Marina Nebro: Arts and Culture

Dance Matters… Really?

First of all, Queens College’s Kupferberg Center for the Arts needs to get their ticket information straight. Are tickets $12/$14, or are they $14.50/$16.50? Don’t publicize one and charge the other, thank you very much. Second, what is a dance faculty concert when it seems to me that only students were performing – $14.50 for a mediocre student performance? I thought I’d be seeing professional dancers! Not worth the money.

Fallen Branches
Choreographed by Kristin Jackson

…is inspired by the Japanese Noh play, Atsumori, which is the story of a young warrior’s tragic death while fetching Tender Branch, his precious flute. His assailant – filled with remorse – becomes a Buddhist monk. The two former enemies meet, confront their past, and find redemption through rebirth.

This performance might have been the weakest of them all. With little music in the background, the dancers could not feel the beat of each movement and were therefore out of sync. At the same time, there was a Greek music concert happening over in the Colden Auditorium, and the loud noise from there was heard by the audience at Goldstein – at first I thought it was some weird musical effect being used. And of course, this distraction was amplified by the fact that there was no music to begin with! I would say this performance really reminded me of the Shen Wei choreography from the Fall for Dance program – the dancers seemed to have no emotion and were just walking across the stage for seemingly no reason. The costumes, “beautiful kimonos” from Tomoko Kanata were distracting and bulky. I don’t, even in hindsight, see how the choreography reflected the Japanese story described in the program. One would think the dance would be more suitable as a duet – between the young warrior and his assailant. Who were all of the other characters in this dance tale?

Getting Lucky: Secret Moments in the Natural World
Choreography by Joseph Mills

I really enjoyed this section of the program. As I have mentioned before, dance is the most difficult art form for me to understand – it’s too abstract for my mind to grasp. That is why the narration in this humorous little number was a great addition. The narrator took the audience on a journey all over the world to see the sexual mating rituals of all different animals – some real and most fantastical. Overall, I wouldn’t consider the movement in this performance dance. There were moments when I thought that some positions were interesting and difficult, and that maybe I could not replicate them on my own, but overall, it was the story telling that made the piece – and shouldn’t the dancing do that on its own?

… Fragmented …
Choreography by Yin Mei

I have so many stories to tell.
–
But stories [are] easy to mistell
(sometimes words warp, disfigure, misrepresent)
And stories sometimes paint just one picture, one slice of the world.
–
How [does] a dreamer pen her world to words?
How [does] a dancer freeze her movement to paragraphs?
together tell many threaded stories and still be, to you, one same person?
–
words.
nothing ……….. so ……….. im ……… per ……….. fect
……………. as words.
………………………………………………..But so what?
…………………………..I have so many stories to tell. 

The words in brackets were added by me because without them, I have no idea how to understand this text by the choreographer. I assume that because words are so “im…per…fect” she resorted to telling her stories through dance. Now, after seeing this performance, I have no idea how those movements conveyed her love for a chipped bowl (there was some narration in the middle of the piece saying how much she loved said bowl). I personally don’t understand why the dance was split into two, separated by the little anecdote. The dancing in both halves seemed to be exactly the same to me! Same movements. The only redeeming quality of this section of the program was the music. But then again, a lot of the dancing was done sin-music, allowing the audience to again hear the drone of the Greek music next-door.

For the Hoofers: The Book of Steve Condos
Choreography by Marshall Davis, Jr.

In terms of dancing, this last performance was the best. While all of the other performances focused on more contemporary, abstract styles of dance, this one focused on a well known style – tap dance. There is an actual skill involved in this type of dance (though, yes, modern abstract dance requires skill too), and for this reason, there seemed to be more substance here. The entire piece was also accompanied by music, which really added to the dance as a whole – and the music was well selected! The only thing I have to say about the dancers, though, is that some of them were not of top-notch quality (as I had assumed I’d be seeing professional dancers). There were some performers who were not able to keep their balance, which was extremely distracting in a syncopated tap dance number. Two of the featured tap dancers had extremely stiff shoulders, and created an awkward look to their movement in general. But other than that, I must say that this piece had the most “dance” in its dance.

—

What is dance? Is it movement? I can do that at home! Is it story-telling? Then why can’t I understand the story? Is it talent based, then why does there seem to be no form or rhythm? I just don’t understand dance.

Dance Matters: Dance Faculty Concert
November 29 – December 2, 2012
Goldstein Theatre
Listed as $12 QC ID/$14 ADULT, but actually cost $14.50/$16.50

Marina B. Nebro