Joanna Haigood Maxine Moerman Run For Your Life more Renee Renouf reviews

Programs One and Two had received some mixed reviews. but Program Three’s roster looked promising: Joanna Haigood; Maxine Moerman: Carol Kueffer; Liss Fain; Run For Your Life – It’s a Dance Company. I went because of Run For Your Life; Dudley Brooks is a friend of mine and possesses a delicious, ridiculous sense of humor. How genuinely many funny dance companies can you count on one hand, let alone two?

After all the Don Q’s, parts of Vaganova’s Diana and Acteon, Esmeralda, etc. and the varied range of ‘contemporary’ ballet at Jackson, I was braced for a reverse version of rarified content, i.e. content requiring undergraduate sociology references. Happily, I struck genuine pockets of pay dirt if the scale may be lost in mainstream dance marketing.

Companies and choreographers I had not seen: Carol Kueffer, a U. C. Santa Cruz dance instructor, who worked with Shirley Wynn in the New York Baroque Ensemble in the 80’s and substantial bi-coastal credits embracing ballet as well as modern. The premiere of Twisted Ties,( in three parts), used music from Guy Klucevsek’s Stolen Memories, Featured Kueffer, Lisa Bush, Damara Ganley and Karen Schmitt, the women proclaimed personal intelligence the minute they emerged from semi-darkness or the wings, and reminded the spectator modern dance was formed on women capable of organizing and sustaining the world around them. The movement was flexible, energetic, earth weighted, well-rehearsed, clearly focused, and upon occasion, deliciously tender and exploratory. It was bracing to see trained bodies outside the Balanchine ideal, and a visible choreographic structure, two women in the first, two in the second and the third a solo.

My dominant impression of the first duet was hewing to linear structure, with strong sections of parallel, if slightly staggered, patterns, the use of the hand on the hips, some impressive lifting of women by women dressed in cut off sweats and tee shirts embellished with brilliants at the waist.

The second duet in flowing white, almost negligees, seemed concerned with exploration of feeling and affection between women. While it may have verged on sexual intimacy, The movement tone and the respect for the material and between the two performers were impressive. It was here that Kueffer displayed playful, fluttery gestures reflecting a certain delicious delight in kinship among womankind, both a rare and welcome pleasure.

Presumably it was Carol Kueffer who danced the final solo, to a hectic, declarative pace with strong Balkan folk accents. As in the first duet, the arm would thrust forward strongly at shoulder level, followed by an equally level leg thrust from the hip from a posture of a clean, strong sousous. It proclaimed, “So, I’m there, here , all me, myself, and celebrating it,” assertively rather than aggressively, a subtle, but clear distinction. In Both first and third sections there were an arm device utilized where one hand dived into the diamond shape formed by the other hand on a hip with the elbow forming the outer edge. The hand would swoop in and out of the shape to an energetic movement phrase, accenting the affirmative quality of the sound.

I would be intrigued to see the work again to assess these initial impressions.

Maxine Moerman’s Dancetheatre’s Lullaby used Marline Coleman’s voice and cello and a nursery quality wooden rooster to frame the dancing of Deborah Miller in an evocative white corset and petticoat. Coleman’s voice and cello created an evocative atmosphere, strengthened by Brian Jones’ dappled lighting. Miller’s sloping shoulders created just the right sense of a turn-of-the-century guardian of the cradle. The feeling of space restriction and the focus, was there. There were moments where Miller seemed to feed pieces of food to the child, to retreat into the background, and emerge from it. The strength of cello and voice affected me more, for I missed the connected with the child’s at bedtime.

Run For Your Life.. it’s a dance company! premiered “A Short Duet (Nocturne in A-Flat Major from Les Sillyphides) with choreographer Dudley Brooks as the blue garbed premier danseur(George “Stumpy” Spelvin) and Carolyn Carvajal as the Romantic Era coiffed premiere danseuse. (Marianne Humainette) Rick Nixon and Jessica Martineau, swathed in black who provided the feet, backed them. After picking yellow Petals from a humungous daisy Spelvin spots Humainette and they engage in a pas de deux and duel of ‘Will, she, won’t she? Should I or Shouldn’t I?. This is accomplished On a table so that the dancers’ heads and hands are seen, but the feet are provided by the cloaked assistants, making cartoon-proportioned midgets and all sorts of tricks impossible for full scale dancers. Every pratfall or tussle imaginable between partners is provided, including despair, presumed and actual suicide.

Chuckles and guffaws punctuated the course of the nocturne and the narrative. Brooks’ sense of the ridiculous is world class with the good fortune of being supported by Carvajal, Nixon and Martineau.

Two more danced remained after Intermission and will constitute Part Two.