Juan Michael Porter II - Page 6

Somewhere in the second act of BLOOD BOUNDARY there is an interesting play to be found with alert performances and a powerful storyline that seamlessly resolves. Of course one has to sit through the long slog of act one's 'exposition mountain' to get to there.

Though effectively retired from performing since 1996, Darshan Singh Bhuller recently started taking classes at Gibney Dance and rehearsing Mark Morris Dance Center in NYC. The reason? He is dancing at the upcoming gala celebration honouring Nadine Senior, the founding principal of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance who passed in January 2016.

Moshe Yassur's direction is bold and intelligent. Eli Rosen's translation is clear. Susannah Norris-Lindsay's costumes are simple and effective. Unfortunately most of the performances are delivered in one mode: whiny, angsty, and loud.

This simple folk tale focuses on falling in love, taking on responsibility, and learning how to fly. Told through fantastic music, a clever use of masks, and puppetry, BEFORE THE SUN AND MOON casts a spell of enchantment across the entire audience.

The thunderclap of energy that opened LOVELESS TEXAS on Friday evening was enough to jolt even the most tired of businessmen awake. Almost everything about this joyful musical is first rate, from the production values to the amazing tech crew to the excellent performers who belt it out to the rafters.

LOVE IS DEAD! is a modern day penny-dreadful, though with more South Park style than Grand Guignol wit and style to balance it out.

This artfully square rendering of a radio studio serves as the set for Radicals in Miniature, an oral history that excavates the lives of non-celebrities. Created by Ain Gordon and Talvin Wilks - Gordon is joined in performance by Josh Quillen - Radicals begins with its performers chanting the word 'fan' over and over again while unleashing a litany of facts that would be obscure even if their subject matter weren't.

With much pretending at being someone who may or may not have been there - and tons of fun puns in this toiling word-play of a French farce - our minds are sent into a dizzying dervish of delight as the four main characters battle it out over who was a true genius and what the meaning of meaning amounts to once those geniuses have left the room.

The state of any company's dancing can be gauged by looking at how it performs its founder's work. Of course that is no easy feat to assess with City Ballet, what with its glorious repertoire. All the same, Wednesday October 12th's program found the company disconcertingly off the mark. In politics, we follow the money; in ballet, we follow the casting.

'Lovely, never, never change. Keep your breathless charm. Won't you please arrange it? 'Cause I love you.' Those glorious Dorothy Fields penned lyrics to Jerome Kern's evergreen 'The Way You Look Tonight' bubbled through my head during Kilowatts Dance Theatre's joyful performance of Jaime Shannon's 'Flights and Follys'. It was just a couple of swells dancing with their lady-friends to the type of tunes that Gram and Pops listened to when new; back when 'it weren't no sin' to revel in the unabashed sunshine of life. How wonderful to visit those times again.

A highlight of this year's Erasing Borders Festival was that it took place on Indian Independence Day; perhaps that is why each artist infused the work with such celestial splendor. We opened with Carolina Prada of Colombia - who is based in New Dehli, India - performing the choreography of her Guru, Janmejoy Sai Babu in the Mayurbhanj Chhau style. It should be noted that each artist seemed to personify a specific human virtue. In the case of Ms. Prada, that virtue was intimacy. I felt as if she were dancing for me alone during her majestic solo. This piece showed the embodiment of feminine and masculine energy in one godly being. With her extreme extension, gravity defying barrel turns, leaps and bounds, perfect balances, and tremendous expression, Ms. Prada proved the perfect incarnation of God as a dual gendered being.

A gracious speech given by Jonathan Hollander - Artistic Director of Battery Dance Company - opened the 35th annual Battery Dance Festival. There was a welcome emphasis on all that went into making this festival possible, including calls for thanks to: Council member Margaret Chin and her continued support, American Express for two years of support, Holiday Inn for giving eighty free rooms - for the full run of the festival - to out-of-town artists, Mary McCormick and Funds for the City of New York for their support, Air India for flying the participating artists of India to New York, and the doctors of Weill Cornell who were on standby 'just in case'. Mr. Hollander closed his remarks with a special thank you to the main sponsors of the festival: 'The artists; they do it because they want to be here in front of you, the public.'

