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The World Is Wide

KDNY
Dance Place
Washington, DC, USA
Saturday, July 31, 2004

by George Jackson
copyright © 2004 by George Jackson
published August 2, 2004

Kathleen Dyer's 5 dancer company from New York presented two very different types of works in DC. Three dances, all of which started within a big picture frame, flowed from their contained starting space onto the broader stage in firm yet finely honed impulses. The closer, "Attending Kinneely", was an attempt to go wild.

All of the company's dancers are women—Theresa Duhon, Lauren Jaynes, Heather Kemp, Carrie Malernee and Dyer—and what they dance about shows how women experience the world. Yet that world is wide, as is the range of feelings the women explore. "At the Passing" might have been inspired by a Renaissance painting of the death a beloved and saintly woman attended by her two sisters. The smooth linearity of its choreography made a tight fit with acapella music by Josquin Desprez. "Flowers on the Table by an Open Window" contrasted hope, persistence, anger and despair. It suggested women in 19th Century novels. The music, selected from Gunod, Massenet, Patrick Cassidy and Somei Satoh, added up to an unexpectedly coherent suite. Most likely, "East Whistwaddle Ladies" shows the white Southern counterparts to Alvin Ailey's church sisters in "Revelations" and, wisely, their accompaniment isn't gospel or even hymnal but by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. The movement vocabulary of these dances is off-ballet and, although the steps might have been more diverse, they were well assembled. Dyer herself hasn't a balletic body and looks best as a character type.

The program's closer looks like something from a summer camp talent show. Its many false endings both in choreography and PJ Merola's percussive music didn't survive transport into town very well. The exhaustion for which the full company strove laid bare individual shortcomings that were well hidden in the three preceding pieces.

Whose choreography does KDNY dance? There is a line in the printed program crediting Kathleen Dyer, yet some of the text about KDNY suggests a degree of collaboration with the dancers.

Originally published:
www.danceviewtimes.com
Volume 2, No. 29
August 3, 2004
Copyright ©2004 by George Jackson