This Week   Classes   Opportunities   Upcoming Performances   Reviews  

THIS WEEK

This Saturday, November 11
Dim Sum Dance's IGNITE benefit at Gallery 5. Come out and support the work of local dance artists! See Performances below for details.

Ongoing
Check out your options for classes -- adult class with Richmond Ballet, Zen Monkey Project, and more.

Please send announcements, comments or suggestions to leam@groundzerodance.org.

CLASSES

Fall Session Ongoing!
Richmond Ballet Open Adult Classes
407 East Canal Street, Richmond.
Richmond Ballet offers open adult classes in Ballet and Jazz for Levels I-III. Click here for a class schedule.
For details, please call (804) 344-0906 x228, or email phorton@richmondballet.com.

Ongoing classes: Fall Season with Zen Monkey Project
Contact Class and Jam
Sundays from 5-7pm at the McGuffey Art Center
201 2nd St NW, Studio 11, Charlottesville

The Art of Spinning with Kelly East
Tuesdays 7:45-9:15pm at McGuffey
Manipulating, maneuver and moving with fire toys--a drop in class for all levels of experience.

Contemporary Dance Technique with Kelly East
Wednesdays 7-9pm at the Old Michie Building (Room 107)
609 East Market St, Charlottesville

For information on all ZMP classes, email kelly_east@hotmail.com.


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PERFORMANCE OPPORTUNITIES

Send me some info, folks!

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES

November 11, 8:00 pm
IGNITE--A benefit for Dim Sum Dance
At Gallery 5, 200 West Marshall Street, Richmond. Tickets $15.

A standby of the local contemporary dance scene, Dim Sum Dance has struck a match for Ignite, a benefit for the company’s larger-scale spring performance at the Grace Street Theater. Ignite will be hosted by Gallery 5, that wildly popular spot described by choreographer Julie Mayo as the “natural choice for a welcoming performance venue.”

The evening will feature excerpts from Dim Sum’s new and repertory dance works as well as music and visual environment by Tulsa Drone; a duet by Ground Zero Dance Co’s Rob Petres and Kat Legault; fabulous food and drink; and a silent auction. Look for an excerpt from Mayo’s newest work, On the Count of Three…Love, a quintet composed, she says, “using a more spontaneous choreographic process” in which she engages the dancers in the creation of movement, rather than simply asking them to “repeat after me.”

Fifteen bucks gets you in the door, munching on pasta from Christopher’s Runaway Gourmet, hearing great music, seeing great dancers, and bidding on auction items ranging from Chez Foushee’s divine lemon cake to original artwork by Becky Bryant. All this, and you’re helping to defray the cost of Dim Sum’s first fully-produced concert at the Grace Street Theater in March. Come along, then…see you there!--L.M.
For more information visit www.dimsumdance.org.

November 16-18, 8:00 pm

VCU Dance presents A Building Alive: 2006 Fall Senior Dance Concert
This concert of original choreographic works by Courtney Cooke, Victoria Metz, Jamie Reynolds and Laura Stepp is the capstone experience of the students' BFA dance program. Click here for full press release (PDF).
Grace Street Theater, 934 West Grace Street, Richmond
Tickets $10. Call (804) 828-2020.

November 28-29, 7:30 pm
Flying Machine Theater Company: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Modlin Center for the Arts, Richmond, VA
Originally formed in Paris but now based in Brooklyn, The Flying Machine is a highly acclaimed theatre troupe formed by a group of performers and educators from various theatrical backgrounds and expertise. Using a global array of theatrical styles, they create works from original and adapted narratives while expanding theatrical possibilities to tell the most vibrant stories possible. With a new theatrical adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel, the troupe effectively deconstructs the classic monster story into 90 minutes of pure theatrical brilliance—often using only bodies, basic set pieces and original music. The Flying Machine has earned its place in the pantheon of American and international clowning as well as with the connoisseurs of serious drama.
Tickets: $30 adults, $28 seniors, $15 children, $22 UR faculty/staff, $8 UR students
Call (804) 289-8980.

