STARR FOSTER DANCE: Anthology
A Dance Review by Julinda D. Lewis
At: Grace Street Theater, 934 West Grace Street, RVA 23220
Performances: September 27-30, 2018; Thursday, Friday & Saturday @ 8PM; Sunday @2PM
Ticket Prices: $20-25 General Admission
Info: (804) 304-1523, starrfosterdance.org, or http://www.showclix.com
The final performance of Starr Foster Dance’s Richmond production of the Anthology program was special in that it marked the final performance of long-time company member and rehearsal assistant Jordan Livermon Glunt. (Glunt will be touring with the company, but this marked her last Richmond appearance.) After the final curtain, Glunt was showered with flowers from cast members and a standing ovation from an audience filled with family and friends.
The Anthology program included two new works by company artistic director Starrene Foster, Falling to Earth and Grudge. Falling to Earth has a quartet of dancers dressed in light clothing performing soft variations of falling, ending with arms raised. Set to the music of Murcof, (Mexican electronica artist Fernando Corona) the piece creates an other-worldly atmosphere that allows for multiple interpretations of the descending and suggestion of a return. Grudge, on the other hand, has an entirely different energy. It is aggressive and instead of the easy give and take between dancers, there is attitude, pushing and shoving, kicks and the sort of tension found in capoeira or a choreographed street fight. The music by the late French film composer Hugues Le Bars often has an urban edge that fuels this roughened sensibility.
An audience favorite was the program’s only solo, Garland (The Day the Sky Fell), created in memory of Robert Garland Gill and performed by Jordan Livermon Glunt. Wearing a black dress and dancing in a cone of light, with a wooden chair at the end as prop and partner, to an Arvo Part choir song, “Nun eile ich zu euch (Now I Hasten to You),” Glunt’s performance was sweetly evocative. At the end confetti falls around her, in memory and in celebration of life.
The program also included Waiting Room, a shadowy dance in red and black in which the play of light and shadow becomes both setting and character; and the mysteriously touching Apartment No. 9, which features six dancers connecting and reconnecting under a string of bare light bulbs with two chairs facing one another, giving the feel of an interrogation room. The program closed with The Space Between the Echo¸ a dance inspired by a work by local photographer Dennis Lieberman which features a mysterious and mechanized original score by Billy Curry.
There are several things that stand out about all of Foster’s works. I have often remarked that she prefers dim, eerie, evocative lighting that often obscures the dancer’s features. Foster also connects with interesting music that is often strikingly out of the ordinary, but always a perfect fit for the movement. Many works include original music composed for the dance. Finally, there is the humanity of her works. Weather humorous, aggressive, sweetly touching, or quirky and moody, the dancers always maintain an extra-sensory connection; they move as a unified organism that feels like family. The way they hold and slide over one another, often with a smaller dancer lifting a much taller or larger dancer, exudes a sense of safety and trust that makes you feel as if they want to do more than just entertain you, they want to tell a story that draws you into their world and connects us all.
Julinda D. Lewis is a dancer, teacher, and writer who was born in Brooklyn, NY and now lives in Eastern Henrico County.
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Photo Credits: Starr Foster Dance by Douglas Hayes.
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