'OMG! Mom and Dad are being such phonies, so I'm going to run away and marry a pirate. Before you think about that too much, let me distract you with this show-stopping production number!' Actually 'TINK!' wasn't as vacuous as all that, though - true to the exclamation point in its title - it did tend to deliver narrative details in bold plot points. Still, Tony Marino's barrel-of-laughs filled book, aided by Lena Gabrielle's tuneful score, with an assist from Greg Kerestan on lyrics ensured that 'TINK!' stood out as one of the more delectable treats in this year's New York Musical Festival smorgasbord.

There may be 'no second acts in American lives' - thank you, Fitzgerald - and yet Enrique Cruz DeJesus has lived so many exciting chapters that seven or eight books could be devoted to his journey. Mr. DeJesus has been the Artistic Director and Resident Choreographer of Alpha Omega Theatrical Dance Company since 1998, inheriting directorship of this nearly 45 years old company from Andy Torres during a time when the future was anything but certain. Having led a successful concert dance career - that saw him working with Eleo Pomare, Talley Beatty, Gary Deloatch, Martial Roumain and George Faison - Mr. DeJesus transitioned in to a highly successful theatre career with his stage debut at Shakespeare in the Park's production of 'Measure for Measure' under the direction of George C. Wolfe.

Three men engage in acrobatic entanglements that transform from free-moving sculptural configurations to crumpled masses of bodies that roll all over the floor of a darkly lit fog filled stage. Resembling an improv-ed floor-work exercise full of incongruously musical acrobatic manipulations, this indulgent routine - replete with lingering touches and mashing of bodies into each other - revealed little about its performers and even less about itself the longer it went on.

Though it was hot and muggy on the evening of July 24th, 2016, the jam-packed audience at Manhattan Movement & Arts Center was grinning agog like newly minted parents infatuated with their brood. The cause: a troupe of adorable bambine from Staten Island Ballet performing Ellen Tharp's 'Tarantella'. Though only one of these girls was delivering the movement nel modo Italiano, they were all so lively with their tambourine strikes and hops that even the most curmudgeonly of audience members applauded with gusto.

If we've been here before, why aren't the returns diminishing? The sequence repeats itself all night long in continuous loops and yet the eye never wanders. To the contrary one is drawn in deeper with each new repetition. Is it the weather-beaten beauty of the performers and the total investment with which they infuse every gesture? Is it the fusion of technology, holograms, and art? Looking around at the audience in The Sheen Center on July 13th, 2016, one is taken by the fact that the patrons are mature in age and completely in sync with this new mode of technology. Going off of appreciation alone, it seems that there is not a luddite in the room for this multimedia spectacle of art that would not look out of place at Coachella. This is art that “younger audiences” think of when they ask for something cool.

Well, yeah. I guess I am self-made. Because - thinking in terms of what my goals have been all my life - I've had very specific ideas around what I've wanted to do since I was about three. I can remember back to the day, the time of day, what I was doing, when the light bulb went off and I said to myself, "That's what I want to do." I pretty much focused on that. I said it on that day and I've gotten to the point where I'm in the middle of it happening. It's hinting towards what I see, what my goals have been. But it's not out of reach. It could happen. It's just a matter of putting the time into that and making it happen. It has happened already and now it's about allowing it to happen again and maybe getting more exposure to let it expand. My earliest inspiration is pretty much what helped shape myself into what I am. I can pinpoint who those people are and at some point I allowed it to… I let those landmarks inspire, I held onto them, and continued to step forward as the man. But it pretty much started with the Sonny and Cher show.

The maxim 'Go big or go home' holds. That's one thing that can be said for Korea National University of Art's 'K Arts; Rising Stars of Korea Gala': they dance big; Bolshoi big. The leg extensions were never below 9 o'clock and more often than not floated past 12 o'clock; the pirouettes were never fewer than two and frequently zoomed from three to six; the grand jetes soared with clean splits every single time; and the manner always roared 'I LOVE TO DANCE AND I LOVE YOU TOO'!

Lines of light illuminate the pathway of a woman in flight. Her focus is razor sharp as she surveys men soaring around her in configurations that fluctuate between the flight patterns of birds and planes. Eventually these men hoist and entangle her in a never-ending series of lifts that keep her suspended as she writes on the air with her body. Skillfully made 'dancing for the sake of dancing' is a special treat to drink in especially when it stars a captivating wellspring of power like Alexandra Berger. For Dušan Týnek Dance Theatre's July 7th opening night concert at New York Live Arts, the radiance that Ms. Berger beamed in this opening piece proved hypnotic.