K Dance

The 22nd Annual YES! Dance Festival: A Virtual Screening Event

At: The Firehouse Theatre, 1609 West Broad Street, RVA 23220

Performances: April 26-28, 2021 at the Firehouse; Remote stream April 29-May 13

Ticket Prices: $15

Info: (804) 355-2001, firehousetheatre.org, or https://firehousetheatre.org/e/yes-dance-festival/

Like just about everything else in life these past 13-14 months, K Dance company, under the direction of Kaye Weinstein Gary, pivoted into the new and produced the 22nd annual YES! Dance Festival as a virtual event. For those who wanted the experience of going to the theater, the program was available April 26-28 to live audiences of up to 10 people, followed by a post-performance conversation with Gary. Following the three large-screen showings, Gary and The Firehouse Theatre, her home base since becoming company-in-residence in 2019, also offered a remote stream of the program, available for two weeks.

For the past ten years the Yes! Dance Festival (formerly Yes, Virginia Dance) has hosted dancers and choreographers from Dance Magazine’s prestigious “25 to Watch” list, and this year was no different.

Boston Dance Theatre (BDT) (Boston, MA; Dance Magazine‘s “25 to Watch” January 2021) has been described as a company that has “appeal far beyond Boston’s city limits.” Their work, Surge Film Preview, was filmed on a sandy finger of land called Jeremy Point in Wellfleet in Cape Cod as part of the company’s Sea-Level Rise Project, a series of virtual events about the ocean, environmental activism, and a sustainable future. Accompanied by an urgent sound score, the five dancers shake, jerk, roll, and sometimes float or suspend just beneath the surface of the water. It is a beautiful and soul-stirring collaboration between choreographer Jessie Jeanne Stinnett, the dancers, oceanographer Larry J. Pratt, and the unidentified composer.

BDT also presented Shadows and Flame, a work originally commissioned for the Jewish Arts Collaborative for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts’ 2020 Hanukkah celebration. Envisioned as an exploration of light, shadow, and the dancing body, the opening scene, with five dancers lined up in a tight diagonal, and another section mid-way through where the dancers rise from the floor, remind me of those drawings that illustrate the evolution of mankind. Inspired by an 18th century Hanukkah oil lamp, the work has a grounded and ritualistic feel that is reminiscent of some of the works of Pilobolus – the unisex flash-toned tunics obscure the dancers’ individual identities and the dancers morph into and out of shapes, not emulating but rather embodying flames.

Paige Fraser (Chicago, IL, Dance Magazine‘s “25 to Watch” 2017 has performed in the YES! Dance Festival before. This time she offered a tiny solo, Silenced Cries, choreographed by Eric Bean, Jr., and set to “Le Jeune Fille et les Loups” (the maiden and the wolves) by Armand Amar. Set in a studio against a brick wall, the soft, spiraling lyrical phrases of Silenced Cries might well be one person’s response to the isolation and imposed loneliness of a year of pandemic restrictions. Fraser’s final gesture seems to be a plea for a time out. Fraser, a dancer with scoliosis (a sometimes disabling spinal curvature) is also founder of the Page Fraser Foundation, a safe space for dancers with (and without) disabilities.

slowdanger (Pittsburgh, PA, Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” 2018) described their work, for shadowing, as “created to embody the liminal space we are existing in, caught between two paralleling realities, a portal to the old world and a portal into shifted space.” Regretfully, the duo’s ethereal movement and original ambient soundscape was the one work of the evening that failed to move me or even leave much of an impression. I hope to have something more substantive to say after another visit by this group, consisting of Anna Thompson and Taylor Knight, who apparently constructed their name from a combination of road signs.

Marcat Dance (Jaén, Spain, Dance Magazine‘s “25 to Watch” 2017) was also a repeat visitor. The group’s work, Adama, choreographed by Mario Bermudez Gil, is a breath-taking trio performed in a patch of dirt in a large field backed by mountains. It is no coincidence that Adama is the Hebrew word for earth. As the dancers jump, turn, and interact with childlike simplicity, the work visually and viscerally connects with the earth and the natural landscape.

The program’s most provocative work was undoubtedly Jabberwock presented by LED (Boise, ID, Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” 2020). Lauren Edson’s color-filled and zany choreography partnered with nonsensical lexicon of Lewis Carroll’s poem, “Jabberwocky” to delightfully explore “themes of good versus evil, resilience, autonomy and truth.” The electric colors – like hot pink shoes and a brilliant blue jumpsuit – power a dynamic blend of flavors and genres. Imagine a world where break dance meets the blues, Kurt Jooss’ “Green Table” shakes hands with disco and the asylum is the penthouse of the dungeon.

Perhaps the intimate and intricate marriage of movement and musical genres is no surprise to those familiar with LED, but for us new to the group, they are described as much about music as they are about dance, with much of the company’s music begin created by Edson’s husband, composer Andrew Stensaas.

And what YES! Dance Festival would be complete without a work by K Dance’s artistic director, Kaye Weinstein Gary. Dressed in short coveralls, Gary danced the role of Kitty in a quirky and charming short written by Irene Ziegler. The little girl, sent to the corner for some unknown infraction, discovers that her imagination is her super power. She becomes so enmeshed in her meditation with her chair that when she is finally released she decides to stay.

Making the best of a challenging situation forced some dancers and artists to stretch beyond their comfort zone, embracing technology and finding new ways to create – because that is what artists do. None of these works seemed to have suffered for the effort and the intimate audience at the Tuesday evening performance seemed happy to be there. Given that many dance festivals often feature works created for film, we didn’t feel cheated, but perhaps the next step will be a hybrid program including a mix of live and video dance. Then all will be right with the world.