VRDT infuses show with sexuality, apathy and conflict

Jackson Reeves Assistant Arts Editor

Strolling by Kenyon Hall last week, you may have noticed a large proportion of men and women dressed in nude-colored everything. By now, however, the spandex-wearing dancers have gone. That’s because Vassar Repertory Dance Theater (VRDT) is off to the nearby Bardavon 1869 Opera House in preparation for its 26th Final Showing.

Faculty, student and guest choreographers are offering up a medley of pieces covering topics such as apathy, sexuality, dehumanization and clan warfare. Performances are in styles ranging from hip-hop to ballet to modern and to jazz. On Saturday, March 1 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, March 2 at 3 p.m., the Vassar community is finally invited to watch the students perform.

Experimental ballet dancer Mark Morris choreographed one of the show’s center pieces “Grand Duo” in 1993. The company condensed it to form its 25-minute repertory piece for this year.

Drawing from Balkan folk dance and mainly modern in appearance, the drawn-out piece finds its appeal—and graceful nature—in its precision. Fourteen cast members dancing in synch with barely a limb out of line. It’s collectivism at its unbridled best.

The dancers spin in a circle that seems to build upon itself during one of “Grand Duo’s” final sections. “You don’t have to understand a lot of dance to understand the last section,” Director of VRDT Paul Mosley explained. The “rhythmic power of all the dancers dancing in unison” is enough, he surmised.

Live music composed by Lou Harrison and performed by one pianist and one violinist dominates “Grand Duo.” One instrument foregrounds the other in dominance, the switches back, thus making it harder for the listener and dancer to follow. This tension is finally made transparent when the dancers start frenetically jabbing into space with bent knees and knotted brows.

“I don’t really think that there’s a storyline,” Chair of the Dance Department Jeanne Czula said. “Morris is just insanely in love with music. I really think it is an extension of—an absolutely original and creative extension of—the music.”

“Grand Duo” falls into the rare category of dance pieces that use time for non-narrative purposes.

Time unifies the space to such a degree that the dance becomes tangible to the immediate senses. It’s a textbook post-modern example of how to use the medium of dance.

“Sometimes to be able to make a simple statement with clarity can be more powerful than any amount of complexity,” Mosley said.

Though “Grand Duo” is inspired by ballet, it is certainly no “Swan Lake.” People interested in more conventional ballet but anxious about the cold aura of classicism can take comfort in the Balanchine-indebted piece “Correlazione,” created by guest choreographer Miriam Mahdaviani-Goldstone in 1994.

After a playful homage to Balanchine’s rendition of “The Nutcracker” involving dancers freezing like dolls needing to be rewound, Naquan Earp ’09 and Alex Spyropoulos ’11 take their turn alone on stage.

Call it trust, call it a connection, call it sexual chemistry; whatever it is, it’s undeniable that they have it and it’s the reason you go to see a ballet. Earp holds and caresses Spyropoulos in all the stages of prolonged sexual interaction.

“You feel so privileged watching them dance together,” Czula said. “Not in a voyeuristic way, but you just get to see something so private, and its beautiful because you feel a connection with their connection.”

The company’s youngest team of choreographers, sophomores Katie Aspell, a first-year member, and Dan Ming, arranged “The Edge.” Through contrasting rigid and fluid movements, their piece offers a cautionary tale against technology’s stranglehold on the human psyche. Politics and peace, the theoretical underpinnings of the choreographers’ respective academic concentrations, find their way to the center of the piece.

“It’s a little lofty, but we’re college students,” explained Aspell. “It’s about the fate of humanity and how we’re going along this trajectory of warfare and technology and killing, and what’s going to be the outcome of all of these actions?”

Björk’s creepy “Where Is the Line?” sets the tone as dancers skulk across the floor as a homogenized unit in muted grays.

“How can you draw the line between humanity and this mechanization and emotionless slaughtering of innocence?” Aspell asked.

David Rodriguez ’08, a VRDT veteran, choreographed “Phallus in Wonderland,” a revisioning of “Alice in Wonderland” as a story of sexual awakening. The phallic protagonist enters a world where the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts and Tweedles Dee and Dum all vogue. They assault Phallus and the audience with their constant twists and contortions. They jump from sharp poses from the vogue vocabulary releasing into more graceful poses.

Set to music by Jacques Lu Cont, Ciarra, Dannii Minogue, The Ones, Daft Punk and Madonna,
Rodriguez’s piece fights against the viewer all the way. It refuses to let you sit passively. It’s a dance club party inviting everyone to join the pelvic playfulness in an orgy of social awakening.

Rodriguez said his courses in queer theory inspired him to create a piece that also connects to larger issues.

“It’s about identity in general,” Rodriguez said. “The main character, Phallus, goes through a transformation, which is something that I think a lot of people can identify with.”

Alumnus choreographer Sam Peterson ’04 also sets his piece, “Black Thai Party,” in the ’80s. Both he and Rodriguez use the styles of that decadent decade, but Peterson indulges in the flash of hip-hop instead of the pulsation of vogue.

Dancers in “Black Thai Party” sport neon costumes that look like what the Village People would wear if they were in a mid-’80s version of Xanadu—replete with knee-socks, jumpers and runner’s shorts.
The retro beats of M.I.A.’s “Bamboo Banga” thump around them yet amidst all the strutting and flare, Peterson betrays his undergraduate experience with VRDT in the form of a modern barrel-turn here and a jazz step there.

Katherine Wildberger’s company finale piece “Skirts” brings the night to an upbeat end. Each dancer in the piece, predictably, wears a different type of skirt, from kilts to tutus—all designed by Wildberger, who moonlights as the company’s costume designer. Modern, step dancing, and clogging stylistically overflow on the stage.

Wildberger set her piece to Celtic music performed live by the Walker Family Band. She used this backdrop as inspiration for her piece. “That’s a Celtic tradition, for the family to be making music,” Wildberger said. She noticed that the same collaborative instincts underly all company pieces.

“It’s a piece about community,” Wildberger concluded. “It’s whimsical, so it’s not a dark piece at all, that seems to allow the dancers a format for their company being together, which is really what the company piece is.”