Company: Desert Dance Theatre
Choreographer: Lisa R.Chow
Performers: Erik Canales, George A. Johnson, Caroline Liddicoat, Jennifer Milani
This piece was unique for me in that it presented a true collaboration between the dancers and live, improvisational music. While choreographer Lisa Chow’s dancers took center stage, percussionist Step Raptis supported their movement from his vantage point at front stage left.
There was something about the complex rhythms Step was producing on hand drums that separated this piece from another work that might have a driving backbeat that everybody hits on cue, or a wispy melodic line that supports a series of graceful gestures. Here, there was a delicacy in the percussion that permeated the movement and became another member of the ensemble.
This was a sometimes sprawling piece with the dancers fully occupying the stage and then readily collapsing into moments of precise partnering, the sophistication of the dancers belying the simplicity of the movement. At some point, however, I found myself taken with the discussion where the intricate percussion and the dancer’s gestures occupied the same space, each dancer courting an unseen partner.
In the end, I did not experience Chow’s choreography of this piece in isolation but as part of a larger, unitary whole – the performers not dancing TO the music but dancing WITH the music, while the percussion was somehow conforming its sensitive rhythms to them. It seemed truly collaborative — best viewed with a soft focus and allowed to simply happen before your gaze.
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