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From COAST to COAST
Five cutting-edge dance companies come to Vail this summer
By Joel Solari
From New York to Philadelphia, Aspen to Los Angeles, the companies at this year’s Festival each present diverse expressions of performance and movement representing their own signature style and expansive voice in the American contemporary dance landscape.
“Each of these amazing dance companies offers something unique and essential,” says Festival Artistic Director Damian Woetzel. “With legendary classics and exciting new repertory from incredible dancemakers, including two world premieres made for Vail, seeing these remarkable companies over the course of the Festival provides a thrilling overview of what dance is today.”
A Festival Debut
The New York-based tap and music collective Music From The Sole will make an exciting debut at this year’s Festival. The group of eight tap dancers and five musicians is led by Brazilian dancer and choreographer Leonardo Sandoval and composer and multi-instrumentalist Gregory Richardson. The pair work as duo Artistic Directors to bring tap dance and live music together to celebrate tap's Afro-diasporic roots. Their work displays the connections to Afro-Brazilian dance and music, and its lineage to forms like house dance and passinho, also called “Brazilian funk.” From the start, the work between the two lead artists has always been a highly collaborative experience.
“Embracing the fact that tap dance is both movement and music is key for us,” says Sandoval. “There isn't one without the other, and tap is deeply connected to jazz and the entire lineage of Black music, so in that sense they’re not really different genres, more an extension of one another.”
“We always work on creating the music together,” echoes Richardson. “The tap dance is part of the score and the musical ideas also determine how the movement develops — which tap step Leo will select to produce a particular sound or texture that will work with a melodic idea, for example.”
In addition to appearing on Opening Night on Friday, July 28, at the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater (The Amp) and throughout the Festival in various events and programs, Music From The Sole will present I Didn’t Come to Stay at the Vilar Performing Arts Center (VPAC) on Wednesday, August 2. The evening-length work was originally commissioned by Guggenheim Works & Process last year and has since been hailed by The New York Times as “one of the best dance performances of 2022.” Created mostly throughout the pandemic, the work was born out of yearning for family and community celebration. “Because there is so much Brazilian influence in the piece, and we were missing being able to have that kind of celebration for so long,” says Sandoval, “we like to describe the piece as a kind of Brazilian Carnaval fever dream. We can’t wait to bring this experience to Vail this summer.”
The Return Of A Modern Icon
Martha Graham (1894-1991) is universally recognized as one of the 20th century’s greatest artistic voices. Her legacy in dance is not only measured in her body of work but how her dances and the modern form she created contributed to the evolution of art itself and continues to resonate today. From former First Lady Betty Ford to pop-icon Madonna, who both took classes at the Graham School, generations of students, dancers and audiences have been influenced by her legendary performances and influential teachings. The now famous Graham technique changed the landscape forever, ushering in a modern era of dance vocabulary that was less ornamental and upright, into a style more grounded, fluid, and expressive of human nature and temperaments.
Her legacy lives on through the Martha Graham Dance Company (MGDC) which she founded in New York City in 1926. As America’s oldest dance company, the formidable cultural institution is nearing its remarkable centennial as it continues to commission new choreography by some of the leading dancemakers influencing the genre today. Regarded as the first of its kind in many ways, the company is most certainly considered an influential part of the future as well.
This summer, the company returns to Vail with an appearance on Opening Night sharing the stage with other Festival companies and stars of American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet. The following evening, MGDC will appear in a headlining engagement at The Amp on Saturday, July 29. This special program will include two Graham works, Canticle for the Innocent Comedians (1952, restaged 2022) and Errand into the Maze (1947), as well as CAVE (2022)
Canticle for the Innocent Comedians is a work inspired by the 1938 poem by Ben Belitt celebrating the different elements of nature. The sun and the earth are represented in the piece, along with wind, water, fire, the moon, stars, and even death. However, it is widely considered a “lost work” since very little photographic or video record of it exists, except for a brief video of Graham’s original staging of the “Moon” section. Last year, the work was restaged by choreographer Sonya Tayeh (Moulin Rouge! The Musical) and features sections by a range of other contemporary choreographers and a new score by jazz pianist Jason Moran.
Often drawn to legends and myths, Graham’s other work to be featured on the program, Errand into the Maze, is loosely derived from the Greek mythology of Theseus, a creature who is half-moon and half-beast. These two works, richly layered with themes of nature and drama, will no doubt come to new life in Vail.
The evening will conclude with CAVE, a visceral new work created last year by Hofesh Shechter, an Israeli choreographer based in London who previously danced with the Batsheva Dance Company.
