Garth Fagan Dance premiered two pieces to an appreciative
audience Wednesday night at Nazareth College’s Arts Center during the opening
of its 2016 home season. Both pieces — Fagan’s “In Conflict” and Norwood Pennewell’s “A Moderate Cease” — were well-received, albeit
different in sensibility.
Pennewell’s “A Moderate Cease,”
the sixth piece he has choreographed for the company, is his most affecting
work yet. The deeply emotional performance, set to a cello concerto by Steven Isserlis, seems more personal than his other works; it also
adheres more to his own developing choreographic style. Pennewell
is a Fagan dancer — that technique is ingrained in his work — but this new
piece uses more of his own expanding dance vocabulary. And it’s just beautiful.
The piece opens with a small group of dancers in a circle
around a pool of light. They move gently at first, like creatures stirring in
some moonlit glade deep in the woods. Arms are repeatedly thrust upwards to the
resonant chords of the concerto, reaching, reaching … then there is just Sade
Bully, whose flawless dancing ensured the performance’s success. Her long-limbed
body moved with great feeling, taking low leaps and traversing the stage
joyously without apparent effort.
Guy Thorne and Vitolio Jeune, two powerhouse males, also took the house by storm,
leaping and turning as the music swelled. And the lighting design by Lutin Tanner should also be noted for its use of shadows
and light — instrumental in conveying the reflective sadness and interspersed bursts
of joy in Pennewell’s piece.
Fagan’s “In Conflict,” a work-in-progress, showcases his
dancers in the language he commands. While Pennewell’s
piece seems more inner-directed, Fagan is addressing the world at large, and we
should stop and listen. As the title suggests, the work examines conflict, both
within one’s self, between individuals, and perhaps, in the world in general.
Two of Fagan’s veteran dancers — Natalie Rogers and Jeune — perform compelling and challenging solos in this
new, four-part piece. Set to the sonorous classical music of Arvo Part, this is a creation of moving and still shapes: Rogers
holds one-legged balances for inhumanly long amounts of time; Jeune’s explosive power is contained and then released.
The piece begins with a solo by Rogers, who performs some
gorgeous work while portraying a state of growing awareness. She is able to
have the audience chuckling with her humor one minute and sighing over her
sensuality the next. At one place in the performance she rises from a crouch up
to a half-pointe balance, then slides back down into her crouched pose — an incredibly
difficult sequence.
Jeune’s solo follows with music that
is edgier and high-powered leaps with no visible preparation. Again, the lighting
contributes greatly. Behind Jeune are long blocks of
shadow, like a skeletal building or the bars of a prison, which connote
harshness and turmoil. Rogers and Jeune come together
for a lovely duet in the third part of Fagan’s piece and then we have a larger
group conveying different types of relationships in the final section. The
audience loved it.
Wednesday night’s program also included the beloved “Prelude:
Discipline is Freedom” (1983), “No Evidence of Failure” (2013), and the
celebratory “Geoffrey Holder Life Fete . . . Bacchanal” (2015), all of which
were choreographed by Fagan.
Garth Fagan Dance will perform this program again on Friday,
December 2, through Sunday, December 4.
This article appears in Nov 30 – Dec 6, 2016.
Fabulous performance. The newbies are also do a great job. The growth of the company is amazing.