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Do IT this week: Layering
Dance company restages Heinz Poll's first work in Akron, 'Elegiac Song'
Published on Sunday, Aug 16, 2009
The modern dance company, rooted in the ballet tradition, was the festival's sole company to perform a work by the late Poll, founding artistic director of the former Ohio Ballet. The mournfully beautiful Elegiac Song, a restaging of Poll's first work in Akron, was one of the high points of the evening.
The expressionist piece, inspired by Poll's memories of wartorn Germany, featured principal dancer Katie Gnagy intermittently on pointe in a long, flowing red dress with a black cape. A chorus of stone-faced war widows at first rebuffed her. Pain, fear and tension came to life through Shostakovich's somber String Quartet No. 8 as well as disturbingly stark images such as the women's clenched fists as they leapt across the stage.
Jane Startzman, festival director and a former Ohio Ballet dancer, restaged Elegiac Song, working to authenticate the original work's steps, style, costumes and lighting. Verb Ballets, run by former Poll student Margaret Carlson, is committed to preserving Poll's contemporary ballets, having performed Elegiac Song previously in 2006 while Poll was dying.
The dance's grieving chorus, in brown and blue dresses with black capes, took one slow step at a time and paused, as if following a casket down a church aisle. Gathered in a mournful cluster, each on one knee with the other knee pointed straight up, they created a diagonal effect with the hems of their dresses that was arresting in its geometry. This flock of sad birds created haunting imagery as they later covered their faces with their capes to create mourning veils.
Gnagy danced with a seemingly distant love (Brian Murphy), who eventually dissolved away. The new widow, lit in red, finally joined in the others' sorrowful dance.
Although principal dancer Gnagy appeared wooden at times, this dance still carried raw pain. In the end, Trad Burns' breathtaking re-creation of Thomas Skelton's original lighting showed only Gnagy's hands reaching out beseechingly, fingers spread and trembling.
Playfulness, attitude
Friday evening's outdoor program began with the modern dance piece Urban Study, where the ensemble exhibited plenty of self-assured swagger and attitude, both on and off pointe. Seven women wore short black skirts and cutoff tops, with four men in black pants and netted tanks.
The dance started with a playful energy, with couples piggybacking and one male dancer lifting a female with her back to the audience, her legs akimbo marionette-style. The 2002 piece was choreographed by Ginger Thatcher to music by Annie Gosfield, who incorporated recorded city sounds, including what sounded like a clanging ferry bell into her largely dissonant music.
Her piece, Burnt Ivory and Loose Wires, included a metallic piano section that sounded like the instrument run amok. This urban playground evoked plenty of grittiness and attitude, with the lights coming up at one point for the company to stare down the audience before stalking away. In its final moments, arm motions made the performance feel like a Madonna Vogue video.
Duet memorable
Urban Study's shifting moods included a memorable duet between Brian Murphy and Jennifer Moll Safonovs set to scratchy violin, with the couple's bodies sculpted by shadow. Moll Safonovs was exquisite here and in the Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux with Murphy, a Balanchine piece full of romance and daring fish dives (where the man scoops the woman so her head is near the floor and her legs are in the air ). In this neoclassical piece, Murphy displayed intense confidence with his bravura leaping athleticism, and Moll Safonovs went beyond technical excellence to share warm personality with her winsome smile.
For its final dance, Verb Ballets' Lady Be Good captured a pop culture trend — the American public's huge appetite for ballroom dance (think Dancing with the Stars). In Lady Be Good, which had its world premiere in Cleveland Heights this summer, the men started out miming dancing with partners but looked overjoyed when the women, dressed in jewel-toned gowns, joined them.
The all-Gershwin arrangements included Sting's mellow singing Someone to Watch Over Me and violinist extraordinaire Joshua Bell playing But Not For Me. The piece, choreographed by prolific ballroom dance maker Gary Pierce, wasn't full of flash, but it was a light, accessible confection to end a lovely summer of dance under the stars.
Arts writer Kerry Clawson may be reached at 330-996-3527 or kclawson@thebeaconjournal.com.
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