H T CHEN @ La MaMa

Friday November 6, 2009 - Down to La MaMa on East 4th Street for a performance by H T Chen and Dancers. The atmospheric performing space, redolent of an earlier and less tech-oriented time, is celebrating its 48th season by honoring its founder Ellen Stewart and her Theatre of the World. Above, the final tableau of SHIFT. Click on the image to enlarge.

Since I started blogging I always receive dozens of invitations each month to attend and write about dance, musical and theatrical events. Something about the H T Chen Company piqued my East-West curiosity and I'm really glad I went because I very much enjoyed the choreography, the music, the dancers and the venue. Since the La MaMa annex has a wooden balcony that runs along the side walls and overlooks the performing space, this provided a fine perch from which Kokyat was permitted to photograph the performance.

H T Chen was born in Shanghai and holds degrees from both Juilliard and NYU; he draws inspiration for his works from the City where he now lives, teaches and choreographs: the Big Apple. In fact, the evening's programme was subtitled The Crisp.

Two excerpts from APPLE DREAMS opened the evening. Culled from a 2007 full-length work, the scenes presented reflect on the destruction and re-birth of Lower Manhattan following the 9/11 catastrophe. The dancers gather in the dim light to the elemental sounds of waves and rushing water.

Fitz Pattton has provided the percussive score. The opening movement is laced with shouting, doom-ladened drumming and a sense of foreboding from the funereal tolling of a bell.

The movement is non-stop: sometimes regimented and almost combative, then swirling in patterns of greater freedom...

...coalescing into pairs and groups and then splintering. The dancers bring individual expression to the ensemble passages, moving and inter-acting with authority.   

Sounds of the jungle, bird-song and tinkling chimes signal a lighter passage, a duet (above) becomes almost playful and there is a walking segment where the sounds of the sea are recalled. As the light fades, the dancers appear as flickering fireflies. 

SHIFT mixes urban vitality and edginess with dreamlike sequences. The poem Street Scene by Vijay Seshadri provided subtitles for the four inter-connected movements: angels and lawyers, the spirit's nocturnal crisis, pidgeons of every color, and rinsed of charity and malice. Again Fitz Patton has provided the sound-world which the dancers inhabit. A long white bench stretches across the playing area. Hazy smoke wafts into the air as the dancers enter one by one, each with a newspaper and each totally self-absorbed. The clanging dodesukaden of a subway train draws us into this urban setting. Street noises, the cries of children playing, echoes of pop music ...all these fill the sub-conscious...

...while the individual dancers step forward in solo vignettes. Slowly they dancers become aware of one another. There are pairings, conversations, disputes. Slowly a community forms.

The newspapers become banners...

...or umbrellas. Drumming motifs become almost ominous...

... before giving way to a playful section as oranges roll across the stage and the dancers add coloured skirts while the music takes on a gamelan flavour.

Receding into a dreamscape, the dance develops solo passages (Kimberly Prosa, above)...

...and duets, this one reminiscent in its hand gestures of AFTERNOON OF A FAUN. Above, LunShan Liao and Takao Komaru. The dancers, now all in white, move slowly into a realm of purity and light.

The Company.

H T Chen joins his dancers at the end of the performance.

Click on Kokyat's images to enhance the view.

Comments

[Barbara Blaine]

A wonderful theatrical atmosphere in these photos.

[A. Brinstone]

La Mama is a real New York institution. The pictures capture it very well. I haven't been there for a few years but I've always loved the old place. Thanks for reminding me of so many memories.

[Max]

"Dodesk'aden": Obie, you are a genius to remember that. Thanks to K for more great dance pictures too.

[Andrea]

Amazing perspective in the seventh photo down.

[ching-i]

hi there,
these photos are really beautiful! i'm just wondering is this published on a newspaper or just on this website?

[Philip]

I'm so glad you like Kokyat's photos. They are only on-line.