Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Nuanced conceptual endeavors in dance: Reggie Wilson’s POWER at BAM and Oona Doherty’s HARD TO BE SOFT at IAC

• By drediman
• January 15, 2022
• No Comments

This week, Reggie Wilson’s Power and Oona Doherty’s Hard to Be Soft – A Belfast Prayer – a pair of fascinating evening-length dance pieces – opened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Irish Arts Center, respectively. Although neither are perfect, they nonetheless beguiled me with their ability to convey nuanced concepts through movement and dance. As always, here are my thoughts.

POWER
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Through January 17

Last night at BAM Harvey, I attended a performance of Reggie Wilson and his Fist & Heel Performance Group’s Power (RECOMMENDED), whose brief run not unintentionally coincides with Martin Luther King Day weekend. The endeavor – which was developed at Jacob’s Pillow and the Hancock Shaker Village – is an intriguing hourlong experiment in the cross-pollination of the Shaker (the work was particularly inspired by eldress Rebecca Cox Jackson, a Black woman who created a Shaker community of her own in Philadelphia) and American Black traditions, two ways of life and modes of expression that prioritize worship and ecstatic communal congregation. By highlighting both their differences (e.g., rigor versus spontaneity, uniformity versus individualism) and similarities (e.g., intense rhythmic drive, dance as a form of worship), Mr. Wilson’s hybrid – with the aid of a talented, diverse crew of dancers and Naoka Nagata and Enver Chakartash’s thoughtfully suggestive costumes – in effect evolves the respective traditions, thereby exploring their utopian possibilities (with hypnotic flair I might add). Although a part of me wished that Mr. Wilson’s experiment resulted in more intersections than juxtapositions, I more than welcomed the clear-eyed intent, simplicity, and elegance of his vision. Note that on Martin Luther King Day proper, Power will be performed without charge on a first-come, first-serve basis.

HARD TO BE SOFT – A BELFAST PRAYER
Irish Arts Center
Through January 23

Then at Irish Arts Center’s impressive brand new home in Hell’s Kitchen, I attended the opening night of the U.S. premiere of Hard to Be Soft – A Belfast Prayer (RECOMMENDED), Oona Doherty’s uncompromising tribute to the men and women of inner city Belfast. The 45-minute production – which features a stylish and imposing set that simultaneously suggests confinement and the infinite/eternal, as well as an atmospheric electronic score augmented by a collage of voiceovers – is divided into four distinct segments. The evening begins with an arresting short solo danced by Ms. Doherty herself, in which she uncannily channels the hard, macho men of the community, all the while delicately articulating the fragility of their inner lives. The next section is danced by the so-called “Sugar Army”, a group of tough but fabulous young women, which at IAC is comprised of a team local dancers from the Young Dancemakers Company. If not wholly and convincingly realized, there’s nonetheless an unvarnished quality to their performance that lends a certain authenticity to the episode. Then there’s one of the unlikeliest pas de deux you’re likely to see, in which the game John Scott and Sam Finnegan – two large and burly shirtless men – engage in an intense embrace of a dance that conjures a multitude of conflicting emotions (adversarial, sensual, paternal, brotherly). The evening concludes once again with Ms. Doherty, who soulfully continues the through-line of her opening solo. Although the work resonated with me at various individual moments, Ms. Doherty’s ability to shape an evening-length experience remains in a state of development – ultimately, Hard to Be Soft registers like a collection of fractured thoughts rather than a cohesive whole.