Performance Mix Festival, celebrating its twenty-fourth installment, presented over thirty dance, music, video, and interdisciplinary artists from around the world during April 13th to 18th, 2010, at Joyce Soho. The festival was presented by the organization New Dance Alliance, fostering a forum to expose audiences to new works while providing services to advance artists’ careers.
On Sunday, April 18th at 3:00 PM, the line up of artists who performed were three New York City artists: Brynne Billingsley, Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance, and Kristi Spessard Dance Projects; one Utah artist: Ashley Anderson; one Vancouver group: MOVE: the company.
The concert opened with a solo by Kristi Spessard, who collaborated with Jeanne Trevers on its creation. The title was Tremor, and Kristi began the solo with pulses and contorted gestures to the sound of amplified breathing. This dance began slowly in a spotlight, the dancer appearing strung up like a puppet as if being moved by some outside force. This activity accumulated until the dancer burst out of the spot light and into the general stage space. Evocative of Mary Wigman, the dancer dropped into a low squat readdressing the opening contorted gestures. There was a brief ecstatic tossing of her body, resolving into a return to the original motif of the dance.
Kristi Spessard choreographed the second piece, Karo. It opened with two dancers, one male and one female, with their backs to the audience in a provocative entanglement. The costumes had a rural aesthetic, creating a down home erotic image to open the piece. The woman bent over and dipped her finger into a bottle of Karo syrup while the man embraced her intimately. They began partnering continuously with a heavily weighted and animalistic quality. It accelerated into wrestling with one another like angry co-dependent partners, finally calming down into a clearly identifiable waltz section. The bottle of Karo was further accessed throughout the dance suggesting the metaphor that relationships can be “sticky” and addictive. The music was a vocal piece that repeated a phrase to exhaustion, sometimes upstaging the dance in its incessancy.
This dance review continues with two more installments of the article, examining the artists who presented April 18th, 2010, at the Performance Mix Festival at Joyce Soho.
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