Amalgamation
Shubert Theatre
Sept. 5
“You will get a taste of everything,” promised Plié For The Arts, the Kingston, Jamaica-based dance company behind Amalgamation, a three-act dance piece that played at the Shubert Theatre on Friday night.
Amalgamation certainly lived up to the hype. The multigenre dance extravaganza brought together dancers from across the Caribbean; including members of NDTC, CDT, the Ashe Company, Dance Theatre Xamayca, Movements Dance Company, and the University of the West Indies Dance Society; and choreographers both local and international, including Jessica Lang, Robert Battle, Andrew Winghart, Shahar Binyamini, Renee McDonald, Steve Cornwall and Orville McFarlane.
The first act opened with a piece called “Memoria” choreographed by Andrew Winghart. In it, a group of two dozen white-clad dancers, all members of what the company calls the “Plié Global Collective,” danced to music, lighting, and projections inspired by the awe-inspiring vastness of the cosmos and the celestial bodies within. Their movements were appropriately expansive, open, and suggestive of circular orbits.
Later in the first act, “The Calling,” choreographed by Jessica Lang, featured a single dancer, Ashley Gordon, wearing a massive stone-white dress that splayed out across the entire stage floor. As she danced gently and delicately to a track featuring a single operatic voice, she continued to twist in a single direction, causing the dress to envelop her in a spiral formation. By the end of the piece, she looked like an elegant marble statue, looking up toward the heavens as the spotlight on her went dark.
In the second act, I was most wowed by Robert Battle’s “The Hunt,” a four-dancer piece underscored by intense and frequent drumbeats that felt fiercely and tenderly masculine. The dancers, wearing black and red skirt-like garments with their upper bodies exposed, exuded a volcanic energy with their movements; mainly slow, powerful, and deliberately paced, but simultaneously volatile and moments’ notice away from grand energetic release. There seemed to be many stories to be told in the piece as the dancers held, mirrored, and confronted each other with arm- and hand-heavy gestures. I gasped as the piece concluded with two of the dancers falling prone, defeated by the other two after a dynamic bout of stylized slices, chops, and kicks.
The final act kicked off with the world premiere of Orville McFarlane’s “Paragon” a piece set against a light blue backdrop, with dancers from the Global Collective clad in dazzling blue leotards, and underscored by foreboding and chimey music that suggested both the wonder and looming danger of icy terrain. The dancers, gliding effortlessly across the stage as individuals and pairs while barefoot, reminded me of figure skaters, helping each other traverse the bitter cold while finding warmth in each other. The whole piece felt like a dance companion to the artworks in Lorna Simpson’s “Ice Series”, which collage Black figures into vast blue arctic landscapes. The final tableau featured the dancers arranged in such a way to form a glacier or iceberg, including one dancer lifted horizontally, with the curvature of her body forming the jagged edges of the ice. “Paragon” was the coolest piece of the night, pun intended.
The final piece was a tribute to Jamaican Dancehall culture, choreographed by Steve Cornwall. The piece, performed to a medley of vivacious songs, featured some of the most contemporary dance and costuming of the night, and was a definite crowd favorite. Cheers and applause erupted as the booty shorts-clad collective shook ass, made it rain, and brought electric vibes and high-tempo fun to the show closer, getting the audience up on their feet to dance along as the curtain came down.
Prior to the start of the first act, Plié For The Arts’ founder, Marisa Benain, took the stage to offer a few remarks, including a reminder to all that “the universe does not have a budget on greatness.” Amalgamation, with an overflowing pool of talented dance artists shining across genre and style, is proof of that.
