So Much More than a Lovely Dance

so much more than a lovely dance...

Jessica Lang Dance written by Philip Szporer With a dance artist like Jessica Lang, you never just say, “What a lovely dance.”

She creates with ambition, vigour, and a sophisticated sense of design and creativity. Natural movements bring personality to the work, and inform the visual composition and the poetry. The New York-based Lang is a compelling up-and-comer, and from the start, her goal was to further develop a personal aesthetic. Part of a cultivated new generation of dance artists, she came onto the scene in 1999, after studies in the dance division at The Juilliard School, and has consistently been in demand, first as a dancer and freelance choreographer for other troupes, and then making new work under her company name, Jessica Lang Dance (JDL).

She is the recipient of the 2014 Bessie Award for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer, where she was cited for her “elegant works.”

When JLD made its official debut at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in 2013, dance critic Deborah Jowitt was taken with what she described as Lang’s “awareness of the space, and her interest in altering it through scenery, costumes, and props. She doesn’t use these as decoration or mood enhancers but as elements that shape IRVINE BARCLAY THEATRE

the choreography.”

Choreography enriches her life, as much as she draws inspirations from and collaborations with the visual art world. Lang crafts a non-narrative world that’s very personal, and yet, she says, the stories and each dance work are very different from each other, dramatically and aesthetically. There is less desire to battle with dance, as if to say, “I don’t need dance to express violent emotions. I want to approach dance through its beauty.” Jowitt has further commented that Lang’s work reveals a “full-blown aesthetic view. I’m always astounded when I see such a powerful choreographic personality.”

What Lang is getting known for − and this is what sets her apart − is a marriage of dance and theatricality, with a provocative, but ironic light touch, a plus in the overly-serious dance métier. It’s definitely contemporary dance, with classical ballet roots, but she’s inventing new vocabularies, fragment-

Jessica Lang

ing them, sometimes with a wink of the eye.

Formerly a member of Twyla Tharp’s company, THARP!, Lang has created more than 80 works for companies worldwide. She is currently riding a wave of popularity nationally, at renowned venues and festivals, and she’s breaking into new markets internationally, including commissions from Birmingham Royal Ballet in the United Kingdom. As Judith Mackrell of London’s The Guardian newspaper writes, “Like Tharp she has the gift of cramming together an eclectic range of colors and ideas without losing thought with her individual sensibility.”

Lang’s diverse background in dance, with ballet, jazz and tap, modern dance, and a wide interest in music, informs her aesthetic. Further, she seamlessly incorporates striking design elements, including, as she says, “sculpting objects and bodies around the objects,” and dance vocabulary into artfully crafted, emotionally riveting contemporary works. There’s a lot going on visually in Lang’s shows. In effect, she steeps her imaginative world with patterned choreography, imaginative set design, and beautiful dancing.

The Sweet Silent Thought (2016), Lang’s newest work, the title referencing Shakespeare’s sonnet, opens the mixed-repertoire Barclay program.

Thousand Yard Stare (2015), the ensemble piece that follows, is a small storm of urgency. The work is based on Lang’s talks with soldiers and research on post-traumatic stress disorder at WWW.THEBARCLAY.ORG

Walter Reid Medical Center. The Chicago Tribune writes, “[Lang] creates an all-too-vivid underworld of loss, of camaraderie and isolation, and of the mind that’s trapped there.”

The Calling (2006) is an eloquent, elegant solo, an excerpt of Lang’s longer work, Splendid Isolation II, commissioned by Ailey II. The project started in response to the death of Benjamin Harkarvy, director of Juilliard’s Dance Division, where she studied, and a personal mentor who encouraged her to pursue her choreography. Set to French medieval choral music by Trio Mediaeval, the work’s incredible vision centers on a long, flowing white skirt (by costume designer Elena Comendador, and costume concept by Lang).

Gina Miles, in the Bermuda Sun, calls the piece “heavenly,” and says, “The beautiful movements seamlessly moved from the long and lyrical to the urging and angular, leaving the audience completely mesmerized.” i.n.k. (2011), an ensemble work set to original music by Jakub Ciupinksi, and incorporating video art by Japanese artist Shinichi Maruyama, based on his Kusho series in which the artist hurled black India ink into water and photographed the millisecond in which these two liquids collide. Zahra Sadjadi, from Theater is Easy, says, “This piece was so utterly poignant and moving that I was surprised how captivated I could be by images, sounds, movements, and moments so abstract,

simple and peaceful.” The meeting point of the collaboration was framed

by Maruyama’s work, with its emphasis on playing with time and layering time. One droplet in slow motion, for instance, inspired the composer to record studio sounds (in Poland) to make sounds with water. The piece has a direct link, says Lang, to Piet Mondrian’s artwork. “The white canvas with very sharp black lines, and the color blocking.” She adds, “I’m intrigued and interested in working with objects and making them support the overall theme.”

A review in the online journal, Critical Dance, cites the multimedia dance for its “incredible visual artistry.” Reviewer Carmel Morgan writes, “Black ink flies across the white scrim, sometimes in a rapidly moving horizontal blob and sometimes in tiny droplets falling languidly from the sky.”

White is a dance on film (2001), directed and choreographed by Lang, and the choreographer again working with Shinichi Maruyama, as director of photography. Typically the ever-inquisitive choreographer fires atmosphere in her work. Here, the burning questions are how she defines space and, once again, plays with the idea of manipulating time, and how the frame functions with the subject moving on-screen, as opposed to the traditional stage setting.

As Dance Europe expressed, Lang “meticulously choreographs these onscreen interactions so expertly that we feel we are no longer watching film, or

Jessica Lang Dance February 19, 2016 Concert Sponsor

Bobbi Cox Realty with series support from

An anonymous fund of the

Orange County Community Foundation

dance, or dance on film: it’s like a completely new medium.”

Lang seems to love and respect the illusion and the magic of theater.

And she readily admits she cannot resist entertainment, as if to say, “My greatest aspiration is to entertain and provoke thought at the same time.” For audiences, the result is they can immerse themselves in a compelling experience, as much as Lang delights in technique and theatrical detail, creating works that are poetic and powerful.

Philip Szporer is a Montreal-based lecturer, writer and filmmaker.

A MOVEMENTUM PUBLICATION © Irvine Barclay Theatre and Philip Szporer

2016