A Modern Night at the Folly began with brief remarks by City In Motion's artistic co-director and board of directors member Dale Fellin. He acknowledged the great talent of the nine accomplished local choreographers for the night's performance. He also proudly noted that with the exception of the Kansas City Ballet, City In Motion is the oldest professional dance theater in Kansas City at 25 this year, a milestone they will celebrate with a concert April 10 and 11. 

Choreographer and dancer Jennifer Owen opened the performance with Fuga Tanguera, a piece with four dancers and live musicians. Performing to live music is one of Owen's signatures. For this performance Bradley Cox wrote delicate, intricate, and nimble music. Owen's choreography always is connected to the music as if by a real physical link and there were moments when the audience could see and feel such a connection. The four dancers worked in circles, facing each other as well as in linear and curving directions that weaved a theme and variations along with the music.

Dressed in a suit, with his tie loosened and an unlit cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, choreographer Jeff Curtis performed Last Call, a humorous interpretive solo to the music of Tom Waits' The Piano Has Been Drinking. Stumbles and drunkenness were the fronts applied to Curtis' precision moves, falling to the floor and rising up to lie over a bench that he used as a piano bench, a partner and finally a bed. He imitated Waits on the piano and meandered across the stage to the humorous lyric of the song.

The Strength to be Willing by choreographer Suzanne Ryan Strati was a contemplative piece. Dancer Kat Kimmitz was effective when she opened this intense work set to a sound montage, The Tower of Babble by Jacob Gotlib. There were scenes of running and bowing over as other dancers entered. It had good use of the floor and asymmetry. It conveyed carrying a burden and yearning for escape. It expressed the human condition and connected well even though there were many layers to the dance and the sounds.

Jane Gotch, who was the production director for the night's performance, also choreographed and performed in and we hold tight together. It featured Justin Cowart on solo cello beautifully performing Variations on J.S. Bach's Cello Suite No. 5 in C Minor. Gotch always makes maximum use of the space in her pieces. The three dancers used the floor extensively and touched and danced against the back wall of the theater. She used diagonal and spiral movements across the stage.

Both of these pieces - The Strength to be Willing by Suzanne Ryan Strati and and we hold tight together by Gotch - brought in some strong elements of Postmodernism. There was also a focus on drawing the audience to the body that was pronounced in other pieces of the evening.

Patrick Suzeau choreographed and danced his solo Broken Flight. This street scene was set to a collage of sounds of a busy street and ended with plastic grocery bags blowing onto the stage, like trash blowing across the street. This piece featured beauty in balance and form. There were long slow gestures punctuated with fast sudden movements. Suzeau also draws the audience to the body. When we look at him, we see one form, not a face and a torso, or arms and legs, just one consistent form. Susan Rendell dressed Suzeau in a beautiful, colorful costume that flowed well with his form. And the trash bags drifting in was a nice touch that gave his piece a narrative conclusion and the audience a clever snicker. 

There were only two male dancers in the show. Where are the guys?

The Reckoning was an excerpt from The Little People by Maura Michelle Garcia. An abstract painting by Soumitra Dasgupta was projected on a screen as a backdrop. Garcia's costume imitated the painting and she did not stray outside the projected painting so she blended with the backdrop, which was the full height of the stage. This gave the piece a great vertical range, which opened up the movement. The program notes said the piece was about Cherokee fairies called Yvwi Tsvsdi and was conceived with retaining native Cherokee traditions in mind. Garcia patted her hands against her body and there were elements of swing in her movements. This piece also played heavily on drawing attention to the body. There was a repeated figure in which she would fold herself over and figuratively wring her hands in anxiety and then move to a standing position with her arms springing open.

Innerlying Landscapes, Section III, "Elemental Procession" was by Michelle Diane Brown. This piece used elaborate costumes designed by a team - Colin Coit, Laura Powell, Jenn McKelvie and Michelle Diane Brown. The four identical costumes featured head wear, long flowing capes, and a figurative fan attached to the left side with a clasp. The most intriguing part of the costume was that the left arm was sewn into the costume and therefore could not move throughout the dance. The dancers removed the fan for some of the gestures in the piece and returned it to its clasp. They also attached their capes to a clasp on the right side to foreshorten the length when more complex leg movements were used. And they did all these graceful gestures with their left arm sewn into the costumes!

Lindsey Pierce choreographed and danced her solo piece low to the music of Brian Harnetty. A single spotlight shown down slightly off center in muted rays of separated color. Pierce moved in and out of the light in both quick and lingering expressions. She was dreaming of her future and reflecting on the past. A girl dancing in a dense dark forest flitting in and out of the rays of sunlight.

The finale was Longing, Fleeting, The End choreographed by Penelope Hearne. This piece was presented in three sections. The first featured dancers in back with minimal draping costumes against a black and white projected background. The background included moving images, some that represented dancing people. The second section required a costume change for some dancers and incorporated more dancers in black and white tights each with a vertical band of color and the dance moved quicker and more complex. The third section featured a solo dancer with dark hair and a long narrow body dressed in a wrap of black cloth that veiled up and away from her to the side of the stage. This elongated drape wrapped to the dancer drifted across the stage until she leaned backward impossibly far, secretly supported from behind by a concealed dancer hidden in the long black drape. It was a pointed and impressive gesture that was both eerie and supple that ended the night.

There is a movement in dance to reclaim the body. This was exhibited in a number of pieces of A Modern Night at the Folly. Also a number of the works used other media in the performance: live musicians, sound montage, projection backdrops, and backdrops with moving images. The audience also experienced choreography that wrestled with breaking limits as well as choreography that challenged acquiring limits. Limits were stretched with sequences that worked with the floor and theater wall, moved in diagonals, circles and spirals to name some. Limits were intentionally set to be challenged by squaring in the movements within the area of the backdrop, blending foreground and background, flitting in and out of the spotlight and sewing the dancers' arms into the costumes. Kansas City is proud to have such a wide ranging Modern Night in a time when City in Motion Dance Theater is celebrating 25 years and when there are more professional dance companies working and creating great performances than there have been in decades.

REVIEW
City In Motion Dance Theater
A Modern Night at the Folly
February 6, 2010
Folly Theater
300 West 12^th Street, Kansas City, MO
For more information visit www.cityinmotion.org

Cover photo: Longing, Fleeting, The End by Penelope Hearne. In this photo, dancer Tracie Davis. Photo by Mike Strong.

By Scott Easterday

New Classical Contributor, VIDs Department Director

Scott Easterday is a musician and singer/songwriter. He writes reviews and performs interviews for KCMetropolis in New Classical and explores new directions in the performing arts.

Comments(1):

1. This review is right-on!

   The Star review for this evening left me wondering if I'd actually slept through the real performance and dreamed up one that was much better. Happily, Scott Easterday's intelligent, insightful review confirms the wonderful experience I *did* have and enthused about with my friends afterwards. Exciting things are happening in K.C.'s dance community (and elsewhere in the performing arts): here's someone you can follow to pick up on some of these new directions -- then rise up from your TV chair and attend!

   Thursday, February 11, 2010 Don