Cloud Gate 2 are at The Joyce thru Sunday February 12th. They offer a diverse and musically intriguing programme of works by four exciting choreographers, performed by a troupe of unusually polished and expressive young dancers. Kokyat and I attended their opening night (February 8th) where the Company received a warm New York City welcome. Photo at the top from Bulareyaung Pagarlava's PASSAGE.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the evening was how young all the participants were. As they took their bows the choreographers looked like college under-grads while many of the dancers looked like they should be in high school. Yet their choreography and dancing showed surprising artistic maturity.
Huang Yi's WICKED FISH opened the evening impressively with the grey-clad dancers moving in a stream of light. The score by Iannis Xenakis provides a buzzy, kozmic atmosphere in which the dancers move with fluid smoothness; partnerships blossom and dissolve as the movement shifts highlight first one couple, then another. A central pas de deux for two boys seemed at once athletic and lyrical and was superbly danced.
Composer Meredith Monk was seated further down our row; some of her wonderfully whimsical songs were employed in TANTALUS where choreographer Wu Kuo-chu presented an ensemble work based on synchronized movement. The dancers are in a pool of light; they stare out at us in silence with slumping postures. From time to time one of them will break the regimented mold with nervous flutters or hints of self-expression. But the overall feeling is of a community of wary individuals moving in sync.
PASSAGE by Bulareyaung Pagarlava was the evening's most arresting work. In this dreamlike ritual of the mysteries of death and transfiguration, the choreographer employs segments of the Bach/African fusion score Lambarena. A beautiful young woman is dressed, stripped and re-dressed repeatedly in preparation for her rite of passage. In her nude-textured body stocking she appears vulnerable and mystified by what is happening to her. Four attendants in black hover busily about her, and a ghostly angel walks slowly across the stage with an umbrella and large suitcase. As the woman finally succumbs, she is covered by a large sheet of white silk. The four attendants slip out of their black coats and dance sensuously as they waft handfuls of white powder into the air, creating billowing clouds. The dead woman has vanished. Where did she go? You must watch it to find out.
Huang Yi's TA-TA FOR NOW cleverly expresses the interactions of a quintet of office workers. Set to the exhilirating allegro from Aram Khachaturian's violin concerto, the five dancers exhibit various behavioral quirks while jockeying for position in a competitive atmosphere. Here the young Cloud Gate 2 dancers showed surprising finesse of comic timing, droll expressions and charming individual personalities.
The closing work, THE WALL, takes the simple act of walking and transforms it into an impressive structural dancework; choreographer Cheng Tsung-lung uses Michael Gordon's textured score Weather One to set his dancers in motion. Clad in black, they stride across the stage in lines, rows or phalanxes at varying speeds and gaits. They seem like automatons, mindlessly marching about. One girl is then stripped to her white silky slip. Her movement style becomes more lyrcical, breaking the mode. Slowly more dancers appear to switch from black to white. Yet they cannot stop walking or truly shed their identity as part of the collective.
The evening was an auspicious one for Cloud Gate 2. Taking their bows, the performers seemed genuinely gratified by the crowd's enthusiasm. Youth and beauty carried the day, buoyed by an excellent range of music and by the sincerity and dedication of the dancers.
Above, three of the four choreographers whose works were presented: Cheng Tsung-lung, Huang Yi, and Bulareyaung Pagarlava.
