Masterful Choreography by three of San Diego’s best dance agencies
Article by Anna Robert
It is always a real treat for dance enthusiasts to experience the foremost contemporary choreography in one show, especially if it takes place in one of the finest attractions of San Diego – the Speckels Theatre. This time three companies – City Ballet of San Diego, Malashock Dance, and Jean Isaacs’ Dance Theatre – joined together to share with us the best in contemporary dance.
From November 13 till November 16 the studios presented two programs that showcased their most recent artistic findings. City Ballet of San Diego had three premiers – Classified, Speakeasy, and A Life According to Me, with the last one featuring both dancing and singing.
Classified was a relatively unusual piece. It started with two young men who showed up on stage, sat down at the desk, and put on their headphones. At this very moment the audience hears the music and the four motionless dancers who were on stage all this time come to life. The audience finds itself in an intriguing place where it is the music that rules the dancers and their movements. As the rhythm intensifies, so do the motions of the group. With each passing minute, the dancers create a variety of shapes and patterns with their oh-so-controlled bodies. By the end of the piece, the two men leave, the dancers come to standstill, but only for a moment… to start the story of their own told through the dance that can exist without music.
Both the Jean Isaacs’ Dance Theatre and Malashock Dance addressed the theme of love and relationship between a man and a woman in their choreographed pieces. But how amazingly different these topics are interpreted and explored! In their dialogue on stage Blythe Barton and Trystan Loucado (from Jean Isaacs’ Dance Theater) reminded us what it is to be truly and deeply in love. Skimming the floor with graceful footwork, stretching and twisting their bodies, the two dancers keep almost constant physical connection – they are seen as a single whole, as if they are unable to exist without each another. One moment they embrace, the next one – there is resistance and opposition. Their superb dancing reveals all the beauty of love and at the same its bitterness and contradiction.
The narrative staged and coached by John Malashock has an equally beguiling power though presenting us a very different love story. The two dancers – Stephanie Harvey and Nicholas Strasburg – demonstrate the intensity of the feeling with vivid movements full of focused energy, risky acrobatic jumps, sudden sinkings and instantaneous rises. But it is a character of Nicholas that seems to become increasingly desperate for his lover’s attention – his body is persistently tilting towards his partner craving for the continuity of the movement. The continuity is interrupted, however, with brisk outward motions of his partner directly expressing emotional indifference and faded love.
With all of the pieces so masterfully choreographed and every single dancer earning admiration it is our very hope that we will see these agencies presenting together again.
(Image: Manuel Rotenberg)
