Another season of ADF has come to an end. We didn't get to as many performances this year as last. I don't know enough about dance to say that this year's festival was less impressive but I can say that there were fewer performances that I was interested in seeing. Last year we saw Pilobolus, Paul Taylor, Shen Wei, Mark Morris and H. Art Chaos. This year we saw Shen Wei, Martha Clarke and Eiko and Koma. Eiko and Koma were pretty amazing. It wasn't exactly my favorite thing ever -- it's just not a style of dance that one's really gonna warm up to. But they're important enough that I felt like I was missing something by not having ever seen them.
The Martha Clarke performance was the big letdown of the season for me. The piece (co-written w/ Alfred Uhry, author of Driving Miss Daisy) was about the Shakers. All the music was Shaker hymns, sung by the cast w/o accompaniment (as was typical of the Shakers). Basically, I thought it was excellent dance, but pretty weak theater. I felt like Uhry and Clarke had one idea about the Shakers. It wasn't a terribly deep or profound idea -- they were uptight, sexually repressed and weird -- and the piece kinda beat the audience over the head with its point/idea. Still, I enjoyed the dance elements.
This was the third time we've seen Shen Wei Dance Arts and it was not only the best work I've seen by them, it was one of the best dance programs I've ever seen. They did "Rite of Spring" which really drew on and amplified the frenetic energy of the piano version of Stravinsky's music that they used. It had an off-kilter quality (very different from the version by H. Art Chaos from last year). Also an untitled solo piece by Shen Wei, which was brilliant, puzzling and funny. The second half of the program was "Folding" and it was mind-blowing. I overheard someone in the audience saying that they were planning to leave at intermission because they'd seen "Folding" the night before. After the show ended, I could not understand how anyone could see that piece and NOT want to see it again. Even if only for the prosaic reason that there's up to 13 dancers on stage at some points and how the hell can you pay attention to what everyone is doing? To say nothing of the fact that the piece is completely fucking brilliant. Here's some thoughts from Sarah on last night's performance