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4X4, Bluefoot Bar and Lounge, 1-9-2007

by David Lemberg on June 18, 2010

4X4 kicked-off the New Year with a bang! There was dancing. There was singing. There was martial-arts-as-performance-art. And there were special guests from L.A. who brought down the house at the Bluefoot Bar and Lounge in San Diego’s North Park community.

Let’s start with the special guests, Casebolt & Smith. In its initial few moments, “After Words” looked like two actors breaking down a scene or performance, giving notes to each other. It became clear they were actually dancers, and they’d danced a dance that was supercharged with sex, relationship angst, and concerns about identity-in-the-world.

There were layers-upon-layers in this richly metaphorical piece. And, it wasn’t all words. Intervals of dynamic dancing, recreating extended moments from the work they were rehashing, provided a powerful counterpoint to the dialog. The partner work as dancers and actors was strong, complex, erotic, and at times, very funny.

Liz Casebolt and Joel Smith are intelligent and talented dancers-actors-performance artists. “After Words” presented a marvelous aesthetic and thought-provoking worldview, offering terrific dance-theater insight into the human condition. And, the piece was tremendously entertaining with laughing-out-loud humor. For me, “After Words” was very much like a movie, with all the elements of motivation, character, conflict, and resolution. Watching a “movie” as a live performance piece was a remarkable experience.

Leslie Seiters presented “Incidental Fear of Numbers”, danced by herself, Amanda Waal, Dina Academia, and Justin Morrison. Although described in the 4X4 program notes as “an early-in-progress showing”, this deeply satisfying piece could stand proudly on its own as a completed work.
The piece opens as the four performers seat themselves around the sides of the 4X4 stage, each placing a fat phone book nearby. We notice they’re each wearing multiple large, clunky, pastel-colored rings — mini-cars, trucks, and assorted vehicles. The dancers flip through massive amounts of pages, giving the sense of concentrating but not-reading, and their arms begin to flop around, Gumby-style, slapping down on the floor. And then they begin to really move.

These very talented, lithe artists slithered through the 4X4 space, using the floor around the stage and expanding the volume in all dimensions. The phone books morphed from mind-numbing, meaningless collections of data into mini-platforms the dancers used to elevate, levitate, and contemplate new vistas of experience.

The partnering among the four dancers was intricate and physically challenging, requiring great strength and technique. At the close, Amanda Waal was alone, half on and half off the raised stage, hands and feet on the floor, in a supremely elevated convex arch that could not possibly have been any more extended. One by one, the others returned and successively placed the very heavy phone books on Waal’s stomach. With remarkable control, using only her center, she reversed the arch and settled in an elongated posture with her knees still bent and calves on the ground. The audience went wild.

Jillian Chu performed a solo work, showing us “myself at 24” and “now that I’ve turned 25 . . . ” This was a bravura piece of great beauty, both physically and choreographically. Early on, Chu appeared to be exploring her own anatomy, and these actions segued into sweeping arm, leg, and torso movements that whirled her around the stage. This mostly allegro work contained wonderful adagio counterpoints, and clearly demonstrated how lyrical, organic, centered choreography can be, simultaneously, dance of great vigor, power, and force. The dance ended to thunderous applause.

Greg Lane and Chris Luth glided into the performance space in the deep plié of liquid Tai Chi forms, and it was as if two warriors had entered the combat pit. We were thus privileged to witness a Tai Chi demonstration as dance–performance art. And, what Lane and Luth did was much more than Tai Chi — the program notes describe the expression of Tai Chi “in its highest form through the partner play of Pushing Hands”.

Lane and Luth maintained a fierce, yet fluid connection throughout, tethered together by palpable, yet invisible lines of force, very much like Space Shuttle astronauts but with the 4X4 stage as the Mother Ship. They flowed powerfully around, across, and through each other, balancing and unbalancing. Erotic images flickered into existence, followed seamlessly by battle scenes, followed by Picasso- and Braque-like abstractions.
The formidable concentration required by this very challenging performance was gracefully matched by the highest levels of skill and expertise of the dancers.

Monique Fleming danced “Careless Summer Clothes”, a rocking performance interpreting “Hang Me Up To Dry” by Cold War Kids. Fleming’s costume included beige culottes and a torn shirt, and her partner was a big piece of fabric which had some pretty human characteristics. There were striking images — including a desperate hangman’s noose and intense percussive syncopation — as Fleming took us through a pretty rough day-in-the-life. Fleming’s clever choreography showed us the “muck and mire” of daily striving for order, self-respect, and dignity.

Victoria Robertson performed an inspirational coda to this remarkable evening. Standing proudly at center stage, wearing a white shirt, short red jacket, and an American flag scarf, Robertson sang “America the Beautiful” and “God Bless America” as these patriotic anthems were meant to be sung. Her rich, operatic voice reached the farthest corners of the packed house, and she encouraged the audience to join her in singing “God Bless America”, honoring our great nation, particularly poignant in our present crisis of national mission and identity.
Robertson’s bold choices were especially welcome as we begin a new year of freedom, hope, and sharing in our beautiful country and in our wonderful world.

Anything goes at 4X4. Freedom of expression is the watchword. The courage, fearlessness, and talent of the performers are inspirational. And the appreciation of the very savvy audience is boundless. We are always honored to be at 4X4 — Bluefoot Bar and Lounge, North Park, San Diego, CA.

4X4 is curated by Liam Clancy and presented by Sushi Performance and Visual Art.

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ONE TO ECHO, SDSU, 12-2-06

by David Lemberg on June 18, 2010

I attended ONE TO ECHO at San Diego State University on Saturday night, December 2nd, 2006, the second of two performances. ONE TO ECHO was curated by Jillian Chu, Founder of BOUNDcontemporaryDance, and Alicia Peterson, Founder of A.S. Peterson Dance.

