Hello everyone! It’s the Friday after our big weekend, and only now am I recovered and (somewhat) caught up on follow-up work from the Black Grace guest residency here in town.

I got an email the other day from Jennifer, the mother of Lauren Carr, one of Black Grace’s talented female dancers. She asked me if I was going to post a review of the performance. I thanked her for calling me out on that, since yes, that would be one of the key purposes of this blog, right? The trouble is, as someone who is not a dancer, and is relatively new to this dance world, I don’t feel qualified. Of course, this is silly since I used to review things all the time without qualifications when I worked at the newspaper. But this is different. I am not a third-party reviewer. I work for the company that brought Black Grace to town. Instead, I’m going to give you a recap of the weekend, with maybe a little review thrown in. I’ve been bugging my fellow bloggers (who are dancers) to post a review, so stay tuned.

Thursday, April 10 — The charter bus bringing Black Grace to Fort Wayne from Tennessee was late. That is understandable — traffic was bad that time of day, especially around Indianapolis. We threw them a welcome party at the beautiful home of one of our long-time friends and yoga students, Mardi Clemens. When they arrived, we have a large spread of food and spirits set out for them. We all had a blast. It was great to get to know these dancers as humans, and not merely performers. Last year, dancers from the Urban Bush Women, our 2007 guest artists, told us that in some venues, they just come to town and they never meet their hosts — they just go perform, collect their payment, and leave. The FWDC really takes pride and pleasure in meeting, greeting, and making our guest artists feel part of the family.

Anyway, the dancers stayed so long the shuttle from their hotel couldn’t pick them up! We drove them back to the hotel in several cars. All of us had a great time.

Friday, April 11 — Black Grace held a lecture/demonstration at Indiana Tech’s gymnasium. With about 500 Tech students, homeschoolers, and middle- to high-school aged youth, it was a great time. They performed two pieces from their repertoire, and then had a question and answer session. Boy, were they a hit. Wendy Wallace, the artistic consultant, spoke in her soft and controlled New Zealand inflection.

This event was intended to expose underserved children to dance they may never otherwise see. I took many pictures of the crowd, and most of them were just enraptured. It was the first time I saw Black Grace perform live, and it was incredible. I tried to get a close up of a dance Tupua was doing (he’s the guy in front on the left in this photo), but he was moving so fast, I couldn’t frame him. When I zoomed out, all I shot was a blur. He was amazing.)

Saturday, April 12 — The big day! It started out with a master class taught by Wendy and attended by several Black Grace members and about 25 local dancers who wanted to learn the particular techniques that makes Black Grace unique. As Wendy told them, “you’ll be learning some moves that when you come see the show, you can say, ‘I learned how to do that!’”

Mike King, our good friend and photographer, took pictures of the master class. As soon as we get those back, I’ll be happy to post them.

At about 6 in the evening, there was a pre-show dinner for a group of Dance Collective patrons in the gallery of the Arts United Center. It was catered by Jeannie Porter from Queenies, and it was delicious. We met a couple who just moved to town from New Orleans, looking for something to do in this town.

Finally, people started arriving for the show. It was packed! We very nearly filled the 660-seat house, and when the show started, a magical hush fell over the crowd.

REVIEW OF THE SHOW

Since I was closing down the box office, I missed the first piece, “Fa’a Ulutao.” I did see an excerpt from it at the lecture/demonstration, so I knew what was going to happen.

I’m trying to think of my two favorite pieces. Definitely one of them is “War Brides,” not just because it featured the men and the women, but also because the music was wonderful! There was a medley from a group that sounded like the Kingston Trio (but wasn’t, according to Wendy. I can’t recall the name right now). And they sang a great rendition of “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” while the dancers cavorted in these beautiful long, measured steps while wearing what looked like military uniforms from World War II. It looked like something out of an avant-garde production of South Pacific. There was also a great rendition of Hoki Mai, a wonderful Maori sound I’ve heard on a tiki podcast I listen to sometimes, while the dancers play-fighted with an incredible athletic grace. It was amazing — they looked like they were kicking each other down, but at the same time, you could tell the precision with which they kicked and fell didn’t harm them in the least. It was energetic, comical, and very skilled.

Perhaps my second favorite piece was the last one, Method. The description from the playbill says,

“The creative process for Method was inspired by boyhood memories of backyard rugby games, bull rush and wrestling. These memories provided the basis for improvisational exercises from which the movement vocabulary was derived.”

What was just incredible about this, though, was that Neil Ieremia (Black Grace’s choreographer and artistic director) put it all to one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos (No. 3, for you classical fans)! What resulted was several minutes of really, really, high energy flips, dives, rolls and leaps. I was agape the whole time, watching these men group together, pick a guy up, and throw him into the air, all in a matter of tenths of a second. (The picture above demonstrates that) One of my favorite moves from the piece was when the six men advanced toward the middle of the stage in a tight formation, and suddenly, the one in the front dropped down, and started rolling backwards toward the other guys. Without missing a beat, they all leapt over him. I know that if I tried that, I’d either injure the guy rolling or fall flat on my face.

In any case, that piece was amazing. It felt like someone turned off the gravity. They were so light and airy, that I felt like I was getting lighter in my seat just watching them.

A couple days later, I was having coffee with a friend of mine who had a different look at that piece. He loved the show, but he offered a criticism for Method that was valid — The Brandenburg Concertos are so powerful and moving, that he couldn’t concentrate on the dancing; he was so emotionally involved in the music. He could see the dancing, but concentrated on Bach’s concerto, so the choreography didn’t impact him. Though Bach isn’t my all-time favorite classical composer, I understand where he’s coming from.

After the show, we all went over to Hall’s Gas House behind the Arts United Center and had dinner. Black Grace, the Dance Collective staff, and 50 of our closest friends took up the dining room and then shut the place down. I sat next to Tracey-Marie and Sean, and talked about differences in speech between New Zealanders, Australians, and Americans, and I tried to do my part to teach them an Indiana accent. (We need to warsh the car and arn the clothes!) Tracey and I also debated on whether or not she should buy an iPhone here in the states and take it back to New Zealand, since it costs three or four times more there than here.

The next day, we took them to the airport so they could get to their next gig in Ottawa, Canada. We were sad to see them go, but it was so exciting to have them here.

Please, I welcome and encourage your comments. Did you see the show? What did you think?

 —Andy