Chamber Dance Project
SLAM: A Festival of Ballets – Program A
Greenberg Theater
Washington, DC
June 22, 2023

By Steve Sucato

In celebration of the company’s ten years in Washington, D.C., contemporary ballet company Chamber Dance Project (CDP) presented SLAM: A Festival of Ballets, June 22-25 at Washington’s Greenberg Theatre.

Program A of SLAM: A Festival of Ballets on June 22 featured two world premiere dance works, reprises of three other company favorites, and two music-only selections played live by CDP’s string quartet of Sally McLain (violin), Karin Kelleher (violin), Jerome Gordon (viola) and Steve Honigberg (cello).

It opened with a reprise of Princess Grace Award-winning choreographer Claudia Schreier’s “Alight” (2021) danced to Chris Rogerson’s “String Quartet No. 1.” The contemporary ballet for three men and two women, began with a playful back and forth of dancers moving about the stage in various
configurations (duets, trios, etc.) punctuated by partnered lifts and dancers alighting softly onto the stage. 

The ballet’s second movement, a succession of pas de deux, started with Atlanta Ballet’s Fuki Takahashi and Patric Palkens in a lovely melding of bodies moving together. They were followed by BalletMet’s Sophie Miklosovic and former San Francisco Ballet dancer John-Paul Simoens, engaging in more partnered lifts and alights to melancholy and reflective music. The third and final movement had Rogerson’s music return to a fast pace, with the dancers moving through leaps, jumps, and chest-forward, arched-back lunges.

A solid opener to Program A, Schreier’s “Alight” put CDP’s dancers through their paces and was nicely danced.

After CDP’s string quartet adroitly performed Astor Piazzolla’s “Libertango” (arranged by Jeremy Cohen), the dancing continued with two excerpts from CDP founding artistic director Diane Coburn Bruning’s “Time Has Come” (2014) that were danced to music by Georg Philip Telemann.

The first was a bubbly and teasingly delightful solo by Miklosovic infused with slides, jumps, and leg beats that showed off her technical prowess and warm stage presence. The smartly choreographed excerpts continued with Palkens and Takahashi again paired together, this time in a light-hearted battle of the sexes with Palkens eventually surrendering to Takahashi’s commanding allure.

Next, violinist McLain stepped out into the spotlight to marvelously perform a section from Paul Hindemith’s “Violin Sonata, OP 31 No. 2, ” leading into the world premiere of Coburn Bruning’s gem of a ballet, “Weave the Wind.”

Titled after a cryptic quote from James Joyce’s Ulysses and set to composer Caroline Shaw’s “Plan & Elevation,” the contemporary ballet for seven dancers in 4 sections showed Coburn Bruning at her creative best. The expertly crafted and darkly beautiful ballet was spellbinding.

Costumed in orange with Bohemian blouses imprinted with swirling lines and wearing headbands and pointe shoes, dancers Hannah Bruce, Miklosovic, and Takahashi set off in highly stylized movements as if elegant birds slinking about in off-kilter bends and dips, preening and nuzzling the air around them. Buoyed by Shaw’s penetrating string music, the trio’s arms hung above them like
wings before descending to fold one over the other in front of them in a vision of avian grace. The polished scene had a freshness to its dancing this critic hadn’t experienced in some time.

A tough act to follow, the ballet’s second section lacked the impact of the first. It was performed by a trio of men who acquitted themselves decently (apart from a sloppy turning sequence) in Coburn Bruning’s similarly stylized choreography. The exquisite pairing of Palkens and Takahashi was featured again in the ballet’s third section. The pair melted in and out of tender embraces and partnered lifts, climaxing with Takahashi, hands wrapped around Palkens’ neck with outstretched arms, being whipped round in the air in a circle as Shaw’s violin music built to a crescendo.

“Weave the Wind” concluded in a final section with the entire cast except for Palkens, revisiting the stylized movement that made the ballet such a standout.

After an intermission, the program continued with Coburn Bruning’s haunting “Exit Wounds” (2014). Danced to music by Philip Glass, dancers Ian Debono and Simoens were captivating in the work about two lives torn apart by conflict.

The last offering was the world premiere of the program’s namesake piece, “SLAM!”. Performed to a live soundtrack of the spoken word poetry by Drew Anderson and Gayle Danley, the piece included choreography by Gabrielle Lamb, Peter Chu, Andile Ndlovu, and Victor Adebusola, each of whom contributed a section to the hip hip-hop-influenced work for eight dancers.

Another example of Chamber Dance Project’s evolving repertory in recent years, “SLAM’s” combination of dance set to a spoken word soundtrack proved rather unique for the company known more for its ballets to live chamber music.

Conceived and directed by Coburn Bruning, the work was divided into sections that paired a spoken word poem/narrative with reactive dance choreography. Some pairings worked better than others. The patchwork nature of the piece had its choreography looking at times like everything from a Broadway musical or a Gap TV commercial to a hip-hop-infused contemporary dance work. While there was plenty of fine dancing and a few stellar moments, there were moments where stylistically, the choreography didn’t sit well on the dancers and even more times when the animated performances of Anderson and Danley drew attention away from the dance. Their delivery of poems about everyday life, seen through the eyes of colorful characters, was captivating. Several by Anderson highlighted those, including him using spirited vocalizations and body language in a
humorous tirade about a frustrated waiter fed up with the hems and haws of indecisive patrons ordering food.

Despite its shortcomings, “SLAM!” was an entertaining and thought-provoking closer to a program containing several memorable dance works and plenty of top-notch performances by CDP’s dancers, musicians, and poets.