Beauty Realized

The Sleeping Beauty
American Ballet Theatre
Staging and new choreography by Alexei Ratmansky
Kennedy Center Opera House
Washington, D.C.
January 27, 2016

By Lisa Traiger

Scene from Alexei Ratmansky’s The Sleeping Beauty. Photo: Gene Schiavone.

Alexei Ratmansky’s newest staging of the great classical ballet The Sleeping Beauty feels like that moment in the classic MGM film The Wizard of Oz when the scene goes from black and white to Technicolor. Ratmansky has returned color, style and detail to the warhorse 1890 ballet, which, has, over succeeding decades, lost its identifying roots. Ballet, of course, is passed down from generation to generation orally, from retiring dancer to young dancer, from teacher to student, so like a game of telephone, sense and details can get lost, dropped or simply ignored because fashion and stylistic preferences change.

For American Ballet Theatre’s 2014 production, presented at the Kennedy Center Opera House January 27-31, 2016, which premiered two years ago in Costa Mesa, Calif., the beauty is in the details, the small moments, the living tableaux stage that Ratmansky paints. The ballet is both outsized and restrained in stager Ratmansky’s sure hand. The Russian-born and trained artist in residence at ABT is known and loved for his contemporary works, but he’s also an historian, a ballet sleuth, and for this production he searched the archives at Harvard University and  in St. Petersburg, Russia, to suss out what the ballet could have looked like in 1890 at its premiere in St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre, or a generation later in the early 1900s when Diaghilov’s Ballets Russes acquired and performed the work.

The story, at least its bones, is nearly universally known, if not from storybooks then from Disney. But this version is more than simply a fairy tale retold. Created for the Russian czar’s court, the world of the ballet models the social and economic hierarchy of that era and tells us much about the workings of the upper class, the 1 percent if you will, amid the storybook unfolding of the prologue and three acts.

Most frequently lost in classical ballets, particularly when they made their way west to North America, has been the mime, which is essential for the narrative and dramatic elements of the classical ballet canon. Without the story and mime, it’s all merely divertissements — pure dancing, and for a time that’s what audiences wanted. But these days, the trend it back to narrative. Ratmansky, with the assistance of his wife Tatiana, has resuscitated mime passages that have been rarely if ever seen in recent decades, illuminating the story in new ways. We see a conversation between King Floriestan (Roman Zhurbin) and Catalabutte (Alexei Agoudine), his chief minister, that helps us clearly understand the hierarchies at stake in the royal court. A little later in the prologue, when the uninvited evil fairy Carabosse enters, there is a snippet of mimed dialogue where the good Lilac Fairy asks her evil counterpart why she’s so angry. Carabosse answers — a bit of mime I’ve never seen — then begins plucking out hairs of Catalabutte.

The dancing, too, has a renewed vigor, though present-day audiences will find few grand and virtuosic tricks. The women don’t raise their legs to ear-grazing heights and the men don’t soar in sweeping leaps and 540 degree barrel turns. Equilibrium restores moderation and attention to the details of smaller, complex footwork are what brighten and color this ballet. While we often think that ballet technique has advanced in the past 100 years, there are elements that have been lost.

Marius Petipa, the French-born émigré to Russia responsible for much of the classical ballet canon from Sleeping Beauty to Swan Lake to The Nutcracker and Raymonda, apparently had specific ideas and distinctions he practiced on the placement of feet and legs. Ratmansky has uncovered those to great effect.

In this setting, the legs rarely go above 90 degrees, lending a greater notion of geometric purity to the way the body moves and poses — particularly the female body. There’s an abiding sense of restraint and purity to the women’s solos. And the partnered balances, especially the famous “Rose Adagio,” where the princess plucks a rose from each suitor’s hand before sticking a breath-catching balance on one leg, is less outlandish and more queenly and staid here. As well, the foot, particularly the woman’s foot, is not just pointed or flatly bearing weight. There are times when weight is borne on the metatarsal, dancers call it demi-pointe, something little seen in modern ballet where emphasis is on highly defined pointe work. And the bent working leg, especially in pirouettes, doesn’t always rise to the knee here — sometimes it remains held at the ankle or at mid-calf. These are not mistakes but conscious choices uncovered in the Petipa notes from Ratmansky’s research.

