This title was digitized by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA).
About Art papers. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1981-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 1, 1981)
The Dancers' Collective of Atlanta, Inc. June Schneider The Dancers’ Collective of Atlanta is an interesting regrouping of some of Atlanta’s well known contem porary dance talents; a newly-formed forum under whose aegis several of Atlanta’s most exciting young choreographers and dancers now per form. As an alliance, the Dancers’ Collective seems to have been formed through common need, convenience and their shared, enthusiastic dedica tion to dance, rather than through any unity of dance style, philosophy, or attitude. In addition to providing eleven talented dancers and seven choreographers with a showcase, the Dancers’ Collective’s June perfor mance at the Fortune Theatre also acted as a vehicle for musicians, both performers and composers. This col laboration of dancers, choreo graphers and musicians is an excellent idea. If the Dancers’ Collective can adopt this combination as a principle and maintain it as a practice, its con tribution to the city’s cultural life will be extremely worthwhile. The dancers who comprise the “new” dance group are all well known to Atlanta’s dance audiences and barely need an introduction: the founding members are Laurie Simms; Joanne McGhee, founder of, but not recently active in the late lamented Atlanta Contemporary Dance Com pany; and Donna Rizzo, one of the company’s leading lights at the time of its dissolution. Barry Thomas and Patrick McCann are familiar figures on Atlanta cabaret stages; Donna Persons is an energetic dance organizer as well as a dancer. Similary, Louise Udakee, Shannon Gordon, Brooke Hunter and Maureen Norvell have graced many Atlanta dance ventures. Terri Jones- Kayser joined the group as a dancer and “guest choreographer.” Her work is less well known, but it was a joy to encounter: she is a strong, stylish, witty dancer and an imagin ative, inventive, spirited choreo grapher. In the June 5th performance, two main trends seem to be defining themselves as characteristic of the Collective. On the one hand, a light hearted, lightweight, easy-going cheeriness, which characterized many of the works; on the other a concen trated, intense ritualistic approach, which revealed itself, though in entirely different manners, in Gesture and Vision Quest. Donna Rizzo’s Ode To Cello, which opened the June program, did not really fall into either of these categories although it drifted somewhat unnecesarily into a fairly comic approach. Ode was the only work on the program which used live music, the cello suite #5 by Bach, per formed on stage by Paul Warner. It is an uneven work somehow missing a sense of self, of identity. At the outset, it seems to intend to be a lyrical, serious piece, trying to match the music’s quiet beauty. Unfor tunately, elements of unrelated com edy soon became intermingled and the work lost any feeling of integrity and character. Perhaps it is a lack of confidence in her own ability as a maker of serious dance which leads Donna Rizzo into this pattern of comic cop-out, perhaps it is simply a matter of natural inclination asserting itself, for Rizzo is certainly a natural, genuine comic. Her humor showed itself wonderfully in Brooke Hunter’s Duet, a double duet (for four dancers) which presented several dance styles. Here it was the choreographer herself who seemed to lack the very humour she required from the dancers, for Hunter was the weakest element in the work. Donna Rizzo and Patrick McCann spoofed tutu-ed classicism and tap-dancing (barefoot!) with relish. Play, by contrast was a totally serious work, choreographed by Shannon Gordon and danced by Cathy Simms, which overreached its own ability. Neither the dance nor the dancer were strong enough to sustain the intensity and single focus demanded by a long solo, danced en tirely in silence. The work’s greatest contrast, indeed almost its only con trast, came from dramatic lighting changes, a sad reflection on the quali ty and inventiveness of the piece. The lighting design by Paul Ackerman was skillfully conceived and executed throughout. Gettin ’ Catty or The Friskie Suite, by Patrick McCann, to music by Cat Stephens, is a hip-swinging, free wheeling spree. Brooke Hunter com pletely failed to capture the work’s style or spirit. Barry Thomas, on the other hand, kept up a strong sexy pelvic swagger, but overall the work remained as weak as its weakest link. In Magnetic Rag, the dancers cer tainly knew how to project the work’s style: it is a send-up of vaudeville dance, complete with cake-walk, well danced by choreographer Patrick McCann and Terri Jones-Kayser. The music by Scott Joplin provided an in imitable supply of kinetic energy which the dancers handled with strength and dynamism. So gleeful was the performance that one forgave its constant playing for laughs. Guest choreographer Terri Jones- Kayser’s Quiche Lorraine with music by the B-52’s is a delightful piece. A multi-colored, punky, New Wave-ish jaunt, Quiche has a light touch, sure fire pace and a wonderfully unforced humour. The dancers maintain a straight-faced, hard-edged articula tion throughout, dancing with preci sion and brightness. The parts in which the dancers walk non-existent dogs, leading them on empty, stif fened leashes, are particularly in spired zaniness. Gesture by Joanne McGhee, per formed to music composed by Michael Smith especially for the work, attempted far more than it achieved. An effective tableau opened the work: nine starkly clad, static figures form a human frieze, dramatically lit on a slanting diagonal across the stage. This gives way to a protracted section through which the four central and five peripheral pro tagonists agonize in ultra-slow motion. The stasis was neither suf ficiently physically tension-filled nor visually interesting enough to pre vent tedium. The uninteresting design of the dance was weakened further by an unattractive, unoriginal score. Smith’s music for piano and com puter-generated sound was unevent ful and unpleasant. It is the sort of music made by Cornelius Cardew and others some twenty years ago, and even when it was new it was a bore: it is the sort of sound-spectrum that gives electronic music a bad name! Even the dance for which it was writ ten soon was unable to sustain any real connection with the score. The sounds remain very much the same throughout, without contrast or change, while the dance goes through several drastic and unrelated changes. After the barely moving beginning, the dance suddenly breaks into unex plained wildness with intentionally, though uncalled for, uncontrolled gyrations and hysterical, hyper kinetic twitches and jerks which then relax into some martial-type steps and postures. The music doesn’t reflect or initiate these changes at all, remaining exactly the same throughout. The other work using an original score was far better conceived in terms of music, dance, and the rela tionship of the two. Vision Quest, subtitled The Human Quest: Light, Wisdom from Darkness, was a col laboration by dancer-choreographer Louise Udakee and composer James Oliverio. Here the movement and the music were perfectly wed: the music, an electronic collage realized primarily on synthesizer, has an imperceptively growing momentum, incremental and subtle as oriental music, with the same ethos of magic spell-weaving invoked by systemic or eastern music. The work is a kind of mystery ritual firedance, a shadowy, secret, solo pageant of swirling fire with the dancer barely visible throughout. All we see is the brandishing and undula tion of a flaming torch. Although the prosaic hall did not lend itself to this invocation of mystery, a sustained aura of ritual and magic was achieved. The torch was doused and the shadowy figure on the stage watch ed with us in silence as five small flames burning on the floor gradually died. Truly an enchanted moment on which to end this promising debut of the Dancers’ Collective. June Schneider, a composer, music ologist and professor of music at Mercer University, regularly con tributes to Dance News. Louise Udaykee’s Vision Quest performed at the debut performance of the Dancers’ Collective in Atlanta (photo: Rick Glisson, courtesy of the Dancers’ Collective). 13 Art Papers September-October 1981
