SARA DU|JOUR will be part of influential presentation at Museum of Arts & Design
Museum of Arts & Design
The Theater at MAD
2 Columbus Circle at 58th St. & Broadway
Friday, April 26, and Saturday, April 27, $20, 7:30
800-838-3006
www.madmuseum.org
The April edition of the Museum of Arts & Design’s third annual “Dance Under the Influence” series features another wide-ranging, eclectic collection of performers who will present a piece, then discuss the inspirations that went into its creation. New York City Ballet principal Jared Angle, whose brother, Tyler, is also an NYCB principal, blends the classical with the contemporary in the personal exploration Jared. Swedish dancer and choreographer Pontus Lidberg, the current resident artistic director of Morphoses and a filmmaker who has mounted productions for stage and screen, will show a duet from Warriors and a solo from Within (Labyrinth Within). For more than a quarter century, Susan Marshall & Company has been incorporating gesture, pattern, spoken word, and multimedia elements into such pieces as Arms, Kiss, and Frame Dances, which takes place in, out of, and through wooden boxes. And the wild and unpredictable bicoastal duo SARA DU|JOUR, consisting of Jordan Isadore and Nicole Bridgens, answer the question “What would happen if the extremes and ridiculousness of pop celebrity were to infiltrate the contemporary dance world?”
WITHIN (LABYRINTH WITHIN) features choreographer Pontus Lidberg performing a solo at Jacob’s Pillow (photo by Martin Nisser)
Update: The April 26 edition of Dance Under the Influence was a wide-ranging evening of movement and discussion on the small stage in the Museum of Arts & Design’s downstairs theater. Actually, the show begins upstairs in the lobby, where Susan Marshall & Company dancer Luke Miller performs Voice 1, standing silently in front of a microphone, moving slowly in place as people pass by; Darrin Wright does the same thing at the entrance to the theater. The presentation then kicked off with Morphoses resident artistic director Pontus Lidberg screening excerpts from three of his films: The Rain, in which two male dancers get hot and heavy in an erotic duet in a room being pounded by rain; Within (Labyrinth Within), in which Lidberg dances across an outdoor stage at Jacob’s Pillow; and Study No. 2, a beautiful underwater solo with an exciting twist at the end. That was followed by NYCB principal Jared Angle’s Jared, a work choreographed by Elena Demyanenko specifically for that shallow stage space as Angle makes his debut as a solo contemporary dancer, set to Elizabeth Hoffman’s “Soundendipities.” After a brief intermission, Susan Marshall & Company showed an excerpt from the work-in-progress Unstrung, including a passage with Christopher Adams, Kristin Clotfelter, Miller, Chin-I Chang, and Wright congregated at the middle of the shallow stage, moving left to right to music by David Lang and the Antlers. And then came the real showstopper, as SARA DU|JOUR’s Jordan Isadore and TJ Spaur exploded with Les Saras, a wild and funky in-your-face dance as the two hairy-legged performers rock the top knot, evoking classic girl groups and vintage photographs from the 1940s and ’50s as they prance about on the stage, with Isadore making riotous faces. Afterward, all of the contributors sat down for a fun Q&A moderated by series curator Valerie Gladstone. The MAD series concludes May 17-18 with Doug Elkins, Rashaun Mitchell, Ramya Ramnarayan, and Blakely White-McGuire.