Time is on our minds these days, it seems. Christian Marclay’s The Clock, a 24-hour film collage about the march of time has become the most talked about art event of the last year. And closer to home, Danceworks Performance Company is honoring its 15th anniversary season with a celebration and a whole lot of reflection.
DPC’s latest show, Want or Need, caps its 15th season with a variety of new work and some blasts from the past. But the mood was pensive.
Dani Kuepper’s new work, “Toc Tic,” set the tone and theme for the evening. Starting with the lone tick tock of a metronome placed center stage, the piece grows into a meditation on the march of time—reflecting on the past and future of the company, perhaps. But also reflecting the ever more frantic pace of modern life. Stiffened arms swing in arcs around in circles—both robotic and clock like. Dancers bend and grab their ankles and pull up sharply onto their toes, struggling to escape from gravity and the earthly pull of time and bodies. Simon Eichinger and Kim Johnson-Rockafellow face each other as they grab their own seemingly paralyzed legs and move them step by step. There are occasional outbursts of soaring freedom where dancers seem to momentarily escape from the machine. But all is eventually contained (beautifully) in the almost mathematical design of the dance’s structure.
Other dances were thoughtful and dark-edged. Sarah Gonsiorowski’s duet, “Of Mindful In(At)tention,” finds a man alone with his books fantasizing about a fantasy playmate, but his fantasy involves rejecting her advances again and again. “Insert Word: I —- You,” by Christal Wagner, is more playful, starting with guest artist Cameron Mathe and Melissa Anderson in a giddy “long walks and sunsets” kind of romance, full of wide smiles and hand holding, which crumbles quickly with the entrance of The Other Woman (Wagner).
In Steven Moses’ “I Have What You Need,” a couple in a tender relationship (Kuepper and Holly Keskey) move from intimacy to the pain of separation. The relationship is ambiguous (romantic? parental?), but the emotions are real and palpable, rendered in a vocabulary that drives right to the heart.
The program also features a reprise of Kuepper’s “The Gate,” a throbbing ensemble piece set to the primal percussion of Kodo. And a finale from former Danceworks artistic director, Sarah Wilbur: “I Before We,” featuring all ten dancers, is hardly the playful mind game that we associate with Wilbur’s Danceworks tenure. A somber and frenetic group of people dressed in black and gray street clothes ricochet around the stage, stopping to sit on folding chairs scattered here and there. They unite eventually into circles and Irish steps, but all remains rather detached and solitary until the final note. Tick tock.
Dani Kuepper and Holly Keskey in Steven Moses’ “I Have What You Need.”
Photo by Mark Frohna
