| . | 11/18/2009
“AMERICA DANCES!” Celebrates the 24th Anniversary of Career Transitions for Dancers
By: Joel Benjamin
Patrick Swayze
Rolex Dance Award
Photo: Greg Goman
This year’s gala fund-raiser for the Career Transition for Dancers was called “America Dances!” and was dedicated to the memory of the movie star and sometimes New York-based dancer, Patrick Swayze. In celebrating its 24th anniversary, the CTFD presented a quick-paced program that included performances by major—and not so major—dance troupes as well as award presentations and honorable mentions of a number of people who had benefited or benefited from the fine services of CTFD.
As usual, the program opened with a film montage that skillfully wove together vignettes of almost every kind of dance: lindy hop, ballet, jazz, street dance and modern dance.
Jacques D’Amboise was a charming opening speaker who revealed some secrets about how some of the lead dancer’s steps were created in the “Stars and Stripes” Pas de Deux which was impeccably danced by Ashley Bouder and Andrew Veyette. His hilarious account of how his leg cramps forced him to change Balanchines’s classical steps to bent-knee and flex-footed beats was the perfect lead in to the performance of these two dancers from the New York City Ballet who impressed the audience with their exuberance and virtuosity.
Lori Belilove and The Isadora Duncan Dance Company provided some historical flavor with their “The Dance of the Furies” to Gluck’s music from his opera Orpheus. Led by Ms. Belilove, the troupe of seven women were fine exponents of the now familiar Duncan style of dancing which wedded natural runs, lunges, twists and falls in a dramatic fashion to the music, giving a moving image of old-fashioned mayhem a la Duncan. The style may look a tad naïve now, but their devotion to it carried “The Dance of the Furies.”
Tap dance was represented by the American Tap Youth Ensemble in “Izzici” a South African Gum Boot Dance featuring calls and responses and a rhythmic score created solely by the complicated pounding of the rubber boots on the floor; and the Lombard Twins, a loose-limbed, extremely slender pair of dancers (Martin & Facundo Lombard) who danced in what used be called an “eccentric” style to Astor Piazzolla’s tangos. Their punk response to the music, usually danced by elegantly sexual tango couples, was unique and amusing.
The Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, fresh from a New York City season, presented “Cold Song,” to music by Klaus Nomi, danced by Jason Kittelberger and Acacia Schachte. Barechested and wearing next to nothing, Mr. Kittelberger and Ms. Schachte, in a tiny white tutu with a lacy train, performed sexy tussles, collapsing into rolling heaps of sensuality, ending when she appeared to expire from all the sensory overload.
Mercedes Ellington, Michael Choi and Kent Drake presented a Tribute to Duke Ellington in a too-cute trio choreographed to music from Ellington’s “Sophisticated Ladies.” Ms. Ellington and Mr. Drake were a slightly older couple whose tap-dance stroll was interrupted by the flirtations of a younger dancer, Mr. Choi. However, it was all in good fun. Ms. Ellington strolled off arm in arm with both men in the end!
Bulletrun, Decadancetheatre and The Street Beats Group represented various forms of hip hop dance. Bulletrun’s “Journey Into Darkness” to music by Trash, featured black-hooded dancers whose costumes were covered with green squiggles. These green lines glowed when the lights were low, making the moving mass of ten dancers seem like a living, streaming and eerie painting. Decadancetheatre presented a video of two people running about a cityscape and then a group which danced an anxious, angular dance in stylized street clothes to pounding electric pop by Portishead.
Choreographed by the “America Dances!” producer, Ann Marie DeAngelo, “If I Loved You,” to the Rodgers and Hammerstein song was more Las Vegas than Agnes DeMille, but the dancing by Nicole Graniero & John Selya, in all its overstuffed lifts and falls was thoroughly professional.
Sonya Tayeh Dance showed Melody Lacayanga and William Johnston in tattered black costumes acting like paranoid robots roaming dangerous city streets. Their automaton dance to an equally nervous song had its moments and was well-danced.
A ballroom dance segment lit up the stage with the very young couple Adealani Malia (10 years old) and Mark Stuart Eckstein (14 years old) who, formally dressed, performed a very professional and probably too-sexy Latin dance, bringing the house dance with their s-m-o-o-t-h & sassy wiggles and looks.
Nicole Fosse introduced excerpts from her father’s “America” segment from “Dancin’” showed that the Bob Fosse theatrical style has not aged. The combination of patriotic songs such as “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever” and the sexy, hip pulsating Fosse choreography seems an unlikely match, but the company of Fosse veterans brought the seven excerpts to life. Robert LaFosse waved an American flag energetically and Shannon Lewis gave weight to the serious “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” emphasizing the irony beneath the song’s words.
In between these works awards were presented by notables such as Jock Soto, Valerie Harper, Laura Benanti and Samuel Ramey to Lawrence Herbert (who elicited good-humored boos for his slightly misogynist comments), the Lloyd E. Rigler – Lawrence E. Deutsch Foundation and Patrick Swayze’s widow Lisa Niemi Swayze for their generous contributions to the ongoing programs of CTFD. Kathleen Marshall introduced Gayle Conran, a CTFD veteran who spoke about the many dancers whose lives were changed and enhanced with the help of CTFD, eight of whom were right there, living evidence of the success of CTFD. Some became public relations experts, some psychologists and some stayed within the theater world as choreographers and directors.
The gowned and bejeweled crowd rubbed elbows with the hoi-polloi dance fans at this successful celebration of the Career Transition for Dancers. Although it is impossible to show all of America dancing, Ann Marie DeAngelo and her colleagues did one hell of a job trying and, for the most part, succeeded. The 25th Anniversary is coming up. That should be a whopper if the 24th Anniversary Gala is any indication.
“AMERICA DANCES!” Career Transition for Dancers 24th Anniversary Jubilee
The New York City Center
145 West 55th St.
New York, NY
November 2nd, 2009, 7:00 pm
Career Transition for Dancers
165 West 46th St., Suite 701
New York, NY 10036
212-764-0172
info@careertransition.org
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