Of Movement And Men
The opening night program of Eliot Feld's Mandance Project at the Joyce on Wednesday demonstrated Mr. Feld's affection for high-concept excess. In addition to his interest in props, appurtenances, and theatrical regalia as catalysts for movement investigations — sometimes in the manner of performance art — he has an inability to judiciously prune or edit his work. An exception was the closing piece, "Isis in Transit," a vehicle for ex-Martha Graham dancer Fang-Yi Sheu, who made a welcome return to New York.
The evening opened with "Backchat," which presents three bikers scaling a sheer plane studded with holes in the manner of climbing walls. "Backchat" might as well be called "Brachiate," given the amount of time that the three spend swinging suspended from pegs. In 2006, New York City Ballet performed it as part of an all-Feld evening, and NYCB's Adrian Danchig-Waring was back Wednesday to perform it here. He was joined by Anthony Bryant and Wu-Kang Chen. The soundtrack by Paul Lansky is a babble of breathy, scatty chat. The three men rappel in rapid and slow motion, strike poses, mesh together, and rub and gyrate against the wall. The aural hubbub pauses for breath, and then burbles again. The three men operate slantwise, in unison or counterpoint, or staggered and stacked overlap. Mr. Feld shows great ingenuity in positioning these three in every way that the frieze-like demands of the set allow. Nevertheless, one's interest and attention flag well before the exhibition is over.
"Pursuing Odette" pits a solo performer, Ha-Chi Yu, against the grandiosity of Mahler's Adagietto. The title is made explicit as Ms. Yu's limbs become double-jointed, inverted, retractable in the manner of birds. Mr. Feld hedges his bets by costuming Ms. Yu with one foot in pointe shoe, and one shoeless, working on relevé, and intimates bifurcated identity as well as a hobbling, wounded fowl. Both Mr. Feld's rhetoric and Ms. Yu's performance held their own against the Adagietto from Mahler's Symphony No. 5.
The next two numbers on the program were performed by students of all ages from Ballet Tech, Mr. Feld's school that offers children free tutelage in ballet. In the first, "Quickstep," Jeremy Summerville leaves home base — a ballet barre at the back of the stage — to traverse the wide world by way of sallies and circuits around the stage. He's then joined by a crowd of mates who jog, strut, amble, and shoot hoops. The music by Steve Martland suggests a PoMo marching band. In "Dirty Polkas," which follows, the oom-pah-pah is courtesy of Johann Strauss. Here, Angela Cascone and a surrounding sisterhood wield big inflated blue balloons, which become lily pads from which they launch frog-like hops, or stand-ins for swimming pools when they strike diving poses over them, or bustles clutched to their behinds. Then the boys come back, their own yellow balloons in tow. It all seemed like a cross between Disney's "Fantasia" and a Busby Berkeley fantasy.
After the intermission came "Undergo," performed to music by Meredith Monk, which sounded like staccato exhalations into a sound box. Mr. Chen was back, mostly wandering around on his own, and countered the orgiastic gyrations of Mr. Bryant, Christopher Vo, and Ms. Yu. Someone got tangled into cellophane and then, at the end, Mr. Chen unrolled a construction of textured paper that spooled down from the ceiling. "Undergo" was long, repetitive, and portentous, but not deadly.
The best thing about the program was "Isis in Transit," which proved that Graham's psychosexual voyages continue to provide fertile ground for contemporary reworking. The scenery by Mimi Lien sowed the stage with sculptural elements in the manner of Graham's theatrical topography. The music was the swelling minimalism of Steve Reich. The piece's ostensible subject was the Egyptian legend of Isis and Osiris, which details the way that Isis resurrects and reassembles the remains of her assassinated consort long enough to become pregnant by him. Ms. Sheu wended through a Plexiglas thicket of flexible but determinedly upright trunks, spun on a dish pivoting on the ground, then burrowed into a Plexiglas sarcophagus. Finally, for an apotheosis she levitated into something suggesting a hang glider's harness. Wearing the bikini and bandeaux of an Egyptian or Cretan entertainer, Ms. Sheu was as powerfully lithe and emotionally intense as always.
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