Jillian Chu and Alicia Peterson created an extraordinary evening of dance theater, presenting a wide range of events, pieces, and styles. ONE TO ECHO was a tremendously entertaining production. For me, the overriding qualities of the evening were invention, intelligence, and vision.

“everyone turns into birds”, by Amanda Waal, was a startlingly original creation, a compelling symphony of mixed media. This kaleidoscopic, encyclopedic piece included, at various times and in various combinations, dance, music, voiceover narration, film, stroboscopic lighting effects, and little white parachutists falling from the flies.

It’s not that “everyone turns into birds” was so good because it contained all these elements — merely dripping paint on a canvas doesn’t result in a “Jackson Pollock”. The piece is brilliant because of the talent, taste, and vision of the creator, Amanda Waal.
For me, “everyone turns into birds” was a continual surprise. It began prosaically with a single dancer upstage right, and yet interestingly, because the dancer had a red strobe attached to her left shoulder blade. Unusual. The assault on the viewer built gradually. It became clear during the first film segment that what was being offered was deep and rich and suggestive, relating strongly to some pretty important aspects of human experience, such as “how do you tell the living from the dead?”. And, what is living? and what is dying?

In the face of these critical issues, “everyone turns into birds” was warm, humorous, and engaging. The second film, from the early days of cinema, featured cavorting celestial beings, gods and goddesses flying about on their planet-chariots — Venus, Mars, the Sun. Jealousy, vanity, war, love. Just like us, really.

The second series of voiceover narrations were literally voices from the dead, dead people relating in single sentences or sentence fragments how they died. The impact and the tragedy continued to build, the weight increasing, and then the parachutists came down. This was a heartbreakingly funny, painfully bittersweet theatrical moment.

And, importantly, for a while the dancer was dancing in darkness. Other things were happening onstage but she was dark. This was very new, for me. At first, I didn’t get it. “Hey,”, I’m thinking, “that’s wrong. She’s not lit.” And then I realized this most unusual approach was well thought out, was very sophisticated. It made a statement — the dancer in a “dance” is not necessarily the only important thing that’s going on. And, “dancing in the dark” is a powerful metaphor, particularly in the context of the piece as a whole.

“everyone turns into birds” breaks new ground in dance theater, extending the poetry naturally inherent in dance by incorporating additional media and creating something new and valuable.
Dance is sufficient in itself. And, as Amanda Waal has so brilliantly demonstrated, dance can become part of a collaborative multimedia effort — very much like film, in this case incorporating film — in which something entirely new emerges.

“Why I move”, concept by Jillian Chu and performed by Sarah Keeney, and “How I move”, choreography by Jillian Chu and performed by Jillian Chu, Sarah Keeney, and Yvonne Hernandez, were small, gemlike etudes. These graceful studies contained many interesting moments. “How I move” was most powerful when the three dancers would find each other, forming a synchronous trio, and then breaking out into new combinations supportive of the music.

“A separate piece entirely”, choreography by Alicia Peterson, performed by Alicia Peterson, Jillian Chu, and Vanessa Tipon, presented a river of movement, like a horizontal waterfall. My impression was of liquid choreography.

“The Commitment”, choreography by Elizabeth Swallow and performed by Alicia Peterson, presented a lone dancer caught in a literal and metaphorical maze of her own personal tragedy and the never-ending demands of daily living. Four dynamic elastic bands angled across the stage from right to left, a spidery meshwork creating simultaneous traps and openings for movement, struggle, pain, and possible redemption. Having explored [for now] the phase-space of darkness and potential light, the dancer walked free of the maze and offered a wistful, half-hearted smile, a desperate attempt to prove to herself and everyone else that she was really all right. And then the stage went black. This was a great, truthful moment.

“Knock Knock”, a cinematic collaboration by Hassan Christopher and Monica Gillette, choreographed and performed by Hassan Christopher and Marissa Labog, was a genre-defining dance film. Not merely dancing captured on film or a film of dance, “Knock Knock” fused the dynamism and showmanship of jazzy choreography with the time/place/perspective shiftability that is the natural power of film.

First of all, the dancing and dancers were killer. And, the choreography was killer. Utilizing virtuoso film editing, a movement sequence would begin in one locale, in one season, with a certain costuming, and would conclude seamlessly in a radically different locale and season, and with different costuming. A spin move would begin in New York’s Central Park with snow on the ground and the dancer would come out of her spin in the brilliant summer sunshine lighting the mean streets of Compton in Los Angeles.

The quick pace of the choreography was complemented by the fast pace of the editing, creating a rich compositional effect. And, the choreography fully integrated the various environments, including solitary park benches, fluttering sheets of newspaper, snowy Manhattan streets, and the rocky shores of the Pacific Palisades.

These very talented dancers were doing very difficult things and they were totally committed to what they were doing and to each other. “Knock Knock” is a high-octane love story, a potentially award-winning film breaking new ground in a relatively new genre.
Likewise, the curators of ONE TO ECHO, Alicia Peterson and Jillian Chu, have set a new standard for what an evening of dance theater can be.

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Anne Brigitte Sirois, Real Estate Development for the Arts

Greg Miller – Artist

Kat Wildish – Ballerina and Dance Educator

Dr. Franklin Kelly – Senior Curator, National Gallery of Art

April Greiman, Artist and Designer

THE MOVEMENT, UCSD Wagner Dance Studio, June 17, 2007

Elisabeth Sussman – Curator – Whitney Museum of American Art

Sean Scully – Artist