Tag Archives: BodyVox

Bob Hicks, Dance, Film, General

Link: movies and dance, BFF

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Jonathan Krebs (top) and Jamey Hampton. Photo courtesy BodyVox.

By Bob Hicks

The other day I posted this essay, BodyVox cuts to the Hollywood chase, on Oregon ArtsWatch. It’s about BodyVox dance’s cannily amusing ode to the movies, The Cutting Room, which continues through May 19. In the piece, I dive into the pool where film, dance and music swim around in existential, essentially nonverbal waters, and I try not to sink. An excerpt:

What The Cutting Room achieves is to distill the essence of movie storytelling without weighting it down with any actual story. And it has fun doing it. Its a situational comedy, a comedy of mood and ritual trappings. “Stella!” a voice cries; or, “I’ll have what she’s having”; or “I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen”; and we all know what the scene is and where, in Hollywood dreamland, we are. It’s as comfortable and comforting as reciting The Lord’s Prayer.

Photo courtesy BodyVox: Jonathan Krebs (top) and Jamey Hampton.

Bob Hicks, Books, Dance, General, Music, Theater, Visual Art

PDX weekend: embarrassment of riches

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  • 25 candles for First Thursday
  • BodyVox leans horizontally
  • William Hurt and Harold Pinter duke it out
  • Wordstock throws a bookapalooza
  • Oregon Arts Watch puts on a show (times three)
  • A double feature at Oregon Ballet Theatre
  • Portland Open Studios’ peek behind the scenes

By Bob Hicks

Good lord, what a weekend. Used to be, a person who really tried could actually keep up with significant cultural happenings in Puddletown. Kiss those days goodbye. Portland’s grown up (in a lot of ways, anyway) and we’ve entered pick-and-choose time. You’ll never catch everything worth catching, so pick what looks most intriguing to you and resign yourself to missing out on some good stuff. Even Don Juan can’t sample all the pleasures in the pantry.

A few ideas:

Tom Prochaska, "So Much To Do," oil on canvas, 66" x 88", 2011. Courtesy Froelick Gallery.Tom Prochaska, So Much To Do, Froelick Gallery

Tonight is First Thursday, the mainline Portland galleries’ monthly art hop, and it happens to be the 25th anniversary of the first art walk, in October 1986. Kelly House has this story in this morning’s Oregonian about how First Thursday and the Pearl District grew together, and I have this rundown (partial, as always), also in The Oregonian, of highlights of the October visual art scene. Personal tip: If you have business in Salem, or a free day for a short trip, the double-header of Italian Renaissance drawings from the Maggiori Collection and 22 prints from Georges Rouault’s Miserere et Guerre series at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art is well worth the visit.

*

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Bob Hicks, Dance, General

A few conclusions on Obstacle Allusions

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By Bob Hicks

Mr. and Mrs. Scatter spent Friday night — or at least a short part of it — at BodyVox for the opening performance of Obstacle Allusions, Eric Skinner’s new half-hour dance for Skinner/Kirk Dance Ensemble.

skinnerkirkb2011It was the second recent new contemporary dance piece in town in which the music was an essential and equal partner to the dancemaking, defining and pushing the ideas as much as the choreography itself. (The first was Jim McGinn’s Gust for TopShakeDance, a piece that was woven inseparably with Loren Chasse’s score based on field recordings of the sounds of wind.) In Obstacle Allusions the music isn’t original: it’s taken from works by Haydn, Aarvo Part and the film composer Ennio Morricone.

But the performance — by pianist Bill Crane, who is always an enlightenment and a pleasure to hear — was a highlight of the evening and a welcome reminder of the essential partnership of music and physical movement in dance.

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Dance, General, Martha Ullman West

Stravinsky the hipster

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By Martha Ullman West

So I put on my black leather jacket and my uncut corduroy black jeans, but balked at a nose ring, and attended the Dance Talks panel at the Pacific Northwest College of Art yesterday afternoon.  This outreach program for adults usually takes place at the Keller or the Newmark a week or so before Oregon Ballet Theatre opens a new concert series.

Stravinsky, by Picasso, 1920. Wikimedia Commons.This one, however,  was a panel discussion to introduce an audience that admittedly had more young people in it than usual to The Stravinsky Project, the middle piece on OBT’s all-Stravinsky evening opening at the Keller this coming Saturday night.

It’s a collaborative effort on the part of four choreographers with very different aesthetics and approaches to dance: Rachel Tess, Anne Mueller, and Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland of BodyVox.

Unfortunately, Hampton and Roland couldn’t be present (BodyVox is touring in Europe), but the two choreographers were joined by composer Heather Perkins, costume designer Morgan Walker, a painter who is on the faculty at PNCA; and OBT’s lighting designer Michael Mazzola.

