Sunday January 23, 2011 - Lydia Johnson Dance in a showing of works set to music of JS Bach and Philip Glass. The performance took place at Peridance where Lydia will be teaching daily starting on Monday January 24th and running throughout the week. Top photo: Shannon Maynor and Eric Vlach of Lydia Johnson Dance, a snapshot I took during the pre-show warm-up.
Tonight two spacious connecting studios were converted into a theater for the presentation and the place was packed, with people standing or sitting on mats after all the seating had been filled.
Kokyat and I got there early to photograph the dancers preparing, as well as a run-thru of the Bach. His pictures are forth-coming. Once the doors opened the place became abuzz as people settled in; on a freezing night it was warming to see two people we like very much - Kerry Shea and Emily SoRelle Adams - among the crowd.
The new work to music of Philip Glass is entitled SUMMER HOUSE and in it four dancers depict the reveries and recollections of a summer spent together in a cottage on some un-named shore. Much of the work is presented with the dancers seated, lounging lazily or daydreaming. Yet for all its surface calm there are undercurrents of romantic tensions and unresolved relationships which give the work nuances that stretch beyond mere pleasantries. The four dancers - Laura DiOrio, Lisa Iannacito McBride, Jessica Sand and Robert Robinson - beautifully convey the surface lyricism while keeping us guessing as to what has transpired in this house during their stay. We don't know who they are or what has led them to spend the summer together, and it is exactly this mystery that makes the piece so intriguing. The Glass music resonates with nostaglia, longing, tenderness and regret by turns. The simplicity and relative stillness of the movement strikes me as deceptively demanding for the dancers: while there are not a lot of steps, there is an atmosphere to be maintained and a type of physicality that in its way is quite taxing. These dancers performed beautifully, which is exactly what we have come to expect from them over months of watching them in the studio. SUMMER HOUSE, when it is lit and costumed, will be something to see...and to hear.
The untitled Bach work is very different: ritualistic and emotive by turns, the piece often has several different things going on at once. Here the dancers are very active indeed, with passages of partnering - including a poignant duet for two men - and moments of solo opportunity for one dancer or another. A raised platform near the rear of the staging area gives some of the partnering elements a different dynamic. One recurring theme is a diagonal of dancers which melts into individual, duo or trio themes only to re-form again later.
The dancers in the Bach included the four from the Glass - Jessica, Lisa, Laura and Robert - who were joined by Eric Vlach, James Hernandez, Shannon Maynor and Or Sagi. Shannon and Or are new to the Company and they are already fitting in nicely and showing us their attractive qualities of movement and expression.
Kokyat and I were happy after the presentation to meet many people who follow my blog, and I was happy to deflect all their kind comments to my photographer-friend because in dance - more than anywhere else - a picture is truly worth a thousand words.
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