X Games
Clearly BalletX knows its home is the stage.
Zany and fresh, BalletX — the little troupe of moonlighting Pennsylvania Ballet dancers — filled up Wilma Theater for Program 3 of DanceBoom! and celebrated its new status as the Wilma's resident dance company. Although founders Matthew Neenan and Christine Cox work in every mood, including lyric and romantic, their focus for the Boom crowd was their specialty of deconstructing and fiddling with traditional ballet moves.
X's program looked back as well as forward. Die Menscheit, from 2002, juxtaposed playful movement with Mozart's majestic sound. Dancers silhouetted behind an orange lit curtain looked like a classical Greek vase frieze. But when they emerged they were strictly contemporary. Using some of PAB's best movers, Neenan turned everyone loose (himself included) doing weird stuff like performing kicks lying on the floor, or crossing the stage on heels. Boneless Amy Aldridge was carried offstage like a sack of potatoes across her partner's broad back.
The world premiere I Like You Different, choreographed by Neenan and Cox, was free-form experimentation glued together with fabulous music (James Brown, Chaka Khan, Ray Charles). Neenan and Cox performed an impatient, unromantic duet that had Neenan holding Cox aloft by her crotch while she looked at her wristwatch in boredom. Jermel Johnson bounded across stage his arms slashing the air like a windmill. Cox swam in space as she was carried. It's an assemblage of unexpected moves that sometimes felt like rehearsal goofs or pranks they decided to keep.
Frequencies originally was performed in 2001 with video superimposed on cloth draperies that the dancers manipulated to an audio montage that often sounded like static. The video is gone now, but the sassy moves and fabric remain. Francis Veyette lay under it, while Aldridge and Cox shifted it into a backdrop. Neenan manipulated pieces attached to Tara Keating's body. Midst this fabric frolicking, Cox crossing the stage on pointe seemed a novelty. Veyette wound streamers around his arms, kicked himself into the air to float across the stage. Neenan, Cox and Keating danced wearing wings while Jump Little Children's wonderful lyric repeated, "There is a feeling you should just go home/ And spend a lifetime finding out just where it is." Clearly BalletX knows its home is the stage.
BalletX
June 13, DanceBoom! Program 3,Wilma Theater
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