The Brooklyn Rail
Critical Perspectives on Art, Politics and Culture
Dec 2005/Jan 2006
Dance
Searching for Virgin Territory
by Ben La RoccoDance
It seems at times that there are no fresh tracks to be made in dance, or in any of the arts. No matter where you step, at least one footprint can be found. Dance Theater Workshop’s Fresh Tracks series stands in defiance of this jaded view; the audition-based program aims to ferret out new choreographic voices. Sometimes, it even succeeds.
Dancing on the Rail
by Vanessa MankoDance
German-born, Berlin-based choreographer Sasha Waltz is often compared to the reigning queen of dance theater, Pina Bausch. But Waltz would rather critics align her with New York’s downtown dance scene. I’ll do both. Waltz’s Körper, performed at BAM in 2002, consisted of dance theater’s requisite fragmented vignettes in the vane of Bausch. Dancers recited monologues on the price of plastic surgery, a man skied down a large black wall, and the work clamored on into an apocalyptic end. Perhaps the most stunning segment of Körper, meaning body in German, came at the start with scantily clad dancers squirming within a large plexi-glass box. Impromptus (BAM, Dec.)signals a slight change of tone for Waltz and here we can better see New York’s influence on her work, particularly in her use of contact improvisation. Set to classical music, this lyrical, ardent work focuses on the duet. The set consists of two large parallelograms, slightly skewed like two tectonic plates colliding. The dancers move from plane to plane, running and twirling. In one duet, a man and woman both fold into each other and unfurl, lunging and leaning, but never quite splitting apart. It’s as if they are struggling to maintain their equilibrium (or their individuality) amidst the intoxicating effects of love.
