Copyright Boston Herald Library May 31,
2003
Rebecca Rice Dance at the Cambridge Multicultural
Arts Center, last night. Final performance tonight.
Every so often, one encounters contemporary ballets
with evident structure, danced with exacting intent.
The program offered by Rebecca Rice Dance last
night at the Cambridge Multicultural
Arts Center was a revelation, intriguing and sophisticated from start to finish,
and proof that Rice is one of this area's most imaginative and downright
solid choreographers.
Rice has been presenting work in Boston since 1988, in modest venues, and she's taught
modern technique and choreography at the Boston Ballet School since 1992. The six ballets shown last night,
created during the past three years, mark an important turning point
in her artistic career. The events in each are organized with heightened
clarity, and it's easy to observe a coherent style running through all of
this work. The costuming is always understated and classy.
Like Jose Mateo and Margot Parsons, two of this
area's most important makers of contemporary ballets, Rice has kept her nose
to the grindstone and worked painstakingly to say
something original within classical ballet technique. She choreographs primarily
on younger dancers, and she's less interested in pointe
work than Parsons or Mateo. Her style is quite informed by her extensive
training in Jose Limon's technique.
"Paradigm," set to Bach's "Concerto
for Two Pianos and Strings in C Major," was a successful opener, and it
was also the most symmetrical work of the evening. The dance begins with combinations of two or three dancers
in traveling phrases or floor work, followed by a dramatic, dense ensemble
passage. An excerpt of Bach's long,
sustained notes on the violins, for example, was illustrated with just a
simple sweep of the arm.
The mood shifted drastically with
"Array," a sensual quartet set to a mesmerizing taped score by
Martin Case, Anugama and Sebastiano.
This was a perfect example of Rice's ability to carefully arrange episodes
within her dances. A solo was slowly transformed into a quartet, the entire group moved through a unison section, and then the dancers broke off into sequences of partnering.
Logically, the piece ended with another solo
played against the ensemble.
"Deep Horizon" was a sweeping work that
showcased the considerable talents of Darrius
Grey and Arian George. Set to Peter Shickele's
"Sextet," the dance centers on a mysterious social hierarchy
that ends with a kind of battlefield strewn with women. Grey and George,
looking perplexed, are the only ones who remain standing.
I can't think of the last time a dancer brought so much meaning to a simple backbend, but
that's what happened in the luxurious solo "Indigo," performed by the accomplished Sara Knight in a kind of primitive, fringed evening gown by
Martin Cooper.
Cooper also provided the brilliant archetypal costumes and photographic projections for the program's finale, "The Altis
Ballet," a psychological rumination on feminine athleticism.
This is Rice at her most spare and enigmatic, with
two- dimensional poses providing the punctuation for each extraordinary phrase.
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