Seems to me that Doris Humphrey should have gone viral long ago. It’s puzzling that her timeless dances, so beautiful in their pure-dance clarity, with their capacity for layered meanings, are not standard fare for dance companies. Nor are they often sampled or memed.
Luckily for New Yorkers, the Limón Dance Company, co-founded by Humphrey, just brought one of her works to the 92nd Street Y. Two Ecstatic Themes, a 1931 classic, was fiercely etched by Jessica Sgambelluri, her air both remote and empathic. She conjured up the space around her into eddies and cascades, gusts of wind and a melting glacier, with lushly sweeping arms, twists of the torso and a radiant opening of the sternum. Arms that briefly stiffened like arrows charted her descent to the ground, then her ascent, with serene intensity.
The program time-traveled from Themes to a new work by Aszure Barton, via two Limón works from the 1940s. The sternly expressive, sculptural quality of his technique illustrated the mythic Mexican tale of the indigenous princess known as La Malinche. Historically significant for its folkloric theme woven into American modern dance, in this case with a deeply personal resonance for Limón who maintained lifelong ties to his homeland, La Malinche proves most gripping in choreography for the figure of El Indio. A compelling performance by Ian Debono who carried the weight of a nation on his shoulders as he rose from the ground to rebel against the oppressor.
The Moor’s Pavane may be the most perfect story ballet ever, an electrifying tale of jealousy and duplicity told in 19 minutes with four characters, two chandeliers and a lace handkerchief. Within the ritual framework of Renaissance dance, betrayal and murder unfold to the baroque strains of Henry Purcell. As The Moor, modeled on Shakespeare’s Othello, Eric Parra smoldered, increasingly consumed by doubt, possessiveness and rage.
Joey Columbus in the role of His Friend (aka Iago) was an overpowering presence, whose gaze flickered from noble to malevolent. His Friend’s Wife (aka Emilia), the riveting Mariah Gravelin, revealed herself to be a calculating co-conspirator, darting around restlessly and tweaking her shoulders magnificently. Savannah Spratt as the Moor’s Wife (aka Desdemona) – tender, devoted and increasingly bewildered – aroused our compassion and an urge to call 911 before her husband went completely berserk. The ceremonial criss-crossing patterns of the dance and the tight staging which keeps all four characters onstage, provoked a sense of claustrophobia, of constantly being spied on, of imminent danger.
A similar sense haunts Aszure Barton’s Join. The work was inspired by an account in Limón’s memoir of the rehearsals for Orestes, a Doris Humphrey work that never made it to the stage. A sprawling epic that depicted the pandemonium unleashed by a vengeful chorus of Greek goddesses, known as the Furies, who wanted to see Orestes punished for murdering his mother. After he was acquitted in a trial, the goddess Athena transformed the Furies into defenders of the city of Athens.
In Barton’s new work, an ensemble of 11 link and unlink arms, or huddle protectively, in one long line, sometimes two lines. They move or sway as one body while creating stark geometric patterns, with hands moving in and out of a communal prayer, or a leg lifted in attitude with the sole of the foot against the sole of the next person’s foot. These entrancing linear formations ebb and flow, on a twilit stage, enhanced by a moody score by composer Ambrose Akinmusire that kicks off with what sounded like the buzzing of insects. I learned that “field recordings of nature” were employed in the score.
These implacably recomposing configurations could’ve represented some phenomena in nature, or the construction of a human barricade. Or a chorus of underworld deities who never sleep, on a mission to guard a city. As the piece wound on for 30 long minutes, individuals would break away from the line for some acrobatic partnering or solo work brimming with angst. The line would rotate while the person at both ends would leap, as if flung into the air by the acceleration.
More than once, MJ Edwards would be hoisted onto someone’s shoulders then fall backward, be catapulted back up, and fall forward, like the action of a trebuchet. Akinmusire’s score layered on flute, piano, Brazilian percussion, cello, vocal chanting and synth, sometimes shimmering, sometimes warning of an approaching threat. But as choreographic sequences repeated, Barton’s inventiveness waned. There was much jumping and ricocheting off each other’s bodies, which lost its fascination. I recall a piece of hers that Hubbard Street Dance brought to New York in April, a spellbinding torrent of percussive, slinky moves that clocked in under 10 minutes. Both pieces created a mood, even a world, but the shorter one left me wanting more.
