Saturday December 3, 2011 - The Park Street Armory is a sensational venue for dance. My first thought as we settled into our seats was: I want to see Balanchine's SERENADE in this space. Tonight Shen Wei Dance Arts held the floor in a three-part programme. Celebrating their tenth season, the Company offered two classic works from their repertoire and a premiere. The audience, seated on three sides of the performing space, were spellbound - especially by the Shen Wei masterwork FOLDING (production image above.)
The evening commenced with Shen Wei's RITE OF SPRING. Since Vaslav Nijinsky's epic failure with this Stravinsky score - one of the great scandals in the history of dance - the music has subsequenty been choreographed countless times. Of the many incarnations I have seen, nothing really rivals Andonis Foniadakis's setting of the work as a solo for the magnificent Ioanna Toumpakari which was performed at Joyce SoHo in 2008. It was electrifying, and Ioanna gave the kind of performance you can never forget.
Shen Wei's vision does not follow the original libretto; there is no sacrificial victim driven to her death, no element of primitive religious fervor. The sixteen dancers, in contemporary grey-blue casual wear, move furtively at first. As the movement becomes more expansive and they seek to explore the space, Shen Wei himself appears; his dancing has a special quality of inner grace that is captivating. For the forty minute duration, the dancers largely repeat certain movement motifs. However, there is no physical contact: each dancer moves within his own private world. RITE production photo: Christy Pessagno.
In its staggeringly beautiful poetic concept, FOLDING creates a dreamworld that evokes ancient rites; but it could also be a futuristic vision. The dancers, bodies painted with white ashen powder and with enlarged brains, seem to float around the space as they move quickly in tiny steps. In their long skirts with extended trains, they remind us of alien geishas. Their comings and goings are mysterious: they seem busy, pre-occupied, elusive. Couples appear, wrapped together in the black gowns: the women bend and fold into improbable shapes in these other-wordly conjoined adagios. As Shen Wei, in a pool of light, performs a final hypnotic solo, the backdrop rises exposing the vast space of the Armory's great hall. The red-gowned dancers slowly retreat into the distance, ascending an unseen staircase like questing angels. The cumulative effect of FOLDING - with its mystical musical union of John Tavener and sounds of the Buddhist monks veering from ominous to celestial - is one of overwhelming beauty.
FOLDING (images by Shu Lai).
The hall was then cleared while the final work, UNDIVIDED DIVIDED (premiere) was prepared. When we were re-admitted, we found twenty-four dancers laying prone on the vast floor in well-spaced positions. The audience were invited to walk among the dancers and soon the playing area was filled with ambling humans. In the darkish setting, it began to feel over-crowded so I retreated to my seat. From there my impressions were of an over-long, rather aimless piece with choreography that was structured but felt improvised. The music (by Sō Percussion) was neither here nor there. Each dancer moved to an adjoining square where small puddles of paint had been poured. As they writhed on the floor, they created abstract canvases whilst meanwhile painting their bodies. The women were topless and all the dancers wore flesh-toned briefs. They paired off (all straight couples, or so it seemed) mixing the colours on their bodies in intense but oddly non-sexual couplings. The overall feeling was of an after-hours sex club where everyone's hormones have been exhausted but they're still going thru the motions.
From my ringside seat I also noticed a somewhat creepy side-effect of all this activity: some borderline-senile heterosexual gentlemen from the audience stationed themselves near the appealingly vulnerable, bare-breasted female dancers and leered at them openly; I half-expected them to start drooling. The dancers maintained their composure but the atmosphere was very seedy. It was a jarring notion to think that the same choreographer who created the exquisite FOLDING could follow it up with this messy, ill-conceived theatrical blunder.
