Thursday January 6, 2011 - Ah, to be young and taking dance classes. That's the life I wish I could have led so these days I'm living it vicariously. There are so many dance classes in every genre and style going on in New York City every day. This morning down at Peridance on East 13th I went to watch a class led by Bennyroyce Royon (above, studio photo by Kokyat) and I was wishing to god that I was 45 years younger and out there on the floor with the lucky dancers who got to participate.
There were two girls in the class that I knew: Marie Zvosec (of TAKE Dance) and Melissa Peraldo, a beautiful dancer I'd met last year at Benny's class down at The Rover.
I've said this before: Bennyroyce Royon is one of the smoothest movers I've ever seen. His body is so elastic and his style of movement so fluid...and it all seems 100% natural. In fact, I am not sure that this kind of gift can actually be taught to others, but as Benny's class progressed the fifteen dancers were moving with ever-increasing fluency and smoothness.
Benny started the class by having the dancers (15 were present) lay on the floor; he lowered the lights in the big studio and had everyone simply breathe. He asked them to forget about their daily toils and troubles and get in touch with their deeper selves, inducing a state of calm. Then, still prone, he had them start to move. He actually choreographed a sequence for them on the floor - I know, it was really an exercise but it had such a sensation of dancing.
The lights came up and as the class progressed thru a series of exercises the pace of the music increased. The warmed-up bodies responded to Benny's combinations with their expansive, contemporary port de bras and the gently sensuous sway of the body in motion. Some of the dancers who seemed a bit reticent early in the class bloomed into lyric movers as Benny urged them to fill the space around themselves with fluid energy. "Dance is a language and you each have your own dialect," he called out to them at one point. I've never heard it so simply and aptly expressed.
A passage of improv or abstracted movement gave me a chance to focus on individuals in the class; some of them were dancing so expressively and so within their own sphere that it seemed like a performance. In the final twenty minutes, Benny built what seemed to me to be a fairly complex combination. All of the dancers picked up on it swiftly and moved across the floor in small groups. It was hard to believe 90 minutes could have gone by so quickly.
Earlier this year I enjoyed watching Benny put his dance-philosphy and movement style to work in a rehearsal for Brian Carey Chung's duet LONELY HOUSE. And most recently, Kokyat and I had a great time with Benny at our photoshoot at The Secret Theatre.
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