Anne Burnidge Dance with guests ETCH Dance Company

Reviewed by Missy Pfohl Smith

October 2009

On Saturday, September 5, 2009, I had the pleasure of experiencing the intimate Buffalo premiere concert of Anne Burnidge Dance with guest artist Etch Dance Company at the Alt Theatre.  In the densely packed house, it was warm in more ways than one, and I settled in to see, feel, sense, think and experience, as invited by Burnidge in her welcoming program note.

I was delighted to see the first work, Conversation Pieces, since it was one that I had had the experience of performing with Burnidge in 2007.  It is often said that you cannot truly experience a dance until you actually are in it.  I discovered to my surprise that there was a great untruth about that statement, for what I witnessed was surprisingly not what I had experienced from the inside.  In the midst of an ominous score by Brian Bevelander, I watched as three feminine beings pushed aside heavy drapery and appeared as if on the edge of perhaps a state of being.  The ruffled blouses and drab brown and ivory skirts suggested a journey back in time.  But I was acutely aware of the eeriness of the scene, as if the women were ghosts or spirits of a time before.  They seemed to have secrets that they were trying to express through writings on a dusty attic wall or ceiling.  These writings were frantically scribbled with fear in the eyes of the authors.   The intensity and weight with which the gestures were expressed and the accent of the full-bodied actions showed me fear, corroborated by the wide eyes of the women.  Three lanes in space within which each of the dancers traveled made me wonder if these feminine spirits were trapped inside the confines an old Victorian home for eternity and the frantic urge to communicate with one another and to the outside world seemed a warning.  Each of the performers gorgeously flowed from textured fluidity to powerful staccato slices.  The ending reflected the timelessness of their state, where beginning and end continuously circle in a trap of time and space.        

In Elisha Clark Halpin’s trio of solos entitled Dancing the Blues, a young, single and hopeful looking Shana Lynch presented to her audience a dance characterized by continuous spoking and circling limbs.  She smiled at us while performing many repetitions of rond de jambes perhaps suggesting flirtatiousness and a sense of innocence.  Megan Moore performed the second solo and seemed to portray an entirely different and perhaps more pessimistic outlook on love.  I was taken with Moore’s sense of connection between her torso to her limbs and amid the French lyrics and lingerie, I sensed that she has been used and discarded.  Her turns seamlessly became rond de jambes that sunk freely to the floor and I appreciated her vulnerability as she danced her blues.   Lauren Steinke then entered and as she wrapped her arms playfully and hugged her own body, I wondered if these three women were connected in some way.  The movement vocabulary from one solo to the next lacked distinction, and I was left wondering if this work was intended to represent three experiences in the life of one woman. 

Halpin’s What Remains began in silhouette and I was introduced to a cast of women walking and creating arrows with their arms.  The dancers cued one another with a series of vocal “go’s” that slightly distracted me from the striking setting that was dramatically outlined in light and space.  Manipulations between partners, self-manipulation and gestural phrases punctuated with two extended fingers created relationships and context for this work.  Halpin, acting as a singled out, perhaps controlling figure approached the others, who in their own separated locales carried on their own self-conversations.   Several women caught a precarious backward runner, but rather than save her from ruin, they seemed to force her to watch and witness.  Sharp, strong and direct gestures appeared to communicate these women’s efforts to make themselves heard.  In this work, I was reminded of Burnidge’s similarly performed gestural moves that characterized Conversation Pieces.  Both choreographers seem to share some similar affinities and they both are adept at creating surprises in the way they morph groupings of dancers in space.  The women in What Remains then began slapping their bodies to the floor and the arrows created by their limbs seemed combative and defensive as if they were finally fighting back.  They sliced and overturned with such force that Halpin’s sense of control seemed to soften.  However, the dancers still backed away from her.  Though they had tried to fight back, perhaps it was the damage that had already been done and fear itself that still remains.   

We Go was a striking and poignant duet for two very accomplished performers.  Burnidge and Walsh walked right up to us confidently, covered their eyes and pressed on each other like two friends at play.  Their relationship was tender, shown to us through a hug or a nudge.  They sat on each other’s lap, fixed one another’s hair and adjusted their clothing.  We learned more about Burnidge’s character, as she appeared a bit more bound and rigid against Walsh’s more open, carefree attitude.  They stayed true to their characters and continued to share their bonds with a secret handshake and a knowing look.  The duet beautifully portrayed the complicated nature of relationships.  I could not help but wonder if Burnidge’s witness to her twin sons helped her to so clearly articulate the love-hate nature of a truly close bond between two very familiar people.  Burnidge smartly chose to end with an inverted beginning.  While Burnidge then concealed, Walsh then played witness.  They know each other so well and we got to know them intimately as they loved, hated, protected and pushed one another into the fire.  This is human nature and We Go was truthful and poignant. 

As I watched the dancers of ETCH Dance company perform Incidental Disconnect, I had this familiar feeling that I had seen this work before.  The beginning seemed to have some similar characteristics to What Remains and I made the assumption that this was Halpin’s work.  Halpin again acted as a separated figure that seemed to play a role distinct from the rest, and at first, I saw most of the other bodies equally separated in space.  The slaps on the thighs and an army crawl put me in a potentially combative atmosphere once again.  However, the spacing became almost immediately more complex.   It was when I recognized the fence of bodies partially covering the scene behind, as if the white picket fence is enough to conceal the conflict inside a home, I realized this was Burnidge’s work that I had seen in an earlier version.  The lifts suspended in air suggested to me a yearning to escape, but as the women slowly sunk back down and acquiesced all the way to the floor, I felt empathy.  As people of a small town watch apathetically as the train goes by, these women also seemed to persist, wait and hope for a change.   The groupings changed as they tried various avenues of escape perhaps, moving back and forth and again, but getting nowhere.  I wondered then if I saw the movement manifestation of an actual train or the cogs of an old locomotive, continuous, but not making any progress.  Until finally, a lone figure got fed up, let loose and allowed her wildness to break free.  Burnidge set up a visceral rhythm here that was powerful in its repetition.  In thinking of the work as a whole, I wondered to myself if the choice to rarely slow down was acting as a mirror to our own busy lives; or whether it might be a minute oversight in the composition.  All in all, Incidental Disconnect was a very communicative and moving work that was rendered well by Etch Dance Company. 

