Above: the women of Lydia Johnson Dance in Undercurrent, having its premiere performances this season; photo by Travis Magee
~ Author: Oberon
Thursday June 7th, 2018 - This evening at the Ailey Citigroup Theatre, Lydia Johnson Dance gave the second of three performances in their annual New York City season.
I discovered Lydia Johnson's choreography quite by chance when I went to a studio showing she gave back in 2009 at City Center Studios. Over the ensuing three years, my beloved friend Kokyat and I spent a great deal of time watching Lydia create her danceworks in the top-floor studio at Battery Dance. I had never felt closer to dance than on those beautiful afternoons with the light pouring into that rather shabby but marvelously redolent space, Lydia and her dancers treating me and my beautiful Malaysian friend like part of the family.
But such times of contentment and affinity seldom sustain themselves; Kokyat vanished from my life without a trace, and for both Lydia and myself the five flights of stairs at Battery Dance became daunting. But she has continued to work in other studios, turning out her distinctive ballets which are rich in their humanity and invariably set to wonderful music.
Meanwhile, Lydia's roster of dancers has shifted slowly but inevitably over the years; new forms and faces have gradually replaced beloved dancers in a transitioning which brings us down to the current collective, who are giving us new memories to hold onto. A series of guest dancers over the years have included men associated with ABT, New York City Ballet, Paul Taylor, and Lar Lubovitch; this season, Lydia has the good fortune to be working with former New York City Ballet principal Stephen Hanna.
This evening's program was particularly appealing for its musical variety, and for its introduction - in Lydia's newest work, Undercurrent - of dancers from The LJD Student Company (photo above by Travis Magee). These young women, who have expressed to Lydia an interest not just in dance but in the making of dance, appeared in - and enlivened - the evening's finale.
All photos in this article are by Travis Magee.
Above, winning combination: MinSeon Kim and Chazz Fenner-McBride in What Counts
The evening opened with What Counts, a multi-dimensional dancework set to music by The Bad Plus. After a bouncy introduction danced by Chazz Fenner-McBride and Danny Pigliavento, a pas de deux commences for Chazz and Min Kim. Their duet shows a real-time lovers' spat...
...which is transformed by the music into something stylized and quietly ecstatic.
Meanwhile, a women's trio (Fates? Graces? Nymphs?) come and go in stylized movement motifs replete with their own gestural language. Above: Min with Laura Di Orio and Katie Martin-Lohiya.
Above: Laura Di Orio dancing a solo passage in What Counts
As the jazzy What Counts moves to its conclusion, Chazz gives up his pursuit of Min when she re-joins her sisters and they imperturbably travel off to some unknown destination.
Min Kim and Chazz Fenner-McBride have danced together often in Lydia Johnson's recent seasons; theirs is a unique partnership, and in What Counts we see it in full flourish.
Above: Katie Martin-Lohiya, Sara Spangler, and the ensemble in This, and my heart beside...photo by Travis Magee
Lydia Johnson's This, and my heart beside... drew inspiration from the lines in Emily Dickinson's poem "It's all I have to bring today...":
"It’s all I have to bring today—
This, and my heart beside—
This, and my heart, and all the fields—
And all the meadows wide.
Be sure you count—should I forget
Some one the sum could tell—
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell."
There's a narrative to this ballet: a highly personal one for choreographer Lydia Johnson. She has sometimes alluded to the story behind the work, but I prefer to let the dramatic tale of a young girl and the three couples who loom large in her life retain its mystery. Suffice it to say: there is love - both the ardent and the parental - betrayal, compassion, regret, tenderness, and heartbreak to be found as this dancework unfolds to music by Marc Mellits and Philip Glass.
We'll let Travis Magee's photos serve as a sort of story board:
Katie Martin-Lohiya and Sara Spangler
Sara Spangler observes Min Kim and Chazz Fenner-McBride. Sara, a student at Lydia Johnson's school, created this role last season, and she again impressed this evening with her graceful assurance and perfect posture.
Poetry in motion: the deeply-felt partnership of Dona Wiley and Stephen Hanna
Dona and Stephen
Katie Martin-Lohiya and Danny Pigliavento
Danny and Katie
Dona and Stephen
Dona and Stephen
Stephen Hanna
Min, Chazz, Stephen, and Dona
Stephen and Dona; what a lyrical and vivid impression their partnership made in This and my heart beside...
