Now Festival.

NOW FESTIVAL

Redcat, Los Angeles, CA July 21-August 6, 2005

More than 175 local dance, theater, and performance artists of varied stripes vied to perform in this year's New Original Works Festival, whose acronym (NOW) sums up its emphasis on process over product even as its full title bows to pre-occupations with the Next Big Thing.

That six of the nine coveted slots in the series were filled by postmodern, hip hop, and improvisational choreographers indicates the strength of a scene burgeoning with the arrival of such new-comers as Rodney Mason and Sara Wookey. Still, NOW's predilection with experimentation rendered it more of a gauge of potential rather than a final report card.

The charismatic Mason's Origins of Man featured the hip hop dancer and choreographer as a circus barker hawking the sideshow of his life, a dutiful son recalling his mother, the "dance Nazi," and a phantom character in a Rashamon-like story told by friends. The fragmented structure benefited from virtuosic hip hop moves choreographed by Rennie Harris (for whom Mason starred in the groundbreaking Rome and Jules). Mixing street jive and Shakespeare into the autobiographical layers, the hubris-and stereotype-skewering solo's many narrative threads, while at times convoluted, revealed a multifaceted artist.

In Love's Geography: Revisited, Wookey mapped desire across the distance between Amsterdam, where she has lived for the past decade, and her new home in Los Angeles. Poetic juxta-positions of text by performance studies scholar Peggy Phelan on an overhead projector predominated. Only late in the piece did a flurry of random eruptions send Wookey tilt-a-whirling through space. This embodiment of the disorientation of travel and love was comedic and cathartic, though its pervasive melancholia of loss ultimately rendered it as remote as the topography it charted.

Also engaging in the emotive resonance of space, former Trisha Brown dancer Popkin's Magic Carpet Solos marked the contours of intimacy rather than distance. One of the most satisfying premieres of the festival, this interlocking series of vignettes heightened and transformed one's perception of the theatrical space. Like the chorus of a song, Jennifer Dignan, Carolyn Hall, and Popkin began or concluded each section by gently tracing the outline of each other's bodies with their faces and a blind, animal need.

Additional high points were Victoria Marks' Not About Iraq and On Forgetting, companion dances that questioned the role of art during wartime. If it can accomplish anything, Marks seemed to answer, it is to expose the false sanctuary it offers. In the opening duet, the choreographer--donning Pollyanna optimism and matching seer-sucker dress--enthused and encouraged Taisha Paggett, whose unfolding ares and pregnant balances subtly shifted alongside Marks' increasingly ridiculous assurances that the performance was the realization of beauty and truth, until Paggett at last took center stage to counter Marks' assertions.

On Forgetting seethed with anger and grief underneath the slick, acrylic sheen of toothy grins and a relentlessly cheery hyperkineticism that propelled a cavorting ensemble (Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Flip A. Condeescu, Robin Prichard, Ally Voye, Eva Wilder, and Paggett) from one whirlwind parody of carefree dancing to the next, even as individual dancers crumpled and fell. Set to the slow burn of Glenn Branca's Symphony No. 1, On Forgetting made its point with about as much subtlety as a knitting needle jabbed in the ear. Which, then again, could have been the point.

The war in Iraq was also of concern in Simone Forti's Unbuttoned Sleeves, which saw the master improviser forgoing the structuring devices she's developed over many years to instead designate roles for collaborators Terrence Luke Johnson (a reluctant prophet), Sarah Swenson ("who objects"), and trombonist Douglas Wadle (he "who feels"). Forti remained a commanding presence as well as the narrative lynchpin, interweaving memories of her family's harrowing escape from Italy during World War II. Serendipitous conjunctions of motion and dialogue--Forti's strong suit--were scarce, however, with characters often roaming the stage in search of such a spark.

On the other hand, it was difficult not to read the Rudy Perez Performance Ensemble as Gertrude Stein's fathers and sons in the author's story intoned at the top of DoublePlay Revisited. Like Forti, Perez is a pioneer of postmodernism, unafraid to expand in new directions--here by collaborating with protege Stefan Fabry. Tethering Stein's verbal repetition to his rigorous architectonics proved to be an exciting marriage. Restrained movement sequences and text resounded with cumulative meaning. Though at times weighed down by ponderous pacing, this sprawling work for 15 dancers thrilled with an energy that embodied the mission of NOW. See www.redcat.org.

WANT MORE REVIEW?

Read about Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal (below), Project Fukurow, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Beverly Blossom, and Smuin Ballet at