Chamber Dance Project – Ramblin’
Sidney Harman Hall 
Washington, D.C. 
June 27, 2024

By Steve Sucato

In the past several seasons, Washington’s premiere contemporary ballet company, Chamber Dance Project (CDP), has offered an eclectic mix of dance works. From those using computer-generated music scores and live spoken word artists to shadow puppetry, the 24-year-old company has treated audiences to more than the top-flight contemporary ballets danced to live chamber music that the company is known for.  

Their latest summer series program, Ramblin, continued that trend, featuring works danced to bluegrass, old-time music, and Kulning, a Scandinavian form of herding calls performed live by North Carolina Tony-Award-winning band The Red Clay Ramblers. 

Chamber Dance Project’s complement of dancers, consisting of professionals on breaks from regular dance companies and freelance artists, featured dancers from Atlanta Ballet, BalletMet, BalletX, and more. Together, they brought to Ramblin a premiere level of dancing enhanced by stellar performances by CDP’s String Quartet and The Red Clay Ramblers. 

The June 27 opening night program at downtown Washington, D.C.’s Sidney Harman Hall kicked off with a reprise of choreographer Jorge Amarante’s 2014 ballet “Sur,” performed to music by composers Astor Piazzolla and Pēteris Vask and played live by CDP’s String Quartet.

In it, dancer Minori Sakita (BalletX) began to lean to one side, landing on the back of dancer Ian Debono, to begin a slowly developing pas de deux that felt like an exercise in bringing stillness to motion. The pair elegantly bent and intertwined their bodies as fellow dancers Fuki Takahashi (Atlanta Ballet) and the rest of the six-member cast began appearing on stage in individual spotlights. 

Amarante’s choreography moved back and forth across the stage in waves like a deconstructed tango using a contemporary ballet movement language. Three male-female couples formed with the female dancers sitting, strutting, and being enveloped or pulled by their ankles by their male partners.  The work was an engaging program opener.

Next, CDP violinist and principal musician Sally McLain performed the first of several music-only works on the program, performing Richard Einhorn’s stirring “Maxwell’s Demon #4” on electric violin. 

A reprise of last season’s gem, “Weave the Wind,” followed to close the program’s first half. Set to music by Caroline Shaw with choreography by CDP artistic director/choreographer Diane Coburn Bruning, dancer Iris Davila (BalletMet) began the work with an articulating solo evocative of Coburn Bruning’s bird-like movement for the piece.  She was joined by Takahashi and Sophie Miklosovic (BalletMet), all in Bohemian-inspired costumes of embroidered orange shirts, shorts, and headscarves and wearing pointe shoes.

The trio preened, bent, and leaned into and around one another like flamingos in conversation. Coburn Bruning’s idiosyncratic movement language for the trio was a delight, as was an athletic men’s trio and a heartfelt pas de deux danced by Takahashi and Patric Palkens (Boston Ballet) that evoked a feeling of loss and remembrance. 

Opening the program’s second half, the world premiere of choreographer Christian Denice’s “Book of Stones.” 

This season’s standout work combined theatrical lighting and production elements with lush contemporary dance choreography that, like “Weave the Wind,” also included bird-like movements.  

It was set to brilliant, original, atmospheric music by The Red Clay Ramblers’ Jack Herrick and Bland Simpson. The music featured vocalist Skyler Herrick’s ethereal Kulning and the sounds of seagulls, conjuring images of high seaside cliffs with ocean waves crashing below. 

On a stage blanketed in fog, three male-female couples moved through Denice’s sweeping contemporary dance choreography, replete with dancers running into slides across the stage, leaping, swaying, and dancers in lifting and diving movements resembling birds aloft and carried by salted air currents.

A wonderfully satisfying ballet on all counts, this was Denice and company at their finest. 

After two delightfully folksy music-only selections from The Red Clay Ramblers, the program closed with the company premiere of Coburn Bruning’s “Ramblin’ Suite.” 

Created in 2002 for Atlanta Ballet, the Washington, D.C.-premiere of the ballet blended bluegrass and old-time music arranged by The Red Clay Ramblers with contemporary ballet movement.  

The ballet, delivered in six sections titled after the old-time and traditional songs they were performed to, began with the American Minstrel Song “The Old Jawbone,” in which a barefoot Palkins launched into a manhood reveling solo as five male dancers in silhouette walked across the stage behind him flexing their muscles. 

Seemingly taking inspiration from each of the six songs’ lyrics or emotional mood, Colburn Bruning’s choreography for the ballet’s dozen dancers had a home-spun, sometimes hoedown feel. With song titles like “Woman Down in Memphis,” about a grieving, lovesick man with tuberculosis seeking cosmic vengeance for the woman who caused all his troubles, “A Beefalo Special,” and the traditional Irish reel “Pinch of Snuff,” the ballet embodied the melancholy and foot-stomping, knee-slapping energy of The Red Clay Ramblers music.

With skillful, athletic and energetic performances by CDP’s dancers and The Red Clay Ramblers, “Ramblin’ Suite” capped a perfect evening of dance and music.