REVIEW: ALASKA DANCE THEATRE

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Posted: October 18, 2008 - 10:56 pm

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BY MIKE DUNHAM

Among the performing arts at this time, dance seems particularly determined to break fresh ground, or at least to not replicate something that has someone else has already done. One finds it easier to name of any of several successful modern dance companies than successful avant garde theater companies, for instance.

So Saturday's Alaska Dance Theatre program of work choreographed either for that show or for recent ADT concerts promised newness, at least, in addition to the innate athleticism of the genre.

Company artistic director Alice Bassler Sullivan's "Variations on Papillons," which debuted earlier this year, was set as formal ballet. It opened with 10 dancers arranged in a triangle, like bowling pins, and relied on the classical movement vocabulary throughout. Schumann's series of piano sketches, also titled "Papillons," is highly danceable - it describes a ball, after all - and for the most part the choreography carefully complemented the music, as in the concluding Grandfather's Dance and midnight bells. The dancers, while individually good, revealed some rawness, however, in recurring mis-synchronization, a few hands raising at different times from the rest in what appeared designed as a unison sweep, for instance, when the full group was on stage. In two- and three-dancer configurations, their timing was tighter.

Former ADT regular Anna Tremaine reprised a solo excerpt from "Internal Emotions," created for the company by Troy Powell of New York's Ailey II company in 2004. Her initial stretch from a bent position reflected the solo cello accompaniment. Almost everything that followed seemed from develop from that stretch, evoking the opening up of inner space.

A second work for solo dancer, set to solo cello music by Bach, was on the program: Sullivan's "In a Different Light," which saw the light of day last year. ADT instructor Nicole Maple was both elegant and able to explode on cue, as in a strong leap toward the end. But there was little connection between action and music, the latter sort of becoming wallpaper. It was like two conversations as opposed to a dialogue and it left me scratching my head; the two movements selected, a courante and saraband, are both court dance forms, though I've never seen anyone perform them to Bach's suites for unaccompanied cello. But it might have been interesting to watch her try.

Even less coherent was Erica Essner's "Dreams of the Great Land," originally debuting here in March. It's highly mechanical movements were not out of place with Terry Riley's gamalan-style music. But there was neither narrative nor architectural statement to generate any strong emotional reaction to the calisthenics.

On the other hand, Amy Young's eloquent "Estanatlehi, The Self Renewing One," created for ADT in 2006, is a remarkably moving piece of dance theater. Three blue-clad dancers flow in calm perfection, like the Three Graces or yoga priestesses, to the music of Philip Glass. A figure in grey and brown crawls weakly onstage from the side, joined by two more, all evoking anguish, frustration, weariness, terror. They scrape at themselves as if plagued by insects, find their movements blocked by invisible walls, shudder and fall. The blues minister with blessings and empathy. Slowly the greys follow their gestures - which in a different context might been lifting and gifting - until the greys can leave under their own power and the blues form a memorable tableau: the chief priestess sitting like a Buddha, flanked by the other two, their arms forming a crescent that they rock back and forth.

The final piece, "Sand in Four Shifts" by ADT assistant director Courtland Weaver, set to music by Bill Frisell, was also memorable, though without a strong "plot." The emotional force of the work was achieved by the aesthetically convincing succession of actions - a blend of both ballet and modern dance with a nod to pop. My favorite part was the second "movement," titled "sand man," which revisited a signature slump, originating in the ankle, traveling up the leg and into the shoulders, as a kind of motif, and balanced playfulness with suggestions of struggle, winding up with a perky chorus line that abruptly shifted into perhaps the most poignant moment of the night.

But win, lose or draw, it says something about Anchorage and ADT that this amount of fresh choreography should have originated here in a relatively short period of time.

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