Scene from The Soldier's Tale | Photo credit: Jim Leisy
There’s nothing wrong with light and whimsical pieces that can make an audience chuckle, but just one perfectly executed, tour-de-force work can dominate a show. That’s what happened on Friday evening (July 20) at the PSU Lincoln Performance Hall when virtuoso percussionist Ayano Kataoka more than conquered a rhythmically complex work entitled “Rebonds B” by Greek composer Iannis Xenakis. Wielding two sticks in her right hand and one in her left, Kataoka commanded an array of bongos, tom-toms, bass drums, a tumba, and wood blocks with panache. Sometimes it seemed that she maintained two different meters at the same time. She deftly controlled the volume and brought the piece to an emphatic crescendo with the last few notes on the bass drums, causing the audience to explode with cheering that went on and on and on in a vain attempt to bring Kataoka back to the stage for at least one extra bow.
Kataoka’s stunning performance was part of a unique concert that paired the musicians of Chamber Music Northwest and the dancers of BodyVox. It was a marvelous collaboration in which most of the musical selections were interpreted by dance in a humorous way, starting with a fluttering, gesture-laden number called “Moto Perpetuo,” which was danced by Jamey Hampton to the (again) virtuosic marimba-playing of Kataoka, who quickly and flawlessly played Paganini’s piece of the same name.
Kataoka and Hampton in Moto Perpetuo | Photo credit: Jim Leisy
“Metamorfishes: Like Kafka but Wetter” took place, mostly underwater. Not on the stage, though, but on film. Some of the action took place at a store that sold aquariums and exotic fish and the other swim-dance segments were in a swimming pool. Some of the dancers (Ashley Roland, Lane Hunter, Jamey Hampton, and Cristina Betts) donned full-body swimwear that mimicked the same colors of fighting fish. To accompany the dancers, pianists Shai Wosner and Elizabeth Harcombe played the “Aquarium” movement from Saint-Saëns’s “Carnival of the Animals,” and the piece was cutely topped off with a bubbly goodbye at the very end.
A trio of dances used Chopin’s waltzes (played impeccably by Shai Wosner) as the inspirational basis for the relationships between lovers and suitors. The first piece, “Two for One…” depicted a beautiful romance between a man (Zachary Caroll) and a woman (Anna Marra), the second piece, “…Three for Al…” added spice with an extra man (Jeff George), who vainly tried to lure the woman away. This created a lot of funny moments as the woman was elegantly yanked from one man to the other. The third piece “…Four for Nothing” escalated the struggle over the woman with a third man (Jamey Hampton) in the picture. This also upped the comic opportunities like when two of the men squared off against each other while the third got to dance with the woman.
Scene from Metamorfishes | Photo credit: Jim Leisy
In a break from the lighter fare, “Falling for Grace” was a sober look at love and loss between a woman and a man. Dancers Heather Jackson, Daniel Kirk, Jonathan Krebs, Eric Skinner, Carroll, and Hampton gave this vignette a dreamlike quality as the woman entered the man’s life and then was taken away. Composer Katarina Kramarchuk’s music (also entitled “Falling for Grace”) created languid spaces for the dancers and was evocatively played by violinist David Southorn, violist Wei-Yang Andy Lin, clarinetist David Shifrin, and bassoonist Julie Feves.
The big piece on the program was Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale” (“Histoire du Soldat”) which stared dancers Daniel Kirk as the soldier, Eric Skinner as the devil, Ashley Roland as the princess, and Jamey Hampton as the narrator. Kirk embodied the upright yet naïve young soldier who attempts to go to his hometown while on leave, but Skinner used every trick in the devil’s bag to detour the soldier as well as his love interest, the princess. Skinner’s nonchalant, ultra-cool poses – often with cigarette in hand – were impeccably timed to the story, narrated brilliantly by Hampton (even when a microphone briefly went out of action). At the back of the stage, an ensemble comprised of clarinetist Shifrin, bassoonist Feves, trumpeter Thomas Bergeron, trombonist Richard Harris, violinist Ani Kavafian, double bassist Rex Surany, and percussionist Kataoka nailed Stravinsky’s tricky rhythms with relish.
Two for One... | Photo credit: Jim Leisy
All of the dances were choreographed by Jamey Hampton and/or Ashley Roland. They have a genuine comic gift that combined wit and grace, and that was a winning combination for this summery program.
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