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Bob Hicks, Books, Dance, General, Humor, Journalism, Language, Theater

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll darn near die

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What's holding things up? Jamey Hampton in "BloodyVox." Photo: Michael Shay, Polara Studios

By Bob Hicks

Actors have a parlor trick they like to pull out to amaze and amuse their non-thespian friends. I’m not sure if it has an accepted given name, but I sometimes call it the “laugh-cry game.” It’s simple, really: They cover their faces, start making an odd guttural sound, and challenge you to tell whether they’re laughing or crying. In terms of technique, both actions come out of the same place.

It’s fitting that the art of acting is so often depicted with drawings of the tragic and comic masks, because the comic and tragic are so often barely a whisker’s width separated from each other. Tragedy gets the respect. Comedy gets the love, if often reluctantly. But really, the balance is a lot closer. Remember, Chekhov insisted his mournful plays were comedies.

Robyn Nevin and William Hurt in "Long Day's Journey Into Night." Photo: Brett BoardmanI think of this because the big deal in Puddletown this weekend is Saturday night’s opening of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Eugene O’Neill‘s imperial American classic, at Artists Repertory Theatre. This production has Serious written all over it. A co-production with Australia’s Sydney Theatre Company, it stars occasional Oregonian William Hurt as the destructive Tyrone family patriarch, and it drew sparkling reviews in its recently closed Sydney run. I look forward to it not just because it arrives with stellar recommendations but also because O’Neill was in a very real sense the father of American theater, our first true genius. That he was such a morose son of a bitch was the luck of the draw. France got Moliere, the satiric comedian. England got Shakespeare, the astonishing Everyman. We got Old Bleak House, and few writers have ever done bleak better: O’Neill paints loss in despairingly seductive strokes of love.

Good laughs are nothing to sniff at.

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Bob Hicks, Dance, General

The big bounce: BodyVox’s ‘Trampoline’

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Jamey Hampton's "Trampoline," at BodyVox. Photo: Michael Shay, Polara Studios

Feeling a little low? Need to bounce back from a bad day? This looks like a dizzy way to do it.

Una Loughran of BodyVox sent along this photo, by Michael Shay of Polara Studio, of Jamey Hampton’s new piece Trampoline, part of Smoke Soup, a program of new works opening tonight at the BodyVox Dance Center. Mr. and Mrs. Scatter are out of town and so won’t be there, but it looks like a real upper.

“Trampoline started with six men and a woman,” Hampton says. “I wanted to see how high three men could throw a dancer if three men were going to catch her. Dramatically, it became a dance about how people can support and help each other.”

Sounds like the woman has more on the line than the men in this relationship. This is no time for butterfingers. Opening weekend’s sold out, but the show continues through April 10.

Bob Hicks, Dance, General

Random Dance, and other movements

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Random Dance, coming to White Bird and the Newmark.

Mr. Scatter is not a dancer. This may seem odd, considering the number of dance posts that have been on this site of late (or maybe, once you’ve read them, it seems painfully obvious), but that is partly a matter of coincidence. There’s been a lot of dance in town lately, and more is on the way.

We’re talking, of course, about presentational dance, art dance, dance as performance — not the social dance that Mr. Scatter did not learn in the 1950s and 1960s, when he suffered from a not uncommon affliction known as Two Left Feet, complicated by a textbook case of shyaroundgirlitis. Yes, he did go to his senior prom. He was in the band. The perfect end-run.

Mr. Scatter's unfortunate childhood affliction.Watching dance, on the other hand, is a longtime pleasure, one that slides from tap to tango, classic to contemporary, Broadway to ballet. And it strikes Mr. Scatter that, while a lot of people weren’t looking, Portland’s become a heck of a dance town.

Oregon Ballet Theatre is somewhere near the middle of it all, continuing its lovely performances of Christopher Stowell‘s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and George Balanchine‘s The Four Temperaments through Saturday at Keller Auditorium.

And surely much of this renaissance can be laid at the feet of White Bird, which has routinely brought the un-routine to Portland audiences, exposing the city to worldwide dance ideas. Fresh from Hubbard Street, which has barely had a chance to skip back to Chicago, here White Bird comes again, this time presenting England’s Random Dance (that’s them in the photo above) Thursday through Saturday in the Newmark Theatre. The piece, Entity, by company leader Wayne McGregor, runs an hour and is reputed to be fast and furious. It also marks the end of White Bird’s two-year Uncaged series, which has spotted dance in adventurous spaces around town while it’s waited for its regular second-season home, Lincoln Performance Hall, to be refurbished. That’ll be done by the start of next season.

