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| (Photo: Dancers Rachel Gonsalves, Katy Hagelin, Courtney Dressner, and Tori McConnell in Controller Photo by Wesley Anderson) |
Second was Kiss it Good-bye, a duet that premiered earlier this year. Though the program notes billed it as a “dance about dancers,” it did not necessarily earn the rights to this broad definition since its narrative story depicted only one stereotypical type of dancer. The piece was meant to be lighthearted, with two friends competing against each other in an audition, laughing when the other falls down, and over indulging in ice cream when upset. The music choice seemed irrelevant and the acting portion of the performance seemed as superficial as the observations of dancers. There is a lot more to say about dance and dancers’ relationship to it, even jokingly.
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| (Dancers Christina Stockdale and Danny Boulet in Fly Through the Air Photo by Wesley Anderson) |
Fly Through the Air, a piece about professional runners, was another premiere. Dancer Christina Stockdale, clad in bike shorts, a sports bra, and tennis shoes, began by moving in slow motion. Stockdale had a gorgeous sense of control of her body and the sight of her muscles contracting and lengthening added to the movement phrases. Midway through the piece, the solo became a duet. This section surprisingly contained traditional balletic lifts which took the audience out of the world of running. However, the dancers’ focus on the finish line brought the audience back to the fictional world of the race.
Controller, the last premiere of the evening, was another piece in which Hagelin took her audience to a fantasy world, proving her mastery of fictional landscapes and narratives. In this world, Hagelin used exaggerated, cartoon-like characters to explore roles in the gaming world: The Player, The Developer, and The Game’s Characters. The appearance of each new game character was a real treat for the audience as the costumes were playfully bright and the movement delightfully near in quality and texture to that of a video game character. The hilarity of their costumes provided a comedic tone that rounded out the piece nicely. The dance resulted in an epic battle between the evil, goth-like players, the real world characters, the game characters, and the developers, with good winning out as it should.
