Evidence, A Dance Company, opened its 40th anniversary season at New York’s Joyce Theater with a program that plumbed the mysteries of grace, braiding together the sacred and profane in founder-choreographer Ronald K. Brown’s singular style: born of the African diaspora, streaked with modern, ballet and house dance, continuous chunks of movement hinting at larger cosmic forces. Each of three works offered distinctive marriages of score and dance, delivering messages of perseverance, of forgiveness and healing at a time when figures of authority in this country are crafting agendas of cruelty and revenge.
Grace and Serving Nia date back to the turn of the millennium when Brown created dances for the Ailey company. At the Joyce today they are imprinted on his small band of strikingly individual dancers who make the roles thrillingly their own.
Shayla Alayre Caldwell initially commanded the stage in Grace, elegantly draped in white, magnificently stamping and swooping about – a deity on a mission to save a community from impending ruin brought on by their own recklessness. ‘Come Sunday’ is the Duke Ellington neo-spiritual that both opens and closes the piece, first in a recording then sung live by the imposing Gordon Chambers as the closer on opening night. “God almighty, god of love / Please look down and see my people through,” he implored in his rich, calming baritone as Caldwell shepherded her wayward flock through a sky blue opening in an upstage scrim.
Between the two Sundays, the ensemble negotiated invisible perils in a flurry of nimble footwork that erupted in high kicks with flexed feet, spins and leaps punctuated by generous open-palmed gestures, to the driving rhythms of house and Afro-pop. The energy was loose and expansive, relentless and percussive. There were confrontations, regrets, and finally, hugs. Four shirtless men darted onstage, punching the air ferociously then suddenly clasped their hands behind their backs, bowed their heads and walked off with a solemn dignity. Someone in the audience shouted “Slay!” It was that kind of evening.
In Serving Nia, the community strove to find purpose (nia, in Swahili), the choreography fueled by 70’s soulful jazz and influenced by Brown’s study of traditional and street dance in Senegal, Ivory Coast and Guinea. The exuberant soundtrack kicked into high gear immediately with trumpet, tenor sax and piano piling onto a mesmerizing groove laid down by drummer-composer Roy Brooks and bassist Cecil McBee in ‘The Free Slave’.
Dancer Gregory Hamilton emerged from the ensemble, first among equals to claim space with boldly fluttering arms and expansive lyrical movement that he ‘passed’ to other dancers in turn. The dance arrived in waves of floor-skimming spins, low springy jumps, shuffling feet, big scooping arms and softly arching shapes. Focus was often downward to the earth: Hamilton tenderly swiped the ground as if planting seeds, and swept his arms repeatedly as if poling a ferry across a river. In a daredevil move, dancers would run backwards into a turning jump. The soundtrack closed with Dizzy Gillespie’s swipe at American affluenza in ‘Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac’, featuring a hilarious call-and-response between Dizzy and saxophonist James Moody, at which point the dancing got very showbizzy and irreverently joyful.
Grace had its own witty episode to the song ‘Shakara’, in which Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti mocked swaggering blowhards. For all the deeply spiritual anchors in his work, Brown also throws a great party – and pointedly repudiates hypocrites and hucksters.
Order My Steps, the middle piece on the program, tackled a darker subject. The title’s plea to God comes from Psalm 119. The ambitious soundtrack sought to integrate songs by Bob Marley, episodes from maximalist-minimalist composer Terry Riley’s epic ‘Salome Dances for Peace’, and poetry by the late Chadwick Boseman on the subject of drug addiction. This was spoken live on opening night by his brother, actor-dancer Kevin Boseman. Those chilling words overpowered Riley’s subtle sonorities.
When ‘Salome Dances’ premiered in LA, there was reportedly a large exodus by intermission. If the living, breathing Kronos Quartet playing ‘Echoes of Primordial Time’ and ‘Mongolian Winds’ (yes, the titles are a faithful description) in a superior acoustic environment could not keep bums in seats, what chance did a recording stand when played back in the indifferent acoustic conditions at the Joyce? That said, you could pipe Bob Marley’s ‘Exodus’ and ‘War’ through a couple of foam cups and a piece of string with no loss of potency. Dancers in utilitarian gear came and went with unremitting kinetic energy in a loose compositional structure. While they were riveting to watch – particularly the combustible Shayla Caldwell in ‘Exodus’ – dance, words and music never cohered.
Yet at its finest, Brown’s choreography reflects an extraordinary depth of human experience, of joy mysteriously twinned with despair, as in the sacred blues quality of the music to which he is often drawn.
