Fall for Dance Opens With Pomp and Pageantry

Fall for Dance, an annual event since 2004, is like an old-time vaudeville bill, programmed with concert dance.On Tuesday night, its opening act was Shen Wei Dance Arts, which performed excerpts from Mr. Shen’s “Map,” first staged in 2005. Mr. Shen recently choreographed the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics and, here in “Map,” he also evinces his taste for mass pageantry and people-moving, allying minimal dance and music to orchestrated collectivism on the march. Performed to music by Steve Reich, “Map” finds Mr. Shen weaving polyphonic strands that transmit what’s in the music, but also add visual complexity. The 14 dancers are frequently divided into multiple phalanxes. Mr. Shen is aware of the limitations of minimalism; he does what he needs to do to effectively populate and mobilize the stage.Next came an intriguing New York debut by Thailand’s Pichet Klunchun Dance Company, which gave the world premiere of Mr. Klunchun’s “Chui Chai.” The program notes explained that this dance is meant to recount the tale of Princess Benyaki, instructed by her regent to transform herself into Sita, who is the “queen of his enemy.” Mr. Klunchun succeeds in the sometimes dicey attempt to hybridize traditional forms of stylization with contemporary tropes and steps.In silence, Benyaki and her handmaidens appear and wield their hyper-extended wrists and flexed attitudes. The music, a skirling by Sinnapa Sarasas, starts, and the women form a semicircle behind Benyaki. All shift their weight from side to side, and then skitter in a circle, recalling the origins of Martha Graham’s voyages of self-exploration. Mr. Klunchun enters in black pants and a cap-sleeved top. He starts to emulate Benyaki, echoing her movements. Although we’re seeing two character identities merging, the explicit difference in the way the two are costumed — she’s in traditional ceremonial-theatrical regalia — seems to make a manifesto of modernistic distillation. The traditional vocabulary is in its embedded form, complete with accoutrements.Benyaki subsides offstage, but her entourage returns, moving in silent procession across an upstage corridor, while Mr. Klunchun waits downstage in darkness, finally moving upstage to join them, taking a place at the rear of their procession. Much of the time in “Chui Chai,” the dancers move with an unearthly, mesmerizing slowness.After the intermission, some very funny comic relief was provided by Keigwin + Company, which performed “Fire” from Larry Keigwin’s “Elements.” The crazy-quilt soundtrack was chosen for its ability to complement a gag. Jenn Freeman, Nicole Wolcott, and Julian Barnett flounce in time to David Daniels’s execution of Handellian fioritura. Then they remove parts of their garishly incongruous costumes — sequin beanies and chiffon handkerchiefs wrapped around their wrists, Roaring Twenties-style — and engage in some elaborately prosaic downtime, involving self-examination and relaxation, and unforeseen entanglements. Then, as Patsy Cline sings “Crazy,” Ms. Wolcott gibbers in uncertain synchronization with the soundtrack. Finally Mr. Barnett mixes balletic scampering with the struts, clenches, and provocations of rap music.Concluding the program was the National Ballet of Canada, dancing Jirí Kylián’s 1980 “Soldier’s Mass,” which the troupe took into its repertoire in 1995. Performed to Martinu’s “Field Mass” cantata, “Soldier’s Mass” wears its heart on its sleeve, but employs angst-ridden gestures in the manner of abstract choreographic units, blending them with both balletic and modern dance fundamentals.Mr. Kylián often likes to work at odd angles to the music, making jagged phrases even more staccato than they should be. Bodies are supine, or hoisted by mates into the air. Rather than linear progression, there are recurring motifs: The soldiers are comrades, casualties, and they are sacrificed, sanctified, memorialized.The 12 men work very hard, and project belief in the material, which can easily seem banal. They bravely assume some uncomfortable modern dance stances. Yet the men often seem excessively balletic here; although much of the vocabulary is balletic, it cries out for the bristling attack of modern dance, which is missing.

Fall for Dance Opens With Pomp and Pageantry

Fall for Dance Opens With Pomp and Pageantry

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