Thursday March 18, 2010 - The floor and rear wall of the Joyce SoHo playing area are deep red. Along the side walls eight chairs have been placed, four on either side. As the audience assembles, so do the eight dancers who enter almost randomly and sit quietly until the house lights fade and Stefanie Nelson's PROXIMITY SPIRAL begins.
For fifty minutes we are drawn into the world of these eight dancers: their individual personalities, their relationships to one another and their collective energy. Opening with a sustained solo for Katie Federowicz, PROXIMITY SPIRAL seemed from the first to be a very personal exploration of movement. Katie sometimes danced up to her seated colleagues but there was no physical contact. Each dancer in turn has a solo passage where we begin to see their individuality.
As the work progresses relationships are formed, developed, dissolved. Passions may seethe below the surface, erupting from time to time, and subtly humorous touches are woven in. In gesture and expression as well as in the steps being danced each dancer draws the eye in a different way: Ariana Siegel's persona has an erotic undercurrent; Yin Yue - dancing in a rectangle of light - seems both longing and wistful. The tall and bald-pated McKay Montz has his own mystique which Nelson's choreography and staging boldly underlines.
All of Nelson's dancers - Malinda Crump, Ali Schechter, Jeff Kent Jacobs and Matthew Oaks as well as those named above - have something to say to us. In PROXIMITY SPIRAL the eye is constantly drawn from one dancer to another and even those who are seated while others dance participate thru gesture or simply by their stilled presence. Eventually the chairs get drawn into the playing area and the dancers perform for one another briefly.
Throughout the piece, Solomon Weisbard's lighting played a major role in maintaining visual allure; shadows were cast about the room and at one point florescent tubes along the outer edges of the floor lit up creating a starkness that threw the dancers into high relief.
The musical panorama was entirely satisfying in mingling Mid-eastern exoticism (Sahand Rahbar) with contemporary rhythmic settings from Hugh Mann, Borut Krzisnik,
The only blot on the evening came from a member of the press seated two (empty) seats away from me and blithely flipping her notebook pages every three or four minutes, even when the music was silent. So insensitive. If I could have changed seats without disrupting people I would have. In an intimate venue like Joyce SoHo, good audience manners are crucial.
But despite this annoyance, PROXIMITY SPIRAL made a vivid impression and I could easily have watched it again immediately for I sensed that there are layers - both choreographic and musical - that invite deeper exploration. An extra 'brava!' to Ms. Nelson for providing nice-sized and current headshots of all her very fine dancers so we knew who we were watching.
Each week I am invited to so many dance, music and theater events but PROXIMITY SPIRAL is something I sought out on my own, drawn by the video clip on the Joyce SoHo website. I'm really glad I went.
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