© Lori Deemer 'Group Therapy' reviews 'Epitaph' reviews 'Journey of Lost and Found' reviews 'Just a Regular Joe' reviews recent American Repertory Ensemble reviews more Graham Watts reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

And so it was with the American Repertory Ensemble. A Fringe programme entry that promised a chamber ensemble that would treat music and dance as equals failed to stand out from thousands of other entries and it was the simple logistical dictates of having to find a performance to fill the gap between others that led me to the X that marked the spot of this little gem.

The company brought together nine excellent classical dancers, borrowed from a host of US companies - three pairs from the Joffrey Ballet, Atlanta Ballet and Ballet Austin and a trio from Oregon Ballet Theatre, none of which was noted in the programme – alongside the Tosca String Quartet and the pianist, Michelle Schumann. The resulting dialogues between music and dance encompassed a programme of four dance works, punctuated by violin and piano solos.
 

The excellence of the repertory was enhanced by its diversity: from the witty and intricate ‘Group Therapy’, which opened the show; to the macabre comedy and sombre dancing of ‘Epitaph’; the solemnity of ‘The Journey of Lost and Found’ (more Shostakovich in his centenary year); and the jazzy finale to five Joe Cocker songs in ‘Just a Regular Joe’. All but the opening piece were choreographed by the show’s co-artistic director, David Justin (formerly a Principal Dancer with BRB) and amongst the Cocker, Shostakovich and John Cage, there were also new compositions by Rob Deemer (the Ensemble’s other co-director). Not one minute of the programme was wasted and all seventy of them amounted to a rare visual and aural treat.

I particularly liked ‘Group Therapy’, choreographed by Harrison McEldowney in 1999 for the Hubbard Street Dance Company and now in the repertory of BalletMet in Columbus, amongst others. McEldowney’s considerable theatrical experience is well to the fore in a piece built on four duets each of which emphasises a relationship problem between the couples: one is a volatile and argumentative pairing; in another the man is an obsessive “Mr Clean” who resists his partner’s attempts to get down and dirty; and in the other two, the woman is respectively a chain-smoker and a narcoleptic. In the latter, the pas de deux between the mostly unconscious Daniella Deloe and Brennan Boyer is full of comic invention.

David Justin’s ‘Epitaph’ was a pas de trois for Kathi Martuza, Ikolo Griffin and John Welker, danced to Luc Sante’s tragi-comic text about the last things that dead people saw, read eloquently by Rob Deemer and mixed with his own original music. This was a passionate and demanding piece in which the endurance and energy levels of all three dancers were pushed to the extreme. So that the dancers had time to recover, there followed a violin solo (another lyrical piece from Deemer) performed by Leigh Mahoney, in which her music stand was a semi-naked performer, back to the audience with white skirt train neatly folded in a candle-flame shape, holding the music balanced on a tray of large, lit candles. The mix of this imagery, the flickering candle light and the haunting violin melody provided a few minutes to transport the soul onto another plane. This set the mood perfectly for the Shostakovich ‘Solemn Opus’ that followed and Justin’s melancholic choreography for the five female members of his ensemble.
 

Following a further musical interlude in which Michelle Schumann played John Cage’s ‘In a Landscape’, the final dance work was Justin’s ‘Just a Regular Joe’. The husband and wife pairing of John Welker and Christine Winkler (both Principals with Atlanta Ballet) carried the central choreography which integrated jazz and musical theatre references onto a solid base of classical ballet. Welker and Winkler were superb, dancing only a few feet away from the audience, which was arranged around them in just two rows on three sides. In such circumstances, there is no scope to hide even the merest blemish but – as with all the dancers and musicians – there was no need for any anxiety in a performance of flawless delivery with material that carried flair and innovation in spades.

I am just so glad that I happened to be in the right place at the right time to catch this new company’s world-debut performance. I can be sure that it will be planning, not serendipity, that will renew the acquaintance.