When casting for his company, Stephen Petronio looks for dancers
who have a fearless attitude toward dancing awkwardly and probably
even looking stupid. Luckily for the eight dancers who performed at
Royce Hall last Friday, only the fearless energy shone through.
The three-part program exhibited Petronio’s distinct dance
vocabulary of aggressive jerking yet clean graceful lines ““
along with splashes of his dancers’ personal flair ““
through solo dances and contact improvisation.
Petronio opened the night with two cathartic pieces: his solo
piece “Broken Man” and the Sept. 11, 2001-influenced
“City of Twist.” The succinct solo piece progressed
from feelings of frailty shown through crouched fetal positions to
fits of vigor with wider arm motions and longer strides that ended
in a pose conveying a confidence from taking back what was
lost.
For “City of Twist,” the women, clad in black,
reflective sparkles, satin or rhinestones, glided across backdrops
of a shadowy tenement, fire escapes or a night-lit skyline. The
climax of “Twist” was a sexually charged encounter in
which a female was held up in various positions by other dancers.
She slowly descended toward the male on the floor for a kiss. After
this heated scene, there were some interesting sequences, but for
the most part, “˜Twist’s’ ambient music became
draining.
At the end of the night, less than 10 individuals stood in
ovation of Petronio and his dancers, which meant either the
audience was apathetic and unimpressed or they didn’t catch
Petronio’s winking humor in the show’s closing piece
“Island of Misfit Toys.”
Of all the pieces in the show, “˜Toys’ provided the
most visual stimulation with a dysfunctional doll propped on either
end of the stage and a totem poll of doll heads in the center, the
most engaging music courtesy of rock icon Lou Reed’s medley
of songs, and the most childish costumes with the female dancers in
dolled-up ruffled skirts and the male dancers in pajamas.
Familiar ballet steps tied the pieces together and kept them
accessible through the noisy “Metal Machine Music” and
excerpts of “13 Meditations on Poe.” Traces of popular
dance ““ the late-1980s running man and a bit of tap pizzazz
““ were thrown in with more complex choreography to juxtapose
the ridiculous with the artsy and demonstrate how both can be
equally fulfilling.
Petronio’s choreographing of “˜Island’ to the
music infuses a feeling of lively visual storytelling into an
otherwise abstract dance. Dancing to Reed’s “I’m
Waiting For My Man,” the dancers may not have been making an
enlightening statement, but they leapt with gleeful energy that
showed they were actually enjoying themselves.
-Rhea Cortado