Built on the idea of a nightclub rave, the result as choreographed by Shechter, is a high-energy work that blends the pulsating beats of a techno club with galvanizing contemporary choreography that is immersive and ultimately transcendent.
From The West Coast To Around The World
What began in 2012 as an “experiment” by Artistic Director Benjamin Millepied, L.A. Dance Project (LADP) has since garnered international acclaim for its bold interdisciplinary collaborations in dance, music, and visual art. “We’re pushing boundaries and adding to the richness and synergy of LA's cultural landscape,” says LADP Executive Director Lucinda Lent. “For the past 10 years, the company has contributed to and grown along with LA's emerging dance scene through our commissions with visionary choreographers, both emerging and established, LA-based and international; collaborations with artists across genres; and performances in unconventional settings.”
In its meteoric rise over the last decade, the company has performed to sold-out crowds throughout Los Angeles and in over 100 cities around the world showcasing its impressive repertory of new works and equally impressive dancers. In addition to works by Millepied, a former New York City Ballet dancer who also starred in and choreographed the movie Black Swan, LADP has amassed a repertoire of works by Martha Graham, Kyle Abraham, Justin Peck, and William Forsythe, among many other notable dancemakers.
Last fall, the company presented a contemporary program of all-female choreographers to enthusiastic sold-out crowds at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. The same program will also be featured in Vail in a special evening at The Amp on Monday, July 31, and includes Quartet for 5 created last year by Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber, 5 Live Calibrations (2022) by Madeline Hollander, and Everyone Keeps Me (2019) by Pam Tanowitz, originally commissioned by the Royal Ballet in honor of the centennial of Merce Cunningham’s birth.
“We’re thrilled to return to Vail with these works that cover a wide spectrum of movement qualities,” said Lent, speaking about the program. “All of the works are beautifully constructed. Bobbi's work is raw and human, informed by her experience with the Gaga technique, and was made in close collaboration with the dancers; Pam's work is based in formal classical and contemporary structures that she then abstracts; and Madeline's work brings humor while examining the plasticity of the human body and its uncanny ability to transform, adapt, and extend in unimaginable ways when set in motion.” Festival QuartetIn-Residence Brooklyn Rider will perform live musical accompaniment as well which features music by Philip Glass, Ted Hearne, and Yuta Bandoh.
New Works Co-commissioned With Festival Favorites
The Festival will also welcome back two dance companies to present work and collaborate with extraordinary choreographers on new dance commissions.
A local favorite since making its Vail debut in 2012, Philadelphia’s cutting-edge contemporary dance powerhouse BalletX returns to the Festival in a program of innovative new choreography that defies definition and boundaries. The company will appear throughout the two-weeks of the Festival in a variety of community programs, master classes and performances, including an engagement at the VPAC on Sunday, August 6.
New works created last year by Caili Quan and Justin Peck will be included in this program. Quan’s Love Letter, originally created as a dance film during the pandemic, is an ode to her native Guam and was recreated for the stage. Also on the program is Justin Peck’s adrenaline pumping Become a Mountain, which seems fitting for a showing in Vail as it depicts the thrilling arc of a mountain climb, with music by Dan Deacon. Additionally, BalletX will present a world-premiere by former Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre resident choreographer, Jamar Roberts. This new work co-commissioned with the Festival will premiere at The Amp on Monday, August 7, during NOW: Premieres.
DanceAspen will also make an encore appearance in the Valley, following its Festival debut last summer on the one-year anniversary of its founding. First on Thursday, August 3, the company will perform in the neighboring town of Avon at the free Dancing in the Park performance with ballroom duo Denys Drozdyuk and Antonina Skobina and other Festival stars. Then later, on the NOW: Premieres performance that closes the Festival on August 7, the company will present the world premiere of a new work by Matthew Neenan, as part of the 10 new works co-commissioned by the Festival this year. Neenan, who co-founded BalletX, is the resident choreographer of the Philadelphia Ballet and was praised in The New York Times as “one of the most appealing and singular choreographic voices in ballet today.” (Go to pages 52 to learn about the 10 new works being commissioned at this year’s Festival.)
In reaching coast to coast this year with the presentation of these extraordinary dance companies, Festival audiences can experience a reflection of modern and contemporary voices that is diverse and global in spirit. “The Festival is truly a special place where the best dance artists from around the world gather to celebrate all that this art form gives us,” reflected LADP Executive Director Lucinda Lent. “Plus, it's Vail! What could be more beautiful?”
