Gibney Company Review
May 9, 2024 | The Joyce Theater – New York, NY, USA
In Gibney Company’s triple-bill showing last week in New York, the program is made up of groups of monochromatic bodies cascading in shades of black, brown, and gray, respectively.
And although I enjoyed watching the close-knit troupe of eight dancers – referred to in the program as “Artistic Associates”- led by their sociable Director and CEO Gina Gibney (I saw her happily greeting the lobby patrons before the house opened its doors), my main critique is that none of the dancing stood out to me.
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Gibney Company Review
Launching the show was the U.S. premiere by Roy Assaf titled A Couple set to music by Johannes Brahms, with dancers Madison Goodman and Lounes Landri cast as the duet.
Madi Tanguay, another dancer of the company, casually appears next to the mic stand pulling in a few laughs from the audience with her deadpan welcome speech. “We’re ready!” says Goodman and Landri as they enter from upstage. She wore a velvet back dress with laced black jazz shoes, while he had on matching dark attire to complement hers.
The dance is a bittersweet physical dialogue told through rapid-fire gestures. It is packed with finicky maneuvers, hard to keep track of if you blink.
The duo digs their heels into the floor while popping into 2nd positions, puncturing through each other’s negative spaces with windmill arms. The choreographed quarrellings continue to unfold in unexpected ways when elements of tango are tossed into the mix.
They were sliding, rolling, melting, jumping, lifting, contracting, falling, and executing all the “-ings” you can name. Heartbreakingly, a kiss was met with rejection when he leaned in.
The dance becomes a forever sentence without a period, mimicking the endless entanglement in intimate relationships.
A loud slap across Landri’s face silences the theatre. Goodman falls into his arms. He catches her tenderly, maybe giving her a second chance.
The lights fade in and out dramatically as the piece approaches the end. She peeks around his body, and tackles him to the floor with an embrace. They start to roll around the stage, holding each other chest to chest, before halting by the mic stand.
A happy ending, I thought, but with a twist; she got up and left the scene.
Next in the evening’s lineup was a world premiere named Echoes of Sole and Animal by a Juilliard alum, Peter Chu, music composed by Djeff Houle, Kavall & Neue Meister.
A man (Graham Feeny) and a woman (Jie-hung Connie Shiau) forcefully walk on stage, thrusting their legs upward, rebelliously sickling their feet midair, dancing in silence. Their duet breaks into solos, he skates off, and loud electronica fades in.
More dancers march on from behind a champagne-colored backdrop, all wearing chocolatey tops and pants, performing Qigong-inspired steps for a change.
Shiau acts like a caretaker, picks up another girl that limps (Tanguay). A man (Andrew McShea) bear walks across the stage, honoring his inner wildness. The ensemble dances out more ambiguous angst, as if trying to resolve some undefinable spiritual issue.
Tanguay falls to the floor, and Shiau shines a fluorescent light on her bare back, examining her like a specimen on a Petri dish.
More experimental dancing happens in between, all reminding me of “Land of Opposites”, a composition exercise where one side of the room is all dancing slow while the other side is dancing fast (or strong vs. weak, big vs. small, etc.).
In the final part, Shiau sits on the floor to speak gibberish into a mic as Feeny frantically freaks out to the sounds of her voice. In the end, Tanguay uncannily bear walks all over Feeny with a pair of shoes on her hands, drifting into the wings when the lights dimmed.
Closing the show, two famous minimalists join forces in Lucinda Childs’ Three Dances (a dance made for an octet, organized into three elaborate sections), performed to the meditative sounds of John Cage.
Eight dancers enter the danceable stage wearing two lines of smoky gray wardrobes. Tagged around the dancers’ waists are some unnecessary hip wraps that give the piece a rehearsal vibe.
You can already see the dancers’ glistening bodies perspire under the lights after they tombé jeté to underscoop sideways for a few minutes.
The piece duplicates steps from Childs’ other work Dance (which I reviewed at City Center over a year ago), where dancers also shift into generous 4th positions and temps levé in arabesques with other subtle accumulations.
We sample a short solo by Shiau before the emergence of the next section which is structured as four couples, repeating their own pas de deux twice, before the next couple dances theirs.
Then everyone repeats a section from each other’s dances.
And the final dance within Three Dances starts in a clump. Dancers are facing upstage and two of them slide into grands pliés in 2nd position, holding their arms out like candlestick holders.
The dancers construct circular puffs of kaleidoscopic expansions that balloon repeatedly. Breathing with it, I noticed the experience was very good for my central-nervous system.
This choreographic loop goes on for about twenty minutes where nothing was unruffled and the dance felt intoxicatingly calming.
Even though everyone in the company is well-trained and had their own featured parts, no one made me soliloquize “I want to dance like that!”
Goodman and Landri, who marathon their way through all the dances of the night, deserve well-earned praise. And knowing how the company values equity, I’m sure the artistic direction imposes a more even-keel cast so no one is ranked above anyone else.
Perhaps it’s also the exploratory nature in the choreographies that held them back. But still, I wanted more sparks, not just the steps.
My final thought is that I hope the company will continue to secure the necessary funding in order to create, expand, and thrive, despite the current cuts in the arts. For thirty-four years, Gibney Company’s greatest strength is its entrepreneurial spirit. Exploring with means is of top priority, and I hope they keep it up.
Featured Photo of Gibney Company‘s Lounes Landri and company in Lucinda Childs’ Three Dances. Photo by Whitney Browne.
