The Yard, the Island's resident summer dance colony in Chilmark, opened its season with two dramatically different but equally innovative presentations. The evening began with Michelle Mola and The Troupe performing "For Tracks That Loop and Record," an edgy and complex piece inspired by improvisational work co-directed by Ms. Mola and Zack Winokur.
Each of The Troupe's sequences challenged the audience to think about interactions between the body and how it moves. Photos by Ralph Stewart
The second half of the evening featured four comic works by choreographer Dudley Brooks and Run for Your Life!... it's a Dance Company.
The combination of new work from two such different dance groups, both awarded this year's company residencies, provided an exhilarating evening. Their performances began a special weekend-long Bennington
College Connection, honoring The Yard founder, the late Patricia Nanon, who was a Bennington alumna. Ms. Nanon's daughter, Victoria Woolner Samuels, who co-sponsored the evening with Anne Gallagher of Oak Bluffs, spoke briefly about her mother during the intermission between the two performances.
The Troupe conveys drama with gesture and movement.
The show began with a single male dancer, dressed in a dark suit, his back to the audience. His movements accompanied a recorded musical track by turn-of-the-century Italian futurist composer Luigi Russolo and his brother Antonio. The sound was intriguingly antiquated and scratchy.
As if inspired by the Russolo brothers' "machine music," four (eventually five) female dancers marched onto the bare stage with its gray scrim backdrop. Their costumes, short beige tunics with tights and black high-heeled lace shoes, seem to help articulate the dancers' muscular and athletic limb movements. They often used their shoes to create an effect that came close to tap dance.
Another grouping, this time of male dancers (one was a female dressed to look male) capitalized on masculine-gendered movements, particularly through its use of the stage walls as elements the dancers could move into and against. To this dance novice, the dancers' motions often seemed reminiscent of the Connecticut-based dance company, Pilobolus.
The piece by The Troupe dancers was followed by a male-female duet, which seemed to investigate more abstract aspects of male versus female movement. The Troupe's final sequence consisted of a solo work presenting a dancer wearing a white corset. Stays from the corset extended over her head in loops like the ribs of an old-fashioned hot-air balloon, becoming the source of an elaborate, modern pas de deux that ended when the dancer removed the corset.
Each of The Troupe's sequences challenged the audience to think about interactions between the body and its movements.
The eight featured dancers were Allison Cave, Meredith Glisson, Allysen Hooks, Logan Frances Kruger, Ian Robinson and Fernando Sabino de Jesus, as well as Ms. Mola and Mr. Winokur.
The natural elements on Friday night added their own sound effects in the form of thunder and a downpour of rain during the second half of the evening. But this spontaneous sturm und drang did not detract from the four comic dance pieces by Run for Your Life!...it's a Dance Company of West Coast choreographer Dudley Brooks. Formed in 1989 by Mr. Brooks and two others who have since moved on, the company's deconstructions of classical dance and conventions kept the audience amused and charmed.
The second half of the evening began with "A Short Solo," in which dancer Erica Hartono, dressed in a lavender tutu of sorts, performed a table ballet with her hands in toe shoes and Mr. Brooks working behind her as if his hands were hers. Music was provided by an elegant Chopin piece rescued from cliché by the comic execution.
Master of limerick nonsense Edward Lear provided the lyrics for "D Was a Dancer." Dancer Andrew Broaddus was joined by Erica Hartono, singing Lear's verse set to music by Mr. Brooks. Having the lyrics included in the program would have been an asset.
"A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Dance" poked fun at pedantic interpretations of musical notations by "Professor" Brooks, who told the audience he had discovered a way for dancers to interpret music by reading it. Using screen projections and a variety of musical notations from Faisible, Moralil, Ponchielli, Tchaikovsky, and A. Nony Moose, Mr. Brooks encouraged Ms. Hartono and Mr. Broaddus to demonstrate his revolutionary interpretive technique.
The rapturous "Valse in C# Minor" from "Les Sylphides by Chopin became "Les Sillyphides" in Mr. Brooks's hands, with help from RFYL! co-founders Mathew Child and Rose Gray. Mr. Broaddus used glass balls as props for juggling while Ms. Hartono sang in a piece that focused on the beauty in hand movements.
All of the dancers inspired cheers and whistles from an obviously appreciative audience, a sign that this year's The Yard resident companies know how to please and entertain Vineyard audiences.
