DANCE REVIEW: Stephen Petronio Company at MASS MoCA
Dance
April 9, 2010
Review by Anna Rogovoy
Upon entering MASS MoCA’s Hunter Center for the Stephen Petronio Company’s performance of I drink the air before me, audience members were greeted by the sight of several company members warming up onstage, ropes being strung throughout the house, and a man in a bedraggled sailor’s costume and bushy gray false beard muttering “cellphones off” and “don’t give me any sass.”
That man was Stephen Petronio, and the evening of dance that followed this strange introduction was a testament to his legacy as one of the great choreographers of our age.
The 10th annual co-presentation by MASS MoCA and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, I drink the air before me was created last year in celebration of the company’s 25th anniversary season.
In the post-performance Q&A with Jacob’s Pillow executive director Ella Baff, Petronio noted that his most immediately previous project, Bloom, created in collaboration with singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright, “was a very uplifting work, so I thought I’d do something a little darker.” Petronio drew inspiration for the work from the architecture and span of storms, creating a movement vocabulary that “tornadoes up the spine” in exuberant twirls, leaps, and extensions.
An hour-long work, I drink the air before me begins with a woman wearing black and white striped pants, a white top, and a long black cloak. Moving with otherworldly grace and fluidity, she is reminiscent of the sprite Ariel from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, from which the work takes its name: “I drink the air before me, and return / Or ere your pulse twice beat.”
In the myriad duets, trios, quartets, and group sections that follow, the powerful dancers of Petronio’s company engage in visceral, sensual movement that draws on classical ballet vocabulary as well as the most contemporary, innovative forms. With effortlessly lifted limbs, spiraling turns, and airborne shapes that build in intensity, Petronio tracks the upward arc of a storm until the ensemble reaches a beautifully manic peak.
A former dancer with the Trisha Brown Company, Stephen Petronio is a veteran performer and choreographer. Still relatively new to the scene, however, is composer Nico Muhly, whose score for I drink the air before me is an elaborately textured pseudo-classical masterpiece. Petronio described his reaction to hearing Muhly’s music for the first time as “I wasn’t sure what genre it was. It was constantly changing.” This mutable quality provides a dynamic accompaniment to Petronio’s restless, ever-shifting choreography.
Prodigious in their respective fields, Stephen Petronio and Nico Muhly have created a whirlwind performance that leaves the audience ruminating and desiring more.
Anna Rogovoy studies dance and English literature at Bennington [Vt.] College.
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Propeller
Reddit
Magnoliacom
Newsvine
Technorati