November 30 - December 2, 8:00 pm

AMARANTH
Grace Street Theater, Richmond, VA
The premiere concert of VCU Assistant Professor Scott Putman's contemporary dance company with the Experiment in White Project, a collection of work inspired by movements in contemporary art and investigating the parallel concepts of eastern philosophy and modern physics. Click here for full press release (PDF).
This is a benefit performance. All tickets $20, on sale Nov. 13.
Call 804-828-2020 for ticket information.

DECEMBER

December 15-23
Richmond Ballet's The Nutcracker
Landmark Theater, Richmond, VA
Dreams come to life as Clara travels with her Nutcracker Prince to the magical kingdom of the Sugarplum Fairy. The holiday favorite captivates audiences with beautiful dance, glittering pageantry and a cast full of whimsical characters. Share the fun of the Mouse King, the Chinese dragon, the Russian bear and more with everyone on your gift-giving list.
Times vary. Call 804-262-8003 for tickets.
www.richmondballet.com

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REVIEWS

Richmond Ballet's Studio I
Richmond Ballet Studio Theatre
3 October 2006

The Richmond Ballet’s Studio Series continually evolves, as the company experiments with the juxtaposition of formal with informal, new works with classics. This season’s Studio I offered works by two classic 20th century choreographers—George Balanchine and Agnes de Mille—and a world premiere by Susan Shields.

The curtain opens on Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante with four couples already in motion, and this corps of eight carried off their roles in sprightly fashion with lively, satisfying energy. The success of much of Balanchine’s work depends not only on superlative technique, speed and musicality, but, as critic Deborah Jowitt has discussed in Time and the Dancing Image, on the dancers’ willingness to act as “angelic messengers who reveal but do not comment,” to strip themselves of mannerism, allowing for the pure expression of musical and choreographic relationships. This, Valerie Tellmann and Igor Antonov in the lead roles did not accomplish, varnishing their dancing with a layer of sentiment that felt insincere and distracting.

By contrast, two duets created for the company in 1981 by Agnes de Mille, set to music by Schubert, felt sweetly flirtatious and surprisingly intimate. In Songs in Green Places, Thomas Garrett gently rocked Anne Sidney Davenport on his knees or lifted beneath her arms and draped her softly along. In her company debut, Cecile Tuzii danced with Philip Skaggs in You Are My Peace, demonstrating a fully-embodied physicality with lovely lines and a clear shaping of the space around her.

In Dark Hugs Me Hard, choreographer Susan Shields began to explore the depth of her grief in the aftermath of her husband’s death. A video introduction preceded this work, describing its origin in her personal experience; I have mixed feelings about knowing the back story before seeing work. An audience has greater breadth of interpretation when they can take a piece at face value. Dim, green-tinted lighting (by MK Stewart) and a set of three panels in a row upstage on which images of rain on glass were projected, invoked a somber mood. Ten dancers in nude costumes moved slowly through the space, the men dragging the women, sometimes letting them fall. Curved upper backs and lifts of nearly lifeless bodies indicated despair. The work was filled with compelling imagery, but broke off only partly realized; neither the dancers nor Shields herself appeared to have yet dug deeply enough into the jagged rawness death brings to the survivor.--L.M.

Richmond Ballet's "Stars of Tomorrow"
Richmond Ballet Studio Theatre
10 May 2006

What a delight to see these hard-working young artists with the Richmond Ballet begin to explore the spotlight. The “Stars of Tomorrow” performance on Wednesday highlighted blossoming talent among the ranks of company trainees and apprentices, and featured both classical choreography and new works by company members, teachers and collaborators with the School of the Richmond Ballet (SRB).

Opening the evening, Anna Carapellotti and Thomas Mattingly brought grace and poise to George Balanchine’s Valse Fantasie, staged by SRB faculty member Amy Seawright. Angela Hutto and Thomas Ragland did likewise with “Princess Florine and the Bluebird,” excerpted from The Sleeping Beauty, as staged by Malcolm Burn. Hutto’s assured, lovely stage presence and clean technique promise more great performances as she takes her place next season with the RB Company.

