Saturday June 11, 2011 - It's an exciting opportunity for a dancemaker to present his/her work at The Joyce. The Chelsea venue is one of the City's prime destinations for dancegoers and over the years countless superb artists have appeared on its stage. Having followed skybetter & associates for a couple of years now, I felt a certain amount of personal pride to be present at their Joyce debut this afternoon as part of the Gotham Dance Festival. Above, Kristen Arnold and Gary Schaufeld in a rehearsal of Skybetter's HALCYON, photographed by Kokyat.
Dance-watching is a highly personal pastime. Certain choreographers - as well as certain dancers - speak to us more clearly than others. Sometimes it is simply that their musical tastes mesh happily with our own, or that their style of movement evokes images that resonate from the depths of our own experiences. I felt from my first encounter with Skybetter that his work was extremely satisfying on all counts. Thanks to Kristen Arnold, Kokyat and I made a connection with Sky and his dancers and became privy to his creative process, spending some really wonderful hours in Sydney's studio.
In March 2010, skybetter & associates offered a full evening of dance at Joyce SoHo; it was a first-rate programme and should serve as a template for choreographers in how to present their work in a way that wins friends and influences people. Having sold out three shows in the intimate SoHo venue, Sky wisely added a fourth - seizing the opportunity and gaining added exposure for his work and dancers.
So now we have come to The Joyce this afternoon. Kokyat and I checked in with Sky a couple of weeks ago over at the beautiful Gina Gibney studios where we got to watch his troupe polishing up the two works that were given today. Watching dancers in rehearsal is one of my favorite pastimes as a blogger, but of course in the end nothing quite compares to seeing fine danceworks costumed and lit onstage.
HALCYON was the piece that first signaled to me Sky's capacity for creating memorable movement, his musicality and his stylistic blend of soul and brain. Today was my third time seeing this work and each time it has struck me as holding a unique place among works by current choreographers. The ensemble of white-clad dancers, luminously lit on The Joyce stage, move to a lilting, heart-tuggingly melodious (yet very contemporary) theme by Carlos Paredes. Ten dancers participate, with nine set in a chessboard pattern which constantly re-populates itself as dancers come and go. There is a restless quality, embellished by wonderfully expressive gestures of the arms and hands; the bodies bend and sway as waves of motion course across the dancespace. A second 'song' by Enrique Rangel leads the dancers into shifting patterns of lifts and turns, with ever-changing partnerships and the forming of fleeting smaller communities within the larger group.
Sky's central group of artists - Kristen Arnold, Jennifer Jones, Gary Schaufeld and Jordan Isadore - are joined for HALCYON by an ensemble of excellent dancers: Dana Thomas, Kile Hotchkiss, Norbert de la Cruz, Wheeler Hughes, Liz Beres and Delphina Parenti; beautiful, handsome and expressive, they gave HALCYON its special glow.
I don't mean to neglect Skybetter's other offering today, a new quartet called TEMPORARY MATTERS, set in four short movements to music by Johann Johannsson. The dancers - Jennifer Jones, Kristen Arnold, Gary Schaufeld and Jordan Isadore - all wear long-skirted gowns by designer Karen Young in deep blue lined in vivid red. The men are bare-chested. Enhanced by Kate Ashton's fine lighting, the dancers are enclustered and attached thru much of the work, occassionally moving into more expansive motifs in pairs or individually. As the skirts swirl, the red linings are glimpsed, indicating private passions beneath the cool exterior.
I wish I could have been more enthusiastic about the other two choreographers featured on this afternoon's programme. Ashley Leite's THE ZOO, very strongly danced by a quintet of women, is full of tension and compulsive energy but it is far too long for what it has to say; there is too much floor-time for the dancers and the music doesn't register at all. Still, it was far more pleasing than Julian Barnett's endless and self-indulgent solo ECHOLOGUE. Neither of these works drew more than a polite response from the audience, and some people left after the Barnett - unaware that the best was yet to come.
When I think of the many fine local choreographers who would have leapt at the opportunity to present something at The Joyce, I wondered about the selection process for the festival. I think I could have put together several far more pleasing programmes.
But it was Skybetter's day, and he seized it.