Oberon's Grove: Bennyroyce Royon's CHRONOS Project

Wednesday April 21, 2010 - In an unexpected twist of fate I missed the opening performance of Bennyroyce Royon's CHRONOS Project (April 22) but Kokyat and I were at the dress rehearsal on Wednesday and so I got to see the works being presented of which one - Monique Meunier's ADAM - made an especially vivid impression. This was the second of Monique's creations I've seen in recent days (the first being SOLID GROUND performed at the Columbia Ballet Collaborative evening). Photo above: Elysia Dawn, Luke Manley and Victoria North in Monique Meunier's ADAM.

Click on the images to enlarge.

ADAM opened the programme, followed by A STUDY OF THINGS GONE WRONG by Brian Gibbs which, though well-performed (photo above), left me puzzled both choreographically and dramatically. It seemed rather too long and never really engaged the senses.

In COMA, Nilas Martins built a scenario around a stricken young woman. The dancers, all in white, may have been the staff and patients of a clinic where she was being treated. Internal dramas seemed to pulsate just below the surface. The work was strongly danced...

...with a notable performance by Kevin Ferguson, formerly of Parsons Dance.

Bennyroyce Royon danced in the Nilas Martins piece and then in his own concluding work, CHRONOS. Set to a collage of music from percolating rhythmic figures and club beats to spoken poetry and vocalizing, Benny puts his dancers thru their paces with some smooth, sexy moves laced with sharper elements of gesture. The poetic references allude to the necessity of dancing and to the physical and spiritual release of the human body in motion, moving thru time.

Enhanced by a film projected behind the dancers, CHRONOS could profit from a slight compression of the final movement but otherwise it is well-structured and finely danced...