| . | 04/09/2009
HORSE Guest company at Eliot Feld’s Mandance Project
By: R. Pikser
photo by Chang Chih Chen
by R. Pikser
The five members of the all-male, Taiwan based dance company, Horse, have co-choreographed a new and powerful work about the body and how it moves, relationships, belonging to a group, and separation from that group.
Wu-kang Chen, one of the founders and dancers of Horse, is also a principal dancer with Eliot Feld, whose choreography is known for its technical demands. The four other dancers of this Taiwan-based company are also excellent, each with his own particular strengths that complement the company as a whole. Though each section of this year’s offering at the Joyce, Bones, has a different thematic or relational content, the style tends to have each movement followed by stillness and suspension that then give way to relaxation. The hour-length ballet was true to its name, exploring the underpinnings of how joints may initiate movement and the many ways that our skeletons move, balance, or suspend us. Bones also explores relational underpinnings that connect us as members of different groups.
The breathtaking, seemingly simple set by Jiu-Chun Huang greeted the audience with a white floor and three white walls. The back wall seemed to lean forward, perhaps because the side walls swooped up from the back of the stage towards the front, carving the black space left above. When the dancers entered as a timid group from the small door to one side of the back wall, they too were in white, in underwear. They huddled together just downstage of stage right center, and bit by bit they sketched gestures that gradually moved out from the group, but not too far or too daringly.
Each subsequent section explored movement in its own different way. From timidity, daring to move out of the group, there was progression to patting, to patting each other, to leaning, eventually proceeding to seduction, confrontation, and bullying. As dancers left and reentered the stage, new relationships engendered new movement themes. In the funniest section, one dancer, formally attired, was chased down and stripped and restripped of his jacket, shirt, pants, and even his shoes while he attempted again and again to dress himself. A later section suggested sexual attraction or dominance; eventually there was bullying, confrontation, and fighting, so that the energy of the piece built in a steady crescendo to abstract and quite beautiful violence.
Bones is an excellent piece, with the fertile imagination of its creators feeding its excellent dancing; it could, however, benefit from editing. Some sections are repetitive or lead nowhere, giving the feeling that the choreographers either wanted to make sure to leave nothing out or else wanted to give everyone a turn. Also, in spite of the many sections and different explorations, the movement style became repetitious. The company is still young and one hopes that with time they will learn where to rein themselves in and how to vary the internal dynamics of a ballet. In the meantime, they are still wonderful to watch and their ideas are provocative.
HORSE
Guest company at Eliot Feld’s Mandance Project
1 and 2 April 2009
Joyce Theatre
175 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY
Tickets $ 19, $35, $49
Box office Monday-Friday 12-6
Joyce Charge 212 242 0800; www.joyce.org
Bones is provocative, the fertile imagination of its creators feeding its excellent dancing; it could, however, benefit from editing.
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