Aside from the ballet geek details, the larger scope of this production is one of courtly grandeur. The backdrops and sets of castles and palace interiors by Richard Hudson are grandly austere, a bit less colorful than the hundreds of costumes — accented by wigs and shoes — also by Hudson but inspired by the Ballets Russes costumes of Leon Bakst. There are no short classical-style tutus a la the pancake-like circle of netting popularized in Swan Lake. Instead the ladies’ tutus are bell-shaped in the Romantic style and hover just above the knee, again adding a sense of grace and restraint. The score, Tchaikovsky’s of course, is played well by The Kennedy Center’s orchestra under the baton of Ormsby Wilkins. And the gaggle of local children, dancing as pages, courtiers and the like, have been beautifully rehearsed by Maryland Youth Ballet teacher Rhodie Jorgenson.

Scene from Alexei Ratmansky’s The Sleeping Beauty. Photo: Gene Schiavone.

The dancing, of course, matters most for audiences here and the opening night cast did not disappoint. Stella Abrera replaced Veronika Part in the important role of the Lilac Fairy on opening night. Russian-trained Part is a cool and staunch ballerina and would have brought those qualities to the role. Abrera brought a sense of openness and even joy to her pivotal portrayal. Though not overly elegant, and sturdier than Part, she carried off the nearly god-like demeanor demanded of the latter acts when equilibrium is restores the courtly order, for it is her spell that causes the young Princess Aurora not to die at the spindle prick but sleep 100 years awaiting the kiss of her prince charming.

As Princess Aurora, Isabella Boylston exhibited both joy and restraint, not terribly girlish, but she was kind and gentle. Her prince, Desire, danced by Joseph Gorak on Wednesday night, was attentively steadfast and, as noted, he doesn’t have many show-off moves, but his footwork, particularly the fleet foot beats, was admirable, if not perfect.

Marcelo Gomes’ evil fairy Carabosse relished being equal parts conniving and lustfully malicious. Stooped and Disney-scary, he played the bad witch with relish. As notable in Petipa’s Beauty are the many variations for the attendant fairies and, in the final act, the fairy tale characters — Little Red Riding Hood, the Bluebird, Puss and Boots, Cinderella, etc. — each has a noteworthy variation with lovely steps specific to who the dancer is portraying.

American Ballet Theatre typically does a run-of-the-mill job with the old school Petipa classics. It mounted a ho-hum Sleeping Beauty in 2007 with staging by its Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie and former ballerina Gelsey Kirkland and  her husband Michael Chernov. Ratmansky has returned Beauty to, it seems, a previous glory and grandeur.

The ABT dancers have tackled the challenges of the more restrained and pure technique and have acclimated themselves wonderfully to the specificity of the mime. As a whole the dancers have a sturdy, solid look, both corps de ballet and principals, which works impeccably well, rather than the gaunt, idealized thinness of late-20th century ballet dancers (here I’m thinking of the Mariinsky’s 1999 revival). The ABT dancers stand and move on solid ground. They may struggle or wobble in a balance, but they are human beings. Yes, they’re playing fairies and kings and courtiers, who are all striving for a godlike elegance, that’s a distinction that makes this ballet, for all its restraint and detail and historicity, a most satisfying evening.

Published January 30, 2016, originally appeared in DC Metro Theater Arts.
© Lisa Traiger 2016

 

Warm Production for a Cold Winter’s Night

The Winter’s Tale
National Ballet of Canada
Choreography: Christopher Wheeldon
Music: Joby Talbot
Set and Costume Design: Bob Crowley
Silk Effects: Basil Twist
Lighting Design: Natasha Katz
Projection Design: Daniel Brodie
Kennedy Center Opera House
Washington, D.C.
January 19-23, 2016

By Lisa Traiger

Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon has taken a challenging late Shakespearean play — The Winter’s Tale from 1623 — and revitalized it into a mostly exquisite 21st-century ballet that breathes soul and spirit into an often cobwebby work. The National Ballet of Canada’s co-production with the Royal Ballet includes staging that draws on a rich collaborative palette of design and musical elements that update what is often called one of the Bard’s “problem plays” for its structural flaws and its hard-to-come-to-terms-with ending.

Hannah Fischer and Piotr Stanczyk in The Winter’s Tale. Photo by Karolina Kuras/The National Ballet of Canada

Trained at London’s Royal Ballet School, Wheeldon danced with New York City Ballet for seven years before becoming the company’s first artist in residence where he began to try his hand at choreography. His early works were, not surprisingly, Balanchinean — driven by line and technique rather than story and emotion — but he soon began to discover his singular voice. He expanded his style and choreographic reach by working on operas at the Metropolitan Opera; choreographing in Hollywood on the popular ballet movie Center Stage (2000) and on Broadway, where his direction and dances for An American in Paris can still be seen nightly at The Palace Theatre. That work also earned him a coveted Tony Award for best choreography.

Over the years, Wheeldon has developed his skill at storytelling in a pure dance environment, resulting in successful evening-length works like without his 2011 production of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland— seen at The Kennedy Center in 2013 — featured the same creative team and the collaboration here is just as fortuitous.

The story centers on jealousy and, more problematically, redemption. King Leontes of Sicilia and King Polixenes of Bohemia renew their childhood friendship during what amounts to a nine-month state visit to the Italian court. Leontes suspects his pregnant wife Hermione of adultery with his friend and in a fit or rages imprisons his wife, causing his young son Mamillius to break down. After giving birth, Leontes rejects Hermione’s baby, who is abandoned in a basket in a distant city state. The baby is found and raised by a peasant shepherd. Act II features a grown Perdita, that abandoned baby, who is courted by Polixenes’s son Florizel (of course) disguised as a shepherd. When the truth comes out, Florizel and Perdita, the young lovers, flee by ship to Sicilia. There eventually true identities get revealed and a wedding takes place. But Shakespeare in this darker romance, hasn’t finished. A stature of Hermione comes to life as Leontes prostrates himself before her image. Hidden for 16 years after her imprisonment, she and her king reunite is a dance of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Choreographically Wheeldon is an equal opportunity borrower and he also has great taste in what he collects for his own choreographic toolkit. While it’s a ballet, the movement language is far from pure ballet technique. The choreographer culled from a multiplicity of dance styles, genres and techniques. We see elements of contemporary and 20th-century American ballet in the angular and geometric details that embellish duets — flexed feet, turned in knees – suggestions of Balanchine. The wide ranging emotional stoicism channels Antony Tudor’s dark female-centric works.

The enervated torso and the dichotomous pelvis-centered pull hint at Martha Graham. Other sections feature a loose-limbed swingy-ness and humanistic corpus of dance recalling Jose Limon and especially some vivid and high strung passages of men dancing channel Paul Taylor. And that’s all before the second act, where a Wheeldonian utopia fuses a jumble of world dances into some new post-modernist expression of an imagined nation state where the steps and rhythms hint at an Irish jig or a Hungarian czardas or a Russian kazatsky, all accompanied by an onstage six-piece folk ensemble playing wood flute, African drums, guitar, accordion and a dulcimer-like instrument.

Wheeldon is a whip-smart style thief who usurps movement ideas that intrigue him and reinvents them into something completely fresh and untarnished. Watching his choreography unspool over the three act ballet, elicits little sighs, nods of recognition, wonderments and surprises. His pas de deux — particularly his act one explicatory one featuring Leontes and a pregnant Hermione (Piotr Stanczyk and Hannah Fischer on opening night) — are exquisite. The lifts come from a natural — or at least natural appearing — place. The dancers intertwine and unspool in whirling, curving arcs of continual movement that doesn’t feel forced or precious and emits feelings of ardent connection.

The fastidious attention to the detail in the storytelling relies not on 19th century mime techniques but on ordinary conversational gestures that demonstrate how mightily body language, posture and a few well-placed gestures can convey complex ideas and emotions. This is where Wheeldon is best: illuminating a knotty, ancient tale and breathing new life into it for the 21st century.

Joining him in this retelling and updating of The Winter’s Tale is Joby Talbot’s rich and varied score, drawing on orchestral harmonies perfect for the most balletic passages, but also capturing syncopated rhythms of music from a wide swath of locales and cultures that, in blending and fusing cross-cultural sounds, feels both like an ancient discovery from a yet to be uncovered new tribe but sounds absolutely modern. Video projections, by Daniel Brodie often onto expansive swaths of silk draped and designed by puppeteer Basil Twist, allow for far more vivid scenic and location changes. These are enhanced by the gorgeous set and costume designs, which like the music and choreography, pick and choose from a rich amalgamation of cultures and regions. Vests and breeches, demure dresses for the corps de ballet and more severe ones that suggest Martha Graham’s torso hugging designs, allow for clear and precise display of the physical and emotional core of the movement.

The Winter’s Tale only wavers in relying on that problematic — and unsatisfying — ending. The final section, with a revived Hermione and Leontes dancing a reconciliation pas de deux is hard to swallow, until one acknowledges that this world – Shakespeare’s and Wheeldon’s — remains male centric and male dominated, and as in most ballet and literature, the forgiveness and acceptance that rights a toppled universe comes from the woman.

