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Kenneth Kvarnström & Co
'Fragile'
by Toba
Singer
October 30, 2003
-- Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA
Kenneth Kvarnström brings
us superbly trained, nubile dancers, who work through this hour-long piece
with an earnest concentration that does not obstruct feelings of genuine
enjoyment of each other or the choreography.
The set is a fragile white stabile, designed by Carouschka, the slender
goose neck of which, arches across a third of the stage with a little
white oval “head” on one end and two ovals on the other. The set of two
ovals could be either bladders or testicles, depending, I guess, on how
long you find yourself seated in the audience with your own impatient
organs. Before the sultry music by Anders Jacobson and Amon Tobin begins,
the dancers appear center stage, on a white square, where they execute
a series of gentle lifts, do a bit of mime and offer us a little forspeiss
of the full-out production. One of them places a Polaroid photo on the
proscenium. The audience can’t see the photo, and so you wonder why so
small a prop assumes such great importance. A fluid-moving blonde dancer
takes a photo of herself and adds it to what will turn out to be a developing
archive of this work. The dancers wear loose pants and non-descript black
or beige tops: two men, three women.
As the music comes up, there are a series of gentle lifts that open the
bodies up, and then they are restored to their previous poses, almost
like taking a book off a shelf, opening it and returning it to its place.
Long reaches make the small company look bigger than their number would
suggest. We see pantomimes of archers, horseback riders with chassées
embellished by those Agnes DeMille cowpoke hip slaps. The stage is often
bridged by lifts, rather than jumps. Three women begin a jazz riff that
gets smarter and sleeker as the intensity builds into back-riding chassées.
While the work is big, it remains safely stylized, taking few risks. As
if to counter this trend, dancers occasionally fall backward into the
arms of a partner.
The dancers seem to be sculpting themselves and each other as the work
progresses. They fold back an elbow, adjust an arm with a hand, or urge
something into place that was in some other place. As the tempo picks
up, we realize that the first half was to prepare for the second. The
new heavy downbeat rhythm could be tantalizing if it were not for the
pedestrian transitions that sometimes undercut the work and coax you into
seeing something that gets two-dimensional and a little drab around the
edges—at times. We are prepared to expect more, but somehow it just stays
where it is. A solo by the stronger of the two blondes is sensuous and
supple and is supported by a trio of women in canons of spirals on the
diagonal. Once the ensemble is moving, a nice tempi is established and
we get a springier rhythm and dance to match. Three work against two,
and we see the other intended dimensions quite clearly in the solid relationships
that are now evinced. The dancers are not fragile now; they are more aggressive
and more ritualistic, as the triplet canons become more unitary, solitary,
and juiced out by a solid hour of dancing.
The secret here is that Kvarnström has found fluid dancers to absorb and
expel the fluidity of his choreography. Their physicality and musicality
work to nurture, color and support his work.
Edited by Holly Messitt
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