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| Photo by photo: Julie Lemberger | "Charge", Bianca Johnson, Eden Mazer, Keith Sabado, Alexandra Berger, Paulina Danilczyk and Elisa Osborne, left to right.
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Good flight, cloying Magi
Dusan Tynek Dance Theater's Debut concert shows strength, but grows too sweet around the edges.
By QUINN BATSON
Offoffoff.com
The Dusan Tynek Dance Theater (DT-squared) made good use of the Kitchen to make their Debut. Tynek showed a strong piece, a good piece and a dumb piece in his first evening-length concert, and he made good costume, lighting design and musical choices with a well-cast group of strong dancers. Tynek's strengths as a choreographer are excellent close partnerings and an appealing human sweetness, but the sweetness occasionally goes too far.
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| | | DUSAN TYNEK DANCE THEATER | Choreography by: Dusan Tynek.
Dancers: Alexandra Berger, Richard Daniels, Paulina Danilczyk, Francisco Graciano, Jennifer Howard, Bianca Johnson, Eden Mazer, Elisa Osborne, Keith Sabado, Dusan Tynek.
Music by: Eric Satie, Anibal Troilo, Philip Glass.
Costumes by: Micheline Brown, A. Christina Giannini.
Lighting design: Roderick Murray
| | SCHEDULE | The Kitchen
512 West 19th St. (btw. 10th and 11th Ave.)
Dec. 3-6, 2003
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The evening began with the impressive "Pilot's Dream," a work in seven joined parts. Veteran Mark Morris dancer Keith Sabado, as the pilot, showed he retains good physicality and subtlety in his opening solo, begun in spotlit slow-motion silhouette. A motif of springing leaps ending in push-up position flavored both Sabado's solo and the subsequent solo by Tynek, with Tynek's becoming quicker and smoother. Windmill arms and contracting collapses, sometimes quick and startled, also set the style, with softly wiggling hips previewing later, softer movements.
Tynek then slowly, tentatively woke the sleeping Sabado to begin the first of several good duets in the piece. These duets were physical but subtle, with partners leaping onto the sides or backs of the other and falling into or onto each other smoothly. After dreamy music by Satie in the first two parts, string music by Anibal Troilo gave this first duet a taste of folk dance theater.
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| Photo by photo: Julie Lemberger | | "Pilot's Dream", Keith Sabado and Dusan Tynek, left to right.
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For the fourth section, Tynek entered slowly, carrying the exquisite feminine creature Jennifer Howard, who dances as well as she looks. Their ensuing duet showed all of Tynek's choreographic strengths, and Spanish guitar and a beautifully odd one-legged, midriff-baring costume by Micheline Brown for Howard completed the overall excellence of this section. One memorable bit had Howard, eyes blinking rapidly, softly extending to and then retracting her fingers from Tynek's tentatively offered hand, the two not quite able at this point to let themselves connect.
The guitar got louder and brighter for the fifth section, which added Eden Mazer to the other three dancers, for soft, swinging movement with much running, flowing sautŽ turns and, also, dancers unceremoniously dropped on the floor to break the flow here and there.
A third strong duet followed with the elfish Tynek partnering his huge-eyed, fluffy-haired Winona Ryderish female counterpart, Mazer, dressed beautifully again by Brown in a subtly striped sleeveless burgundy jacket-dress with long burgundy gloves. Here again there was great close work and some interesting paired spinning.
The final section of "Pilot's Dream" introduced flying, with Sabado flown around stage by the other three, in leisurely and inventive variations. Also following through from their earlier tentativeness, Tynek and Howard finally connect in a sweet bit begun with head-to-head contact, another recurring characteristic of Tynek's choreography. Sabado finished the piece as he began it, soloing slowly in a spotlight as the others receded offstage.
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| | One memorable bit had Howard, eyes blinking rapidly, softly extending to and then retracting her fingers from Tynek's tentatively offered hand, the two not quite able at this point to let themselves connect. |
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After intermission, "Charge" swirled right into classic Philip Glass music from 1987, in beautifully watery costumes by A. Christina Giannini and moody, intriguing lighting by Roderick Murray. There were no big surprises here, but the choreography worked well with the music and the piece was danced smoothly and cleanly by Alexandra Berger, Paulina Danilczyk, Francisco Graciano, Bianca Johnson, Mazer, Elisa Osborne and Sabado. The movement was full of fast chainŽ turns and repetitive, sweeping forward and back running and fast walking, with a recurring motion initiated by Mazer of rising slowly straight up on toe, then slowly falling sideways to run off, later done simultaneously by the whole group, with much sliding to the floor. Married as it was to the endlessly cycling music of Glass, the choreography came very close to excessive repetition but succeeded overall.
Too bad the same wasn't true for the last piece, "Wardrobe Spectre," a possibly cute five-minute concept extended into a much longer spectre. The initial idea of a wardrobe person being seen as almost one of the Magi bearing exotic and treasured objects of clothing to near-naked dancers seated silently waiting with their backs to the audience was humorous, and the opening of the piece was beautiful, but by taking the concept to absurd lengths and ending up with dancers wearing five layers of clothing in a sort of vaudeville schtick, the piece got pretty cloying pretty quickly.
Overall "Debut" was a good first showing by a young choreographer, presented well and generously.
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DECEMBER 15, 2003
OFFOFFOFF.COM • THE GUIDE TO ALTERNATIVE NEW YORK
Reader comments on Dusan Tynek Dance Theater:
I forgot from Maria Sabado Pehling, May 24, 2008
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