NO FAREWELL TO ARMS AT CARLITZ DANCE
By Paul Hertelendy
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
and dance
Week of Jan. 11-18, 2009
Vol. 11, No. 47
The word hasn’t
gotten around on the elusive Natasha
Carlitz Dance Company. But it will, it will.
The
opening night at the Cowell Theater Jan. 9 drew too
small an audience---a smattering of about 100---but the fully committed
performers,
if they took note, were no less committed to their mission.
Carlitz
created all seven of the dances, most of them
recent or new. Her style features nine bare-foot women in bright,
form-fitting
outfits showing off---no, not legs! It was arms, swaying captivatingly
like willow
limbs in the wind, unlike any other troupe around.
This
is a trim, well-drilled modern troupe with fluid
lines, even when dropping to the stage in a springy corkscrew fashion.
The NCDC
has the usual limitations of single-gender ensembles to be sure. But
the sense
of ensemble unity is extraordinary as groups come and go to the wings
with
aplomb, at times leaving difficult numbers like a quintet forming
smooth
formations on stage. Clearly, this mysterious four-year-old company
that
provides neither address nor phone number is poised to move up to the
next
step, whether in transparency, virtuosity, choreographic variety or
gender
diversity.
The
overall theme for the weekend run was “Time Flies (when
you’re having fun).” But the focal dance “Time. Running. Out” was the
least
consistent all night, often looking like a high-energy aerobics dance
class. (Running
in place? Sports bras? Please, give me a break!)
Carlitz
created the first science-inspired dance I've seen
since Margaret Jenkins' “Strange Attractors” in the 1990s. “Principles
of
Magnetism” played out dual polarities and attractions, as well as
dancers’ circular
lines suggesting magnetic lines of force around the Earth.
There
was daring in “Triptych,” three different devotional solos
showing off, improbably, the dancers’ backs (Jetta Martin, Tiffany Yee,
Christina
Chelette) more than the front.
The
ensembles jelled in “Tempus fugit” (2008), using the
last two movements of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. The slow movement
was a bit
of slow motion, satin-smooth, reminiscent of choreographer Antony
Tudor, with
dancers casting coy and enigmatic glances out toward the house, and
making
effortless falls and rises to the stage. Movable platforms not only
spotlighted
solos, they also revealed dancers in
angular positions hidden within, like 19th-century
mechanical dolls
come to life.
Engaging
symmetries pervaded the new duo “Figment.” But I
couldn’t help thinking during the lifts that this was an obvious boy-girl concept that had to be executed by
two women, Annie
Thatcher-Stephens and Christina Chelette.
Carlitz,
who took a final-curtain bow with her San
Francisco-based company, explains that the recent “Time” works were
done during
her father’s terminal illness, when the passage of time, and the
optimum use of
it, became a paramount issue.
Her company is
something close to a one-woman band, wherein she takes on all the
related tasks short of flying scenery.
All
the music, which
was both popular and classical, was prerecorded and neatly amplified in
the
inviting, intimate San Francisco theater.
Natasha Carlitz Dance Company, at Cowell Theater, S.F.,
Jan. 9-10. For info: Go online.
©Paul Hertelendy 2009
#
Paul Hertelendy has been
covering
the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with
relish
-- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never
weakly)
will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with
forays
into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local
artists as well.
#
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