Flight of Fantasy By, Yuliya Lanina With C. Eule
Dance Company
MARCH 21-31
The installation will consist of a window display
composed of a variety of props and materials, including grass, trees,
dolls, feathers, flowers and fabrics that would extend into a gallery
space, creating a imaginative forest-like environment. An animation,
projected on the back wall, will be continuously playing over the
course of the show (accept for during the performances). Several
dancers from the C. Eule Dance Company http://www.ceuledance.org
) will be bringing Lanina's costumes and images to life with dance
performances at 6pm on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday both weeks.
The performances will be based on improvisations and choreography
created during rehearsals that will take place during the daytime,
where passersby can observe the rehearsal process.
Live music is simply too expensive for most dance companies, but many small groups — essentially pickup ensembles — seem to be increasingly good at enlisting like-minded musicians to work alongside their dancers.
Such was the case on Saturday in an evening of work by C. Eule Dance and the Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble, part of the Performance Project @ University Settlement, a century-old social services center on the Lower East Side. Caron Eule has been choreographing and presenting small-scale concert evenings in New York for several years, creating uncomplicated, slightly old-fashioned dances that offer audiences a pleasant if unchallenging hour or two.
On Saturday she did that in the company of six fine musicians, opening the program with “Prelude/Nocturne,” to piano solos by Scriabin and Chopin. They were played by Koji Attwood, his back to the audience as first one woman in a rose-colored clingy dress, then another three, joined him, raising their arms above the keyboard in dramatic pianist manner.
Ms. Eule was on to something here; in those dramatic arm-lifting gestures, and their sliding falls from the pianist’s bench, the women felt like emanations of Mr. Attwood’s consciousness, or perhaps embodiments of the music itself. But the actual dancing, when the women moved away from the bench and into the center, was less interesting: a ballet-inflected sweep that loosened the tight bonds between music and dance created in the first part of the work.
The main event was “The Crane Wife,” a Japanese fable that Ms. Eule has staged to music by Meg Okura, who led the five-member Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble behind the dancers. Ms. Okura’s vibrant, Eastern-influenced, jazzy score and the playing of her musicians were the most sophisticated parts of the work, which offered an entirely literal re-enactment of the story, narrated by Allison Hiroto. It was nicely done, and the Japanese touches — beautiful kimonos, a traditional dance (both by Momo Suzuki) — were delightful.
Aloha on the Hudson
Caron Eule presents varied evening of dance that
begins and ends on Waikiki
By LORI ORTIZ
Hula is the reigning style in choreographer Caron
Eule’s “Clean Springing 3.” The result is warm,
welcoming, exuberant and just a bit cliché. The
performance at Cunningham Studios in the West Village on May 22
transported us without admitting a shred of irony. If there is any
doubt in the dancers smiles, it’s barely perceptible. They
can’t be serious. But why ask and spoil
the fun of an evening out with these excellent dancers and musicians?
The full, mixed, though still largely white, cast
accumulates on the scene, waving hips and arms in grass skirts and
bikini tops to a recording of Ray Kinney’s “Hula Hands.”
A wave of men in the same outfits is the special attraction. Finally
all gather into a formation suggestive of a volcano with the nine-year-old
Bridget Clark held up at its peak. Live and lilting scat by Louise
Rogers, composer Jon Diaz and Mathias Kunzli drives home the point
in the interlude of music that follows.
“Suite Brazil” begins breezily with
a “Morning” romance around a clothesline draped with
colored scarves. Young love is followed by cruel reality in a memorable
“Evening” bar scene. Alexa Weir is the cocktail waitress
who strikes up a movement conversation with patron Cornelius Brown.
It sours though and Weir cowers on the floor as Brown walks off,
puffed out and chuckling coldly with a mate. “After Hours”
brings us to the day’s close in this cohesive suite of four
acts.
Eule’s version of “L’Chaim,”
premiered in 1996, is anything but celebratory. Hers is a Holocaust
remembrance that’s dramatic in the tradition of Martha Graham.
Wier, Erin Hunter and Faith Hunter are a family struggling to stay
together. The long bench, sometimes standing on its end like a monument,
recalls a Noguchi prop. In this new version with fiddle, Colin Jacobson
plays excellently, with a stage presence that feels essential.
We’re treated to New York City Ballet dancer
Melissa Barak’s “Musiqawi/Wezewazay” with a live
performance of traditional Ethiopian music. To this riveting music,
Barak improvises with her hands. She repeats several angular movements,
providing some structure. Her musical and spirited performance is
never coy and thus full of believable integrity. One hopes she will
find the time to develop this project.
“Face 2 Face” is Eule’s new piece,
a slapstick vision of confused body parts. Eyes, nose and mouth
are cut and pasted onto breasts, navels and butts or thighs respectively.
The dancers rise three high in totems. This construction is performed
to original music by Jeremy Kasha and includes laugh tracks. It’s
highly entertaining, sexy and fun.
If this is not enough to transport the audience,
what more can be done with a simple concept?
“Nocturne” achieves successful musicality
as dancers in romantic dress sit on a piano bench, moving as if
they are emanations of the Chopin classic. In “Spiral Songs,”
Melissa Morrissey, on toe, drapes herself over a violinist struggling
to play. Should we laugh or cry as the gorgeous dancing and spectacular
quartet of strings cancel each other out?
The ponderous mood is lifted in the spell of a
“Hula Reprise.” All the dancing is superb and Tony Marques’s
lighting adds nuance to Eule’s work.
The unusual and varied music somehow holds together
as an evening’s entertainment. Eule bills her company’s
work as dancing for new audiences 101. The company is also something
of an experimental petri dish, yet one that consistently delivers
good clean fun. Talented dancers and musicians engage their adoring
and returning crowds with visceral magic.
"Not only did they dance beautifully,
but Alexa Weir and Cornelius Brown acted with aplomb."
Review of Fire Island Dance
Festival 11
Dan Evans, Fire Island Tide
"The choreography by Caron Eule is
both thoughtful and unpredictable. It ranges from buoyant leaps
onto the stage to fierce and ominous interplay between androgynous
dancers to en pointe ballet. Eule
maintains space and fluidity, despite the formidable cast of 24."
Review of "Voices of the Wind/ The Story
of the Ninja" Jo Ann Rosen, NYtheatre.com
"Caron Eule's choreography was a prominent
voice in this production. It is rare that a director gives the choreographer
so much freedom... Eule's work was delightful."
Review of "Blood Wedding"
Jade Esteban Estrada, www.oobr.com
“And an especially sultry, contented atmosphere emerged
from Caron Eule’s choreography for a trio from New York who
artfully blended yoga, ballet and modern dance.”
Review of Dance Under The Stars Choreography
Festival
Jeff Britton, The Desert Sun
“…an exotic ménage a
trois… The movement is a skillful blend of modern and classical
western dance forms, and a kind of Balinese vocabulary. Tension
binds the threesome, tension of body and spirit, influence and relationship.”
Review of Dance Under The Stars Choreography
Festival
Joanna Beresford, freelance writer based in Southern California
"Caron's tongue-in-cheek dances backed
up by all out dancing; colorful and humorous set design and surprise
appearances of musicians made for an unpredictable finale."
Karen Bernard, Director, New
Dance Alliance, Inc.
"Caron's choreography demonstrates
imagination and skill. Her choice of music is quite sophisticated
and the fact that she gets excellent dancers to perform her works
is a testament to her standing in the dance community in New York
City."
Shela Xoregos, Artistic Director,
Xoregos Performing Company
"I don't know much about modern dance,
but seeing C. Eule Dance makes me want to see more."
