A Dance of Culture And Compromise
LEVYdance founder Bejamin Levy favors muscular, theatrical choreography.
(By Bryan Davis)
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Friday, January 4, 2008
Choreographer Benjamin Levy has only vague notions of what his parents did when they lived in Tehran, before fleeing the revolution in the late 1970s. Yet his new dance piece, "Bone lines," draws much of its inspiration from his Persian-Jewish background.
After leaving Iran, Levy's family settled in Los Angeles, where he was born, and they rebuilt their lives, never looking back.
"What happened in my family," the San Francisco-based choreographer says, "was a complete shutting off of the past and a turning forward" to the future. "Bone lines," a 24-minute work for his youthful troupe, LEVYdance, doesn't delve deeply into the drama of his family's flight, but it does investigate cultural transmission: what gets passed on and what gets lost amid everyday life. There's something about the work's tender and knotty partnering, the spare walking, the shadowy relationships that suggests a shared sense of loss.
"Bone lines," Levy says, "uses a very focused, hot issue, exaggerated in my family's experience because it was so dramatic, but looking through that lens, [the work] gets to a core truth of human experience."
Levy, 27, who founded his company of five dancers five years ago, returns to Dance Place this weekend with a program of new and recent works, including "Bone lines" and his nightclub-inspired "Nu Nu," the male duet "Falling After Too" and the solo "if this small space."
He favors steely partnering, muscular attack and theatricality. For "Bone lines," industrial designer Rick Lee crafted a mirrored mobile that refracts and reflects lights on the dancers and the curtains, and fashion designer Colleen Quen created two sets of costumes. The dancers shed loosely flowing pants and tops for stylish, edgier red and black as the piece proceeds, suggesting a change of place.
"Bone lines" composer Keeril Makan mines American folk, European avant-garde, Indian classical and minimalist influences in his work. The "Bone lines" score is performed by the Kronos Quartet.
While Levy says his work is broader and deeper than family or cultural history, he acknowledges that his family's plight has influenced him.
"It affects my feelings about my home and my security. . . . It has shaped my life in some way, even if it's just flowing through my veins, my blood, my bone lines."
LEVYdance Dance Place 3225 Eighth St. NE 202-269-1600 Saturday at 8 and Sunday at 4. $22. LEVYdance Dance Place 3225 Eighth St. NE 202-269-1600 Saturday at 8 and Sunday at 4. $22.