In the end, Lydia Johnson's This and my heart beside... brought to my mind another poignant bit of poetry, from Gian Carlo Menotti's libretto for Samuel Barber's opera VANESSA:
"To leave, to break, to find, to keep; to stay, to wait, to hope, to dream; to weep and remember."
Like Anatol in that sad opera, someone is left empty-handed:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Following the interval, a return of Trio Sonatas, a Lydia Johnson hit from last season. Choreographers can never go wrong with the music of Georg Friedrich Handel. This particular ballet looks very contemporary while adhering to the classic Baroque formula of alternating fast and slow movements.
There's no narrative in Trio Sonatas, but interesting elements of repose and re-wakening are woven in.
Danny Pigliavento and Chazz Fenner-McBride in the air in Trio Sonatas
Joyous arabesques: Laura Di Orio and Katie Martin-Lohiya
Min Kim and Chazz Fenner-McBride
Central to Trio Sonatas is an unusual, stylized quartet danced by Chazz Fenner-McBride, Laura Di Orio, Katie Martin-Lohiya, and Min Kim
The quartet
Min and Chazz
Ramona Kelley and Dona Wiley match arabesques. Ramona's dancing with Lydia Johnson Dance for the first time this season, and I hope she'll continue to do so.
There was then a pause as the stage was set and the dancers changed costumes for the evening's final work. Henryk Górecki's "Three Dances" (composed in 1973) is the setting for Undercurrent, which will henceforth always be thought of as Lydia Johnson's 'red ballet'. The lighting designs by Renée Molina, a positive element throughout evening, were particularly atmospheric in Undercurrent.
The composer has given us three very different dance movements, each creating its own emotional world. In the first, a feeling of bleakness seems all too well-suited to the current world situation. The music is darkly agitated - driven, in fact - with sharp accents giving it a relentless quality:
Downcast dancers, in turmoil. LJD company newcomer Peter Cheng, a vital dance force, in the foreground
Danny Pigliavento, Chazz Fenner-McBride, Peter Cheng
Peter Cheng, aloft
Chazz and Peter
The second Górecki dance brings us some of the most moving choreography of the evening. The music has turned moody, mysterious, thoughtful. Yet despite its gentle uneasiness, it seems to speak - very haltingly - of reassurance in this new Age of Anxiety we are living in. The dancing here was nothing short of remarkable.
Laura Di Orio (above), in her duet with Chazz Fenner-McBride, is simply gorgeous.
The atmosphere is sustained in a duet of consoling danced by Min Kim and Peter Cheng.
Dona Wiley gave a breathtaking solo, her dancing contained and luminous.
This interlude ended with a duet for Katie Martin-Lohiya and Danny Pigliavento, dancers who have become an amazingly expressive, simpatico duo over the course of a year.
It takes a village: the finale of Undercurrent brings the children into the dance. In an age when our government - to our eternal shame - is modeling their actions on the practices of the guards at the concentration camps in Nazi Germany by tearing infants away from their parents, Lydia Johnson reminds us that the safety of children in the nurturing presence of caring adults should never be compromised by the sadistic interference of sick-minded ogres. Instead, in the finale of Undercurrent, Lydia shows us a community of shared affection reveling in the simple joy of dancing...even if it at times it feels like dancing on the edge of the proverbial volcano.
Above: a beautiful quartet comprised of LJD's apprentices - Nicole Nerup, Michelle Siegel, Shekinah Thompson-Gbolagunte, and Catherine Gurr - formed one contingent of women, echoing and mingling with Company dancers Min Kim, Laura Di Orio, Katie Martin-Lohiya, and Dona Wiley. Meanwhile the three boys - Chazz Fenner-McBride, Danny Pigliavento, and Peter Cheng - celebrated in folkish fashion by periodically tossing other people into the air.
The girls from Lydia's school did a terrific job: they were self-assured and mixed in beautifully with the dancers of the Company. Here they are, in three groups
The music and the dancing now build to an inevitable big-bang finale:
Min, Dona, Katie, Laura
Structure is everything!
Danny swirls Katie
Peter, Danny, and Ramona
Many thanks to Travis Magee for the brilliant portfolio he has produced, to publicist Audrey Ross, to all the dancers, and to Lydia Johnson for making it happen yet again.
~ Oberon