DURHAM -- The American Dance Festival’s “Past/Forward” presentation, now in its fourth year, has become one of the festival’s most anticipated events. This showcase for ADF students offers reconstructions of notable works, combined with premieres by cutting-edge choreographers, making for exhilarating evenings of old and new.
This year’s program is a must-see, its heady mix of mystery, tranquility and vibrancy giving as much pleasure as anything on this summer’s slate.
Russian Tatiana Baganova’s works, seen a handful of times at ADF over the past decade, are always vividly memorable and the premiere of “Sepia” is no exception. The title color dominates the shadowy world she envisions, a desertlike realm inhabited by creatures that may be insects or aliens or members of an ancient cult.
The opening is riveting. On one side, there’s a large paper chrysalis out of which three female creatures slowly emerge, punching through with their hands and heads. Once freed, they gather the paper shreds into large balls and carry them around like beetles. On the other side, three males perform a ceremonial cleansing by opening hourglasslike containers above them, showering streams of sand over them as they preen and flex.
Throughout the half-hour piece, the creatures go through ritualistic couplings, sometimes a mating dance, sometimes a contest of domination. Sand also figures in other segments, sometimes sadistically, sometimes sensuously. Avet Terteryan’s coldly eerie music adds a mesmerizing quality. The piece ends with the creatures staring out at the audience, a mirror to our own ingrained conflicts. The breathless quiet at Monday’s performance signaled the power of this enthralling new work.
The first reconstruction is “Inlets 2,” modern dance icon Merce Cunningham’s 1983 work staged by former Cunningham company member Jean Freebury. This piece is pure movement, the seven dancers offering spurts of poses and short routines, working individually, although sometimes moving in tandem, but never connecting or acknowledging one another. Many of the movements are formal, even balletic, but paced in a meditative manner, supplemented by John Cage’s “score” for water-filled conch shells, their gentle burble and splash additionally soothing.
The program ends with the energetic sweep of Ryan Ghysels’ reconstruction of “West Side Story Suite,” Jerome Robbins’ 1995 gathering of the famous musical’s dance numbers. Such memorable moments as “The Dance at the Gym,” “America” and “The Rumble” come to life as 31 ADF students dance (and sing!) with appropriately youthful verve and charm.
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