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Wandering Man

Steven LaBrie, the baritone in Jessica Lang’s The Wanderer. Photo by ulieta Cervantes
Steven LaBrie, the baritone in Jessica Lang’s The Wanderer. Photo by ulieta Cervantes

Last week, the choreographer Jessica Lang presented her new, fully-staged version of Shubert’s song-cycle Die Schöne Müllerin at BAM’s intimate Fishman Space. In it, she takes on the the lyricism of Schubert and  the poetry of Wilhelm Müller and gives it physical form. Her eight dancers fill the roles of protagonist, miller’s daughter, huntsman, and, more intriguingly, of the forces of nature and the brook in which the protagonist eventually drowns himself. Lang made a valiant effort; her approach is sensitive, well-informed, and consistently engaging. But the two languages—dance and son—only occasionally spoke to each other with eloquence, bringing about something more than the sum of various parts. Here’s my review, for DanceTabs.

And a longer a piece I wrote for The Nation, on the difficulty of combining vocal music and dance.

The cast of Jessica Lang's "The Wanderer." Photo by Julieta Cervantes
The cast of Jessica Lang’s “The Wanderer.” Photo by Julieta Cervantes
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Bill T. Jones and Co. Take on the Canon (for DanceTabs)

 

The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in "Ravel: Landscape or Portrait?" Photo by Paul B. Goode.
The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in “Ravel: Landscape or Portrait?” Photo by Paul B. Goode.

Here is my review of  the program of new works by Bill T Jones at the Joyce, in the company’s thirtieth anniversary season. Both works are set to “important” chamber music (Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major and Schubert’s Death and the Maiden),  performed here by the excellent Orion String Quartet.

And here is a short excerpt: “Mr. Jones holds his own, in part by not attempting to follow the music in any literal way. The choreography, which is described in the program as being made in collaboration with Janet Wong (Associate Artistic Director) and the dancers, has a pleasingly free, earthy, all-over-the-place quality. Each dancer has a story to tell and is allowed to do so; the stories, in turn, are artfully subdivided into smaller units (phrases) and re-distributed across the stage, thereby becoming themes, patterns, motifs…. The repeated phrases act as signposts, giving a sense of structure, much as the repeats do in a piece of music.”

I’m eager to hear what other people thought of the program…