Russell Maliphant really brought a trio to the Lam Research Center Theatre, Buena Center for the Arts, October 13 and 14 under the auspices of S.F. Performances in one of those 60 minute performances without intermission, fast becoming de rigeur mode for modern dance ensembles. The title was Afterlight.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the evening followed the performance, when Maliphant’ commented about his association with Michael Hulls whose lighting creates an atmosphere enhancing, perhaps structuring the movement quality. Adding to the ambiance was the Gnossiennes1-4 of Erik Satie, placing the patterns executed by Thomasin Gulgec, Silvina Cortes and Gemma Nixon clearly in the realm of personal rumination.
Maliphant also said the genesis of Afterlight stemmed from a Sadler’s Wells Commission for its 2009 Spirit of Diaghilev season. He went beyond his Royal Ballet training to study not only t’ai ch’i and ch’i gong, but the Rolfing Method of Structural Integration, contact improvisation, capoeira and yoga. Hitching such diverse movement principles to a study of Vaslav Nijinsky’s drawings brought him to what was seen on stage.
At the opening,Gulgec was seen in movements balletomanes could recognize as influenced not only by the circles, exaggerated eyes and heads in Nijinsky’s drawings but by the character of Petrouchka in that most perfect of dance theatre productions. Thomasin seemed to embody the drawings as well as the character of that puppet. Silvina Cortes and Gemma Nixon brought to the piece touches of Nijinsky’s third work, Jeux, all backed by the limpid Satie compositions.
Most difficult was where it led. After the trio’s appearances and the exposition evoking the brief Nijinsky career, nothing seemed resolved. The piece floated onward until the music’s end. The dancing was elegant, skilled, the stage spare, the lighting and music intimate and evocative; that was the entire sum. No convention in modern dance these days seems to require a conventional conclusion to an idea or an exposition. Russell Maliphant hued to this line of permission.
With all the resources, music, lighting and participating dancers, what a pity.
mywesterneye/woollywesterneye 