But as important as they are, the scene is far from just OBT and White Bird. Keep an eye out for these upcoming events, too. (The dance action’s so hot and heavy that we’re sure we’re missing something; we apologize in advance.):
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Bob Hicks, Dance, General

BodyVox-2 does the bunny hop

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BodyVox-2, in "Usual Suspects." Photo: Blaine Truitt Covert

Mr. and Mrs. Scatter headed for BodyVox, the Portland touring dance and performance company, the other night for the public debut of BodyVox-2, the next generation.

BodyVox is a veteran company, filled with performers who have long and deep experience in ballet companies and with such performance troupes as Pilobolus and Momix. They carry their performances with the sureness and muscle memory of artists who have been living with this material for a long time, and, in many cases, who have had pieces created specifically for them and their bodies.

NodyVox-2, "Hopper's Dinner." Photo: Blaine Truitt CovertSo it’s something of a revelation to see some of these works performed by other bodies. Thursday’s performance included 10 short dances, plus a couple of Mitchell Rose’s terrific short comic films — a smorgasbord of BodyVox hits. Seeing fresh bodies perform them wasn’t just about getting to know a new crop of good dancers in town. It was also about rethinking these works as pieces of choreography that both define the BodyVox style and stand on their own as discrete works of art that have entered the contemporary-dance repertoire.

These are good dancers, all of whom come to the company with significant training and who now get the opportunity to learn the BodyVox style and absorb some of the knowledge of Jamey Hampton, Ashley Roland, Daniel Kirk, Eric Skinner and other main-company stalwarts. BodyVox vet Zachary Carroll directs the second company, which already has done a little regional touring and several school shows, and he’s done a good job: If things aren’t always quite as crisp as with the main company, this is a highly promising, athletic, nimble young professional ensemble.

The troupe of Jeff George, Kara Girod, Melissa Kanavel, Jonathan Krebs and Josh Murry works well together, especially on such ensemble-oriented pieces as Usual Suspects (top photo), the rollicking Hopper’s Dinner, and the nose-wiggling frolic that is The Bunny (inset photo). Despite their loose-as-a-goose moods, these aren’t easy pieces to perform, and BodyVox-2 pulls them off with a nice combination of recklessness and polish.

The growth of BodyVox-2 means a couple of things. First, BodyVox has become an institution, known for a specific style that can be replicated and performed by multiple casts. That’s a big step in the arts-touring game. Second, it’s a bet on the future, a way to prepare for passing things along. BodyVox isn’t just a group of performers who work together any more. It’s a body of work. And BodyVox-2 makes it much more likely that, come that inevitable day when artistic leaders Hampton and Roland and other veterans retire as performers, BodyVox will continue to grow and thrive. You could call this a legacy moment.

BodyVox-2 has two final performances, at 2 and 7:30 p.m. today, at BodyVox Dance Center, 1201 N.W. 17th Ave., Portland.

PHOTOS: Blaine Truitt Covert

Bob Hicks, Dance, General

Northwest Dance Project joins the PDX renaissance

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Wen Wei Wang / "Chi" / 2009. Photo: Blaine Covert

Above and below: “Chi,” by Wen Wei Wang, Northwest Dance Project, summer 2009. The Project dances downtown Friday and Saturday. Photos: Blaine Covert


It’s not all about Oregon Ballet Theatre.

Sure, the OBT story’s fascinating. Scrappy little company grows into rising national star. Stumbles into economic abyss. Gets saved by outpouring of bucks and extravaganza featuring top dancers from around the country. Dumps its executive director after noisy staff revolt. A day later, triumphs onstage. It’s like Pauline’s perils. Or the Comeback Kid. And there could be cliffhangers yet to come.

But while OBT’s sucked up most of the attention, Portland’s been enjoying a modest renaissance of dance. The two big pieces are OBT — a sterling company in spite of its backstage adventures — and White Bird, the presenting company that’s rejuvenated the city’s contemporary dance scene by bringing in a lot of the best the world has to offer.

And there’s much more.

The popular dance/movement troupe BodyVox, which tours the country, has opened its new dance center in Northwest Portland. Another contemporary troupe, Polaris, has its own new digs. The Portland Ballet, a well-regarded training company, is once again readying its charming holiday production of La Boutique Fantasque — this time with live accompaniment from the Portland State University Symphony performing Rossini’s playful score. Ghe downtown dance center Conduit, despite its own bump in the road, continues to serve the contemporary scene well. Veterans such as Mary Oslund, Josie Moseley, Gregg Bielemeier and Linda Austin are creating vital new work. Movement-inspired theater companies like Do Jump and Imago (which reopens its innovative teeter-totter version of Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit on Friday, with a terrific-looking cast) cross disciplines audaciously. Mike Barber’s Ten Tiny Dances pop up all over town. The aerialists of Pendulum Dance Theatre keep on floating new ideas. Newcomers like POV Dance, which specializes in site-specific work, are turning out some dizzying stuff — in the case of POV’s August piece at the Conduit benefit, literally: The performers were poking over and out from the four-story open stairwell at the Pythian Building as the audience gazed over guardrails, stomachs flipping.

