The
Most of It
I
sat down on the bank the grass was damp a little then I found my shoes
wet
Kimberly Bartosik
Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery
June 24, 2004
by
Nancy Dalva
copyright
© 2004 by Nancy Dalva
published June 28, 2004
After
a week of overwrought, tricky visuals—Eifman at New York City Ballet,
Pilobolus at the Joyce—what a relief Kimberly Bartosik's new piece
was. Subliminally narrative, but not oppressively so, despite a worrisome
title. A trio, but for the most part given over to two exceptional dancers,
Derry Swan and Daniel Squire. Mostly, just beautiful, beautiful, beautiful
dancing, in a beautiful space. What more could one want?
Both Swan and Squire are current members of the Merce Cunningham Dance
Company, she via Barnard, he via the Rambert School. (If you had ever
needed a dance company to function as a think tank, Cunningham's would
have been a good choice, at any moment in its 50 years. As e.e. cummings
said, "Art is intelligence functioning at intuitional velocity.")
Swan is the Queen of the Lunge, a lush, womanly mover who is astonishingly
fleet footed. Cunningham's solo for her in Fluid Canvas (2002)
elucidated this just as Balachine summed up Merrill Ashley in Ballo de
la Regina.) She also has amazing powers of stillness, which held her in
good stead here. Among the lovely sequences Bartosik devised for her were
a traveling lunge, with arms extended to the sides like wings. It recalled,
if from a different point of view and traveling rather than stationary,
a wonderful episode in Cunningham's Enter (1992), originally
danced by Michael Cole, who happened to be in Bartosik's audience. Standing
to the left of the stage (if memory serves, Bartosik was on the other
side, in a row of girls, at the time), he balanced on one bent leg, and,
like a raptor, he flew, his arms like great predator's wings.
Squire has the technical mastery his background would suggest, allied
with a rare transparency. You feel that whatever emotions he is experiencing—and
you sense that he is someone who feels a great deal—are used in
the dance to give the movement truth, and color, but all in service to
the choreography. To see him is to know that dance, with plot or not,
is never abstract. He is an excellent partner, ardent, focused, and with
nothing in the least pretend about his interaction.
Together, then, Swan and Squire are ravishing. Their one long duet in
the doorway of the sanctuary was precise yet plush, deliberate but appearing
capable, at any second, of dissolving into abandonment. Brainy, but hot.
Bartosik was their spritely foil, somehow there and not there, another
Cunningham trick. In this case, you felt she was somehow making the work
up as it transpired, not in the sense of it being improvisational–far
from it–but in the sense of her evoking the movement. Her part was
the smallest, but she presided.
The bird-boned choreographer spent nine fleet eventful years with Cunningham,
during which she was notable for aerial occupation achieved without equipment,
though she could be languorous if called for, in a spare way. Here, only
one brief yet thrilling jump (so like her romantic leap in Cunningham's
Ocean) across the stage, to be caught mid-air by Squire, hinted
at her history. Her piece opened with Bartosik up in the balcony, the
rose window of the Danspace home, St Mark's Church in the Bowery behind
her. The audience was seated on the altar end, some on white benches set
on astroturf, a summery touch enhanced by the soundscore of crickets and
the simple white costumes. The upstairs appearance was an introduction,
and also an invocation. It never hurts to call on the muse.
Despite the correspondences to Cunningham, the resemblance to his work
was not conceptual at all, but merely in how people moved. Bartosik must
have some story for her piece, given its title: I sat down on the
bank the grass was damp a little then I found my shoes wet. The lighting,
by Roderick Murray, gave a sense of the dancers moving from place to place,
but nothing specific. Because the theater was very hot, one thought of
a house at night, with the sleepless inhabitants leaving their beds for
a breath of air, or to feel the cool of the floor on their feet. You could
also simply see the work as an exercise in connection, as Bartosik used
the sides of the space, and the back, stretching out the space between
the dancers yet maintaining their equilibrium. In this respect, no matter
who had the focus, or who was moving or who was still, the work was entirely
a trio.
It isn't true that you can give wonderful dancers anything to do and they
will look good. But you can give them just enough, and they will make
the most of it.
Photo of
Kimberly Bartosik and dancers by Barron Rachman.
Originally
published:
www.danceviewtimes.com
Volume 2, Number 24
June 28, 2004
Copyright
©2004 by Nancy Dalva
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