Kelley Donovan and Dancers opened their New York Season with an evening, called, “In a World & What is Stable Shifts, Wh http://vimeo.com/29179247 at is Solid Slips,” after two of Donovan’s pieces, also featured the work of Guest Choreographers David Parker, Co-founder of the Bang Group; Hip-Hop Ballerina Sharon Montella; and Jessica Parks and Stephanie Booth of Umbrella Company Dance.
Like Donovan, these choreographers have Boston roots and New York followings. Their dual-city performance credits made this a strong evening by seasoned professionals. The program compels the audience with its own organic shifting of styles.
Donovan Lives Her Dreams
Donovan, who several years ago gave up a secure job at MIT, sold her house, and decided to divide her time between New York and Boston, is making a life—and a moderate living—from dance. It is a gamble that has paid off handsomely in the evolution of her company’s reputation; her performances have earned her accolades from Boston and New York critics alike, including the New York Times, whose Rosalind Sulcas called her a “force of nature.” (2009)
In her generous approach to dancers and movement, Kelley Donovan also provides opportunities to other developing performers, inviting their productions to share in her showcase evenings. During the last fifteen years, Donovan has presented at numerous influential New York venues including the Merce Cunningham Studio, Jennifer Muller’s Hatch, Movement Research, the Joyce Soho, and the 92nd Street Y.
During the spring, Kelley returns to Boston to resume her university teaching position and performance with her Boston dancers at venues such as Harvard, the Federal Reserve, and the Dance Complex in Cambridge among other venues. During the fall, Donovan also teaches classes at Roger Williams College, in Rhode Island.
Autumn in New York Means Bold New Dances
The evening opened with “In a World,” a strong piece of Donovan’s performed by Nordica Houlton, Laura Murphy, Sasha Peterson, Lucy Vine, Stephanie Reeves, and Michael West. This piece incorporated technology by using projection screens with interactive video imaging that sometimes suggested the strings of an instrument, and other times, bells, among other possibilities.
rue to its title, each performer appeared to be in an independent world, sometimes dancing together with others, and at other times, expanding their boundaries to incorporate one another in a group. West’s flexibility is often a breathtaking counterpart to the tall, strong, powerful arm and leg movements of many of the other dancers.
Donovan’s Guest Choreographers
The evening continued, true to Donovan’s focus on shifts, as a study in contrasts. Sharon Montella presented “A Whisper,” a solo dance that complemented her delicate form and movements, but also suggested great strength as in the potential of martial arts movements.
Next, the audience appreciated the wit of David Parker, who explored vaudevillian and musical comedy conventions in “T4three.” This piece proved a loving, 3-man send-up of chorus lines and twenties dancing. Parker, teaming up with fellow dancers Jeffrey Kazin and Nic Petry, demonstrated his partnering techniques in addition to his more recently honed singing skills in this light-hearted effort.
Jessica Parks and Stephanie Booth carried the honors for the edgiest choreography of the evening in “The Book of Right-On,” drawing from the funky song by Joanna Newsom. In contrast to most of the dancers in previous pieces, their physical energy drew from their strong centers, beginning with their hips and torsos. The duet by Parks and Booth contained an aggressive and graceful vocabulary of motion that covered the stage with authority.
Kelley Donovan offered the strong solo from “Triadic Memories,” which affords her the space to explore a particular movement vocabulary that she enjoys. During a rehearsal earlier in the day, Donovan had been teaching dancers to hook a body part to the air and then work movements around it. Some of Kelley’s own favorite moves make use of body joints as hinges. As Donovan keeps her arms close to her sides in this dance, she maintains an appearance of floating, as if drawing plants toward her, as in an underwater sea.
Reinterpretations of Ballet Classics
David Parker, a member of the Ailey and Barnard faculties in New York, reemerged near the end to supply a second tongue-in-cheek moment in the form of an excerpt from the Nut Cracker revisioned as “Arabian. For this reworking of the dance, now in the form of Nut/Cracked, Parker added an additional dancer, Amber Sloan. Parker’s full-length “Nut-Cracked” enjoys frequent performances during the holidays. Parker, writing in Dance Magazine, says of his own work, “I choreograph because I know of no other way to contend with the world.” (2011)
Donovan’s final sextet, consisting of Donovan, Tiffany Ballinger, Lucy Vine, Nordica Houlton, Laura Murphy, and Sam Wilson displayed the virtuosity of her choreography in “What is Solid Slips, What is Stable Shifts.” With Murphy leading and often remaining solo, the ensemble offers a strong march across the stage that elevates the choreographer’s peripatetic life choices through the cinematic dance vocabulary of tension and release.
Donovan will continue her monthly series at PMT House of Dance on the second Saturday of every month through December. Judging from the sold out house for the quality first performance, these events will be a hot ticket for the season.
Related Article
Sources
Parker, David. Dance Magazine, January 2011, accessed online 27 September 2011
Sulcas, Rosalind. “Lunges and Tumbles Become Fluid Movement, Both Sparing and Lush.” The New York Times, 29 January 2009.
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