The dancing by the cast, particularly leads Piotr Stanczyk and Hannah Fischer, is unabashedly fine. The Canadians fling themselves wholeheartedly into Wheeldon’s — and Shakespeare’s — worlds, making this Winter’s Tale one that inspires warm feelings on a cold winter’s night.

Alas, due to the blizzard of 2016, all performances this weekend at The Kennedy Center have been cancelled.

© 2016 Lisa Traiger

This review originally appeared on DCMetroTheaterArts.com.

2015: A Look Back

For reasons that continue to surprise me, 2015 was a relatively light dance-going year for me. That said, I managed to take in nearly a top ten of memorable, exceptional or challenging performances over the past 12 months.

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, on its annual February Kennedy Center Opera House visit, brought a program of politically relevant works that culminated, as always, in the inspirational paean to the African-American experience, “Revelations.” Up first, though, was the restless “Uprising,” an athletic men’s piece that draws out the animalistic instincts of its performers. Israeli choreographer Hofesh Schechter, drawing influence from his experiences with the famed Batsheva Dance Company and its powerhouse director Ohad Naharin, found the disturbing core in his 40-minute buildup.  As these men, in street garb – t-shirts and hoodies – walk ape-like, loose-armed and low to the ground, their athletic sparring, hand-to-hand combat, full-force runs and dives into the floor, ultimately coalesce in a menacing mélange. Is it protest or riot? Hard to tell, but the final king-of-the-hill image — one red-shirt-clad man reaching the apex of a clump of bodies his first raised — could be in solidarity or protest. And, in a season awash in domestic and international unrest, “Uprising,” with its massive large group movement, built into a cri de coeur akin to what happened on streets the world over in 2015.

The Washington Ballet Artistic Director Septime Webre has been delving into American literary classics and on the heels of his successes with both F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, in February his fearless chamber-sized troupe unveiled his latest: a full-length Sleepy Hollow, based, of course, on the ghostly literary legend by Washington Irving. But more than just a haunted night of ballet, Webre’s Sleepy Hollow delved into America’s early Puritan history, with a Reverend Cotton Mather character and a scene featuring witches drawn from elements of the Salem witch trials, expanding the historical and literary context of the work. This new dramatization in ballet, featuring a rich score by Matthew Pierce; well-used video projections by Clint Allen; and scenery by Hugh Landwehr; focuses on the tale of an outsider, Ichabod Crane – a common American literary trope. Choreographically Webre has smartly drawn not only on the expected classical ballet vocabulary, but he also tapped American folk dances and early and mid-20^th century modern dance influences to expand the dancers’ roles for greater expressivity and storytelling. Guest principal Xiomara Reyes played the lovely love interest, Katrina Van Tassel, partnered by Jonathan Jordan. It’s hard to say whether this one will become a classic, but Webre’s smartly and carefully drawn characterizations and multi-generational arc in his approach to the Irving’s story expanded the options for contemporary story ballets.

Gallim Dance, a Brooklyn-based contemporary dance company founded  by choreographer Andrea Miller, made its D.C. debut at the Lansburgh Theatre in April. Miller danced with Batsheva Ensemble, the junior company of Israel’s most significant dance troupe, and she brings those influences drawn from the unique methodology Naharin created. Called “gaga,” this dance language frees dancers and other movers to tap both their physical pleasure and their highest levels of experimentation. In “Blush,” this pleasure and experimentation played out with Miller’s three women and three men who dive head first into loosely constructed vignettes with elegant vengeance. With a primal sense of attack as they face off on the stage taped out like a boxing ring. Miller’s title “Blush” suggests the physiological change in a person’s body, their skin tone and during the course of “Blush,” transformations occur as the dancers, painted in Kabuki-like white rice powder, begin to reveal their actual skin tones – their blush. In so doing, they become metaphors for shedding a protective outer layer to reveal their inner selves.

