KCMETROPOLIS.org
Kansas City's Online Journal of the Performing Arts

Quixotic has a darkly magical vision well worth seeing. Dancers performed moves from ballet leg extensions to modern dance falls to hip hop riffs to circus feats-live musicians on each side of the stage with instruments amplified to make the theater vibrate with sound-visual artists creating a mobile setting of ever-changing light patterns and visual projections-they call themselves Quixotic Fusion and that's what they are. 

Their latest production, Lux Esalare (to exhale/emit/breathe forth light) begins with a Prelude in the lobby, where the theme of darkness and light is introduced by two fashion models, one in black and one in white, wearing striking mini hoop skirts on top of street-wear tights and leotards. Are the hoop skirts a contemporary take on the undergarments of 19^th and 18^th century dancers? 

Following the Prelude, the production on stage is structured in sixteen short, intense scenes, and the intensity never flags. The first scene revolves around a central couple, Rachel Coats and Michael Eaton, who enter in a burst of fog, her in white and him in black. The couple reappears briefly in later scenes and then seem to break apart. Eaton danced frequently enough to be something of a central figure, but Lux steers away from narrative. Scene follows scene, held together loosely by the theme of darkness and light, weight and lightness, ground and air with darkness predominating. The scenes were arranged for variety and contrast: a group dance, a quartet, an aerial dance, a solo, a dance lit only by the lights in the dancers' hands, etc. Not knowing quite what's coming next is part of the excitement. 

Every choreographer looks at the stage and yearns to find a creative way of dealing with the large space above the heads of the dancers. Aerial dancing is a crowd-pleasing solution and produced some memorable moments in Lux: a dance with three loops of rope that aerial dancer BJ Erdmann manipulated to tie himself into extraordinary shapes, to perform multiple vertical pirouettes, and to suspend himself by an arm or a leg; a duet for ballerinas Rachel Coats and Angie Sansone, using their ballet training to execute a sequence of lyrical moves that concluded with running en l'air around the space; and a daring conversation between a dancer flying through the air and a contingent of dancers on the ground. Another moment, notable for the interplay of non-aerial dance and visuals, was the solo for the wonderful dancer, Lateef Williams, with the intriguing title "Conscience." 

Quixotic's Lux Esalare is a collaborative effort: eight different choreographers and sixteen dancers, several from the Kansas City Ballet, working with a Concept Team, a Musical Composition and Sound Design Team, and a Projection Design Team. Co-artistic directors Anthony Magliano and Mica Thomas seem dedicated to giving equal weight to the various ingredients and blending them into a cohesive whole, and their efforts succeed quite well. As a dancer, this reviewer wanted the sound to let up occasionally, so the rhythms of the dance could play more of a role, and for the visual components to become sparse enough now and then, so the spatial configurations of the dance could take over. Each scene in Lux had a title that leans toward meaning, such as "Spiraling the Human Chord," "Conscience" and "Stay in Line." But there were no program notes, no further explanations. For the moment Quixotic has opted for Lights! Sound! Action! What you see and hear is what it is! And maybe that's the only tolerable way to keep on going in these chaotic times.

 
REVIEW:
Quixotic Dance Fusion
Lux Esalare
Thursday, June 25 at 8 p.m.
Friday, June 26 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, June 27 at 8 p.m.
Spencer Theatre at UMKC
4949 Cherry, Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-235-6222 or online at www.quixoticfusion.com

By Jone Stone

 Dance Contributor (Past writer)

Comments(1):

1. Great article Jone!

   Very informative. Thank you.

   Friday, June 26, 2009 N