Monday, June 16, 2008
CityDance Ensemble
Whatever CityDance Ensemble presents, the choreography sits on its dancers like a cat on an easy chair: The performers look comfortable, whether rendering early modern dance works or mounting a contemporary look at environmental disaster.
The performances are what made the program sparkle Friday at the Music Center at Strathmore. Nothing on this end-of-season program was entirely new, but no matter. Winning pieces from earlier in the season looked more polished (and left out were the clunkers). Kudos to Artistic Director Paul Gordon Emerson for having the wisdom to edit. The program included two superb re-creations of signature works from social-protest choreographers Sophie Maslow and Jane Dudley, and works by Emerson (his serviceable "Born to Run," set to Bruce Springsteen music, and a resetting of his transcendent duet "Falling," danced to Otis Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness"). The program concluded with Brenda Way's "On a Train Heading South," a piece about global warming that still unfolds like an intelligent commentary, but without touching the heart.
The most significant parts of the evening, and by far the most significant events of the company's season, were the historical re-creations of Maslow's 26-minute "Folksay" (from 1942) for eight dancers and Dudley's 3 1/2 -minute solo "Harmonica Breakdown" (from 1938). "Breakdown" was danced with verve and sauciness by Alicia Canterna. The ensemble danced "Folksay," set to Woody Guthrie songs, with intelligence and heart.
CityDance Ensemble, which is devoted to history and reconstruction, showed us this season that "reconstruction" is a bit of a misnomer. In the modern dance world, reconstructing something from a much earlier era often implies that the work is unfashionable and out of step, a historical oddity of sorts. But these works by Maslow and Dudley have withstood the test of time and deserve to be performed more often.
How terrific it would be if more modern dance programs included some classics (classics from modern dance, that is) on their programs as a matter of course. Excellence is excellence, no matter what era it comes from. CityDance has done an excellent job of showing us that.
-- Pamela Squires
Anita Baker
Anita Baker made quite an entrance at Wolf Trap on Friday night, running onstage as fast as her sequined black gown would allow, then giddily twirling and bouncing about, as eager as ever to delight a crowd that was already on its feet, cheering wildly.
The multiple-Grammy-winning vocalist didn't find her summer groove so much as seize it during a two-hour performance laced with free-spirited tangents and audience requests that harked back to the mid-'80s. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Baker has little use for rigid set lists and time-saving medleys. After all these years she's still a spontaneous performer, one who loves to approach familiar melodies in fresh ways -- with a slippery scat phrase or a brassy, gospel-charged flourish.
Of course, large pavilions are no place to savor the subtle and sublime aspects of Baker's great artistry. The heavily amplified sound inside the venue all but obliterated some lyrics -- concertgoers on the lawn were better served. But there was no concealing Baker's dynamic range or winning personality when it came time for her and a nine-member ensemble to reinvigorate "Sweet Love," "You Bring Me Joy," "No One in the World" and other hits.
Often alluding to the heat and humidity, Baker suggested at one point that photo hounds snap away before her inevitable meltdown. Yet she paced herself so well that the concert ended on a high note, with an extended and improvised series of encores that included "Angel," "My Funny Valentine" and "Fairy Tales."
-- Mike Joyce
Wagner Society Singers
The golden age for Wagner singing has passed, but the Wagner Society of Washington is trying to remedy that with its emerging singers program. Under its auspices, soprano Evelyn Lear has coached four singers, presenting them in an 80-minute concert Friday night at the German Embassy. Lear's hyperbolic narration left no doubt of the brilliance of each of her charges, though she could not remember some of their names.
Each singer on the program had attractive moments. Most striking were the Brunnhilde excerpts by soprano Valerie Bernhardt, with a ringing tone on the "Hojotoho!" shouts, along with clarity (alternately tender and piercing) in the immolation scene. Baritone Ryan Kinsella tried to channel Lear's late husband, the Wagnerian baritone Thomas Stewart, in the Dutchman's Act 1 monologue. Kinsella had an intense presence, with the voice a little compressed at the top, except when he opened up at the words "Never death!"
In the scene that ends the first act of "Die Walkure," soprano Julia Rowling had a rounded and rich low range as Sieglinde, but the high notes, which can come out of nowhere, needed some more burnishing. Tenor Bryan Register's Siegmund had a fluttering vibrato that played havoc with intonation, and he lacked that last bit of power for the duet's ecstatic ending.
Accompanist Betty Bullock gave a consistently sensitive approximation of the orchestral fabric of leitmotifs at the piano.
-- Charles T. Downey
Battles
Most instrumental-rock groups, no matter how they struggle against the tyranny of song form, end up sounding like novelty acts. Battles, which played Saturday night at the 9:30 club, could also be dismissed as a mere curiosity. Yet there was nothing "mere" about the New York quartet's walloping performance, which was looser, nuttier and more compelling than the band's debut album, "Mirrored."
Battles' lineup might seem traditional: a drummer, a bassist and two guitarist-keyboardists, one of whom occasionally vocalizes. But their music is prog-rock that has been reverse-engineered from techno, with even the live instruments treated to sound electronic. Instrumental riffs and vocal bits were sampled on the spot, becoming loops that underpinned the ensuing passages; and all the musicians save drummer John Stanier toyed with their instruments as much as they actually played them. Tyondai Braxton (son of avant-jazz elder Anthony Braxton) and Ian Williams wore guitars around their necks for most of the 70-minute set, but rarely used them. The evening's biggest crowd-pleaser, the cantering "Atlas," featured only a few scattered shards of guitar.
If the performance revealed the extent of Battles' reliance on synthesized timbres, it also spotlighted the crucial difference between the band and most techno outfits: Stanier's stripped-down drum kit is the crux of the sound. All four players contributed heavily to the complex rhythms, but it was the extraordinary drummer's fluid, muscular beats that allowed the music to breathe. Whether leading the assault or signaling a tempo change, Stanier was always at the heart of Battles.
-- Mark Jenkins
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