Eliot Feld.ELIOT FELD Born: Brooklyn, New York Studied: School of American Ballet, New Dance Group, High School of Performing Arts, Richard Thomas. Performed: At age twelve with New York City Ballet as the Child Prince in George Balanchine's original production of "The Nutcracker" and in the JOYCE THEATER The Joyce Theater is a 472-seat dance performance venue located in the Chelsea area of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The Joyce Theater Foundation, the organization founded in 1982 that operates the theater, also owns the Joyce SoHo dance center located in a , NEW YORK New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , NY OCTOBER 21-NOVEMBER 7, 2004 Eliot Feld has reinvented himself yet again with his ManDance Project, his first choreographic venture since folding Ballet Tech in 2003. For the new company of five men and one woman, including two guests from New York City Ballet New York City Ballet, one of the foremost American dance companies of the 20th cent. It was founded by Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine as the Ballet Society in 1946. , he's created half a dozen new dances full of theatrical gimmickry gim·mick·ry n. pl. gim·mick·ries 1. An array or abundance of gimmicks. 2. The use of gimmicks. Noun 1. and obsessive movement. Feld's habit of leaving the front curtain raised between dances is a wise choice here; scene changes are extensive but fascinating to watch and less predictable than the dances. What's intriguing about Feld's choreography are the unlikely physical gyrations he puts his dancers through, such as the superhero-like scrabbling on a plywood sculpture he and Mimi Lien devised for the opening piece, Backchat, danced by three ethnically diverse, exotically beautiful men: Wu-Kang Chen, Nickemil Conception, and Jason Jordan, wearing colorful hip hopinspired costumes by Camille Assaf. Flipping over the top of the wall, they hang by their hands, doing zigzagging footwork on the vertical surface, jeteing in slow motion, and huddling together in sculptural tableaus. What's frustrating about Feld's work is his unvarying method of introducing phrase after phrase and repeating each in canonic permutations until the next motif replaces it--like watching insects going through genetically programmed routines for no apparent reason other than it's their destiny. In Proverb, guest Sean Suozzi illuminates himself with tiny, powerful lights on his palms. He traces his limbs, throwing intriguing shadows on the rear wall. In one section he obscures the lights only to reappear in a new location (recalling David Parsons' signature Caught). He turns the lights at us, making him invisible, then on his face, as he approaches us. Clever ideas, but the premise wears thin long before the Steve Reich score does. Suozzi's NYCB NYCB New York City Ballet NYCB New York Community Bank colleague Damian Woetzel skitters charmingly through Jawbone jaw·bone n. The maxilla or, especially, the mandible. to David Lang's music, played by onstage bass clarinetist Evan Ziporyn. Tap-dance-like footwork and twitchy twitch·y adj. twitch·i·er, twitch·i·est 1. Characterized by jerky or spasmodic motion: the twitchy whiskers of a cat. 2. Nervous; jittery. knee vibrations make him look as if small animals were trying to escape from his trousers. The charm of Jawbone lies in the interaction between the performers, but only the first two performances had live music. "A Stair Dance" (aural pun probably intended, though the dance is dedicated to Gregory Hines) sends its five dancers endlessly running up and down five adjacent step units in intricate traffic patterns. If you've seen Feld's Aurora I and II, you've seen the same dance on slippery ramps instead of stairs. FOR MORE INFORMATION: www.ballettech.org |
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