Thursday July 28, 2011 - BalaSole Dance Company opening their season tonight at Dance Theater Workshop. Founded by Roberto Villanueva, BalaSole offers young dancers/choreographers a stage for performing their work and for introducing themselves to a wider public. In this, the second season of Balasole offerings, thirteen dancers (including Mr. Villanueva) were presented in self-created solo works. Click on the above photo to enlarge.
This evening's participants:
To open and close the evening, Roberto Villanueva and his fellow performers devised a sunny, beachy ensemble number (top photo) set to Manuel de Falla's Ritual Fire Dance.
A full evening of solos might have become an exercise in tedious repetition but the individuality of each dancer assured that the programme maintained freshness from start to finish. The performance was well-paced with nary a lull, and the excellent lighting and stage management of Miriam Crowe were a big plus in this kind of presentation.
We had attended the dress rehearsal (where Kokyat took all these photos) which was really good but it seemed for the performance that all the dancers really raised their communicative and technical level.
Needless to say, some of the dancers and works presented were more appealing or impressive than others; it's interesting that no one chose music that could be considered 'classical' (aside from the de Falla for the ensemble) but each dancer's music worked well for his/her individual style.
The evening started beautifully with Marie-Christine Giordano in silhouette (above) as she began her solo entitled In and Out, a work-in-progress. Ms. Giordano is perhaps the best-established and most familiar name among the participants; her artistry and stage experience shone throughout this expressive solo.
Thereafter it was the men who seemed to offer both the widest variety of dance-styling, personal appeal and technical polish. The women were all attractive and had lovely things to say but in a more generalized sense.
Here's a detailing of the dancing boys:
Odman Felix (above) from Brazil gave a supple physicality to his solo. Masculine and posessed of raw power, his solo Forces had a contained sexuality that was somehow also spiritual.
Alan Khoutakoun's solo (above) benefited not only from his subtle and intense delivery and his sleek physique but also from the most distinctive lighting of the evening.
William Tomaskovic (above) used the space with real command, his physical elasticity and brilliant dramatic focus making a particularly fine impression. His choice of Laurie Anderson to dance to was also inspired: quirky, yet oddly touching: "Come as you are, pay as you go..."
Yuki Ishiguro (above) from Japan called upon a fusion-style that incorporated elements of break-dance, hip-hop and ballet. In his solo Another World, Yuki seemed encased in glass and used his hands with subtle texturing to express his captivity. Sometimes collapsing like a broken marionette, his solo was perhaps the most personal of the evening. Having escaped his glass prison, he seems at the end to be pondering whether he had been safer inside.
Francesco Pireddu (from Sardinia) pictured above in his aptly-named solo Silence? There was nary a sound as this intriguing dancer evoked images of Marcel Marceau with his fluent mimetic gestures.
Roberto Villanueva: a boy and his bear. Roberto, a virtuoso by nature, tonight presented a playful solo called The Child Inside. I was left wondering which is cuddlier: Roberto or his teddy?
The sub-title of this evening's programme by BalaSole was True Colors and the multi-cultural background of the participants gave the evening a fine sense of diversity and a perspective on dance that is broader than we usually see in a single evening's presentation.
There is an additional gallery of Kokyat's images from this presentation here.
Roberto Villanueva's inspired concept of providing a stage for dancer-types that are under-represented in larger companies and his valuable mentoring of the participants make BalaSole as a unique venture in the contemporary New York dance scene. I'll look forward now to keeping Roberto and BalaSole on my A-list.
All photos by Kokyat, with my ever-lasting gratitude.