Dance Review: Santa Fe Dance Festival (June 7)

Written by Jennifer Noyer   
Saturday, 07 June 2008 09:06

Moving People Dance opened its 2008 Santa Fe Dance Festival June 6 at the Lensic Theatre, featuring excerpts from Bill T. Jones’ newest work, “A
Quarreling Pair.” Ballet Austin presented “KAI,” a pas de deux inspired by South Pacific’s Bali Hai. Moving People Dance repeated Curtis Uhlemann’s
dynamic “Roda de Agua.”

Friday evening Bill T. Jones teased the audience with excerpts from “A Quarreling Pair,” promising to present the full ballet Saturday evening. This was
physical theatre in a vaudevillian structure, and based on the puppet play of the same name by Janet Bowles. Live original music, composed and
performed by Wynne Bennett, Christopher Antonio William Lancaster and George Lewis Jr., drew on songs and poetry in a sound design by Sam
Crawford and text by Bill T. Jones.

Two sisters, Harriet and Rhoda, quarrel about their life roles in the world. The quarrel opens as a carnival scene within a puppet theater as the dancers
carouse to ragtime rhythms in front of a red screen projected behind and above them. One man wearing a collar, like a Pierrot ruff, helped set the
crossover medieval/contemporary ambiance. A trio of men, with backs to the audience, then stamped across the stage in a jazzy take off of classical
ballet’s cygnets.

A shadow puppet scene emerged next, with the silhouetted figures of the two women arguing about female roles in the world. Harriet brings a
nourishing cup of milk to her sister, while Rhoda announces she is leaving to pursue a singing career. It was humorously melodramatic, in fine 19th
century style, yet served to state the serious theme of one of life’s eternal questions in a surreal setting.

Tracy Ann Johnson, as Rhoda, entered in a brilliant yellow gown to sing “a bit of history” but was ordered off the stage by the musical director. She
followed groups of dancers as an outsider until the end, carrying her suitcase with her.

“Dreams of dreaming,” set in a beautiful space design with a video of a large window scene by Janet Wong, brought romantic couples on stage in
swirling duets in front of a lamp-lit chaise-long. The dancers floated around each other, were lifted lovingly, and leaned towards each other to Lewis’s
song “Hold Me.” Harriet and Rhoda were urged in song to “come home now, to bed.”

The final excerpt opened with the words, “Where have you been, my blue-eyed son,” as dancers began to glide across the stage in a kind of fast,
slightly irregular waltz, changing direction constantly, moving in twos, threes, or larger flocking groups. Rhoda, in her yellow gown, watched, tried to
follow, but was “some one always left behind,” observing as the video screen revealed a city scene in rapid motion; people rushing about, with cars
speeding by. 

The final shot is of a highway sign reading “Bienvenidos” to New Mexico, bringing it all home to us.