Here & Now from Seattle Dance Collective

I saw on social media last summer that Seattle Dance Collective was working with choreographers in some kind of residency. But the summer came and went without a performance – live or virtual – and I thought maybe there wouldn’t be an SDC production this year. Then I got an announcement that their new program, Here & Now, would be available for streaming on Veteran’s Day. Just as I’ve come to expect from SDC, the program was both enjoyable and challenging, often at the same time.

Here & Now

The program comprises three new works choreographed during SDC’s summer residency on Vashon Island. It’s a short program with three pieces. All the choreographers are new to the fledgling company, and so are most of the dancers; the resulting program looked a lot different from anything they’ve produced so far. In just my last post, I commented on how rare and exciting it is to see something completely new in ballet, and less than a week later, here comes SDC with a whole lot of different. Most of the program used completely unfamiliar vocabulary that I couldn’t hope to translate. Like a newly arrived tourist, I could only immerse myself in wonder at the birdsong of this foreign idiom.

To Dust by Juliano Nunes

Choreographed by Juliano Nunes
Directed by Bruno Roque
Filmed by Bruno Roque
Music by Travis Lake
Dancers: Alice Klock & Florian Lochner
Runtime: 8 minutes

The only thing I know about Juliano Nunes is that he’s young and from Brazil. Featuring two dancers who choreographed a different piece in the program, To Dust was, above all, interesting. I know, “It was interesting,” is what most people say when they didn’t like something and want to be nice. But to me, it’s a genuine compliment. I didn’t immediately love it the way I loved previous mind-blowers like “Mopey” or “Emergence.” But I was completely absorbed and engaged by every movement.

Travis Lake’s Erased Tapes-adjacent score falls into the “ponderous piano chords” school of neoclassical composition that only works for me sometimes. And Nunes’ choreography seems unrelated to the music, as if the score is only there for something to listen to while you watch the performance. A lot of contemporary dance does that, and except for “Mopey,” which seems to comment on that approach rather than use it, it’s not my preference.

What I did love was the partnering. “To Dust” was much less about the “dance” than about the way the dancers related to each other within it. And those movements were captivating. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes awkward, the dancers moved together, almost always in contact with one another, with the mesmerizing intensity of an anthill. I particularly loved the way they used each others’ hands and the strange transitions that referenced film. Shifting back and forth from silken languorousness to jerky acceleration was reminiscent of watching an old movie on stretched film, until one remembers that this filmed dance is digital.

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Where You Stay

Direction & Choreography: Robyn Mineko Williams
Music: Brian Case and Tenci
Dancers: Jacqueline Burnett, Jane Cracovaner, Andrew McShea, Noelani Pantastico, David Schultz and James Yoichi Moore
Runtime: 18 minutes

Between the matching bookends of the two pieces filmed inside a black box, Robyn Mineko Williams’ site-specific “Where You Stay,” was a different sort of beast. Her choreography is not entirely unfamiliar to me, because PNB performed “The Trees The Trees” in 2019. Thanks in large part to Alejandro Cerrudo, I have a Pavlovian drool response to the name Hubbard Street Dance, but Mineko Williams’ works tend to grab my head before my heart.

“Where You Stay” is definitely a film that includes dance, rather than a filmed dance. Embedded at Mukai Farm & Gardens, the house, landscape, and costumes all evoke the timeless elements of the mid-20^th century. The score alternates between an ominous modern drone and an achey, old-timey, Patsy Cline kind of country song. There’s a white couple, who mostly dance outside the house; a female couple at the center of it all who seem to be involved in a domestic dispute; and James Moore, who sometimes dances with another man and sometimes seems to be haunted by/following in the footsteps of his younger self/a previous generation. The various characters appear in each other’s stories like palimpsests along an uncertain timeline.

Because SDC is an API-led company and the choreographer is Japanese-American and the piece is specific to an issei farm, it’s tempting to read a story of immigration and shifting land ownership into the piece. But no linear narrative or direct allegory can be shoehorned into it. There was a dislocated feeling that was neither here or now; I felt like six-year-old me watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The music told me things were very serious, but I had no idea what was going on, and why is the shaving cream so scary?

And as satisfying as it is to deconstruct and analyze a work of art, mystified is good, too. After all, I still remember the shape of that Close Encounters mountain 40 years later.

5 Favorite Things by FLOCK

Choreographed by FLOCK (Alice Klock & Florian Lochner)
Directed by FLOCK & Bruno Roque
Filmed by Bruno Roque
Music by Wolff Bergen
Dancers: Jacqueline Burnett, Jane Cracovaner, Andrew McShea, Noelani Pantastico, David Schultz and James Yoichi Moore
Runtime: 23 minutes

Opening on a hand pressed to the camera lens, “5 Favorite Things” starts out seeming to be another film-based dance. And while it employs Bruno Roque’s characteristic play with angles and slow zooms in and out, it quickly settles in as another black box abstract ballet. Except with movements that once again are completely outside the vocabulary of a person like me who learned everything they know about dance at PNB. In fact, there’s hardly anything balletic about it at all. But it’s mercifully devoid of Contemporary Eric moves (aside from the odd hand on head).

Six dancers move in and out of the camera’s view, sometimes pairing up with the same disregard for gender seen in “Where You Stay.” Most of the time they all dance individually on a shared stage. Sometimes they come together in synch or mass partnering. At times they are almost like a jazz ensemble as everyone steps back to allow the focus to fall on once dancer. But more often it’s real life, with everyone doing their own thing until someone steps into their space.

I could make a few connections to the other pieces in the program and to the Alonzo King work recently performed at PNB (which is probably coincidence, since I think these were completed before PNB started rehearsing). But I really don’t know what to make of it. There’s no narrative and the music doesn’t give a lot of emotional clues. Even the title doesn’t give away much. Except, well, there are six people on stage, so if any one of them is the “me,” then the other five could be the favorite things. Maybe it’s FLOCK’s way of saying, “I love you guys, let’s play together again.” I hope it is, and I hope they do. I don’t understand the game yet. But I like the way they play.

The Details

Here & Now is available for streaming until November 21 through the SDC website. Tickets are $20.

{I received a complimentary ticket to view Here & Now. Opinions, as always, are my own.}