The Washington Ballet continued its terrific season with the company’s much ballyhooed production of Swan Lake, at the smaller Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater in April. It garnered international attention for Webre’s casting: ballet “It” girl Misty Copeland, partnered by steadfast senior company dancer Brooklyn Mack, became purportedly the first African American duo in a major American ballet company to dance the timeless roles of Odette/Odile and Siegfried, respectively. But that’s not what made this Swan Lake so memorable, and mostly satisfying. Instead, credit goes to former American Ballet Theatre principal Kirk Peterson, responsible for the indelible staging and choreography, following after, of course, Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. He drew exceptional performances from this typically less than classical chamber-sized troupe. The corps de ballet, supplemented by senior students and apprentices, really danced like a classical company. As well, Peterson, who has become an expert in resuscitating classics, returned little-seen mime passages to the stage,  bringing back the inherent drama in this apex of story ballets. My favorite is the hardly seen (at least in the U.S.) passage when Odette, on meeting Siegfried in the forest in act II, tells him the story of her mother, evil Von Rothbart’s curse and the lake, filled with her mother’s tears, as she gestures in a horizontal sweep to the watery backdrop and brings her forefingers to her eyes indicating dropping tears. Live music was provided by the Evermay Chamber Orchestra and made all the difference for the dancers, even though the company’s small size meant the act III international character variations were cut. While the hype focused on the Copeland debut, she didn’t own or carry the ballet, and here Mack was a solid, but not entirely warm Siegfried. This Swan Lake truly soared truly through the corps, supporting roles and staging.

June brought the Polish National Ballet, directed by Krzysztof Pastor, to the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater in lovely evening of contemporary European works. The small company – 11 women and a dozen men – are luscious and intelligent dancers who can captivate in works that push beyond staid classical technique. Pastor’s program opener, “Adagio & Scherzo,” featuring Schubert’s lyricism, twists, winds, and unfurls in pretty moments. There is darkness and light, both in the choreography and in designer Maciej Igielski’s illumination, which matches the shifting moodiness of the score. Pastor’s movement language is elegant, but not constrained, his dancers breathe and stretch, draw together and nuzzle in more ruminative moments, then split apart. In his closer “Moving Rooms” we first meet the dancers arranged in a checkerboard pattern on a black stage, each dancer contained in an single box of light. Using the sometimes nervously itchy score by Alfred Schnittke and Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki, the dancers, clad in flesh colored leotards, used their legs and arms in sharp-edged angles and geometries. But the centerpiece of the evening was a new “Rite of Spring” – yes, to that Mt. Everest of scores by Igor Stravinsky – this one is choreographed by French-Israeli Emanuel Gat. Danced on a red carpet, the five dancers ease into a counterintuitive tango of changing partners, always leaving one dancer as the odd one out. The smooth and slightly sensuous salsa is the basis for the work’s movement sinuous vocabulary, as it quietly builds like a slowly simmering pot put to boil.

Man and machine – or in this case – dancer and computerized robot – meet in Taiwanese-born choreographer and dancer Huang Yi’s 50-minute work. The evening presented in The Clarice’s Kogod Theater, its black box at the University of Maryland in September, provided a merging of art and technology. KUKA, the German-made robot, used in factories around the world to insert parts that build autos and iPads, has become a companion and artistic partner for Yi. Performing to a lushly classical score of selections from Bach and Mozart, Yi, clad in a dark suit, dances with, beside and around the singular movable robot arm sprouting from KUKA’s bright orange base. There are moments of serendipity, when the two seem to be communing in a duet of machine and motion, and others, in the dimly lit work, when each strays off on a tangent – robot and human, may move side by side, or even together, but only one inhabits a spiritual profound space of flesh, blood and breathe. That was my take away from this intriguing experiment in technology and dance. Yi is at the forefront of merging art with new technology and his experimentation – he programmed the robot – is on the cutting edge, but the work doesn’t cut to the quick. Still, orange steel and computer chips don’t trump muscle, bone, flesh and spirit. I would like to see more of Yi’s slippery, easy silken movement, in better light and with living breathing partners.

Camille Brown went deep in mining her childhood experiences in Black Girl: Linguistic Play, presented by The Clarice in the Ina & Jack Kay Theatre in October. The evening-length work draws on Brown’s and her dancers’ playground experiences, first as young girls playing hopscotch, double dutch jump rope and sing-songy hand clapping games. On a set of platforms, chalk boards that the dancers color on and hanging angled mirrors designed by Elizabeth Nelson, Brown and her five women dancers inhabit their younger selves, in knee socks, overall shorts, and all the gum-chewing gumption and fearlessness that seven-, eight- and nine-year-olds own when they’re comfortable in their skin. As the piece, featuring a live score of original compositions and curated songs played by pianist Scott Patterson and bassist Tracy Wormworth hit all the right notes as the performers matured and grew before our eyes from nursery rhyming girls chanting “Miss Mary Mack” to hesitant pre-adolescents, fidgeting and fighting mean-girl battles, to teens on the cusp of womanhood – and uncertainty. The work is a vibrant and vivid rendering of the secret lives of the little seen and less heard experiences of black girls. The movement is pure play: physical, elemental, skips and hops, the stuff of recess and lazy summer days. But there are moments of deep recognition, particularly one where an older sister or mother figure gently, carefully, lovingly plaits the hair of one of the girls. Its quiet intimacy, too, speaks volumes.

