3 Spice Presents

A Review

My husband and I thoroughly enjoyed this evening of twelve dance pieces created, choreographed, and performed by alumni of the Young Artist Residency Program at Bearnstow in Mount Vernon, Maine. We are delighted that 3 Spice Dance is widening the audience area by presenting the alumni work in the Boston area.

From the winter cold, we walked into a warm lobby filled with pho­tos of the Bearnstow woods, lake, and buildings, and the artists in summer. Film projected on the theatre's cyclorama added move­ment and more summer color, showing the Bearnstow camp with artists, workshop students, and teachers dancing, working, and creating.

Photos by Victoria Awkward. Hold mouse over images to pause slide changes.

The performance opened with Dy­ing Loons by Angela Cole and Ellen Oli­ver of Providance Project — two dancers in black, loon calls in the background, dark lighting. Interest­ing visuals, with dancers moving to­gether and apart, making sculptures, always in a loon- like tempo, showing a bond. So far, very good — and fol­lowed by an enter­taining and inter­esting mix of styles, images, media, and messages — well lit, with excel­lent live and recorded sound.

Dance:

Dog by Owen Prum, Divyamaan Sahoo and Chaesong Kim was filled with the quick energy of a dog run­ning, stopping, exploring the world. Images: high space, low space, leaps, ending quietly with boy and dog looking out to the sky.

Connect, a second duet by Providance Project, explored the way that the same movements done by two dancers look dif­ferent, whether coming together, moving in parallel, moving apart in space, changing dynamics.

Potato State, from Molly Hess and company, and Rinse and Repeat by Eliza Malecki and Molly Hess, were dances built around props. In Potato State the dancers rolled balls of yarn, and incorporated the improvisation needed to follow the unrolling as they moved in squaredance-like patterns and formed a square. Rinse and Repeat started with Molly and Eliza hanging clothes on a clothesline, and then moving from the literal action to abstract repetitions.

Films:

Dear Brother, an Ellen Oliver film with Mario Hernández Contreras and Angela Cole, was created during their Bearnstow summer residency, and showed a sister and brother moving in and around the woods and buildings, with Tika Lifton-Herman’s recorded voice in the background talking about the issues in their lives and relationship.

Everyday, by Megan Mizanty and 96B Dance Theatre, gave us dancers outdoors — in suburban wood, on residential streets, going through an underpass, dancing naturally with the environment.

Live Dance with Film:

She Walks the Air was lit so that Chaesong Kim seemed to be floating in air as she walked on stage and sat in a chair. She was accompanied by Divyamaan Sahoo on piano and prepared sounds. The piece then focused on the film behind her, showing her high in the trees, at one point sitting on a wooden chair suspended from the trees.

The background film for Do You Ever Feel was made in the Bearnstow kitchen and dance space and showed collaboration in cooking and dining as well as dance. The live dance (accompanied by Divyamaan Sahoo) started with a group of five dancers coming out slowly in a tight group, wearing plastic shopping bags that they removed and used as props through the rest of the dance. Images included colors of the dancer’s clothing, the plastic bags, and the bright kitchen in the film.

Dance Theatre:

It’s Not What It Looks Like by members of Almanac Circus Dance Theatre included circus acrobatics, interesting lifts and multi-person combinations, dance, and acting, with one member telling stories of her background in beauty pageants, cheerleading, and ballet.

The next to last piece was Look at the Doughnut and Not the Hole! — five dancers in an ever-changing ball of bodies, coming and going, using most of the stage and interacting with Ruth Grauert, Bearnstow’s director, in the foreground, who had come out from the audience to dance from a chair. Chaesong Kim was beside her; and Divyamaan Sahoo was at piano. A joyful dance! (Ruth started her dance career in the 1940s, and it is wonderful to see a master at work with this group of newer artists; and, I should say, wonderful to see these dancers work with Ruth.)

But there was more — Listen Loud by Evelyn Langley and Tyler Rai, preceded the curtain call. Listen Loud was full of movement and suggested stories, with clothing as props, snippets of lip-sync pop dance moves, water tossed on each other, and confetti. For the curtain call, Tyler Rai swept the stage, while the entire group made a pile of clothing on their way to forming a traditional curtain call line. Then, each person came forward and selected a garment (to great applause), until only one garment was left, next to a chair.

Well done! We enjoyed it! Please do more.

—Janet Erickson, February 18, 2018