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| Photo by Yi-Chun Wu | Ori Flomin, Antonio Ramos, Colleen Thomas
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Three New Old Stories
3 choreographers split the bill at DTW
By QUINN BATSON
Offoffoff.com
A trio of choreographers each did their own thing in a shared evening at DTW, two choosing not to dance and one choosing to dance a lot.
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| | | THREE AT DTW | Choreography by: Mina Nishimura, Ursula Eagly, Ori Flomin.
Dancers: Mina Nishimura, Kai Kleinbird, Floanne Ankah
Ursula Eagly
Ori Flomin, Antonio Ramos, Colleen Thomas.
Sound design by: James Lo.
Video installation for Toronto: Carlos Moore.
| | SCHEDULE | Dance Theater Workshop
October 8-10, 2009
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Mina Nishimura presented Timmy's Idea, a spoken word trio in canon form with three completely different voices. Kai Kleinbird starts the piece minimally but interestingly and is fun to watch. Nishimura joins him next as a foot-dragging little-girl-voiced character, like a castrato hunchback of Notre Dame. Floanne Ankah sort of spoils the party as a brash, loud bruiser. The basic storyline goes everywhere, like a dream, but each of the three manages to deliver it word for word in their own distinctive voice and body.
Ursula Eagly seems to have moved past dancing and performing to play with the Buddhist concept of no expectations. Lamps, darkness and stillness are the main components of Fields of Ida, which apparently are described in Norse mythology as a post-apocalyptic place of destruction and regeneration.
Ori Flomin puts a lot into Toronto, a charming piece that evokes the feeling of childhood play and memories, inspired by newly discovered old home movies. The trio of Flomin, Antonio Ramos and Colleen Thomas dance convincingly as siblings or childhood friends, tumbling and playing like kids. After a fairly long introduction of pure movement, two sheets hung with a large gap between them split the home movies into two halves, a clever arrangement devised by Carlos Moore that leaves the middle free for dancers to enter and leave without being covered with home movie. Flomin uses this setup to maximum advantage, cutting bodies like a magician sawing a box and playing with the idea of emerging from the movies to dance recreations of them. Sound design by James Lo is subtle but effective, including the sound of a film projector, which in itself sends the listener back to the days of film projectors and the experience of watching home movies in small family groups. The piece is quite long, with plenty of physical dancing, but the overall feelings of playfulness and nostalgia are winning and consistent throughout.
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OCTOBER 22, 2009
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