The 93rd season of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival got underway Wednesday evening, June 25th, in classic Pillow style, with an eclectic and engrossing evening of dance. Ted Shawn, the Pillow’s founder and creative center for decades, and famous for bringing all kinds of dance and performance from all over the world to the Pillow, would have been proud.
The season kicked off with Prehistoric Body Theater, a dance and performance company from Java on the outdoor Henry J. Leir Stage. The company of eight dancers performed “Stone Garuda,” part of an evening-length work called “Ghosts of Hell Creek.” And the outdoor stage and setting could not have been more perfect. Even the weather, as absurdly hot as it was, seemed to make sense for the piece. According to program notes supplied by Pillow Executive and Artistic Director Pamela Tatge during her welcoming curtain speech, “Garuda” is set 66 million years ago, presumably just before the life-ending asteroid hit the Yucatan, and represents “a portal into our prehistoric past.” One thing is certain: there was no Tik Tok or Instagram 66 million years ago. There were no instantly gratifying rapid-fire videos which resolved in five or 10 seconds and didn’t require any kind of sustained concentration, focus and attention from the viewer. This work definitely did!
The performers came onstage covered in clay and other seemingly organic materials, designed by Basuki Setiyawan, who was trained in prosthetics and fabrication in the film industry. The movement was quite non-human, very much bird-like (raptor-like) and low to the ground. Everything unfolded exceedingly slowly, and quite deliberately; even the jumping, powerful and prodigious as it was, appeared to happen slowly and deliberately, an amazing feat. These were dancers who were fully committed to this stark work. Ari Dharminalan Rudenko and Sofyan Joyo Utomo are the choreographers, in collaboration with all the performers.
In addition to the costumes (although what the dancers came onstage “wearing” was so much more than a costume), key to the piece’s power and success were the sound and music, designed and composed by Iwan Karak in collaboration with Merak Badra Waharuyung and Mo’ong Santoso Pribadi. Initially, it seemed as though what we were hearing was maybe what the composers thought forest-dwelling animals would themselves hear as they moved through their habitat. Eventually, as more recognizable instruments joined—perhaps tablas, gamelan, accordion, and/or stringed instruments?—the sounds became more traditional music, and the work built subtly. It was beautifully executed.
Eventually, the dancers began to interact and communicate in small groups, and maybe a large dinosaur passed by. By this point, I had definitely connected with the performers and begun to feel a kind of sadness and maybe impending doom. (When would that apocalyptic asteroid arrive?) It was a bittersweet piece.
Later that same evening, Ephrat Asherie and Michelle Dorrance presented “The Center Will Not Hold,” a Dorrance Dance Production, on the main stage of The Ted Shawn Theatre. The title relates to a poem by W.B. Yeats, commenting on what he considered to be—wait for it—the apocalyptic time he was living in. And that was not the only connection between these two performances. Forgive my hyperbole and poetic license, but “The Center Will Not Hold” had such an organic, animate, physical grounded-ness, together with some quite high-tech modern lighting and musical effects, that it was almost as though we started 66 million years ago with Prehistoric Body Theatre, and then—fast forward 66 million years—collected and synthesized absolutely every movement, music, and technical performance practice from every culture on this planet, and ended up right here, at this production on the main stage at the Pillow.
The range of dance forms the performers show us in the piece is voluminous, and includes tap, hip-hop, break dancing, house, and absolutely everything in between. We get the breadth of the dance styles represented when we look in the program and see that, as Pillow Director Tatge pointed out, the list of choreographers credited in the program is longer than the list of performers on stage. And these performers are astonishingly good; suffice it to say these are dancers at the top of their game, at the top of their profession. Tomoe “Beasty” Carr had the ability to isolate and move at blistering speed, but still somehow show us each individual movement. And Zakhele “Bboy Swazi” Grabowski executed some simply spectacular acrobatic moves in very close proximity to the floor.
Often, when essentially non-narrative performances like this feature many extremely accomplished dancers, there is a tendency to, at some point during the piece, just give each performer time centerstage, and let them wow the audience with what they do best. To its credit, this piece did not do that, or at least it did not do that until it was well along, and then only in very short, worthwhile bursts. The dancing opened with a sweet duet between the co-creators Dorrance and Asherie. Their duet unfolded and developed with heart, soul, and sensitivity, as did most of the rest of the piece, and, because of that, the work was captivating and mesmerizing, especially the first half.
The work was augmented beautifully by the lighting and music. The lighting design, by Kathy Kaufmann, could have been too busy, full of trickery, and distracting. Instead, it was exceptional. Kaufmann went right up to the edge of too much, but—with the exception of the one center strobe, which this viewer thought was unnecessary—she didn’t cross the line; the lighting entirely enhanced the piece, brought out subtleties, and made it much, much more powerful.
Likewise with the original music by Donovan Dorrance, and the sound by Christopher Marc. Given the rhythmic skills of the performers, the music and sound could have been overwhelmingly complex, and unreachable for most audience members (but easy for the performers), and it was not. It walked a fine line, one that allowed it to be entirely accessible to the audience, but presumably challenging enough for the performers that they could have fun adding to it with their hands, feet, and bodies in movement. Percussionist John Angeles on trap set and other percussion was just remarkable, both as a solo musician, and also when his serious musical skills were combined with Dorrance and Marc’s inspired recorded compositions.
“The Center Will Not Hold” is a great example of what consummately professional dancers, choreographers, composers, designers, visual artists, musicians, and wonderfully creative human beings can do when they all come together to make something. And it only took 66 million years!
Information about tickets for this excellent performance, as well as all performances at the Pillow this summer, can be found on the Jacob’s Pillow website here.
