Emphasis Dance

Saturday, I was up on Mount Washington for  HomeLA, a salon featuring 14 dance artists performing inside, and out, of a spectacular contemporary house with impressive hillside and city views. Presenter Rebecca Bruno had developed a similar site-specific series in her own home in San Diego (she studied dance at UCSD), and for this inaugural LA edition, she partnered with the Dance Resource Center and Pieter.

HomeLA ”seeks to contribute to a dialogue among independent dance makers, musicians, home owners, and guests on issues relating to performance and domestic space” and the performances, it was hoped, would “activate” the architecture and the “particular ethos” of the home. We were handed an architectural floor plan of the home’s four levels, with the names of the dance groups printed in the room or area where they would be performing. Dance start times were staggered throughout the evening so theoretically you could catch every dance.

It was a very casual evening (in contrast to the pretentiousness of the promotional materials quoted above). Aside from dance, there were weak but tasty drinks, served by two women standing in a whirlpool bath, plus a continuously replenished bowl of popcorn. Even with those amenities, we stayed for only 90 minutes, about half the evening. To me, dancing felt almost like an afterthought; this was more like a party. Rather, it was a party. The very loose and unstructured nature of the event meant that it was up every individual to focus as much or as little as they chose to on the artists.

I believe the artists–some of whom are among the city’s more well-known experimentalists–had invested considerable thought into how to adress dancing in someone’s private space. Melanie Rios Glaser created a “sleeping dance” and she was very comfortably tucked into a bed on the roof of a lower room. She was dreaming, perhaps, of her “knight in shining armor,” according to an explainer text, her inspiration coming from a story by a Guatemalan author. Amanda Furches twirled in a red dress on a hilltop perhaps a quarter mile away, a fanciful and fairy-like figure, whom we could see from the house’s terrace. My favorite performer was Maya Gingery, an elegant and intensely focused woman who strode and even pirouetted on the edge of the empty swimming pool. Her strong carriage and purposefulness appealed to me; how the work related to the “ethos” of the house was, I’m afraid, lost on me.

But HomeLA got me up to Mount Washington for the very first time, and I have to say a hearty “thank you!” for that.

It’s a known, anecdotal, unscientific fact, that Mark Morris fans will follow the Mark Morris Dance Group anywhere; the Dead Heads of the dance world.

How else could he have made such a success in Brooklyn, where the group is headquartered and has an annual season? Many years ago I played hooky from a work-related responsibility, and trekked to UC Riverside to catch the company and Morris, who was still performing. (And that’s all I’ll say about my transgression.)

So there was a big crowd of folks who, I’ll bet, were making their first trips to Northridge because the MMDG was at CSUN’s Valley Performing Arts Center Saturday night (April 27). It was a tremendous program, spanning 30 years of Morris’ choreographic output, and the dancing and live musical accompaniment (violinist Georgy Valtchev, pianist Colin Fowler and Julia MacLaine on cello) were near flawless. With the exceptions of familiar faces such as Lauren Grant, Maile Okamura, Noah Vinson and Michelle Yard, there were many unfamiliar faces among the dancers. Unlike other companies, however, Morris maintains clear and consistent artistic control, and the group’s style remains recognizably his — unique and undiluted.

In “Canonic 3/4 Studies” (1982), Morris is playing with dancing in three-quarter time. Each was a mini-exercise, flirty ballet steps contrasted with big galumphing strides, and wide-stance plies. The nine men and women were dressed like boy ballet students — white short-sleeve T-shirts tucked into black tights. Inside dance jokes abound: an uncomplaining partner waits for two women to leap back and forth in front of him, and he catches them with flawless timing, a  sweet smile on his face.

“Festival Dance” (2011) is, at least partly, a couples’ dance, an exuberant celebration of love and community to a piano trio by Johann Hummel. Morris paints delicately with a palette of romantic and whimsical partnering. But the stage churns, too, with weaving chains of Morris’ intricate folk dances.

After intermission, the mood shifted entirely thanks to “Grand Duo” (1993), one of several pieces Morris has made to the music of the late experimental musician Lou Harrison. Here, Morris suggests the community is a tribe, communicating with hieroglyphic gestures. Two groups “threw” invective at one another in time to the piano’s chaotic chords. I had forgotten Morris’ fantastic range, his wild imagination. “Grand Duo” was the thrilling reminder.