Company member Pedro Szalay choreographed Spring, Sprang Sprung, which opened with adorably sassy attitudes from five trainees, and reflected Szalay’s buoyant personality. A series of solos sprinkled throughout the piece gave each dancer a chance to shine. In the “Pas de Trois” excerpt from The Sleeping Beauty, apprentices Maggie Small and Shira Lanyi certainly did shine, complemented by the powerful presence of Maurice Johnson. Small’s liveliness was so infectious you wanted to run down and join her on the stage.

Goddesses in the Rain, an impressive choreographic debut for former RB trainee Ariadne Conner, sent twelve women swirling through the stage space to the breathless music of Philip Glass. Conner’s approach to this large group work revealed sensitive musicality and a celebration of her dancers’ abilities.

Choreographer Starrene Foster contributed to the program a modern work—refreshing and filled with air—titled When the Threads Unravel. Six dancers in bare feet moved through groups, partnering sequences and floor work with dancing that felt bright and alive.

Rounding out the program were “Excerpts from Vespri,” a trio choreographed by Andre Prokovsky and staged by Malcolm Burn on Lauren Breen, Thomas Mattingly, and Michael Forrest-Johnson. All three aquitted themselves well, and Thomas Mattingly’s clean, confident and joyous dancing elicited whoops of admiration from the audience. Choreographer and SRB faculty member Julie Fauth Job closed the evening with an entertaining group work, Fancy That, in which 13 women strutted their stuff and the RB’s two male trainees, Paul Dandridge and Lawrence Lowe-Papa, dancing with admirable aplomb, transformed from boys to young men before our very eyes.--L.M.

Late night thoughts: Classical Savion
Camp Concert Hall at The Modlin Center for the Arts
24 October 2005

Experiencing tapper Savion Glover’s take on familiar and gorgeous classical music – Vivaldi, Mozart, Bach, Mendelssohn, for example -- feels like riding a fast horse across plains streaked with clouds, or like listening to music in a tin-roofed house on a rainy night. No matter how many times you’ve heard the music, after THIS time it will never sound the same again.

Within the architecture of classical compositions such as Vivaldi’s Four Seasons or a Bach Brandenburg Concerto, Glover has found ways to walk up walls and slide across ceilings. He elbows through musical doorways; his rhythmic genius appears too large for the music to contain. The smiles on the musicians’ faces reflect this, as does the rapt concentration of the audience. With our eyes, with our fast-beating hearts we cling to Glover’s capacious shirt-tails as he stamps, spins, slides and tickles the floor into such a finely tuned percussive instrument that we feel sure Bach must have noted floor and feet into his score.

At times the stage, rather than Glover’s feet, appears to vibrate beneath him as he simply rides along on the rhythm. During a Bartok piece, as the violins weave a nervous, shimmering spell, Glover builds a scurrying, a pattering of small, nervous creatures and then scatters them with a stamp. A Shostakovich quartet evokes at first a fierce combativeness; later comes a moment of Glover airplaning around the stage, riding the sustained build of the strings with a shout, “Like birds!”

When he faces the audience, his downcast eyes and inward-turning expression, lit now and then by a small smile that widens into a grin, evoke in us a tremendous tenderness and gratitude for such skill and concentrated brilliance.--L.M.

Ailey II
Richmond’s Landmark Theatre
Presented by The Modlin Center for the Arts
11 October 2005

Ailey II, the junior company of the beloved Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, strutted their stuff on the Landmark stage Tuesday night in a program of recent works and classic favorites from the Ailey repertory. With physical beauty and accomplished technique, these dancers were a treat to watch, though young as they are, emotional resonance and depth of expression were sometimes lacking.

The program opened with How Small a Thought (2004), choreographed by Associate Artistic Director Troy Powell and set to somber choral music by Steve Reich, music that built an atmosphere of expectation or longing unfulfilled. Within the piece’s classical, frontal structure, three men and three women moved through a predictable pattern of group sections, trios, duets and solos. Powell’s movement itself, however, sustained interest through gestures: hands outstretched in warning or supplication; torsos wrenched around repeatedly; the men holding their heads as the women walked them gently offstage.

