Henry Baumgartner
Another Way into the Cloud
Cloud Gate 2
Joyce Theater
February 8–12, 2012
Reviewed February 12
 |
| Scene from "Passage" by Bulareyaung
Pagarlava.Photo by Liu Chen-Hsiang |
Although New York audiences have long been familiar
with Lin Hwai-min’s amazing Cloud Gate Dance Theater from
Taiwan, its second company, Cloud Gate 2, is only now appearing
here for the first time. But this is not your usual second company:
Cloud Gate 2 is a completely separate group that does not perform
Lin’s work at all. Rather, they specialize in the work
of new or lesser-known dance makers from Taiwan or elsewhere
in Asia, though the choreographers on this program, who all
come from Taiwan, have each had some international exposure.
The work certainly looks nothing like what we
are used to seeing from Cloud Gate--there is none of the large-scale
sumptuous gorgeousness that is Lin’s trademark. The staging
is fairly spare, and the lighting, mostly credited to Lee Chien-chang
and Chen Chien-chang, tends to favor brightly lit dancers on
a murky background. The work recently on view at the Joyce,
five pieces by four choreographers, of course varied in its
appeal, but some pieces hit the mark, while everything was at
least worth seeing--no small statement given a program of such
length. And the quality of the dancers was superb.
The first piece, "Wicked Fish" by Huang Yi, was one
of the more engaging pieces on the bill. A thin ray of light
in front of a line of dark-clad dancers momentarily catches
flashing arms, hands, or heads—a slippery, darting light
that brings to mind fish in the water. Suddenly the music--Xenakis’s
"Shaar"--begins zooming ominously up and down the
scale, as the dancers start to turn and gyrate. The dancers
rush back and forth, not in any particular direction, but often
turning and hurrying off in a group, a little like schooling
fish, I guess. They didn’t always remind me of fish at
all, never mind wicked ones, but the piece was exciting to watch.
"Tantalus" was by Wu Kuo-chu, who served as artistic
director of the Tanztheater in Kassel, Germany, before his untimely
death in 2006. The title here is not so easy to explain; the
dancers in this humorous piece do not seem particularly tantalized
as they shrug, gasp, and run in place to the accompaniment of
Meredith Monk’s delightfully cacklesome "Tale"—"I
still have my hands! I still have my telephone!" This piece
is somewhat less successful and, like several of the pieces
here, seemed overly long.
Bulareyaung Pagarlava’s name may be familiar as the creator
of two pieces for the Martha Graham company in recent years.
Pagarlava, who is a member of the Paiwan tribe, one of the indigenous
peoples of Taiwan, contributed "Passage," a somewhat
mystifying yet reasonably involving bit of surrealism. The music,
which sounds like Bach played on homemade instruments, adds
to the air of intrigue. There are people in black who keep wiping
the floor, and others who keep changing the clothes on another
dancer--sometimes she resists, sometimes not. And there’s
the scantily clad gent in white body paint carrying a suitcase
and an umbrella. Eventually everyone strips down to simulated
nudity, and the woman with the changing outfits pops out of
Umbrella Man’s suitcase. The dance started out strong
but began to drag a bit toward the end. Huang Yi’s second
effort, "Ta-Ta for Now," a sort of slapstick quintet
with chairs to music by Khachaturian, also outlasted my interest.
Last, but not least, "The Wall" by Cheng Tsung-lung
provided some of the more satisfying moments of the evening.
A line of black-clad (again!) dancers enters in silence and
parades around the four edges of the stage. Then, to Michael
Gordon’s "Weather One," they form into military-looking
troops and go marching across the stage, crisscrossing, interpenetrating,
eventually breaking up for some heavily athletic unison dancing--a
difficult task brought off pretty well by the clearly well-trained
company. At one point there’s a loud bang and everybody
stops, while a soloist continues to dance alone to quieter music--a
particularly moving touch.