The best explanation I have for an Italian contemporary dance company that calls itself Spellbound, is that its artistic director and choreographer, Mauro Astolfi, trained and worked for about eight years in New York City. That may or may not have anything to do with it, just my speculation. In any event, Spellbound Contemporary Ballet was here, at the Irvine Barclay Theatre Tuesday for a one-night performance. An almost-full house got to decide for itself whether it was bewitched and enthralled by Astolfi’s three pieces. There was a standing ovation at the final curtain, but since that has become such a common occurrence, that is less of a sure-fire indicator than you might suppose. I was impressed mostly with the dancers’ electricity, but got bored pretty quickly with Astolfi’s one-note style.

We don’t see much Italian dance in southern California — yet another mystery that certainly an agent could explain in short order. Money undoubtedly has something to do with it. The Segerstrom Center presented Aterballetto and works by Mauro Bigonzetti, and the La Scala Ballet, many years ago now. In the case of Spellbound, the respected New England Foundation for the Arts is sponsoring the inaugural tour for this troupe of six women and three men.

Astolfi’s style: It is absolutely distinctive, an ever-flowing, full-body ripple, with dancers coursing together at intersecting points about the stage and then pulling apart again. Those meetings appeared almost random. During these junctures, dancers’ differing body parts fit together like well-made puzzle pieces. Give them points for the remarkable physical control to maintain this consistent dynamism and momentum. During infrequent passages of unison dancing, the power of these squiggles and jiggles multiplied exponentially.

But the movement felt almost entirely abstract, detached from emotion, and appealed more as physical feat. I found little communicative value within, making each dance feel very much like the one before it. I found little relation in the gestural language to the program descriptions of each piece, for example. Astolfi’s whipped steps seemed to float on top of the contemporary musical compositions that served as the score; the music existed to create a mood. Rhythmic diversity was also of less concern.

The final company of this season at the Barclay will be Ballet BC, from Vancouver, which I am eager to see, having gotten good reports from a close dance critic friend.

Born and raised in Uruguay, choreographer-performer luciana achugar —  letters lower-case on purpose — is an award-winning member of New York’s alternative dance scene. Her cutting-edge dances have been presented at respected venues such as The Kitchen, Walker Art Center and Portland’s Institute of Contemporary Art. And though she is a graduate of CalArts, achugar had been a no-show in Los Angeles. Until this weekend, that is, when Meg Wolfe and Showbox L.A. presented achugar and collaborator Michael Mahalchick (also a CalArts alum) in their “Puro Deseo,” winner of a 2010 NY Dance Bessie Award.

Performances were held at downtown’s Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, a perfect space, it turned out, because of its low-ceilinged and cave-like appearance; it was hard to make out where the theater’s back wall met the floor and ceiling. Unlike the feeling one gets from looking out over the ocean, however, this limitless horizon was discomforting, de-stabilizing. Indeed, “Puro Deseo” was a kind of nightmare. achugar and designer Madeline Best reversed lighting convention by setting much of the piece in blackness. Side lights flashed on just long enough to illuminate key moments. Otherwise, we were surrounded by darkness, thrust inside our own heads, at the mercy of our imaginations.

When achugar wanted us to see, “Puro Deseo” delivered tightly controlled scenes of cryptic repetition and ominous enigmas. achugar shuffled forward and backward along a lighted diagonal, turning her head at exactly the same moment each time to gaze expectantly at us. Mahalchick was revealed as a collapsed heap, who, in successive scenes moved upstage with a weighty gracefulness. achugar  growled and yelped like a wounded animal; she threw herself to the floor with fearsome velocity and risk. The only planned accompaniment, initially, was their singing, chanting and gasping for breath, but faint sounds from the church down the block drifted into the theater. “Puro Deseo” presented a universe of contradictory symbols and impulses — ripped, risque and slovenly appearance; wild and dangerous-seeming gestures; but tightly managed theatrics and minimal, yet extreme expressiveness.

About an hour into “Puro Deseo,” light dawned and achugar and Mahalchick lined up for a synchronized arm duet. Initially their semaphore signals proceeded in unison. But with one seamless orchestration they transitioned into harmony. A marvelous moment partially because — I’ll admit it — it felt “normal.” achugar’s work, however, “lives” on the fringes of abnormal, and that’s a place that’s less comfortable to visit.