Susan Marshall & Company
Bard Spiegeltent
Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, Bard College, NY
July 6–15, 2007
Reviewed by Elizabeth Zimmer
“Spiegel” is German for “mirror,” and a spiegeltent is a sturdy temporary structure designed to shelter drinkers while providing stylish diversions to keep them tossing back refreshments purchased at the bar. Last summer saw one installed at New York City’s South Street Seaport; this July another went up on the campus of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson. It has stained-glass windows, with mirrors installed below them and on the carved wooden pillars supporting the tent.
As part of Bard’s celebration of composer Edward Elgar, the campus’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts commissioned choreographer Susan Marshall to produce an entertainment suitable for the high, round stage at the center of the tent, around which the audience is deployed in a couple of rows of folding chairs. Behind them are cabaret tables where people can continue drinking while watching the show. Marshall’s Sawdust Palace, a 90-minute suite of 20 “acts” ranging from live piano numbers to chicken-plucking, gave us both the superficial glamour of vaudeville showgirls and the emotional subtext apparent in her best work for the stage.
Pianist Stephen Gosling played Elgar’s Salut d’Amour on the piano while being teased by Petra van Noort; Stephin Merritt’s The Book of Love, from the Magnetic Fields’ recording of “69 Love Songs,” undergirded a passionate duet for Joseph Poulson and Darrin M. Wright, the former in a sheer, ruffled blouse, the latter in a “wifebeater” undershirt. A sensual atmosphere thus established, Kristen Hollinsworth and Luke Miller led an apparently hypnotized van Noort around the circular room, greeting patrons who either shrank from the gesture or welcomed it. Because there was only one “wing,” making quick changes difficult, the dancers wore layered costumes, shedding one to reveal another and keep the action moving.
The divertissements followed in duos and trios, with the occasional larger item; the material was mostly new, though one wonderful number, Tea for Two, was borrowed from Marshall’s recent Bessie-winning show Cloudless, doubled to two couples for improved visibility in the circular space. Turning a ritual of serving tea into an erotic pastime, it holds its power on a second viewing.
The high point of the bill, to my mind, was Chicken Flicker, a sort of backstage romance for Hollinsworth and Poulson; he appeared, butcher-like, in a huge white apron, riding a stool on casters, and she wore fishnet stockings, character shoes, and swaths of black and white feather boa. She lay across his lap; he took his gloves off and plucked her feathers, to the strains of Zorba’s Dance by Mikis Theodorakis. Finishing his task, he did a triumphant “chicken dance,” while Luke Miller swept the feathers away with a chenille bedspread. This and other lengths of fringy fabric did double and triple duty throughout.
One charming conceit followed another, from Hollinsworth sprawled atop the piano, presenting her butt as a stand for Gosling’s next rendition of Elgar, to Miller and Poulson making “body music” with their hands and various bare body parts. The few young boys in the house beamed at this one, which appealed to their raunchier instincts.
Wright performed a star turn in Belt Man, his torso wrapped in half a dozen leather straps. Kasia Walicka Maimone, who’s been dressing Marshall’s dances for 12 years, hit the jackpot again here with one glamorous get-up after another; I cherish the vision of the tall Miller in a salmon-pink satin shorts suit, running through the house.
A couple of the works utilized flying, the dancers dangling from rigging attached to the high center of the tent. As always, Marshall’s choreography deploys arms to powerful emotional effect; the small circular stage made “up” the direction of choice in many situations. Designed as an after-dark entertainment in a cabaret setting, Sawdust Palace suffered a bit from being viewed at a Saturday matinee, but still communicated Marshall’s trademark alchemy of gesture and feeling.
Although designated a “world premiere,” it is likely to be tightened before it’s shown again. It’s scheduled to reappear April 9–12, 2008 at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland in College Park.
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J. Alice Jackson, Courtesy CHRP
Chicago Human Rhythm Project's Rhythm World Finally Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary
"Rhythm World allows tap dancers the space and the freedom to grow and discover our own character, while learning and refining an element of percussive dance or hoofing," Taylor said in a release. "From Bojangles to Gregory Hines, we carry on the traditions of tap, rearranging a legacy of 30 years for another 30 years of legendary work."
Co-founder Lane Alexander started the festival in 1990 with modern and tap dancer Kelly Michaels. Billed as the "Human Rhythm Project," the inaugural summer workshop featured classes at the Gus Giordano Dance Center and a performance at Northwestern University. Along with the Colorado Dance Festival and the Portland Tap Festival, it helped spur the creation of annual tap festivals across the U.S. during the 1990s, fueled in part by the establishment of National Tap Dance Day in 1989 under President George H.W. Bush.
Jumaane Taylor
Kristie Kahns, Courtesy CHRP
Today, Chicago Human Rhythm Project encompasses not only Rhythm World, but also year-round classes and rehearsal space, citywide educational programming and a percussive dance collective. The festival has had its own home since 2012, the American Rhythm Center, where two new programs will debut this summer.
Dancers who want to study how a concert tap piece is composed can do so during the weeklong Choreographic Residency, August 9 to 13, where they'll take four classes each day with dancemakers Ian Berg, Christina Carminucci, Maurice Chestnut and Sarah Savelli.
The two-week American Tap Conservatory is an immersion program in which young pre-professionals will work with live musicians, engage in conversations with master faculty, and learn and perform choreography. Billed as "an invitation into the life of a professional tap dancer," the program will run twice, in two overlapping cohorts, to accommodate the limit of 20 dancers per class that is part of current COVID protocols.
Students and faculty alike will jam and perform throughout the festival at four prominent Chicago venues: the Jazz Showcase; Lake Stage, in Navy Pier Park; The Illinois Black Legislators' Auditorium, at the DuSable Museum of African American History; and The Edlis Neeson Theater, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Tap artists Naomi Funaki, Jason Janas, Karissa Royster and Caleb Teicher are just a few of the professionals who will appear onstage, selected by Taylor for their abilities as performers, improvisers and choreographers.
In addition to the festival's technique classes, with four acclaimed tap artists at different stages of their careers on faculty each week, the third week of the festival will see a seminar with dance critic and author Brian Seibert. Taylor will discuss tap history with Seibert, and tap dancer Tristan Bruns will interview Seibert about his book What the Eye Hears.
After three decades in which the festival has grown into a new space, significantly expanded its programming, and influenced a worldwide panoply of like-minded rhythmic celebrations, it's clear that Rhythm World fulfills its name: bringing together a global community to experience the power of percussive dance.
