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Jeanne Ruddy's "Earth Moves'
Dancers in search of a vehicle
LEWIS WHITTINGTON
Positive energy flowed at Jeanne Ruddy Dance Company’s Performance Garage, where the company opened its seventh season with premieres of two new works while celebrating a new tenant in her eclectic studio space/gallery. Ruddy’s studio theater has joined Walter Dallas’s Freedom Theater, home of Eleone Dance, in extending the so-called Dance Avenue of the Arts north of City Hall. Things were a bit cooler onstage with Ruddy’s uneven “Earth Moves: Dance Gone Green” program. The Ruddy troupe is still establishing its aesthetic as a chamber modern dance company, and this program had the feel of a recital.
Bob Fosse disciple Ann Reinking’s 2004 piece Songs Without Words, scored to music by Dudley Moore, is a seductive, very Fosse-derivative jazz ballet: three male-female couples in duets with plenty of showdance cleaving and predictable combinations ending in flash freezes en delicato flagrante. A trio of women installed themselves astride the couples in their own scenario like a Greek Chorus. As danced on this night, the work was brittle and studied: The simultaneous duets created too crowded a picture, and Reinking isn’t a sufficiently concrete choreographer to focus the action into a cohesive flow. The most polished phrasing was captured by the central couple Rick Callender and Sun-Mi Cho, two of the strongest technical dancers in the company.
‘I’m really OK’
New York choreographer Jane Comfort offered witty concepts in Short Term Memory with much dancing amok. Ruddy has worked with several New York downtown dancemakers with great results, but this piece, in its current state, seems completely unfinished. It opens with seven dancers, wearing disco-era castoffs, clustered and clinging to each other while they’re menaced by an unseen swooping force, perhaps an attacking aircraft. In an allegory for our times, they talk themselves down with mundane salvos like “I‘m really OK,” but soon the dancers are hurling themselves around in epileptic dance seizures.
Unfortunately, just when Comfort establishes this potentially rich dance terrain, she bails out choreographically and resorts to a sophomoric message that plays out a dead improv sketch. A dancer is reduced to crawling around on all fours, mechanically repeating, “I’m a good dog,” thus ending the piece in a thud. Let’s hope this is just an introductory piece with Comfort, because the dancers were completely committed to this concept and were completely cheated on choreographic ideas.
Ruddy likes big themes that create elegant pictures. Two years ago she stepped out of her own style for a strong narrative about abusive relationships called Breathless. Not only was the concept compelling, but Ruddy fleshed it out with rich ensemble configurations and dramatic duets. The result was a true rarity: the docu-dance, in the tradition of Anna Sokolow and Bill T. Jones. Her new work, Oceans I: Wetlands is taken from the same choreographic book.
Good ideas, sketchy work
Dancers in shoulder stands let their legs sway like stoic reeds on the water banks, or they’re amphibious or lizardy creatures evading pollution as they hunt and stalk each other sexually. Ruddy etches some interesting bodyscapes and clever transcreature movement here, but doesn’t stay with anything long enough. An avian tableau with a woman on a harness being stalked and mounted by two male rivals looked like a Vegas flash act.
Ruddy tugs between a movement meditation and social commentary and ends up with sketchy work. The live narration, although well handled by Meredith Riley Stewart, should be dumped because it underlines and siphons off some ripe symbolism that would stand better with a soupçon of mystery.
Ruddy’s dancers are accomplished in multiple idioms, and their performance space is fine. But because JRD has short runs and presents only two bills a year, every appearance is critical. This program contained too much unfocused and rote movement. It suggested a modern dance company still in search of choreography that brings forth its technique and artistry.
LEWIS WHITTINGTON
Positive energy flowed at Jeanne Ruddy Dance Company’s Performance Garage, where the company opened its seventh season with premieres of two new works while celebrating a new tenant in her eclectic studio space/gallery. Ruddy’s studio theater has joined Walter Dallas’s Freedom Theater, home of Eleone Dance, in extending the so-called Dance Avenue of the Arts north of City Hall. Things were a bit cooler onstage with Ruddy’s uneven “Earth Moves: Dance Gone Green” program. The Ruddy troupe is still establishing its aesthetic as a chamber modern dance company, and this program had the feel of a recital.
Bob Fosse disciple Ann Reinking’s 2004 piece Songs Without Words, scored to music by Dudley Moore, is a seductive, very Fosse-derivative jazz ballet: three male-female couples in duets with plenty of showdance cleaving and predictable combinations ending in flash freezes en delicato flagrante. A trio of women installed themselves astride the couples in their own scenario like a Greek Chorus. As danced on this night, the work was brittle and studied: The simultaneous duets created too crowded a picture, and Reinking isn’t a sufficiently concrete choreographer to focus the action into a cohesive flow. The most polished phrasing was captured by the central couple Rick Callender and Sun-Mi Cho, two of the strongest technical dancers in the company.
‘I’m really OK’
New York choreographer Jane Comfort offered witty concepts in Short Term Memory with much dancing amok. Ruddy has worked with several New York downtown dancemakers with great results, but this piece, in its current state, seems completely unfinished. It opens with seven dancers, wearing disco-era castoffs, clustered and clinging to each other while they’re menaced by an unseen swooping force, perhaps an attacking aircraft. In an allegory for our times, they talk themselves down with mundane salvos like “I‘m really OK,” but soon the dancers are hurling themselves around in epileptic dance seizures.
Unfortunately, just when Comfort establishes this potentially rich dance terrain, she bails out choreographically and resorts to a sophomoric message that plays out a dead improv sketch. A dancer is reduced to crawling around on all fours, mechanically repeating, “I’m a good dog,” thus ending the piece in a thud. Let’s hope this is just an introductory piece with Comfort, because the dancers were completely committed to this concept and were completely cheated on choreographic ideas.
Ruddy likes big themes that create elegant pictures. Two years ago she stepped out of her own style for a strong narrative about abusive relationships called Breathless. Not only was the concept compelling, but Ruddy fleshed it out with rich ensemble configurations and dramatic duets. The result was a true rarity: the docu-dance, in the tradition of Anna Sokolow and Bill T. Jones. Her new work, Oceans I: Wetlands is taken from the same choreographic book.
Good ideas, sketchy work
Dancers in shoulder stands let their legs sway like stoic reeds on the water banks, or they’re amphibious or lizardy creatures evading pollution as they hunt and stalk each other sexually. Ruddy etches some interesting bodyscapes and clever transcreature movement here, but doesn’t stay with anything long enough. An avian tableau with a woman on a harness being stalked and mounted by two male rivals looked like a Vegas flash act.
Ruddy tugs between a movement meditation and social commentary and ends up with sketchy work. The live narration, although well handled by Meredith Riley Stewart, should be dumped because it underlines and siphons off some ripe symbolism that would stand better with a soupçon of mystery.
Ruddy’s dancers are accomplished in multiple idioms, and their performance space is fine. But because JRD has short runs and presents only two bills a year, every appearance is critical. This program contained too much unfocused and rote movement. It suggested a modern dance company still in search of choreography that brings forth its technique and artistry.
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