The Elks Lodge, Newport, RI.
October 20, 2024.
The magic of concert dance can lie in dancers filling a stage, releasing and regaining contact. In the same way, it’s all only possible through the collective talent and commitment of varied individuals: from dancers to designers to volunteers. Newport Contemporary Ballet‘s latest program, Mosaic: Puzzles of Love and Connection, presented works wherein these themes of unity and divergence were clear.
A strong current of community was also at the forefront – such as with Artistic Director Danielle Genest encouraging audience members to vote for an arts and culture bond that would support the company’s continued growth, as well as her acknowledging the contribution of each collaborator – meaningful both individually and collectively. Our individual capacities leveraged towards a common vision can make something incomparable.
Beginning to underscore these truths was the program’s opener, Amy Hall Garner’s Ripple Effect (2023). I first experienced this work last year, through the company’s outdoor summer dance festival. Former Company Dancer Emily Baker served as Rehearsal Director for the 2024 staging. With the work indoors, the company could present it with more controlled lighting: dappled patterns reflecting the light and dark dancing over ocean ripples, dancing all the more with the performers’ ever-shifting light and shadow.
Also striking me more this time were the kinetic layers in the piece, executed at lightning speed towards the beginning of the work. Everything was in continuous motion – like the sea on a day with high winds creating “white caps” on the water. Yet the tempo and visceral force softened with a pliable solo from Timur Kan, soon joined by the effervescent Brooke DiFrancesco.
It was as if the wind died down, perhaps with the sun peeping out from behind clouds. Yet the energy – and, in my imagination, the wind and waves all around – rose again as the work came to a climax. Everything in nature, and in our lives, moves in cycles. Everything is temporary. As Genest alluded to in her pre-show address, we experience those cycles both as individuals and in community. We tango between the two.
Then came Genest’s Transport, created and first performed in 2020. I experienced the work then…over livestream. It was a time of uncertainty and isolation – both of which certainly hummed through this work. Dancers reached, circled limbs, and leapt in ways that signaled yearning for connection. Yet it was not so easily nor quickly found.
Later in the work, physical contact did come through partnering. That demonstrated what the connection could be – even if it sometimes held twinges of tension and sorrow. In the community dancing before us, there was space, time, and physical support for multiple modes of feeling and being.
A sense of isolation wasn’t gone forever, though – and the group oscillated between that and connection. Indeed, everything is temporary. Yet, I also found myself wondering: with our faces so often in our phones, are we that much less disconnected than we were in the days of lockdowns, masks, and swab tests? That’s a weighty question indeed.
Next came a world premiere from Takehiro Ueyama: the enticing, imaginative Unlimited. That title felt apropos, the work being notably multifaceted in terms of tone and movement quality. Fulfillment of kinetic, sonic and visual possibilities abounded. Some of that was through an energetic arch – a build and then easing of energy and speed – but more so in the layering of the easeful and more taut. That layering reflected the myriad components in the highly polyphonic score (from Joseph C. Phillips Jr.).
Inventive gestures evoked exploration, but also an inward gaze. Tracing fingers and sickled feet, caught behind calves, exemplified the unconventional tenor filling the stage. See also: gray costumes of funky cuts and fits (by Eileen Stoops), which offered a blank slate for audience imagination – yet also a singular, confident aesthetic.
Even with such unique elements, and the freneticism of movement riding the fast score, there was a harmony at hand. Groups and numbers of dancers frequently changed: a seamless, frictionless multiplicity. With unspoken, embodied connection permeating an ensemble, there was a pleasing order to chaos. All of this at work, the non-narrative work offered stirring meaning – but, even short of that, was simply a unique treat on many levels.
Closing the program was another world premiere, also from Genest, Heartstrings. Highly soothing, but also pulsing with passion, the work felt like a bit of a stylistic departure for Genest. Transport reflects her work’s more typical mood and aesthetic: notably visceral, darker in aesthetic, with just a pinch of the edgy and raw. Contrast that with this work: balletic in shaping, soft (yet assured) in bearing, and bright in coloring (with Stoops’ red costumes and Stephen Petrilli’s fiery lighting). As such, the work demonstrated Genest’s commendable courage to venture outside of a well-trodden comfort zone, to push her own envelope.
What resonated louder, however, was that harmony and connection within the ensemble: different, yet no more or less valuable, than that of Unlimited. Danseurs partnered danseurs, ballerinas shared weight with ballerinas, and ballerinas exchanged space with danseurs – within groups of assorted numbers and through varied staging. All of these sections fluidly ebbed and flowed, riding the score (from Maurice Ravel) like a wave. I envisioned “heartstrings” connecting the ensemble members across these shifts, growing out of how they shared space and time.
All of that collectively painted a tapestry of connection and care; threads of diverse bodies and movement qualities created something beautifully multichromatic. Unity grew out of all of this multiplicity becoming whole. Yet, just as with Unlimited, one needn’t recognize that specific meaning in order to appreciate the work. Its bright and soothing aesthetic, in and of itself, left me smiling and breathing a bit more easily.
One can also appreciate the fruits of community – like the one which supports this company – on many different levels. Perhaps that’s another lesson that concert dance can teach us, if we’re ready to listen. If not, there’s always something that we’ve never quite experienced before, through every tenacious movement and soulful gaze (that list could certainly go on!). Thank you to Newport Contemporary Ballet for always providing such treasures in spades!
By Kathryn Boland of Dance Informa.
Share this:
