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Waiting to Exhale
Lisa Traiger, Danceview Times
February 11th, 2008

Camille Brown has that ineffable performance quality that makes you want for more. Saturday evening at Dance Place, this rising New York choreographer – her company debuted at Joyce SoHo in December 2006 –- gave just a taste of what she can accomplish on stage. A scintillating dancer, tough and tender, juicy and jangle-edged, she danced with Ronald K. Brown/Evidence for six years and now dances with Rennie Harris/Puremovement as well as her own young troupe. In the compact excerpt from “The Evolution of a Secured Feminine,” she showed her mettle and easy-going sensuality, her sugar and spice, in a solo so tautly put together it was hard to exhale until its final tension-filled moments subsided. At that point, an audible “whew!” erupted from the full house. Brown has an innate ability to emulate the unspoken in the subtle way she captures and telegraphs vernacular gesture: the briefest but neatest rise then dip of her chin, the way she dashes her shoulder up, or switches of her hips then, oh so deliciously, pauses. For Brown, every little movement, as in Dalcrozian terms, has a meaning all its own. As more than one woman exclaimed from the audience, "MMM hmmm!"

Riffing to two smoke-and-whiskey jazz greats, Betty Carter and Nancy Wilson, “Evolution…” dissects a relationship with pinpoint accuracy. Clad in a half-cutaway jacket, a thin cigar held at her lips, eyes shaded by a pork pie hat, she’s a looker, fashionably retro, yet coolly contemporary. There’s a sharp pithiness in the way she slices her arm across her body, or tremors her knees together. With eyes hidden, face a pleasant non-confrontational mask, Brown relies entirely on her specific lexicon of gestures to render her character – a woman wronged into an engrossing portrait.

The three additional works Brown showed on the shared program with D.C. hip-hop activist Aysha Upchurch and her Life, Rhythm, Move Project, were not nearly as effective, perhaps because her dancers, while fine, don’t exhibit that extra something that can turn good choreography into great. Elise Drew own the muscular definition and well-tempered athleticism, but lacks the added polish to enhance “Choices,” a solo danced to a score by Bobby McFerrin and YoYo Ma with poetry by Dana Gourrier. Juel D. Lane uses his lanky reach in “With Ways” and Kevin Guy demonstrates his powerful arms and thighs – those ultra-deep hinges -- in “Going Forward, Present In the Now,” yet neither attained Brown’s intense attack. Full-bodied Francine Elizabeth Ott finds lushness in her undulating torso for her own choreography, “In the Heart of Those He Desires.”

“Am I On?” Upchurch’s hip-hop suite of seven dances, addresses the age-old issue of misunderstood teens. But for Upchurch and her 10 dancers, the stakes have risen with the onslaught of growing urban violence, gangs, drugs and the politicization of education in the guise of the Bush administration’s “No Child Left Behind Act.” Using real-life interviews with teens from Wilson High School in the District and excerpts from radio news reports, including National Public Radio segments on NCLB and on school shootings, the work has a ripped from the headlines feel. The dancing contains that elixir that makes hip-hop so compelling, the powerful beat that keeps feet, hips, shoulders, rips and torsos in constant syncopated motion. The score ranges from Alicia Keys to Timbaland, Aphex Twin to Nas, mashed up with the youth narratives and the graffiti backdrop by Ryan Dalisay proclaims “speak” and “listen” as does the piece. And while the sentiments and power of the performances are compelling enough, the work suffers from a feeling of choreographic sameness and flags rather than builds, before its final powerful punch.



February 11, 2008 © Lisa Traiger 2008