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| ABOUT TRaC |
Dance TRaC Winter 2004
nicholasleichterdance Modern dance, throughout its existence, has been a quandary. It is a form of art without, in a sense, corporeal value. Unlike painting, sculpture, and other more static art forms, dance cannot be captured by the simple click of a camera or any one freeze-fram of a mental image. More often, modern dance, while powerful at its time of presentation, tends to fade from memory after the movement is done. This fleeting quality makes it a decidedly harder sort of art to "sell" to the art-going public. A situation which nicholasleichterdance seeks to remedy. Even the venue is defiant for choreographer Nicholas Leichter's double piece neverend and skindiving. The Duke on 42nd Street stands out like a kamikaze David among the plethora of neon Goliaths trying to impinge on its small space. This cantankerousness, or better yet confidence, is exuded by the dancers and the movements in both pieces and helps to ease the audience along. We're presented initially with a smoke-machine and lights to depict the malleability of the scenery, so Leichter's neverend comes as a not-quite-unexpected surprise. neverend depicts the journey of a white woman between various lovers and couples, all of them fleeting and left unremembered at the moment of the next fling. Couples, male and female, male and male, fill the stage in a mock semicircular fashion, like a half made game of Duck Duck Goose. This implied naïveté belies Lechter's true obsession, the innocence, and indeed, the impermanence of youth. As a culmination the dancers are finally given a coupling and a sense of forgiveness. Although we have been unfaithful, they were only youthful transgressions. Skindiving introduces a new dancer to the stage, an Asian woman, to underscore the importance of the title. As in neverend, we are introduced to the ideals of inclusion and exclusion that belie love and cooperation, and conversely, lack of both of them. Because of the similarity of these groupings and the liquid grace of Leichter's choreography, the two pieces might have been easily mistakable. However, in skindiving, undoubtedly the greater of the two pieces performed, the dancers are forced to flow into each other so that they are nearly indistinguishable between their contortions. It almost feels like someone should be playing Lennon's "Imagine" in the background, but then it's clear that Lennon's dream is so thoroughly realized by Leichter that it's not even necessary. Never in this critic's experience has a "brotherhood of man" seemed so plausible or refined. In both pieces, the music plays as a sort of touchstone and double entendre: not only are we left with a memento to recall the memories of the dance, but we are given a way to ground nicholasleichterdance's suave movements and maintain a distance from them. In neverend we are given popular and Latin themes which Leichter commands with a twist of his hand to serve his new purpose as elements of modern dance. However, in skindiving we are given a controversial small live music section at the back of the performance space with large instruments, intense solos, and a head-banging electric cellist. While some may feel distracted by this long-haired misplaced Styx fan and his fellows, they merely prove the infectiousness of Leichter's dance: even those not associated just can't resist the beat.
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