Robert Moses’ KIN at The Dance Center of Columbia College
BY LUCIA MAURO
The over-used term "eclectic" could easily be applied to Robert Moses’ choreography. After all, an operatic diversity engulfs the San Francisco-based dancer-choreography’s large body of work. But eclectic can also imply dilettante. And the intricate, fully explored pieces on display at The Dance Center of Columbia College, March 6-8, could never be considered frivolous dabbling.
Whether influences of Paul Taylor, Martha Graham, Alonzo King, Twyla Tharp and a vast range of African, hip-hop and jazz rhythms could be discerned, Moses’ intense interest in carefully phrased individual expression within a group flourished.
Most immediately, I was left breathless by the end of the second act. It opened with a flirtatious and geometrically precise unpeeling of Bach’s harpsichord concertos, "3 Quartets for 4 and the Second is 2." Suggesting the bawdy playful patter of the Baroque era, this quartet – featuring the lithe, pixie-esque dynamism of dancer Tristan Ching – fostered an unselfconscious and angular virtuosity that was also soft around the edges. Moses, in essence, has placed a musical score before our eyes – after he has extracted its emotional essence
In fact, each work on the program had a symphonic quality – whether a solo to The Last Poets’ catalog of African-American artists, oral histories or percussive-based scores. Moses’ dancers truly transformed themselves into instruments on many levels, including metaphoric vessels for the human experience.
"Lucifer’s Prance" – an astonishing company finale set to Philip Glass music – recalled the spiritual grandiosity of Martha Graham and the primal terror of Vaslav Nijinsky’s "Le Sacre du Printemps." Gestures of collapse and offering suggested ritual sacrifice at the same time the dancers appeared propelled into blurred motion as if they were celestial bodies. The relentless drive of this piece had my heart beating faster than I’ve ever known.
The first half of the concert, however, felt repetitious and somewhat disconnected -- especially with the programming of three text collages in a row. But each of the four works in act one served as a study in Moses’ rich and meticulous movement vocabulary. Never a hodgepodge of influences, his choreography tells touching stories and makes severe political statements through a measured, yet spontaneous humanity of movement and gesture.
Least successful of all the works on the bill was the opening "A Biography of Baldwin," an ensemble dance-commentary to sound excerpts from a 1961 radio discussion with James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Langston Hughes, Emile Capouya and Alfred Kazin. The interview itself, with the African-American writers representing a complex spectrum of their history and experience, was so mesmerizing that the movement became distracting – especially since it was in severe counterpoint to the speakers’ words and intonations.
Issues of rage and the "duality of consciousness" did not filter through the dancers’ belabored and monotonous gesture. Not that I was seeking an accurate mirror of words and movement – just visuals that engaged as stingingly as the recorded voices.
More successful was Moses’ ironically named solo, "Never Solo," to The Last Poets’ incendiary words in which the exquisite and athletic Moses embodied the injustices, will and liberation of his culture, his art and his lineage.
"Blood in Time" ranks as the most textured and bittersweet work in the first half. Four dancers, including Moses, combined street movement with a revivalist energy accompanied by Bill Withers’ poetic strains and Moses’ own touching memoirs. From a segment chronicling the fervor of Sunday church service so uproarious that, even at funerals, "they used to have to tie the caskets down," the piece segues to a lyrical passage about a grandmother’s giving, musical hands and then Moses’ reflections on his mother. He had once recorded her laughter, but the tape got lost, prompting the voice-over: "I no longer have my mother’s voice in my life," against the image of a female dancer flailing about in despair.
Moses’ latest ensemble piece, "The Soft Sweet Smell of Firm Warm Things" – capturing the first blush of attraction – really needs to be viewed several times in order to grasp its uncontrived complexity and innovation. Consisting of movement studies that make the dancers look like agile musical compositions, Moses makes bold and seductive use of between-the-legs lifts, turned-in feet and isolation of certain body parts, like a hip or a shoulder.
Overall, Moses created an evening of music, poetry and geometry – all swirling about in harmonious exactitude. •
