Wednesday April 14, 2010 - Takehiro Ueyama's Unfiltered evenings are always a pleasure. Friends of TAKE Dance are invited to watch the Company working on current repertoire in an intimate studio setting. Now preparing for their season at Dance Theater Workshop (May 19th - 22nd, 2010), the Company tonight were showing parts of two works that will be on the DTW programmes: FLIGHT (Take's new, large-scale work) and Jill Echo's LEFT THERE BY THE TIDE which will be having its New York premiere.
Click on the images to enhance.
In Kokyat's photos at top and immediately above, an ensemble passage from FLIGHT. Take has added some dancers for this work to supplement his own ensemble of Take Dancers. Jill spoke about the audition process and of the fact that 200 dancers showed up to vie for a possible spot in Take's piece. As we discovered while watching Amy Marshall's audition not long ago, there is a vast wealth of exciting dance talent in this City. Jill talked about the difficulty of narrowing the field down to the selected few when so many of the candidates had all the right moves.
Take welcomes his guests, above. One of my first behind-the-scenes experiences as a blogger came about when I was invited to watch TAKE Dance in rehearsal. That's when I got hooked on TAKE and that's also where I met his dancers for the first time: a beautiful and dedicated troupe of young people each with his or her own distinctive energy.
As with all dance companies, Take's roster changes from time to time. Shortly after I had 'discovered' TAKE Dance, one of the dancers - Elise Victoria Drew - left the Company to dance with Luna Negra in Chicago. I did keep in touch with her (just recently she assisted choreographer Pablo Ruiz with mounting his TEMPO ROSSO at Ballet Builders) and it was great to see her dancing with TAKE Dance again this evening. Elise with Kile Hotchkiss above, rehearsing Jill Echo's work.
Take's FLIGHT was inspired by the choreographer watching a large flock of starlings wheeling and sweeping overhead while on a visit to Rome. Take used the imagery of birds in flight (or in repose, above) in crafting this big work. He showed two segments tonight: the first to a spare and silvery score by Aleksandra Vrebalov (who was present) and then to Philip Glass's Meetings Along the Edge.
Jill Echo (above) also uses Philip Glass in her LEFT THERE BY THE TIDE - I must say, every dance work I have seen set to Glass has been eminently successful - in addition to music of Graeme Revell, Damian Eckstein and Lukas Foss. The title of the work comes from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay:
Ebb
- I know what my heart is like
- Since your love died:
- It is like a hollow ledge
- Holding a little pool
- Left there by the tide,
- A little tepid pool,
- Drying inward from the edge.
Tonight's Unfiltered was held in the largest of the studios to accommodate the expanded company of dancers. More of Kokyat's photographs from the evening appear here.
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