ADF review: Breakout performance offers jaw-dropping moves
Among several dozen companies presented each season at the American Dance Festival, there’s usually a breakout performance that becomes the talk of the summer. Even with six programs still to go this season, it’s difficult to imagine any having more impact than Company Wang Ramirez.
Honji Wang and Sébastien Ramirez created a unique world for an hour Tuesday night that gripped the crowd from the first moment and consistently drew gasps until the final blackout. Then an instantaneous roar broke from the audience, holding strong through repeated curtain calls.
Wang, raised in Germany by Korean parents, studied classical ballet and martial arts. Ramirez, a Frenchman with Spanish parents, is a self-taught dancer coming from hip-hop and breakdance roots. The pair’s 2011 “Monchichi” is an abstract telling of their meeting and life together, attempting to blend and balance their backgrounds and cultural ties.
Against a backdrop of ever-changing colors and shadows (in Cyril Mulon’s dramatic lighting design), the two began a flirtation of quickly changing moves, alternating between elegant fluidity and sharply angled, freeze-framed steps. Influences of breakdancing were visible, especially in Ramirez’s mid-air spins and Wang’s seemingly dislocated limbs, but the choreography melded these into an artistic whole that included architectural structure and engaging characterizations.
The piece constantly shifted mood, style and presentation. There was a hyper version of a tango, a karate-like skirmish, and a segment that looked like ice-skating.
Both dancers also spoke short, humorous monologues in English, later performing an amazing sequence in which they spoke in overlapping German, French, Korean and English, giving insights into their true-life challenges in communicating.
Impressively high energy was maintained throughout the piece, as well as amazing technical precision necessary to produce seemingly impossible maneuvers, such as Ramirez’s slithering and spinning around Wang’s feet as she walked across the stage. Other moves were too jaw-dropping to ruin their effect revealing them here.
The presentation’s appealing combination of acrobatic showmanship and poetic, mysterious character makes it a perfect choice for festival first-timers but also should satisfy seasoned dance fans.
Dicks: music_theater@lycos.com
If you go
What: Company Wang Ramirez, presented by the American Dance Festival
Where: Reynolds Industries Theater, Bryan Center, Duke University, 125 Science Drive
When: 8 p.m. July 9
Tickets: $27
Info: 919-684-4444 or americandancefestival.org
This story was originally published July 8, 2015 at 3:37 PM with the headline "ADF review: Breakout performance offers jaw-dropping moves."