Every year during September and October, as a celebration for the Fall for Dance Festival, many dance companies arrive at the Big Apple to have their seasons in the New York City Center. This time, like the past eight years, the festival consisted of several performances on various days, inviting numerous dancers to carry out their talents on stage. There were four very different acts in the October 2nd presentation. Let’s just say, this show included the very classic, the very best, the very confused and the very diverse.
A very traditional ballet, Grand Pas From Paquita, was the classic. For an opening, however, the ballerina, Christiana Bennett, was not a great choice. Though correcting herself alone the way, she missed the rhythm of the music at the beginning. On the other hand, Rex Tilton, the Danseur Noble, strongly contrasted himself from Ms. Bennett, was very supportive and eventually stood out as a very talented dancer. The couple was missing their parts at first, but then slowly catch on and show their coordination from the practice.
The High Heel Blues, a simple, but playful modern dance by Tu-Dance, illustrated the mini-story of a woman wanting to buy high heels from a salesman, even though those shoes didn’t fit. The dancers, Yusha Sorzano and Uri Sands, brilliantly demonstrated with their gestures the duet between the indecisive woman and the smooth talker, in which the characters going forth and back while the dancers choreographed accordingly. The background music High Heel Blues by Tuck and Patti won the audience’s amusement. Very jazzy and yet with a tone of serious (guess she really want those shoes!), the lyric of the song (no instrumental accompanies) were in sync with the movement of the dancers, along with the blue lighting, let the highlight of the night. Here is another performance using the same background music. Take a look:
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With such a well-done second performance, the third act, Tarian Malam, was surely in a disadvantage. The dancers were perfect at the illustration of the mood, especially with the martial arts movements inserted, and the constant change of lighting effectively reinforced the theme of earthquake and the emotions. However, even with the intermission, it was a huge and risky twist between the dances. Caught in the light and joyful atmosphere created by the pervious act, it was very hard to capture the full emotion of the dance, and thus led to confusions for some people, including myself.
As a closing act, the various cultural dances worked pretty well for the audience. The choreographer Igor Moiseyev combined the small dances of different cultures into a work of art. Though it might be a good idea to put some plots into the dances (just a personal preference), the pure European cultural dance was entertaining on its own.
The four dances presented on stage could be described with a single word—“idiosyncratic”. Although there are several technical minor mistakes here and there in a few of the performances, different performers danced in their own distinctive styles, each with a unique attitude matching with the mood of the background music. It is almost impossible to compare them with one another, for it would be unjust to simply line them up and list all the best and worst, ignoring all the emotions and the particular characteristic involved in each dance. How do you compare a tiger with a peacock? —Exactly, that’s how distinctive they are.
