Monday, December 04, 2006
Ten years ago, LABCO Dance began as an initiative of Dance Alloy, when it first included in its mission four C's: collaboration, creation, commission and community. Those four qualities are still embedded in the company, as was apparent at the group's performance at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater on Friday night. The members tagged it "Ripe," indicating that LABCO is now fully grown and developed.
Indeed, there is a core of dancers that has been with the company several years, and, under the artistic directorship of Gwen Hunter Ritchie, they are starting to move with the same plush weightiness that she still exhibits in her dancing. But LABCO Dance stands for Laboratory Company Dance, with all the experimentalism that it implies. In fact, this company rarely repeats its works, gathering pieces from the likes of Sean Curran, Janet Lilly, Miguel Gutierrez and Kevin Wynn, along with an impressive roster of local artists and company members.
This latest concert had all of that -- a premiere by Sarah Skaggs, "The Women's Dance"; an encore performance of Donna Uchizono's highly successful addition to the LABCO repertoire, "Steel Eyed Susans," and a premiere by Hunter Ritchie, "Soul Carrier." Each offered a differing perspective on the feminine mystique. Most intriguing were the similarities between Skaggs and Uchizono.
The pieces were created for LABCO a year apart, but both used a vocabulary heavily reliant on arm gestures and a hip thrust of a walk while retaining their identity. But where Uchizono's Susans were flower children, delicate and oblique in their approach, with steely underpinnings peeking out like petticoats. Skaggs' women were more linear and forthright -- everything was mostly deliberate as they appeared to contemplate an uncomfortable relationship.
"I wear the pants in the house because someone's got to...
" Hunter Ritchie explored the cycle of life and death in "Soul Carrier," inspired by the birth of her son and the death of a family member. It was an ambitious work, coordinating Susan Amundarain's sail-like set design, Prajna Paramita Parasher's embryonic film, Mary Margaret Stewart's costumes and Efrain Amaya's unusually full and technically challenging score for cellists Barney Culver and Nicole Myers. It was a lot to compress into one piece, overloaded by the addition of text and the use of a Latin American children's song and dance.
When all was said and done, the strength of the piece, and its inherent meaning, lay in the dance, particularly in the opening ensemble movements, where the dancers picked up on the phrasing in different groupings, and a lovely fetal duet between Stephanie Thiel and Hunter Ritchie.
News RSS