Jan Erkert & Dancers
at the Athenaeum Theatre, through March 22 Los Mu–equitos de Matanzas at the Museum of Contemporary Art, March 13 and 14
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Jan Erkert is a serious artist. As she puts it in her mission statement, “We live in a world in need of awareness and wisdom of the body, in need of connections to the human spirit, in need of communication. Jan Erkert & Dancers is committed to meeting these needs.” Sounds like a religious impulse to me, and you can see that seriousness of purpose in her dances, which are carefully constructed to address significant issues: grief in Turn Her White With Stones, physical injury and healing in Whole Fragments. In the 1997 UnWeavings–which forms the first half of Erkert’s program this year at the Athenaeum–she explores the end of relationships, inspired by her mother’s illness and a passage from The Crossing in which Cormac McCarthy describes God as a divine weaver, impassively creating and destroying the world, weaving and unweaving the threads of human lives.
Erkert also has the humility of a true priestly mind: she has never pretended or wanted to do it all herself. She always credits her dancers in the program for movement development, and she collaborates with other artists to create sacred settings. UnWeavings relies heavily on a set design by textile artist Laurie Wohl. Long strips of canvas carefully unwoven and rewoven are mounted in layers that can be shuttled back and forth across the stage, creating a gauzy forest in fleshlike pinks and reds that alternately conceals and reveals the work’s five dancers. There’s something balletic about the set, recalling the human curtains of the huge corps in the “Kingdom of the Shades” act of La bayadere; also reminiscent of ballet is the opening phrase of UnWeavings–a single dancer traveling on half toe from one side of the stage to the other.
Love Poems really takes off with the third section, “Breathing Fast.” This trio for three women–Erika Gilfether, Suet May Ho, and Nelson–explores the fine line between rage and passion, between offended dignity and blatant need. The music, whose lines are primarily percussive and vocal, takes on almost a rock beat. The energy drops abruptly, however, in the fourth section, “My Mind Is Alone,” featuring Paul Cipponeri. Though Gilfether attends him, dressing him and touching him affectionately, he seems entirely unaware of her presence. Who is she? If she’s so patently there, why is he alone? But the energy picks up again in the fifth and sixth sections: in “Slipping Away” and “I Want You, I Need You,” Erkert recapitulates many of the violently propulsive movements of earlier sections, their excess mirroring the headlong impetus of early love.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Jan Erkert & Dancers photo by William Frederking; Los Mu–equitos de Matanzas photo by Cynthia Caris.