Tiny Temple took my breath away.   My first impression of Burnidge’s striking ruffled skirt pointed me back historically to the skirt dancing of Vaudeville, with skirt as theme and prop for slowly and briefly showing off what was mostly kept private (in that instance the legs, but here something wholly different) in the latter part of the 19th century.  Her fragmented shifts and the old-time piano recording painted me an image of a broken porcelain doll, fragile and well loved.   Burnidge found her way to the center of the stage and balanced in an arabesque, precarious, but steady.  The risk of teetering on one leg seemed manifest in the pain of the crumpled ruffles and body.  She brought the ruffles to her mouth to fully take in what existed for the moment.  The final image was at once heart breaking and breathtaking as the soft, beautiful and innocent folds of delicate fabric dissolved into nothingness.  This solo was brave in its vulnerability and performed with such truth and conviction.  I experienced a wave of sadness and “saw/felt/sensed/thought and experienced” in a very real way.  Brava!

The somber and serious tone of many of the works in this concert artfully and rightfully reflected the distressed state of our world and time, and this is continued in Testify.   Three blindfolded women appeared at the onset of Testify, Halpin’s work-in-progress.  Though unable to see, they appeared to be searching. The sound score was layered with violin, rhythmic percussion and found sound and seemed to support the inner turmoil and outward grace of the figures in this piece as they looked intensely at one another and curled in on themselves.  Testify told me a story.  Church bells chimed as one woman manipulated another physically in close proximity as well as psychologically far apart in space, overpowering her subject.  A third stood witness to the injustice before she was carried prone with her eyes covered as if to say she did not want to see, refused to see, or could not admit to seeing.  I slightly questioned that each character was costumed in the same dresses since their roles were clearly delineated and unequal in power.  In the final statement, the witness was silenced, forced not to testify.  Will the abuse live on for generations?  Though in progress, this strong and telling tale of power and abuse is chilling and could provide Halpin with a signature work. 

Close Enough was the final dance of the evening choreographed by Burnidge and it began with gentle self-referencing.  The liquid quality manifest in the movement of the four women made them appear to be bathing and caring for themselves.  However, the watery scene quickly turned tides as a trio turned violent, with two women pushing the third up and down the diagonal from one corner to the other.  This dramatic scene was juxtaposed with Christina Walsh’s gentle fluidity at first, but then mirrored in her as she accelerated in speed and intensity.   The groups shifted as two lay on the floor and two danced together, tangling and rolling, flipping and flopping, dropping their weighted elbows.  This duet drew in a third (Stephanie Mellinger) who collapsed and overturned.  Her partners inspected a passive Mellinger, gently adjusting, attempting to resuscitate.  The eerie moment she opened her eyes was at once a surprise and a delight, eliciting a response from the audience.  She was not dead, or was she?  She joined Walsh in her ethereal state, but not for long.  Soon after, all four women were beating themselves up, throwing themselves down to the floor with impressive abandon only to rise again and again.  They flopped and they fell until they began a persistent series of trust falls, yelling “Me!” in hopes they would be caught, saved.  There were misses and near misses and I delighted in the risk of staying with this simple, repetitive, but effective idea.  The falls got faster and more out of control, creating a wonderful dramatic climax for the work that matches the power of the music score by Sequentia and Joe Keating.  Burnidge smartly reverted back to the relentless pushing towards the upstage corner.  This work served as a sad and powerful testament to the cruel world we live in.  Close Enough is a work that I long to see again.  It is rich with detail, meaning and emotion, the best ingredients for an end of concert dessert!

Green Space Take Root 2012

Batson, Quinn. “All for One Night: Jenni Hong and Anne Burnidge share a night at Green Space.” Rev. of

Necessary Grace, chor. by Anne Burnidge. Take Root Dance Festival. Green Space Studios, New York.

OffOffOff.com, The Guide to Alternative New York 12 Nov. 2011.

http://www.offoffoff.com/dance/2011/greenspacetakeroot.php

Cool New York 2010

Batson, Quinn. “Cool and Hot, COOL NY 2010 Program C brings it.” Rev. of Close Enough, chor. by Anne

Burnidge. Cool New York Dance Festival. John Ryan Theater, New York. OffOffOff.com, The Guide to

Alternative New York 2 Jan. 2010.

http://www.offoffoff.com/dance/2010/cool_ny_2010.php

Anne Burnidge Dance with guests ETCH Dance Company 2009

Pfohl Smith, Missy. Rev. of Close Enough, Conversation Pieces, Incidental Disconnect, Tiny Temple, and We Go,

chor. by Anne Burnidge. Anne Burnidge Dance with guests ETCH Dance Company. Alt Theatre, Buffalo, NY.

Oct. 2009.

See Below

American Dance Guild 2007

Macauley, Alastair. “AMERICAN DANCE GUILD; Shakespeare's Scottish Dame: Ambition in Motion.” Rev. of

Conversation Pieces, chor. by Anne Burnidge. American Dance Guild Festival. Hudson Guild Theater, New

York. New York Times 7 Sep. 2007.

www.nytimes.com