Rare ballet piece accents black festival
Summer dance activities concluded on a thoughtful, occasionally jubilant note over the weekend at Oakland’s Odell Johnson Theater at Laney College, where the Black Choreographers Festival ended its annual celebration, begun in February in San Francisco. Six companies performed Friday, Aug. 26, and the variety of movement approaches, more than I can recall at previous festivals, testifies to the intelligent curatorship of co-director Kendra Kimbrough Barnes.
To find a ballet-based piece at a BCF concert is unusual. To come across a good ballet-based piece like Gregory P. Dawson’s new “Altered Larynx,” performed soundly by four members of Dawsondancesf, is amazing. The choreographer sets four baroque arias for countertenor in solos and small ensembles that seem models of fluency and musicality; Dawson can invest his movement with the structure of the baroque aria, and, as he proves in the opening section danced by Ilana Guerra, make it all look natural.
Dawson confesses that the social implications of the castrato voice and how it got that way intrigue him, but he’s smart enough to know that dance is capable of only so much. He does let his concerns show through in a tortured solo for Eric Debono, arching his back in agony and ecstasy. Jordan Drew and Alexander Vargas completed the cast, all in the simplest of bathing suits and all responsive to Dawson’s unisons.
The other memorable entry on Friday’s program was a late substitution, Erik Lee’s performance of his own “Precious Lord,” made for Dimensions Dance Theater in 2015. As souls-in-torment solos go, this is a spectacular specimen of the genre. Lee’s muscular attack, his vulnerability and sheer expressiveness get to you, even before the electronic score yields to Ledisi’s unaccompanied recording of “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” a haunting moment during which Lee appears to levitate in a state of grace. He’s a dancer to watch for.
The first half of the evening summoned fewer compliments. Works in progress do not belong in first-rate festivals; if artists cannot offer a complete dance, they should not be engaged. Works in progress insult an audience (this one diminished as the evening wore on) and render critical evaluation genuinely impossible.
Yet, here were three in a row. It was a huge error to open the program with “Reconstruction Study #1A,” choreographed and performed by Chris Evans and Byb Chanel Bibene, accompanied by keyboard, cello and David Boyce’s wailing saxophone. The movement style favors weighty encounters, but these 30 minutes failed to yield any secrets (and that title is a pretentious turnoff ).
It is always a pleasure to watch Antoine Hunter in motion, but the excerpt we were shown from “Body of a Black Man” did not whet the appetite for the rest of it. Hunter walks toward the audience and rolls on the floor, repeats the process and engages the audience in a group hand ballet.
Barnes’ own “Angst” will be performed complete in the fall. The portion given here involved an earnest narration, and an exploration of the quandaries faced by African American boys, but the stop-andstart choreography has promise.
The program closed with a guest appearance by Los Angeles group JazzAntiqua Dance & Music Ensemble. Pat Taylor’s jazzy choreography is workmanlike rather than brilliant, but the eight dancers brought spirit to their assignments.