© Marty Sohl 'Approaching Thought' reviews 'Toward September' reviews recent Robert Moses reviews more Renee Renouf reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

Such sojourns have provided these artistic directors time to assess local potential, to measure vision against the realities of grooming and maintaining a company and dancers in the San Francisco area. It takes real doing; Robert Moses, for one, has been singularly able to establish and maintain a unique vision. After leaving membership in ODC, Moses further grounded himself by teaching in the Theatre Arts Program at Stanford University. Though Moses no longer appears regularly with his company, he has acquired deserved gravitas and national recognition; the company appeared this summer at Jacob’s Pillow.

Moses and Alonso King share a particular ability of incorporating subtle torso undulation into a distinctive movement vibrato; Moses in the modern idiom, King based on ballet vocabulary. With a torso freer than the tensions required in ballet-based exposition, the Moses dancer rocks, sways or propels him/herself with greater extremes, to explosive, highly rhythmic sounds, to spoken text, frequently with overt reference of some historical, legal or social theme. Moses is not about to let audience, let alone his dancers, off easy.

We got three dances, one a world premiere. “Toward September,” bracketed by “Approaching Thought” and “Jokes Like That Can Get You Killed.” With the exception of Kate Foley, most of Moses’ dancers are comparative newcomers to his special technique, ably absorbing its demands with considerable skill. I found them striking, but unable to provide me a lingering impression As ballet.co readers know, instant reactions are scarcely my forte. And I do want to remember a least one singular impression.

I remember so distinctly a pas de deux Moses created; if memory is correct, it was called “The Ineffable Lightness of Being”, performed to Cesar Franck music and performed one time at an Isadora Duncan Dance Award Ceremony in the long gone Brady Street Studios. I mention this because September 18 quickly moved into complex athletics with a great deal of push-pull, technical balances and other such feats, coherent line absent.

Unlike the pas de deux cited, still warming my memory, or a solo danced at the former Presentation High School auditorium around a church bench, the dances registered skill and complexity,only that. What did linger was the cleverness of the set in “Jokes Like That Can Get You Killed,” with the dancers initially walking in competition to cartoon-like bodies bobbing and ballooning in size across the back scrim, headed by familiar faces in the right physical location. Very soon, the dancers became entangled in center stage and the images became chaotic. It was a satiric cry from the Moses social issues, war concerns and racial injustice biting awareness wherever it jarred complacency. The evening made me long to see a revival of that beautiful pas de deux.