a&e | DANCE REVIEWS
DAVID BAZEMORE
RAZZLE-DAZZLE: Ira Glass joined forces with Monica Bill Barnes (right) and Anna Bass for a beguiling blend of radio and dance.
Pure Magic One Radio Host, Two Dancers, presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures. At the Granada Theatre, Saturday, October 19. Reviewed by Elizabeth Schwyzer
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s the host of NPR’s This American Life, Ira Glass is accustomed to exposure — at least of a certain kind. Yet as interviewer, compiler, and narrator of the program’s stories, Glass is a master of drawing the humor and pathos from others’ lives while avoiding the spotlight himself. In his current collaboration with modern dance duo Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass, Glass is more visible. It’s not just the fact that he appears live on stage, or the fact that he actually dances (and he does, and it’s gloriously goofy). The real excitement is in personal revelations: He performed magic shows as a kid; his wife sometimes accuses him of behaving like Mr. Spock. There are many reasons this show works so beautifully. After 10 years of collaboration, Barnes and Bass are masters of evoking character and emotion through dance, plastic facial expressions, physical comedy, and subtle body language — all silent art forms. Glass, of course, is a consummate deejay of the spoken word, mixing narration, quotation, music, and sound effects into stories. Together, these three produce a perfect — and perfectly unexpected — union. As might be expected, Glass organizes the
evening into three acts, basing himself at a lectern and using a tablet to bring in sound clips (he even precedes each tap of the screen with an overhead flourish — a nod to his magic days). Sometimes, he speaks as the dancers dance; sometimes he gives the stage over to them. In one memorable segment, Glass recounts consulting with a lawyer over whether he could air this sound bite from writer David Rakoff: “You can suck a mile of cock; it does not make you Oscar Wilde. I know; I’ve tried.”As if in response, Barnes and Bass come out in prim cable-knit sweaters and plaid skirts, then engage in sexually charged exchanges with an invisible conversant, backed by James Brown’s “Sex Machine.” At the heart of the show are reflections on love and the nature of partnership — that curious blend of affection, competition, desire, and loss. As poet Donald Hall reads poems written about his wife’s death, Barnes and Bass stand in trench coats on a tabletop, shuffling forward and back in a slow, lonely standoff. Out of this unexpected union of dance and radio comes a show that, like the work of its collaborators, blends moments of delight and hilarity with glimpses of the soft underbelly of human experience. It’s magic.
Dance as Recreation Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures. At the Granada Theatre, Wednesday, October 16. Reviewed by Elizabeth Schwyzer
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hen children swing on the monkey bars, we call it “play.” When a pianist makes music, we use the same word. And when Bill T. Jones stages a dance, it’s a highly refined form of the very same thing. On Wednesday night, October 16, at the Granada, UCSB Arts & Lectures presented the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in Play and Play, an evening of dance set to live music. Across three works spanning 1977-2000, two qualities remained consistent: a playful spirit and a sense of freshness. The program opened with the newest work, “Spent Days Out Yonder,” set to the sprightly andante movement of a Mozart string quartet. Accompanied by the Los Angeles–based Calder Quartet, dancers in flowing pants moved across the stage in loose processions, alternating between suggestions of laxness (wobbly knees, flopping arms) and moments of sublime, controlled fluidity. In the arresting final passage, all nine dancers formed a tableau, shifting slowly off stage as the strings drew out one last, soaring note. “Continuous Replay” began with a burst of strings and movement: Stark naked, Erick Montes Chavero exploded onstage, leapt about
wildly, and disappeared just as fast. Eventually, he reemerged and began a series of minimal gestures: a turn of the head, the lifting of a fist, a wide-armed lunge. Over time, the structure of dance emerged — a steady accumulation of gestures, dancers, costumes, and sounds. In its original incarnation as “Hand Dance,” this was a solo for Zane, who was fascinated by the minimalist dance experiments of the early 1970s. In its current manifestation, it’s a masterpiece of theme and variation. Set to a Mendelssohn octet, “D-Man in the Waters” is the most exuberant, celebratory work on this program and a showcase for the company’s remarkable athleticism. Dedicated to the memory of a company dancer who battled AIDS, the work is a rousing affirmation of the power of community. Army fatigues suggest a battle, but the dancers belie that theme as they spring joyously into each other’s arms and join in happy communal gestures, including a tummy slide across the stage. Despite its darker passages — or maybe because of them — it’s in “D-Man” that the “play” reaches its pinnacle. How else can one respond to death, Jones seems to be asking, than with life, in all its ecstasy? ocTobEr 24, 2013
THE INDEPENDENT
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