Choreographer Elise Long is renowned for her epic, zany, community-based productions mixing popular American culture and world folk traditions. Since founding Spoke the Hub Dancing in 1979, she has also promoted and produced the work of young dancers, especially those who labor in Brooklyn's cultural nooks and crannies.

Spoke the Hub’s  “Gowanus Wildlife Preserve Showcase #8,” performed Friday and Saturday evening, March 27 and 28, in Spoke the Hub’s Space in the Gowanus Arts Building on Douglass Street in Brooklyn, is a wide-open  showcase created to give both emerging and established performing artists of all genres --- both traditional and wildly experimental --- a place and a vehicle to try out new and renewed music, dance, theater and multi-media works in front of a live audience.  As the creator of this showcase, and as a producer of hundreds of similar showcases here in Brooklyn over the past three decades, I have to say that I never tire of seeing new work, new faces, new efforts.  And yet, I also puzzle over the same pitfalls and missteps made by many young choreographers each season as they try to flesh out their own unique voices and put their own singular stamp in the ether.  Given all the creative activity around, it is still extremely rare to discover a young, and sometimes not so young, artist who is truly breaking new theatrical ground. This weekend’s concert was no exception--- a mixed bag of some delightful and imaginative new beginnings, some respectably solid but safe and ultimately forgettable choreography, and some old traditional work which brought new life, relevance, and even nostalgia to a diverse shared evening of music, theater and new dance work.

Musicians Jody Kruskal and Paul Friedman feel as comfortable onstage playing together as a pair of broken-in, walking shoes--- and I for one, was happy to surrender to their music and go strolling with them back in time.  That is not to say their music is worn out or that shoes can fiddle or squeeze high-kicking dance tunes out of a concertina like these veterans can, but their old timey music is worn-in in such a way that it fits the contours of the human body and American landscape precisely.  Whether “heard” through the 1920’s or 40’s folk songs Jody sang, or through their country dance jigs, which could ignite any dance floor, the past becomes present through the music and gives the industrial Gowanus loft space a whole new ambience. As Paul commented, they probably were the only performers on this program who couldn’t touch their toes, yet their music did dance.  They reminded me that dancing is more about spirit than body, more music than muscle --- a lovely counterpoint to the overt physicality and theatricality of the rest of the evening. 

Dancer/Choreographer Summer Brown presented two works on the program, a new solo for herself entitled “Lighthouse”, with music by Philip Glass performed by the Kronos Quartet, and the edgy new trio “ Lie In Wait” performed by Brown, Erin Gottwald and Cara Surico and set to music by John Adams.   Physically, Brown herself is a strikingly tall, beautiful, and voluptuous mover, one that a figurative sculptor or painter would love as a model/muse. Her dancers, too, are no pushovers, and all three move with power, fierceness and aplomb.  The choreography feels as if it emerges from some intense emotional wellspring --- in the solo, one gets expectancy, searching, seeking, a yearning to find a way “home.”  Dressed in simple dark capris and white tank top, Brown begins with her back to the audience; as she slowly turns to walk downstage and survey the new frontier, her movements unfold in big arcs and sweeping gestures -- reaching, swirling, leaping and  loping, now and then curling in on herself, before spraying out again.  I think of play-full kids and kites, helium balloons, drawing pies in the sky and ephemeral lines in the sand.  The ending image is one of Brown trying to scrub (or claw?) her way out the upstage windows, or maybe she is just ripping down curtains trying to let more light inside?   She repeats the frenetic gestural pattern several times, as if trying to break through some invisible surface, some unwanted division between an inner and outer world.  

In “Lie in Wait,” one finds the same emotional underpinning; a very similar, albeit darker, movement vocabulary informs the new trio, whether that was intentional or not.   She employs similar uber dramatic music but this time, there is more existential angst and twist to the dance, which often leaves the dancers panting and with furrowed brows.  Dressed in black dance pants and tank-tops with dark grey, taupe and brown sleeveless tunics wrapped around their torsos,  the dancers hurl themselves into space, spinning, dropping, flying, solos working against duets, all for one and all for none,  alone and together,  all waiting for and battling against an approaching disaster of some great and fearful magnitude. Like Job, looking up at the sky and duckwaddling with “why me?” outstretched arms and splayed fingers, or walking tentatively, haltingly down the diagonal, hands nervously fluttering over hearts, or covering a gasping mouth, this is a brand new and scary world these women struggle in and through.  I like the intensity of both Brown’s works, but, ironically, also wish both dances would dig much deeper and go for an even rawer jugular vein of physicality, where pointed toes and classical arabesques have no cache.    

Cara Surico’s new group work, “thinking” with music by Steve Reich and Sigur Ros, for five young, technically proficient, totally inoffensive young women, was as well-rehearsed, well-performed, well-crafted, and tidy a modern dance as one could hope for. It begins with the dancers, dressed in white sleeveless blouses and denim capri-length pants --- wait, didn’t I just see a dance in the same outfit? --- marching in and out in simple formations.  They enter side by side and exit several times from the stage right wings, combing through each other in waves and canons with no-nonsense movement phrases that accumulate and repeat in satisfying patterns.  The Reich score percolates underneath building a subtle air of suspense --- you can’t help but wonder who these slightly militant and steadfast women are , what is going to happen next, and where all this “thinking” leads to?  So far, so good.   