What we have here, folks, is a scene.

And there’s more. Like, for a pretty big instance, Northwest Dance Project, the brainchild of choreographer and teacher Sarah Slipper, which got its start in 2004. Slipper, a Canadian who did her training there and in London and danced with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, came to Portland as ballet mistress for OBT back in the James Canfield days. Although deeply rooted in classical ballet, her temperament, like Canfield’s, is more contemporary.

photo: BLAINE COVERTNorthwest Dance Project began as a summer training program for young and mostly professional dancers, ages 16-25, who came to town from across the country to work with leading national choreographers for a few weeks and then put on an end-of-workshop public performance.

That still happens. Dancemakers such as Canfield (now at Nevada Dance Theatre in Las Vegas), Nashville Ballet’s Paul Vasterling, Bebe Miller, Susan Gaudreau of BJM Dance Montreal, Lucas Crandall of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and Washington Ballet’s Septime Webre have offered classes.

But things have expanded. Now the Project has an eight-member resident company that does some touring: It’s doing a residency next month at the Flying E Ranch, a 20,000-acre working dude ranch in Arizona’s Sonoran desert that also hosts arts groups, and follows that with a performance in Tucson. And it’ll perform Friday and Saturday nights at the Newmark Theatre in downtown Portland.

This summer the Project moved into its own new studio space in a handsome old ballroom just off North Mississippi Avenue at 833 North Shaver Street, right across from the popular Equinox Restaurant and Bar and barely a skip from the hot spots Gravy and Cup & Saucer Cafe. This part of town is hopping, and a lot of people peek in from the sidewalk to watch the dancers jump. The studio’s bathed with natural light from its big windows, and out back, behind the studio mirrors, the view opens to a sweet little pocket park. It’s a good place to call home.
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Bob Hicks, Dance, General, Music

BodyVox: Home again, home again, jiggity jig

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BodyVox's Water Bodies, which helped inaugurate the new dance center and is going on the road. Photo: J. Dunham Carter, Polara Studios

BodyVox’s “Water Bodies,” which helped inaugurate the new dance center (minus the sand!) and is going on the road. Photo: J. Dunham Carter, Polara Studios

The downside of BodyVox’s ambitious move into its own new BodyVox Dance Center in Northwest Portland?

Jamey Hampton, co-artistic director with his wife, Ashley Roland, of the Portland-based touring dance and movement ensemble, paused to consider the question.

“We were closer to cold beer before,” he finally allowed.

The new BodyVox dance center from the mezzanine. Photo: Bob HicksSurely a heavy price to pay — and the pizza was good, too. For several years BodyVox kept house in sunny but cramped quarters on the top floor of the BridgePort Brewpub,  several blocks away from the company’s new digs at Northwest 17th Avenue and Northrup Street.

But as charming as the proximity was, it’s tough to think of many other drawbacks to the move, which gives BodyVox a much bigger and more sophisticated space that also has the potential to be a vital community resource. As general manager Una Loughran put it, “We want this space to be used.”

One evening late last week BodyVox threw a little open house-slash-open rehearsal to show off the new space, and everyone was pretty much in a celebratory mood. Beer (BridgePort, of course) and wine were flying out of the lobby. Bodies were flying just as rapidly around the new stage, which is 60 feet wide as opposed to 40 in the old space, a huge difference in terms of choreographic possibility.

The rehearsal was mostly for Water Bodies, which the company is taking on tour to Philadelphia and New York state in mid-October (the home season, which will be performed entirely in the new space, opens Nov. 12), and with a crowd on hand it was loose. Christopher Stowell, artistic director of Oregon Ballet Theatre, stood at the side of the stage with a microphone to talk about what was going on in the dances, and when Hampton and Roland weren’t out on the stage performing, they joined in on the chat, too.

I talked briefly with veteran dancer Eric Skinner, one of BodyVox’s artistic anchors. He and the company were getting ready for a quick trip to Minnesota for a performance tomorrow night (Sept. 24) at College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University near St. Cloud. I congratulated him on the company’s wisdom in scheduling a trip to the upper Midwest in September instead of January.

Eric grinned. “Coldest winter I ever spent was the year I danced with Milwaukee Ballet,” he said.

By the time everything’s finished BodyVox’s main performing space will hold 160 seats, up from 90 in the old space. “It really transforms the financial picture for us,” Loughran said.

A front studio with big inviting garage-door windows onto the street was in use during the reception and already is attracting dancers for lots of classes. “That’s nice, too. Gets us back to that revenue flow,” said Loughran, whose job it is to worry about such things.

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