Dancer James A. Pierce III performed choreographer Tally Beatty’s classic Mourner’s Bench (1947), set to the traditional hymn There Is a Balm in Gilead. As described in the Ailey repertory (see www.alvinailey.org), this solo grapples with “themes of oppression and transcendence” in Howard Fast’s novel, Southern Landscape, depicting the struggles of a mixed-race community in the South after the Civil War. Pierce’s performance, despite a few lovely moments, felt too safe in the face of a history whose spiritual weight drags many and varied unsafe emotions to the fore.

Eight dancers performed Bitter Suite (2005), a well-constructed, well-danced work in the genre I’ve named “slaves of desire,” choreographed by Scott Rink and set to music by Sex Mob that included many jazzy riffs on the James Bond theme. With fog effects, the women in skimpy dresses, and the men in pants, dress shirts and loosened ties, the stage felt like a smoky bar filled with sexy young couples alternately wrangling with and seducing each other. It was fluff, but with terminal appeal, especially on gorgeous young dancers whose legs go on forever and to whom no technical feat yet feels impossible.

The evening closed, as always, with Alvin Ailey’s Revelations (1960) in which the dancers moved through sorrow, hope, redemption and joy with vigor. A highlight of this evening was Ricardo Zayas’s deeply felt performance of “I Wanna Be Ready”, in which his hunched back seemed to speak, from the outset, of pain and determination.--L.M.

Pilobolus Dance Theatre
Modlin Center for the Arts
Richmond, Virginia
9 September 2005

Pilobolus Dance Theatre blew into Richmond Friday night masquerading as sea creatures, insects, and electricity itself, and leaving their audience at the Modlin Center giggling and loudly appreciative. The six-member, 34-year-old company displayed their solid athleticism and fearless approach to weight-sharing in a program of five works which spanned their history, from 1971-2005.

In Aquatica, which premiered this year, six dancers joined together—often literally—to evoke the sea, from breaking waves to coral reefs, fish, and swaying underwater plants. Choreographed by Michael Tracy with a group of collaborators, Aquatica interspersed sequences of serene beauty with the comedic hijinks of wriggling sea creatures. Two men back to back with arms linked transformed into a four-legged critter that spun across the floor; four dancers arranged themselves into a coral reef through which another climbed, gazing around in wonder—all this highlighting the company’s uncanny ability to create cohesive, smoothly-functioning units from their several, disparate bodies. Such evocative physical skills made the projection of wave patterns on the scrim superfluous; the elaboration on the aquatic theme through costumes and music felt heavy-handed at times. All we needed was the heaving, rolling sea created by the dancers themselves.

Walklyndon (1971), a comical group piece choreographed by Robby Barnett, Lee Harris, Moses Pendleton and Jonathan Wolken, caused a little girl in front of me to say to her mother, “Isn’t that man acting silly?” as dancers in green unitards and boxing shorts strode goofily on and off stage, crashing into each other, falling down, and mock fighting. In fact, a mock duel between two men who escalated from comically fierce gazes, to slapping each other, to rooster-like rage seemed to sum up the history of warfare in a minute, especially when they collapsed, sobbing melodramatically, into each others’ arms at the end.

Friday’s program closed with Megawatt (2004), a well-constructed riff on the theme of electricity, choreographed (again, a collaborative effort—you can see how this group works) by Jonathan Wolken and set to music by Primus, Radiohead, and Squarepusher. Dancers scooted onstage on their bellies, flung themselves into the air and onto the floor, twitched wildly, and, in a gorgeous unison sequence, demonstrated such mastery of the aikido roll that you wondered why they ever bothered to walk.

Also included in the program were a comedic solo section from Michael Tracy’s Empty Suitor (1980), and BUGonia (2005), a collaborative choreographic effort lead by Alison Chase, involved dancers Renee Jaworski and Jenny Mendez creeping about, climbing onto each other, and then into two lengths of fabric suspended from the ceiling, evoking grubs, cocoons, frogs, and butterflies. --L.M.

Lea Marshall is a freelance dance writer for, among others, Style Weekly, C-ville Weekly, and Dance Magazine. She is also Executive Director of Ground Zero Dance Company. If you are interested in contributing material to or commenting on this page, please email Lea at leam@groundzerodance.org.

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