Rochester Fringe Festival, Day 4: Day of Dance, Rochester Contemporary Dance Collective reviews

By Saturday, Fringe really felt like a full-blown festival.
The parking was tight, the sidewalks were full, and the line at Java’s was
long. Knots of people stood outside various venues, clutching programs and
discussing the merits of a show they’d just seen or debating which event to
take in next. For me, it was a day of ongoing dance. I caught more than five
different performances, but still missed a few I’d been anticipating. Too many
dance choices is a predicament I can live with, however.

At Rochester Association of Performing Arts (RAPA) on East
Main Street, “Day of Dance” performances ran 11 a.m.-3 p.m. The best I saw was from Geomantics Dance Theater, led by Richard Haisma, a
longtime professional dancer who, impressively, appeared with Rudolf Nureyev on
Broadway, and is an expert in Laban
Movement, a fundamental mode of analyzing movement. Haisma’s
choreography demands immediate kinesthetic engagement while simultaneously
invoking intellectual paradigms. I was especially drawn by the Rochester
premiere of “Attempting Meditation” (2012), a solo danced by Yuko Hashimoto that
felt pure and true, as if she were dancing her reality and allowing us inside.
Her every movement was executed with complete conviction and it was rewarding
to follow her journey toward — as I understood it — some inner peace or
knowledge.

The choreography clearly depicted the joys and frustrations
of self discovery. Hashimoto began seated
cross-legged, hands lightly resting on thighs, in the classic yoga pose of
preparation. As the piece progressed, her movements sharpened and accelerated
her breathing became more audible until it seemed the sole power driving her
slight form. We witnessed Hashimoto’s arms jerking and her body spasming as she fought to find her balance and overcome
unseen forces. Eventually, her connection between outer and inner worlds
appeared to mesh, her movements deepened and slowed, and her breathing calmed.
I loved the trusting vulnerability of Hashimoto on her back, eyes closed, arms
drawn in but legs scissoring widely side-to-side. I half-expected to see that
image etched, like a snow angel, upon the studio floor when she rose.

Over at Rochester Contemporary Art Center on East Avenue,
Bleu Cease, curator of the gallery, welcomed people to the ongoing exhibition “State of the City 2012: Whose Space? Our
Space!” where dance/multidisciplinary performances from Rochester Contemporary Dance Collective were occurring. Marielys
Burgos Melendez, an interdisciplinary artist pursuing a masters in dance studies
at SUNY Brockport, presented “Here and There,” her multimedia and dance
installation that included live performance, text and projections.

During the performance, Melendez moved in reaction to video
projections of places of personal importance to her, places strongly enmeshed
in her memory. She began by deliberately placing and then scattering cards with
images of people, signs, buildings, etc. across the floor and then writhing
about amongst them, slapping one against her face, holding another in her
mouth, and so on.

As her artist’s statement read that the piece’s intention
required “an active participation of their (the audience’s) bodies and minds
evoking ‘presence’ as participatory act,” I found myself waiting, a tad
apprehensively, for this to transpire. Yet, I observed no evidence of physical
involvement on the part of the audience other than a few people shifting their
seating (was I expecting too much?). The projections, however, did transport me
— and I assume others — mentally. As an ex-New Yorker, I was especially
affected by her images of New York City subway train interiors that she aligned
her shadow with in the darkened gallery. Having spent a good percentage of my 10
years in the city enduring that mode of transportation, my sensory memories of
the particular press of bodies against your own and the lurch and screech of
starts and stops was indeed reactivated.

The next performance artist, dancer Mariah Maloney, a
longtime member of Trisha Brown Dance Company and current graduate program director
at The College of Brockport, claimed the audience’s physical
involvement with her piece, “The Body Inside.” At her invitation and per her
instruction, a surprising number of audience members sat, stood, or laid near
each other for a period of two to 10 minutes, carving out and claiming their
own physical space in the midst of a larger public one – a simple but powerful
and successfully enacted concept. As I lay prone on my stomach against the
gallery’s wooden floor, only observers’ feet and legs visible in my restricted
peripheral vision, I did indeed feel an ownership of the space I occupied. And
I was definitely more aware of the way in which my body filled that space.
Remember hiding under the table as a little kid? You were the focal point to
which all other presences connected back to, like lines drawn with a compass. Maloney’s
piece re-established that concept for me, and marked the distinction between
participant and observer. Rising from my position to rejoin the ranks of
observer, I found my physical presence dwarfing as I receded from being a focal
point.