Time for another season

It's summer again, which means it's time for the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC. Again this year, I have the privilege to review some of the performances at the Festival for World Dance Reviews.

So far, I've published two reviews, one of the opening Gala performance, and one on Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's "Rosas Danst Rosas."
Here's an excerpt from the Gala review:

Looking Back and Moving Forward: The American Dance Festival's opening Gala honors Charles L. Reinhart

The American Dance Festival opened its 78^th season at the Durham Performing Arts Center on Thursday, with a special Gala performance honoring the 43 years of leadership by ADF Director Charles L. Reinhart. Reinhart will step down as director after this season, and a large crowd turned out to celebrate his legacy with the ADF.

Four and a half dance works (Mark Dendy's "I am a Dancer" was mostly talking) were featured on the program, interspersed with a video chronicling Reinhart's life and career and remarks by Durham Mayor Bill Bell, Executive Vice President of Duke University Dr. Tallman Trask, III, ADF co-director Jodee Nimerichter, and Reinhart himself. Diverse in style and attitude, the dances exposed different faces of the modern dance genre, as seen at the ADF. "Is this what it means to be a modern dancer," they seemed to ask. "Is this what it means to dance?"

Read the whole review here.

And here's an excerpt of "Rosas":

"Rosas" is a work of sharp contrast as well as subtle shadings. The lights and music are often abruptly switched on or off, and the dancers snap into their movement with precision. It is at once dramatic and monotonous, universal and mundane. The bold lighting and music gives it theatrical drama, but the dance is also about the drama in tossing hair and crossed knees, in a bared shoulder and the flicker of a smile.

As the house lights dim, a ticking music begins, sort of a mechanical heartbeat. As the dancers enter, the music gets louder and louder, to the point of real discomfort. Suddenly, the music is cut off, and the silence that follows feels particularly quiet in contrast. The four women have fallen to the floor, and they lie there for a long time while we consider them, listening to the silence, to our own breath that we are carefully holding. They begin a movement phrase that rolls, pauses, flops, and curls, first slowly, then gradually developing in speed and rhythmic complexity. Their poses of rest - lying as if sleeping on their sides, a hand languidly tracing an arc on the floor above their head, the forehead resting in the palm - are belied by the sharpness with which they lift their heads to look at something: these women are always alert.

Read the full review here.

More to come...