After the performance of Miami City Ballet, the bright red curtains led to a stage that was dark. Then, clouds started forming from smoke. The audience was contemplating what they were about to watch. In the distance, I could hear tribal music and a weird bird noise. I couldn’t figure out what type of bird it was and impatiently stared at the spooky stage. Few minutes later, a man appeared, whistling the same bird noises. As the lights brightened, I noticed the man doing some sort of weird movements. The man was Vincent Mantsoe, a South African dancer and choreographer, who performed “Gula” at the New York City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival. He combines street dance from his South African youth with contemporary dance styles. His work is greatly inspired by cultural and ballet traditions.
My first impression was that he was trying to mimic a tribal dance. Since contemporary dance includes improvisation, I also thought he was just going with the flow of the background music. But, I realized he was dancing like a bard. Whenever he performed an act of flying with his hands, it seemed exactly like how a bird would swing its wings. He even moved his neck like an actual bird. The audience seemed to be engaged during the entire performance, cheering and applauding at the bird movements done by him. When the darkness disappeared and light appeared, Mantsoe changed his bird movements to a normal human being. Often times, when dance performances came to my mind, I would think of people putting up a show together in a group. After watching “Gula” by Mantsoe, I noticed that a solo dance is as enjoyable as a group performance.
Later, I watched “Myelination” by Dorrance Dance. In contrast to the dark background in Mantsoe’s performance, the tap dancing group was consisted of vivid colors, each of them were like mini themes. In the middle of the show, the color changed to bright red as the tap dancers picked up their pace and the whole performance became really intense. For some reason, I enjoyed that intense feeling, it was evil yet satisfying. Everybody in the group got to perform their solo performances and had their own colors. The different colors might have portrayed their personality and experiences as a dancer. What I thought was really cool that Michelle Dorrance, the artistic director of the dance, was part of the performance. Dorrance is a MacArthur Genius Grant winning American tap dancer who founded Dorrance Dance. She wasn’t the narrator or main dancer and blended well with other performers of the group.
This was the first time I observed music and dance taking equal roles in a performance. It wasn’t like the dance videos I watched on YouTube where the dance followed the loud music. Instead, both complemented each other. In Mantsoe’s performance, each of the bird’s act followed the tranquil tribal music, whereas, Dorrance tap followed the rhythm of the pleasant jazz performed by the band.
Both images taken from Google Image Search.