The dance event of the year was likely the much heralded 50^th anniversary tour celebrating Twyla Tharp’s choreographic longevity and creativity. For the occasion at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater in November, she pulled together a 13-member ensemble of some of her long-time dancers and some younger favorites – multi-talented performers who can finesse a quick footed petit allegro or execute a jazzy kick-ball-change and slide sequence or bop and rock in bits of freestyle improvisation with equal skill. For the two Tharp did not revive earlier masterpieces, instead she paid a sort of homage to her elf with a pair of new works – “Preludes and Fugues” and “Yowzie.” Each had elements of hat smart synchronicity that Tharp favors, her beloved little balletic passages that she came to embrace after years of more severe post modernism, and her larky, goofy wiggles, scrunches, and witty physical jokes, like pairing the “tall” girl with the shortest guy in the company, or little games of tag or chase and odd-one-out that are interspersed in both works. “Preludes and Fugues” was preceded by “First Fanfare,” featuring a herald of trumpets composed by John Zorn (and performed by the Practical Trumpet society). The two works, one a bit of appetizer, the other the first course, bled into each other and recalled influences of Tharp’s earlier beloved choreography, especially the indelible ballroom sequences and catches of “Sinatra Suite.” “Preludes and Fugues” is as staunch piece set to Bach fugues that Tharp dissects choreographically with precise footwork, intermingling couples, groups and soloists and her eye for the “everything counts” ethos of post-modernism where ballet and jazz, loose-limbed modern and a circle of folk like chains all blend into a whole.

“Yowzie” is brighter, more carefree, recalling the unbridled energy of a New Orleans Second Line with its score of American jazz performed and arranged by Henry Butler, Steven Bernstein and The Hot 9. Dressed in mismatched psychedelia by designer Santo Loquasto the dancers grin and mug through this more lighthearted romp featuring lots of Twyla-esque loose limbs, shrugs, chugs and galumphs along with Tharpian incongruities: twos playing off of threes, boy-girl couplings that switch over to boy-boy pairs, and other hijinks of that sort. The dancers have fun with the work, its floppiness not belying the technical underpinnings that make the highly calibrated lifts, supports, pulls and such possible. The carnivalesque atmosphere feels partly like old-style vaudeville, partly like Mardi Gras. In the end though, both works are Twyla playing and paying homage to Twyla – they’re both solid, smart and well-crafted. They’re not keepers, though, in the way “In the Upper Room,” “Sinatra Suite,” or “Push Comes to Shove” were earlier in her career.

Samita Sinha’s bewilderment and other queer lions is not exactly dance or theater, but there’s plenty of movement and mystery and beauty in her hour-long work, which American Dance Institute in Rockville presented in early December. In a year of no Nutcrackers for this dance watcher, this was a terrific antidote to the crushing commercialization of all things seasonal during winter holidays. Sinha, a composer and vocal artist, draws on her roots in North Indian classical music as well as other folk, ritual and classical music traditions. Together with lighting, electronic scoring, a collection of props and objets (visual design is by Dani Leventhal), she has woven together a world inhabited by creative forces and energies from across genres and encompassing the four corners of the aural world. Ain Gordon directed the piece, which sometimes featured text, sometimes just vocalizing, sometimes movement as Sinha and her compatriots on stage Sunny Jain and Grey Mcmurray trade places, come together to play on or work with a prop, like a fake fur vest or scattered collected chairs and percussive instruments. There were eerie keenings, and deep rumbles, higher pitched vocalizations, cries, exhales, sighs, electric guitar and steel objects banged together, all in the purpose of building a world of pure and unclichéd  vocal resonance. It would be too easy to compare her to Meredith Monk and Sinha is far less artistically self-conscious and precious. She is most definitely an artist to follow. Her vision and talent, keen eye and gracious presence speak – and sing – volumes.

© 2015 Lisa Traiger

Published December 31, 2015