Unfortunately what happens next is the bane of the bulk of most young choreographers’ work I see.  After an engaging opening, the choreography soon resorts to the same old overworked movement vocabulary that has been drilled to death in classes and onstage by older dance mentors --- if I never see another half handstand, back shoulder roll, pointless leg extension, perfunctory lift or push, or another Humphrey back fall in my life, it won’t be too soon.  What happened to the suspense created in the beginning?  Why did “thinking” lead back to safe choices?  It feels as if the choreographer sold-out in the second half of the work and lost her investigative courage.  A good beginning with a body and tail, which needs radical rethinking. 

And this brings me to the traditional Bulgarian folk dance group, Bosilek, under the direction of Cathy Springer.   A rather odd duck on this particular program, “Fire and Magic,” a lively Balkan medley of dances drawn from three different regions in Bulgaria and performed by eight women with ages spanning three or four decades (my guess), provided a refreshing change of pace and place on the program.  First, the brilliantly colored, festive and elaborately embroidered costumes alone were a sight for sore, basic black, Postmodern spandex eyes. The tinkling coin necklaces complemented the intricate rhythms of the music and the fancy footwork in their unusual leather dance shoes with turned-up toes.  The stylized swinging arms, the vocal whoops and accent yips, the simple geometric group floor patterns, the changing musical tempos, and the smiling eye contact with each other and the audience assured us that this presentation was meant to please, not disturb; to charm, not challenge.   Although a few of the performers were not quite as proficient or polished technically as others in the troupe, I appreciated the diversity of ages, the joy and color they brought to the stage, and the odd little excursion across the Atlantic they allowed us as we entertained their “otherness” on the banks of  Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal. 

Adrian Jevicki’s Movementpants Dance presented an excerpt of a longer new work, “La Spectra,” which was by far the funniest, most original, and inventive work on the program, even though it was also the most unfinished.  As with Bosilek, the costumes were outstanding unique grey and white crocheted ensembles, differentiating and yet uniting each performer,  like the handmade afghans grandma used to make, only minus the neon acrylic colors. The piece begins with a centaur-like creature, emerging from the curtains, elaborately chewing his imaginary cud.  As he emerges further, we see another man hooked onto him functioning as his hind legs, when a young, goofy, damsel definitely not in distress saddles up and rides the creature out onto center stage.  A funny little trio unfolds between the girl and the two horse-men, where one catches her leg as she leans and presses her palm against the other man’s chest then he moves away, leaving her suspended in the air by the guy pulling her leg.  Her persona, like the centaur’s, is that of the clown/fool and we are prepared for a slapstick narrative to unfold .   

But soon, another female dancer enters the scene. Her presence in this piece is rather unfortunate.  Perhaps the choreographer had some idea about how she might function in this piece as the straight man, but whatever the case may be, casting blunder or directorial blindness,  her bland presence detracts from what the piece initially had going for it --- over-the-top absurdities and general clown chaos.  Then, in another theatrical nonsequitor, a new woman with a video camera is pushed out on stage in a wheelchair, filming the scene around her.  The music stops and a dialogue ensues where we learn tall guys are boring and everything can be fixed in post production.  The appearance of the filmmaker gives us another breath of fresh air and even though her garbled and guttural nonsensical conversation with her nurse feels a little too forced and contrived at the end, we are left curious about the whole Spectra and want to see where this story will go, who these people really are, and what they are cooking up for the silver screen. 

“White Ashes” , choreographed by Benjamin Kimitch, is a pensive and haunting solo performed by Tzu-Yin Lee and set to music by David Lang.   The  influence and confluence of Asian elements in the piece --- the sound score of  sparse gongs, snippets of piano melodies and random percussion, the image of traditional Chinese ribbon dances, the bold flow and slash of calligraphy, the sound of catamaran sails flapping in the wind ---  all serve in giving the solo both a traditional context to anchor itself in as well as a push-off point to depart from.  The solo begins in a dreamy world with the dancer clothed in simple white pants and  hands hidden within long white sleeves. Sitting with her back to the audience down left she begins to rotate slowly and deliberately with no hands, eventually rising to her feet; she  startles us by throwing out one long sleeve, which expands dramatically into a long white streamer she  then whips around and dances within.   The sound of the snap of the fabric and the extension of her arm movements into abstract designs in the air eventually wind down and bring her back to where she started.  The music ends and Lee matter of factly removes her long sleeves,  then walks deftly offstage in silence, a postmodern phoenix risen, shedding the wings of her past and her own flights of fancy for a grounded life on her own two legs.  A fitting ending where past and present eras, eastern and western traditions, and old and young voices, cross oceans, aesthetics and sidewalks, to converge.

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