock ‘n roll habeas corpus during one segment when a bad Roy Orbison impersonator took the stage.)
The work began with “Maelstrom,” set to music by contemporary composer John Adams, whose sound-fields crop up throughout and generate the most kinetic dance. Ashley Roland opened the piece dangling from a harness in spins and dance-poses as film of a vortex is projected on a screen. Suddenly lightning struck as other dancers burst on the stage like a rain shower. This effective tableau demonstrated the troupe’s strengths in its simplicity.
Unfortunately, about halfway through, the opening conveyed a dance-by-numbers feel, as if someone suddenly flipped an air switch on the dancers. The group unison suddenly had ballone under them, and individually they came alive.
In the next segment, “Travelogue,” the dancers struck group poses from photos taken of them in various locales— pulling a truck, on a railroad track, being splashed by water— which they re-posed live on stage and then danced from. A fun concept evolved into an urbane essay on the ephemeral nature of dance and life.
From these potent movement muses, things disintegrated into group indulgences and studio exercises, such as the segments “Elevator World” (an animated film that broke the performance continuity) and “The Gallery,” a drawn-out sketch that had the dancers mulling around an art gallery while ostensibly reacting to a voiceover about art. How can this troop be so much fun and not be aware when they’re tedious?
Roland and her co-artistic director Jamey Hampton hung back to contemplate an “Orb” and dance a jerky and vulgar jitterbug around a hung wrecking ball. Get it? The pair both formerly performed with the “physical” theater troupes Pilobolus, MOMIX and ISO, and those troupes’ influence showed in many of these dance skits.
“Schlumps” clothed the dancers in different colored oversized ugly wool coats that made them look like “South Park” people. They modulated themselves into grotesque shapes and into a predictable cartoon.
The finale brought kids “Birthed” out of their backpacks, an image that became an elegant statement of innocence as the dancers shed the coats and lifted their supple little bodies in various yogic style poses. They ended the first act by stripping down to blue body suits for an airy group dance called “Distant Weather,” in which they evoked bodies floating on the winds.
Act II opened with a film of “Deere John,” used in BV’s last concert here, with dancers mugging from the nests of actual cranes. The dancers returned in suits and do a subway handle dance that uses little choreographic variation.
“Broken Quartet,” for four men, was equally deflated with little engagement between the men. The show limped to a close with a completely abrasive minimalist finale to a song by Tom Waits set against a riding-off-into-the-sunset backdrop.
At some point there was the embarrassing “The Orb of Love,” with Orbison appearing in what was intended as a tribute, but it came off as a cheap shot. BodyVox somewhat redeemed itself in freewheeling manner by dancing to the real Roy singing “Dream Baby” during the curtain call. Note to BodyVox: Some fun stuff, but reset the alarm before you oversleep again.
LEWIS WHITTINGTON
BodyVox, an eight-dancer troupe based in Portland, Ore., returned to Dance Celebration Series at the Annenberg Center recently, playing like the b-side of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s sensational appearance earlier this year of. Both groups are inventive and quirky yet completely accessible. Between them (as well as Dance Celebration artistic director Randy Swartz’s nose for rock ’n roll), they’ve generated a very interesting second half of the DC season.
But BodyVox’s six-part, 12-scene opus, “A Thousand Little Cities,” had sound tracks that should have been left in the dance studio. (It was rock ‘n roll habeas corpus during one segment when a bad Roy Orbison impersonator took the stage.)
The work began with “Maelstrom,” set to music by contemporary composer John Adams, whose sound-fields crop up throughout and generate the most kinetic dance. Ashley Roland opened the piece dangling from a harness in spins and dance-poses as film of a vortex is projected on a screen. Suddenly lightning struck as other dancers burst on the stage like a rain shower. This effective tableau demonstrated the troupe’s strengths in its simplicity.
Unfortunately, about halfway through, the opening conveyed a dance-by-numbers feel, as if someone suddenly flipped an air switch on the dancers. The group unison suddenly had ballone under them, and individually they came alive.
In the next segment, “Travelogue,” the dancers struck group poses from photos taken of them in various locales— pulling a truck, on a railroad track, being splashed by water— which they re-posed live on stage and then danced from. A fun concept evolved into an urbane essay on the ephemeral nature of dance and life.
From these potent movement muses, things disintegrated into group indulgences and studio exercises, such as the segments “Elevator World” (an animated film that broke the performance continuity) and “The Gallery,” a drawn-out sketch that had the dancers mulling around an art gallery while ostensibly reacting to a voiceover about art. How can this troop be so much fun and not be aware when they’re tedious?
Roland and her co-artistic director Jamey Hampton hung back to contemplate an “Orb” and dance a jerky and vulgar jitterbug around a hung wrecking ball. Get it? The pair both formerly performed with the “physical” theater troupes Pilobolus, MOMIX and ISO, and those troupes’ influence showed in many of these dance skits.
“Schlumps” clothed the dancers in different colored oversized ugly wool coats that made them look like “South Park” people. They modulated themselves into grotesque shapes and into a predictable cartoon.
The finale brought kids “Birthed” out of their backpacks, an image that became an elegant statement of innocence as the dancers shed the coats and lifted their supple little bodies in various yogic style poses. They ended the first act by stripping down to blue body suits for an airy group dance called “Distant Weather,” in which they evoked bodies floating on the winds.
Act II opened with a film of “Deere John,” used in BV’s last concert here, with dancers mugging from the nests of actual cranes. The dancers returned in suits and do a subway handle dance that uses little choreographic variation.
“Broken Quartet,” for four men, was equally deflated with little engagement between the men. The show limped to a close with a completely abrasive minimalist finale to a song by Tom Waits set against a riding-off-into-the-sunset backdrop.
At some point there was the embarrassing “The Orb of Love,” with Orbison appearing in what was intended as a tribute, but it came off as a cheap shot. BodyVox somewhat redeemed itself in freewheeling manner by dancing to the real Roy singing “Dream Baby” during the curtain call. Note to BodyVox: Some fun stuff, but reset the alarm before you oversleep again.
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