sarma

BALLET TECH is the name of Eliot Feld’s new group. He is a choreographer with a long career mainly in ballet, but revolutionarised by the introduction of modern dance which is more obvious in his most recent works. I can not be sure if “Tech” refers to the “technical” or “technological”, I believe however, that it is a term which has something to do with the groups aims and the dancers’ bodies.

Certainly it does not refer to the thematic content and the style of the bill which we watched because the passion, eroticism and lyricism of the works included in the programme was beyond our expectations. The first part included “The Grand Canon” (from the 1980’s) and “Evoe”, “Yo Shakespeare” and “Doo Dah Day”. “Grand Canon” was dance for 8 sinuous, expressive and very competent dancers. One could say a lot more about the minimalist development and repetitive demonstration of the movements which however, gradually changed as the performance got under way. The slow introduction served as a magnification of the ritual coming on stage of the group which then organised and disorganised, approaching and going away within the spatial and temporal parameters of the stage under a slow rhythm.

The changes and the movements, rigorous but also smooth and lyrical were very demanding in their execution. The hand movements were impressive and showed evidence of technical expertise as the combinations of dancers kept changing.

After the first half, the following section was being repeated: the group would move as a whole for a while, but then one dancer who had become isolated from the team, would rejoin them so that all together could now produce through the choreography something akin to a freeze frame as one by one the dancers went through the movement. Frequent couplings and separations, holding of hands, disorganisation and rejoining followed before the end which found the dancers holding hands standing in a circle. That image transferred an optimistic message of Eliot Feld’s faith in the need for support and solidarity.

The bill carried on with Feld’s version of the Faune, named “Evoe”. The solo by an exceptional black dancer was sensual and sophisticated as it was provocative. It was encouraging to see the possibilities that can be created even in such a well known work first associated with Nijinsky (1912) when the choreographer is talented and innovative. The male dancer was so imposing, that the addition of 4 female dancers on pointes, which was relevant to the development of the story left the audience uninterested. I should mention her, that at the end of the piece, half of the theatre was left speechless and the rest was clapping maniacally. Similarly clever and original was “Yo Shakespeare”. It was performed by two dancers, also very accomplished with live music. It was felicitous occasion where the choreographer can follow his inclinations in the combination of movement in space served by the technical abilities of his dancers. I would call it “a competitive coexistence in space” with two extraordinary creatures, making the impossible possible in front of our eyes. The last piece was one of those “American crowd pleaser” works, which we have got a taste of two years ago at the Megaron, in Athens, when Paul Taylor Dance Company presented choreographies based on familiar musical themes. Here, in the Joyce Theatre, the popular music was not swing but blues and jazz songs, seven in all, danced by the whole group, in solos or duets. Despite the risk of having created works that are unoriginal and court predictability, Feld managed to sidestep these problems with dignity and humour, employing a tongue-in-cheek attitude for the most part.

“Moon in the Sky” was the most directly provocative duet but also the most inventive in use of movement on a theme (love between man and woman) which can be very clichéd. Otherwise, we, the overjoyed audience, took pleasure in the optimism of the last solo titled “Be born again” before the curtain calls of the twelve magnificent performers….