Smuin Contemporary Ballet at The Joyce Review
July 12, 2024 | The Joyce Theater – New York, NY, USA
Smuin Contemporary Ballet’s return to New York City’s Joyce Theater represents a celebration of their 30th anniversary and a season of change for the impressive 16-member Bay Area troupe.
Following the close of their NYC tour, the company’s role of Artistic Director will swap over from Celia Fushille, director since 2007, to Amy Seiwert, a former Smuin dancer (as was Fushille) and a flourishing contemporary choreographer whose name is cropping up more and more.
And so, the company’s return to The Joyce, their first since 2012, may represent more than just a baton pass but also the moment just before striking a match, a prelude to the light and heat Seiwert has in store for the company.
Smuin Contemporary Ballet at The Joyce Review
Seiwert’s piece, Renaissance, was situated between Val Caniparoli’s grin-filled opening number and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s campy fever dream closer – taking on the transitional role of the program.
Scenic design by Brian Jones featured three floor-to-ceiling vertical panels emulating a web of strings. And indeed, when you see the dancers winding and braiding their elbows with each other, they evoke unraveling thread. The texture, sinewy and soft, is mesmerizingly smooth and even more so when contrasted with the rigid dancing of Tess Lane
Dressed in navy blue against the organic neutrals of the rest of the cast (designed by Kaori Higashiyama), Lane is recognized as a prominent symbol, left up to interpretation.
Stoic and proud, Lane does nothing without the assistance of five men who maneuver her like a puppet. They manipulate her ankles to walk forward, or they lean over to act as steppingstones she can climb upon. Yet she remains cold and foreign to the rest of the ensemble, never breaking from her rigid trance.
Set to the Bulgarian vocals of the Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble, the work is hypnotically calm with slow motion partnering and off kilter twisting turns.
The dancers look completely comfortable and in-control in Seiwert’s brand of movement which leaves me optimistic for when the match does strike.
Although not a bold piece, it operates just as it should, a lenitive reprieve offering balance to the program.
Caniparoli’s Tutto Eccetto Il Lavandino (everything but the kitchen sink) opened the show with a dose of humor through wing-flapping elbows, arms reminiscent of T-Rex, and a particularly endearing huddle of dancers miming shaking coconuts, tearful sobbing, and embodying soupy ribbons falling to the ground.
Another creative section featured a trio wherein a dancer’s upper body is supported by one colleague while another guides her feet to carve through the air, like the tail of a kite rippling in the wind.
Additionally, Caniparoli has a good grasp on themes and repetitive structure, calling back to earlier steps.
Despite the clever elements, the work felt restricted by straightforward geometric formations and the interruptive weight of classical ballet steps, which removed the dancers from the realm they were inhabiting.
Perhaps the inclusion of abrupt classicism was an intentional nod to the title, to include everything but the kitchen sink. Yet, ironically, the piece did include a kitchen sink, rolled across the stage just as the curtain fell.
And while seeing it before Seiwert’s helped to showcase the versatility of the dancers, it lacked consistency, slipping in and out of a clear vision.
Lastly, Ochoa’s Tupelo Tornado packed a haunting punch with a motley mix of tunes featuring works sung by Elvis Presley, snippets of interviews, layered techno sounds, and more compiled by Jake Rodriguez.
In Ochoa’s words the work is a “mosaic portrait of the artist and king of rock & roll, Elvis Presley, who slowly and gradually succumbs to the weight of fame”.
Ochoa knows how to build drama and it started at the top of the piece with the world’s most adorable baby spotlight drawn from the top of the closed curtain to the bottom where it rested on a small Elvis Presley bobblehead.
The curtain opened to reveal twelve dancers in skintight grey outfits, accessorized with blue gloves and metallic sneakers designed by Susan Roemer.
Butts swayed to the repeated words, “Elvis Elvis, Elvis” and the dancers were serving attitude, much to the crowd’s approval.
Elvis, danced by the extremely effective Brandon Alexander, delivered wild rubber legs which elicited whoops and hollers from the crowd.
Alexander’s getup, a TV box head illuminated with interior LED lighting which was at first humorous, gradually begets more of a Prometheus type punishment than joyful fame. Locked inside the burdens of immeasurable stardom, Alexander transforms Elvis’s signature rubber legs into a move akin to torture.
And it’s here where the silliness turns to ache, because the audience has been in on it from the start. We all know what is coming.
Culminating in an eerie duet between Tessa Barbour and Dominic Barrett to Love Me Tender, the couple don all white and move around each other drowning slowly in Presley’s baritone chords. Elvis lies upstage on his side, finally resting, an ephemeral blip in our history.
Maybe more theater than dance but Ochoa has found a way to make metaphor with movement within an absurdist storm in her vision of Elvis’s life.
Featured Photo of Smuin Contemporary Ballet‘s Terez Dean Orr and Artists in Amy Seiwert’s Renaissance. Photo by Chris Hardy.
