Kate Weare’s world premiere hits the mark at ADF

Kate Weare’s “Marksman” had its world premiere Tuesday at the American Dance Festival, combining many of her well-established choreographic elements into an intriguing examination of action and reaction, tension and release, control and freedom.

Weare took her inspiration from a book about the art of Japanese archery, in which marksmanship is honed by focusing energy on the target but also by loosening energy to allow spiritual development (“aiming while being aimed”).

Over the work’s 55 minutes, that concept played out in ever-changing variations as three men and three women interacted in pairs and groups. In front of three dark fabric panels topped by ocean wave motifs (Clifford Ross, designer) and dressed in loose white pants with irregular tunics splashed with black (Sarah Cubbage, designer), the dancers created a world of ancient ritual and rites.

The atmosphere was enhanced by Mike Faba’s shadowy, subtly evolving lighting, sometimes starkly cold, sometimes as if created by flaming embers. Curtis Robert Macdonald’s original music, featuring piano, saxophone and acoustic bass, completed the otherworldly feel with sounds ranging from scratchy buzzing and percussive tapping to eerily plucked strings and bell-like reverberations.

Each combination of dancers took on different aspects of the focusing and loosening construct. A dancer might strike the stiffly posed torso of another, who would collapse like a puppet with a cut string. A dancer might hold the head of another, turning, caressing or pushing it and thereby molding the dancer into a desired shape. Sometimes, dancers would motion toward others as if with an invisible force, causing them to ricochet against a ring of dancers like pinballs.

Many images came to mind during the performance, including a baptism, an exorcism, a creature mothering its young and a wild beast being tamed. The amazingly limber dancers undulated, bounced, spun and fell, often in slow motion, indicating consummate control of every muscle. The unrelenting changes of balance, tension and energy demonstrated their prodigious talent.

Weare’s seemingly limitless invention kept the piece moving, each segment lasting just long enough to establish its particular variation on the theme before the combination and mood altered. “Marksman” should prove one of the choreographer’s most significant works.

This story was originally published June 22, 2016 at 11:41 AM with the headline "Kate Weare’s world premiere hits the mark at ADF."